Spain's most important modern art museum has confessed it has lost a 38-tonne sculpture by the prestigious American artist Richard Serra.
The valuable artwork, Equal-Parallel/Guernica-Bengasi, was commissioned by the Reina Sofia museum in 1986, and displayed there until 1990.
The museum admitted on Wednesday that the last document it had relating to the piece and the payments made for its storage was dated 1992.
The four 1.5-metre-wide blocks of solid metal Serra used for the sculpture were removed from exhibition in 1990 and, as they were too big and heavy to keep on site, were sent to a private storage depot.
When the museum's new director, Ana Martinez, told her staff to produce an inventory last year, they discovered that the storage company had gone into receivership in 1998 and the blocks had disappeared. The owner of the company said he did not know where the sculpture had gone.
A Spanish newspaper suggested the work may have been sold as scrap or melted down by somebody who did not realise its artistic value. Ms Martinez, however, still hopes that the piece might be found.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/19/2006 20:33
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A Spanish newspaper suggested the work may have been sold as scrap or melted down by somebody who did not realise its artistic value.
Man! St. Louis should've thought of that! "Hello, Bud's Salvage? We got some iron scrap we'd like you to pick up and haul away. Yeah. Corner of 10th and Market. Could you possibly come in the evening, say, oh, midnight? What? Oh, no reason..."
You've heard a lot about the ACLU lawsuit since its filing yesterday.
But you haven't heard much about its less famous plaintiffs, plaintiffs with whom I'm all too familiar and about whom I've written a great deal. The details on these individuals makes the National Security Agency's monitoring of phone calls not just warranted, but a necessity.
I'm referring to ACLU lawyers Noel Saleh, Mohammed Abdrabboh, and Nabih Ayad, the ACLU Plaintiffs named in the yesterday's Complaint, attorney William Swor, a member National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and Nazih Hassan -- all named in the lawsuit. They are exactly the kind of people whom the federal government should be watching, but probably isn't. One of these men admitted to funding Hezbollah, one was accused of tampering with a witness, and a third signed a document contradicting statements he made in the lawsuit. Not to mention, one of these men engaged in exactly the same "spying" (on me) that he now opposes when done by the NSA.
Their clients are no different from that of convicted Attorney Lynn Stewart's (convicted of helping the Blind cleric spread terrorist messages in Egypt). Yet, instead of monitoring them, the federal government's representatives in Detroit -- including U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy III, FBI Special Agent in Charge Daniel Roberts, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent in Charge Brian Moskowitz -- have been courting them, their clients, and friends in a series of exclusive meetings.
Take Noel Saleh. The thrice-disciplined attorney (who was suspended from the practice of law) openly stated at a townhall meeting with federal officials that he has financially contributed to Hezbollah. He heads an Arab welfare agency that gets millions in our tax dollars, yet was raided by the FBI for engaging in Medicaid fraud. The organization also spent thousands in our tax dollars on "job training" (commercial driving lessons and attempts at HazMat hauling certificates) for two men indicted as members of the Detroit al-Qaeda terror cell. He has represented a number of Islamic terrorists, including Ibrahim Parlak and "former" PFLP terrorist Imad Hamad. Rest at link.
Posted by: ed ||
01/19/2006
19:24 ||
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Thanks for shortening, ed. I got more than enough from your ed-it.
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/19/2006 20:47
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SD Business News - WOT good News; EFL, pic at link
In a series of flight tests this week, a robotic helicopter developed in San Diego landed aboard a Navy warship while it was steaming off the Maryland coast near Patuxent River.
The tests marked the first time an unmanned helicopter has landed aboard a moving Navy ship with no pilot controlling the aircraft, according to Northrop Grumman Corp. The Los Angeles defense contractor made the two Fire Scout helicopters used in the flight tests at its unmanned systems business in Rancho Bernardo.
The landings demonstrate that robotic aircraft could still become a valuable weapon for the Navy, which has yet to embrace unmanned aircraft with the same enthusiasm as the Army and Air Force.
The Predator unmanned plane, which was also developed in San Diego by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, has gained widespread praise for the role it has played in U.S. military operations in Iraq. Northrop Grumman's Global Hawk, also created in San Diego, has served more of a strategic role as a globe-girdling, high-altitude spy plane.
In the same vein, the Fire Scout could prove to be a major new source of revenue for Northrop Grumman, which plans to build a fleet of Fire Scouts at a new plant near Moss Point, Miss.
Fire Scout MQ-8b
Company: Northrop Grumman
Length folded: 22.87 feet
Rotor diameter: 27.5 feet
Height: 9.42 feet
Gross weight: 3,150 pounds
Speed: More than 144 mph
Ceiling: 20,000 feet
Flight time: More than 8 hours, with standard payload
Flight time: More than 4 hours, with 500-pound payload
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/19/2006
19:04 ||
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Cool!
Life is goooood. :-D
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/19/2006 20:29
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Former Syrian Vice President Abdul-Halim Khaddam, who resigned and defected to France in June 2005, discusses the role of the current president in the Hariri murder case, the establishment of a government in exile and the possible end of the Damascus regime...
A suicide bomber blew up near the old central bus station in southern Tel Aviv at around 3:45 P.M. on Thursday, wounding at least 20 people. Islamic Jihad said that it carried out the attack. The terrorist group has claimed responsibility for each of the six suicide bombings in Israel since a truce took effect last February. Police said that the suicide bomber was the only person killed in the explosion.
On Thursday evening, Islamic Jihad released a video recording in which it claimed responsibility for the suicide attack. Palestinian sources in the West Bank city of Nablus identified the bomber as Sami Antar, 20, a resident of the adjacent Balata refugee camp. The Israel Defense Forces said it had no specific warnings of an attack but only general information indicating Islamic Jihad was intending to strike. Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has ordered the IDF to continue its operations in the West Bank against Islamic Jihad.
This is the first terror attack that originated in Nablus in more than a year. Other recent attacks carried out by Islamic Jihad involved explosives from Jenin assembled by operatives from the Tul Karm area who reached the Sharon region via Jerusalem.
Sources in Nablus told Haaretz that Antar was a member of a Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades branch headed by Balata resident Ala Sanakra. This particular branch of the Brigades, which seeks its inspiration from Hezbollah, has threatened to disrupt Palestinian parliamentary elections in the city by carrying out terror attacks.
The Thursday blast occurred at a shawarma stand close to the bus station, at the junction of Neveh Sha'anan and Salomon streets, in an area normally crowded with shoppers and travelers. Witnesses said the bomber entered the restaurant pretending to be a peddler selling disposable razors. According to police, the bomber blew himself up in the restaurant's bathroom and may have been trying to prepare the explosive device when it went off prematurely. Of the wounded, one person was in serious condition, five people sustained moderate wounds and 14 others were lightly hurt. All the wounded were evacuated from the site of the attack within a short time of the blast. They were taken to Wolfson Medical Center in Holon and Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv.
After the blast, a crowd gathered outside the restaurant. An elderly man wearing a felt hat wept. "There was a huge boom near... a restaurant," witness Ronit Lis told Reuters. "Everything turned black and I ran away. They began to close the area down and there are a lot of ambulances in the area." A witness, who identified himself only as Itzik, said he was eating at a fast-food stand when he began to suspect the man standing next to him. "All of a sudden a policeman came, he pulled him out, and started searching him," he told Israel Radio. The suspect fled, Itzik said, and five minutes later the explosion was heard.
Israel said that the blame for the attack lay at the feet of the Palestinian Authority, which it said was doing nothing to fight terrorism. "The terror attack in Tel Aviv is a direct result of the Palestinian Authority's glaring indifference to preventing terror against Israel," David Baker, an official in the Prime Minister's Office, told Haaretz.
"The PA continues its policy of refusing to take any steps whatsoever to prevent this terror, and ignoring its commitments to do so. It continues to sit idly by and do nothing."
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, condemned the attack, calling it an act of sabotage against Palestinian parliamentary balloting scheduled for next Wednesday. "We condemn this attack," he said. "This is an attack to sabotage the Palestinian elections and sabotage the efforts being exerted to revive the peace process after the elections." In the wake of the blast, the police raised the level of alert across the whole country, Channel 10 TV reported. Talking to reporters at the site of the attack, senior police officials said that it was too early to provide details of how the attack was carried out.
Olmert did not convene a special meeting of top ministers and defense officials following the Tel Aviv attack but held consultations via telephone. Olmert spoke with IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz and heads of the police and Shin Bet domestic security service. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz directed the security establishment to continue operations against Islamic Jihad and "ticking time-bombs" during the coming week when Israel had planned to reduce its presence in major West Bank cities in the lead up to Palestinian parliamentary elections. A Palestinian suicide bomber last struck in Israel on December 5, killing five people outside a shopping mall in the coastal city of Netanya.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/19/2006
14:01 ||
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According to police, the bomber blew himself up in the restaurant's bathroom and may have been trying to prepare the explosive device when it went off prematurely.
Courtesy boom.
U.S. Repeating Arms Co. Inc. plans to close the New Haven factory that opened in 1866. New Haven residents are trying to save the plant before the March 31 closing date, but if a buyer can't be found, it could mean the end of all commercially produced Winchesters.
Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
01/19/2006
13:38 ||
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Challenge for Rantburg Industries:
1. Buy gun factory.
2. Build AK-47's
3. Sell to US Gubment (cough, cough)
4. Machinery magically delivered to Iran dissidents.
5. Fun and profit.
Let's say that George Galloway, Ramsey Clark and other luminaries of the international progressive movement got their wish. Let's say the Iraq war never happened. Saddam Hussein is still in power. How does he react to the Iranian nuclear program?
"You guys go ahead, I'll stick with Russian artillery pieces. Besides, those things are more trouble than they're worth! The testing, the maintenance, the hiding -- it's like having six wives! No thanks. I'll sit here in my palace and smoke my cigar and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism, thank you."
Or: Colorful Tikrit-specific profanity, hurled ashtrays, and a crash program that launders oil-for-food kickbacks into a secret weapons program facilitated by Libyan and North Korean assistance with information from the A.Q. Khan network, conducted under the indifferent eye of a world tired of pretending it cares about Iraq.
Some would actually prefer option No. 2, since it would give the region a "balance of power."
Well, tell that to Egypt, which came out against Iran's nuclear-bomb plans right around the time Vice President Cheney dropped by. Huzzah: That annual $2 billion bribe is finally paying off.
Tell it to the Saudis, as long as you're in the neighborhood -- Prince Saud al-Faisal opposes the Iranian bomb, although he blames Israel for the problem in the first place. Damnable pesky nation, insisting on surviving: the sheer cheek of those Jews.
Tell it to International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mo ElBaradei, who, sporting the rented testes that U.N. types like to use when diplomacy proves futile, threatened the Iranians with "force" if additional palaver fails.
No one wants Iran to have the bomb, except the apocalyptically minded mullahs. For them there is no God but Allah, and J. Robert Oppenheimer is his messenger.
At least it's not that bad. Scott Ritter could be defending Iran.
So what now? The Iranian situation has eerie overtones of the Iraq debate -- the gathering threat, the nuclear ambitions, the frowny faces of U.N. diplomats preparing the 13th Strongly Worded Document, complete with threatened revocation of parking garage privileges. But things are different now.
The American left believed in Iraq's WMDs and terrorist links in the '90s because that gave them much-needed hawk cred; it was Viagra for their dovish side. But they've spent the last two electoral cycles preaching defeat, insisting that when the Bush administration says something's a threat, it's a lie, a diversion tactic, an election ploy, a floorwax AND a dessert topping.
Oh, they'll suggest that Iran should have been the main target in the first place, but if the U.S. had invaded there in '03, we'd be looking at huge casualties, an occupation that continued to this day (quaqmire!) and evidence that the Iranians were still years away from a bomb. Years! And we invaded on that slender pretext? Impeach!
Well, something's going to happen. Iran is taking delivery of anti-aircraft missiles from Russia in March, press reports say. (Thanks, Vladimir! Anything we can do for you? Besides having the NYPD put the boot on all your U.N. limos?)
One suspects President Bush is disinclined to do the long, slow gavotte with the U.N. again, especially when half the big players have been in bed with Iran so long they feel comfortable enough to complain about the ayatollah-patterned sheets. (Honestly, Monsieur; c'est creepy.) The U.S. may attempt a political change, since the great mass of urban, educated, decent Iranians would rather rejoin the outer world than blow it up.
But if the mullahs looked brittle and nervous a few years ago, now they look downright insane -- and determined to turn their nation into a collective suicide bomb.
If there are attacks that set back the program, and they don't inspire a wave of nationalism that strengthens the mullahs' hands, and the threat is pushed off three years, and the Bush administration ends with the neutralization of the region's worst actors -- well, you can imagine what the progressives will say:
"What about North Korea? You did nothing about North Korea. We're no safer than ever. Oh, one more thing -- don't you DARE do anything about North Korea."
You can't win. But we must.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/19/2006
13:24 ||
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"The American left believed in Iraq's WMDs and terrorist links in the '90s because that gave them much-needed hawk cred; it was Viagra for their dovish side. But they've spent the last two electoral cycles preaching defeat, insisting that when the Bush administration says something's a threat, it's a lie, a diversion tactic, an election ploy, a floorwax AND a dessert topping."
Iraqi soldiers and about 1,000 U.S. Marines, sailors and soldiers with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) are conducting counterinsurgency operations in Iraq's Anbar province.
Operation Koa Canyon began Jan. 15 to capture or kill insurgents and to locate and destroy their weapons caches in the western Euphrates River Valley, between the Jubbah/Baghdadi region and the city of Hit, officials said.
This combined operation involves 1st Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 7th Iraqi Division, and the 22nd MEU's ground combat element, Battalion Landing Team 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment.
Most forces are conducting cordon-and-knock operations and searching for weapons and insurgent activity along the Euphrates River, about 80 miles northwest of Baghdad. U.S. Marines are also working with Iraqi police in the Baghdadi region in Anbar province. I suspect that this is more a combination of field training exercise for predominantly Sunni troops, unit shakedown operations, brigade training exercise, and core evaluation. All of which is very, very good.
LONG FORK - The steep mountainsides in western Pike County are painted in the drabbest of winter browns and grays now, but already there is a feeling in the air that the land is ready to break out with spring color in a few weeks, bringing new life, new hope. Maybe that's a good omen for a young man back home after surviving the meat grinder of Iraq but still struggling to cope with the psychological shocks of all he's seen and done, shocks that ultimately cut short his career in the U.S. Marine Corps.
RAMADI, Iraq â For Marine Gunnery Sgt. Michael Burghardt, the business of hunting down and defusing roadside bombs is something of a deadly chess game.
Burghardt, 36, of Fountain Valley, Calif., is probably one of the best-known and most well-respected improvised bomb experts in Iraq, where his skills are in constant demand.
Last September, an embedded journalist snapped a photo of Burghardt moments after a roadside bomb exploded on him in a notoriously troubled corner of western Ramadi â a city that Burghardt describes as âthe scariest place on Earth.â The image shows Burghardt with bloodied legs and shredded uniform, flipping the bird to an unseen insurgent who triggered the bomb.
The photo has circulated widely among military personnel in Iraq, who view it as a powerful symbol of resolve and fighting spirit.
âItâs one hell of a picture,â said Col. John L. Gronski, commander of U.S. troops in and around Ramadi.
#1
I'm having a sweatshirt printed up with this guy's finger photo in front.
Can you just imagine being one of the Muslim terrorist watching as he set off the bomb? Not only did the American get up but for good measure he flips of the wearer of diapers. LOL!
Talk about balls of steel! Way to go Gunny! 64 bombs defused, on his 3rd tour. If Bin Murtha thinks our troops are demoralized, I'd love to see them worked up!
The project, conceived in April by President Jacques Chirac of France and Gerhard Schröder, then the chancellor of Germany, is an attempt by two of Europe's largest economies to develop a local challenger to Google, the California-based search engine, which spent $327 million on research and development in the first nine months of 2005. No question the Euros can overcome Google, Yahoo and Microsoft and whom ever else is investing in a segment likely to be saturated before they complete their government make work project.
In a speech this month laying out his 2006 agenda, Chirac spoke to those concerns, saying: "We must take up the challenge posed by the American giants Google and Yahoo. For that, we will launch a European search engine, Quaero."
#1
If the project was conceived by Chiraq and Schroeder, then it is just a big money hole. Chiraq, especially, knows how to come up with schemes to piss away spend the public purse.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/19/2006 18:33
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I'm sure it will be at least as successful as the Japanese Government's 50 billion yen Fifth Generation Project.
In an audio tape broadcast on Aljazeera, Osama bin Laden has warned that al-Qaida was preparing an attack very soon, but also offered Americans a "long-term truce".
... upon which at least a third of Congressional Dems are going to jump...
"The new operations of al-Qaida has not happened not because we could not penetrate the security measures. It is being prepared and you'll see it in your homeland very soon," the voice attributed to bin Laden said, apparently addressing Americans. But the voice on the tape, which appeared to be aimed at the American public, also offered a truce: "We do not mind establishing a long-term truce between us and you."
"It would last until we can train up some more bigshots. We're running a little short lately..."
The tape, broadcast on Thursday but dated to December last year, comes after a year of silence from the al-Qaida leader.
Ayman's done most of the talking. Ayman almost(?) gets zapped and suddenly Binny's talkative. I'm wondering about that "almost." And I'm oiling up my ululator.
"This message is about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and how to end those wars," it began.
"It was not my intention to talk to you about this, because those wars are definitely going our way.
"But what triggered my desire to talk to you is the continuous deliberate misinformation given by your President [George] Bush, when it comes to polls made in your home country which reveal that the majority of your people are willing to withdraw US forces from Iraq.
"We know that the majority of your people want this war to end and opinion polls show the Americans don't want to fight the Muslims on Muslim land, nor do they want Muslims to fight them on their (US) land.
"But Bush does not want this and claims that it's better to fight his enemies on their land rather than on American land.
"Bush tried to ignore the polls that demanded that he end the war in Iraq.
"We are getting increasingly stronger while your situation is getting from bad to worse," he told the US, referring to poor US troop morale and the huge economic losses inflicted by the war.
"The war in Iraq is raging and the operations in Afghanistan are increasing."
Truce offer
"In response to the substance of the polls in the US, which indicate that Americans do not want to fight Muslims on Muslim land, nor do they want Muslims to fight them on their land, we do not mind offering a long-term truce based on just conditions that we will stick to.
"We are a nation that Allah banned from lying and stabbing others in the back, hence both parties of the truce will enjoy stability and security to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan, which were destroyed by war.
"There is no problem in this solution, but it will prevent hundreds of billions from going to influential people and warlords in America - those who supported Bush's electoral campaign - and from this, we can understand Bush and his gang's insistence on continuing the war."
Addressing Americans again, he said: "If your desire for peace, stability and reconciliation was true, here we have given you the answer to your call."
Bin Laden, who had not been heard of since a 27 December 2004 audiotape in which he anointed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraq's most wanted man, as al-Qaida's leader in Iraq, also said his network was winning the war against the US.
"I would like to tell you that everything is going to our advantage and the number of your dead is increasing, according to Pentagon figures."
Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's deputy, said in a September videotape that his leader was still alive and leading the jihad against the West. .. and dhimmies accept the truce. Let the demonstrations begin.
#1
I gotta admit, I like the terms. We offer to stop banging Binny's senior officer corps, and he offers to...retire to his cave to continue plotting the demise of Civilization and to be measured for his new Caliph turban.
#3
There was a Tumbleweeds comic strip years ago that applies to this situation. The indian chief asks the Colonel of a cavelry fort to surrender the fort. "Give me one good reason", the officer asks. "Because you're losing", replies the chief. "Need a better reason than that", says Colonel Fluster. "Because we're winning", says the chief.
Binny should take parable to heart.
Posted by: Jim K ||
01/19/2006 12:28
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#4
Truce? OK, right after the US annexes Arabia.
Posted by: ed ||
01/19/2006 12:29
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#5
Benny's speech sounds like it was written by the leading Demo politicians. Nancy keeps telling us, they are developing a plan. Maybe Benny is delivering this as a dry run for them.
With Hillary saying Bush isn't being tough enough on the MMs in Iran and calling for sanctions, now Benny offering truce, wonder how she's going to square this? Attack the Iranians, and maybe Benny will offer a truce for them also?
And wonder if the Demos will realize now, that we are at war. I mean, how can you have a truce if there is no war? So, if Dems start screaming for "talks for this truce," will they admit we are at war?
There's something about cause and effect here, that just seems to be circling around in my head, not landing anywhere. Oh well, it almost time for lunch, maybe food will help this circling entity to find a resting place.
#6
Though obviously intended as a slam of Americans, the artist who created this image actually got it more right than his Lefty Moonbat Kool Aid addled PCism allowed him to realize, heh. It's a prominent feature of Tranzis in the terminal stage of BDS. I figure it will give many of you a case of the giggles. ;-)
#7
The LLL/Dums must be proud he covered all of the talking points, military industrial complex, warmongers made Bush pres, Americans donât support US WOT (same polls the Dums have made and tout), US is losing, blah blah blah.
You could fill in Bin Laden name for Kerry, Shenan, Dean, Kennedy, Pelosi, Moore and it would just sound like another LLL radio address.
#9
Here are our terms for your "truce": Your unconditional surrender and war criminal trial--or death by Hellfire. Either is fine by me.
I'd also like to state how proud this American taxpayer is of the spooks who nailed the 3-4 al Qaida ops in Pakistan this past week. Nice shootin', boys! Keep up the great work!
I just love the timing of this "truce" offer right after the Pakistan strike... the offer tape was probably recorded and planned for release before the strike happened, but the timing is excellent and makes it appear al-Qaida is crying "Uncle".
Posted by: Dar ||
01/19/2006 13:16
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#10
.com he has a pretty good grasp of the geopolitix of the region. Thanks!
#11
Can't wait for one of the "intellectuals" to say this is evidence that poor Binny's been misunderstood. All he really needs is a hug, an Iron John drumming session, or something like that.
#12
The bin Laden truce and the Murtha withdrawal plan are pretty much the same document.
Wonder if anyone but us Rantburgers will notice?
Posted by: Mike ||
01/19/2006 13:27
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#13
Benny's speech sounds like it was written by the leading Demo politicians
don't know who wrote it, but it sure sounds like it was taped a good while ago -- no specifics. It may also be the offer of hudna that preceeds (when it is ignored) an attack.
#15
009.005 But the treaties are not dissolved with those Pagans with whom ye have entered into alliance and who have not subsequently failed you in aught, nor aided any one against you. So fulfil your engagements with them to the end of their term.
009.005 But when the forbidden months are past [when the 'treaties' expire] then fight and slay the Pagans [wherever] ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem of war.
#16
rather than spin this as a DU conspiracy or neocon conspiracy, it would be nice to use this "offer" as a teachable moment to tell people what a hudna is
Wikipedia has a good write up
--------------
Hudna
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Jump to: navigation, search
Hudna (Ã¥ÃäÃ) is an Arabic term meaning "truce" or "armistice" as well as "calm" or "quiet", coming from a verbal root meaning "calm". It is sometimes translated as "cease-fire". In the Lisan al-Arab (Ibn al-Manzur's definitive dictionary of classical Arabic, dating to the 14th century) it is defined as follows:
"hadana: he grew quiet. hadina: he quieted (transitive or intransitive). haadana: he made peace with. The noun from each of these is hudna."
A particularly famous early hudna was the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah between Muhammad and the Quraysh tribe.
According to Umdat as-Salik, a medieval summary of Shafi'i jurisprudence, hudnas with a non-Muslim enemy should be limited to 10 years: "if Muslims are weak, a truce may be made for ten years if necessary, for the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) made a truce with the Quraysh for that long, as is related by Abu Dawud" ('Umdat as-Salik, o9.16).
#19
SM listed suras 9:4 and 9:5. Basically it's saying to honor the hudna (no more than 10 years) if the infidels also honor it. At expiry, it's jihad again.
Since Surah 9 was the last (some say next to last) chapter of the quran to be revealed, it supercedes all the be nice to the idolaters verses Mo spouted while he was weak.
Posted by: ed ||
01/19/2006 14:33
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#20
Binny blinked.
Oh, and he thinks we don't want to fight Muslims in our own land...Bullshite, we have these pesky laws keeping us from annihilating y'all.
#21
Binny didn't blink. The quran says to offer a truce when the muslims are in a bad position. It's just an acknowledgement of facts on the ground and a desire to regroup and attack when our guard is down again.
Posted by: ed ||
01/19/2006 15:11
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#22
I'm in, ed. They're playing the Long Game. When we finally become tired of the WoT (happening all around us already) and so self-absorbed and juvenile that we're back to navel-gazing, then it will begin anew. It's to our immense advantage that they're tactically clueless. They started this about a decade too soon. Thank your Lucky Stars that they did it when they did and that Dubya grew into the shoes, not to mention that he beat Gore and Skeery. Just imagine...
#25
.com is right on. Thank God that these idiots wanted the glory for themselves, not for future generations. So they could'nt wait much longer for the war to happen, less they not be glorified.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad began a visit to Syria Thursday to consolidate an old alliance made increasingly crucial as both countries face mounting U.S. pressure and the threat of international sanctions. Ahmadinejad and Syrian President Bashar Assad were expected to talk about Iran's standoff with the West over its nuclear program and the threat to refer it to the U.N. Security Council, as well as Syria's own troubles over a U.N. investigation that implicated it in the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister.
Bilateral economic, industrial and cultural agreements also were expected to be discussed during the two-day visit. Syria is Iran's closest Arab ally. The two countries have had close relations since 1980 when Syria sided with Iran against Iraq at the start of the Iran-Iraq war. On the eve of the visit, Ahmadinejad described bilateral relations as "strong and good." Both countries share to a certain extent similar foreign policy objectives: opposition to what they describe as U.S. attempts to dominate the Middle East, hostility toward Israel and support for Palestinian and Lebanese militant groups fighting the Jewish state.
Ahmadinejad's visit comes at a very delicate time for both nations. Iran's insistence to proceed with its peaceful nuclear activities have raised great concern in the European Union and the United States, which have been pushing for referring the issue to the Security Council, a first step toward possible sanctions.
Syria faces international accusations of failing to fully cooperate with the U.N. investigation into last year's assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Investigators have implicated Syrian officials and now want to interview Assad and his foreign minister. Damascus has denied any role in the killing.
Syria sits on the 35-nation International Atomic Energy Agency board, which meets on Feb. 2 for a vote on whether to refer Tehran to the Security Council.
Ahmadinejad on Wednesday accused the West of acting like the "lord of the world" in denying his country peaceful use of nuclear energy. But the United States and other countries are suspicious that Iran is planning on develop nuclear arms.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/19/2006
11:29 ||
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I predict this Ahmadinejad guy is gonna go a long way. He's got an incredibly bright future, brighter than a thousand suns.
The Benefits of Becoming Indian AKA: Ward Churchill Syndrome Sweeps Nation.
In the United States a growing number of white people are discovering their Native American roots. Some are doing so for financial gain, but most are just looking for the meaning of life. And the meaning of life is usually financial gain...
A few weeks, Betty Baker was still just a white housewife. But now the woman, with her piercing blue eyes, goes by the name "Little Dove" --and has jettisoned her apron for an elaborate deerskin dress. I wonder if that turns on hubby?
"I am an Indian and I've sensed this my whole life," says the 48-year-old Baker, who lives in a wooden house on the edge of the small town of Pinson, Alabama. Five years ago, after her parents told her that her family probably had some Native American ancestry, she assembled documents and birth certificates and last September was accepted into the Cherokee Tribe of northeast Alabama. The cultural neophyte is now zealously learning the rituals and dances of her newly discovered ancestors. Twenty Three...busted...no winner. Place your bets.
But she certainly isn't alone. Little Dove is just one of thousands of people in the United States who are becoming Indians. The government's official grouping of "Native Americans" is an extremely fast growing minority: between 1960 and 2000 it grew by 640 percent. More than 4 million Americans now describe themselves as Native American, which cannot be explained by the birth rate alone. Much of the growth is due to people like Betty Baker changing their ethnicity. Changing you ethnicity? You can just do that? Can I be a Viking? Or a Mongol?
Most of these new Indians have pale skin, some are even blond, and almost all were considered white before. Others point to high cheek bones, brown eyes and straight, glossy hair in their families as unmistakable signs of Indian ancestry. The self-described 'half bloods' may still live in their old homes, but their free time is now taken up by organizing powwows and walking around in costumes like those straight out of old Western movies. How! Where I park'em Mercedes? Financial benefits No! Really? Do tell...
But the benefits of racial identity aren't the only ones Indian converts are after. The Indian identity has attracted some poor Americans for the access to university scholarships or free health insurance that comes with it. Potential income from casinos. Indian tribes are allowed to have gambling on their reservations, as long as the tribe is recognized by the US government. A loophole that was originally intended to help many Native Americans out of poverty and deprivation has developed into a huge business. The gambling income nationwide amounts to over $18 billion annually and much of it is distributed among the members of the tribes. Also increases your chance for employment and/or tenure at the University of Colorado.
One of the biggest casinos in the world -- with 40,000 visitors a day -- is run by the Mashantucket Pequot near Norwich, Connecticut. Since gambling was established in 1986 the number of Indians living there has increased tenfold -- and each week there are new applications. According to Joyce Walker, the administrator of applications, "People say: I've just found out that I'm an Indian, and want to know how I can get my cash." Meanwhile the Mashantucket Pequot have made their entry requirements tougher and demand proof of blood ties. They and other tribes recognized by the state insist that they alone can decide who they accept and who they don't. Even those who turn up with DNA proof can be rejected. Go whine to Columbus, white eyes. It's all his fault.
This doesn't seem to be putting off these "wannabe" Indians. If they are not accepted by the established tribes many simply found their own. While there are only three recognized Cherokee nations (two in Oklahoma and one in North Carolina), for example, there are now more than 240 tribes from Alaska to Mexico that have been attempting to gain government recognition for years. So far without success. I'll try for staus for the Hon-key tribe. We're fierce warriors. And accountants. A sense of belonging
Circe Sturm of the University of Oklahoma believes these second-class Indians are often simply enjoying themselves. The anthropologist has interviewed more than 70 people who changed ethnic groups about their motivation. She doesn't believe that most of them are just after the money. Many are frustrated and are looking for some kind of meaning in their lives. "If being white is just an empty plate," she says, "then being Indian is a gourmet buffet." White people boring. Film at eleven.
Many of the converts connect the indigenous existence with ideals such as equality between the sexes, more democracy and a romantic affinity with nature. The anthropologist found that two things were particularly attractive to the pale-faced Indians: the spiritual rituals and the idea of belonging to a group. An increasing number of Americans want to experience those pleasant feelings -- and that is causing some unrest amongst Indians. In order to escape an invasion of outsiders, even many of the newer tribes are trying to seal themselves off from further claimants. So instead of becoming hippies these days, I guess you become an Indian?
Little Dove's husband Steve Baker is a mechanic and also feels like an Indian. He wears moccasins and a loin cloth, goes to the folklore meetings and wants to be accepted into his wife's tribe as "Running Bear." So it is a turn on...
However, this isn't likely to happen anytime soon. The once so modest hobby tribe in northeast Alabama has swelled to 4,000 Cherokees and is now re-examining its integration policies. Until further notice, no new Indians will be accepted. Scram! Go to Vegas and open your own casinos, paleface!
#3
Many are frustrated and are looking for some kind of meaning in their lives. "If being white is just an empty plate," she says, "then being Indian is a gourmet buffet."
Personally Iâve always considered myself a steaming hot cup of coffee... with a considerable amount of cream in it.
#4
My sister married a man who's 1/2 Canadian Iriquois - though he doesn't advertise it or use it in any way. That makes their daughters 1/4 native - enough to legitimately claim membership, IIUC. Now that the girls are old enough to start looking at colleges (very competitive ones), they're wondering if they should claim their native heritage to get an edge. At least they wouldn't be lying, unlike a certain perfesser.
#5
Who couldn't see this kind of garbage coming as a logical consequence of affirmative action? AA was a scam from its inception and has done nothing but become more biased with time. Damn the people who invented it and double damn those complete frigging idiots who continue it at the cost of Balkanizing this country. At the end of the day there will be a serious price to pay for having done this and it won't be silliness like this story.
Posted by: mac ||
01/19/2006 13:21
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#6
I think I'm going to become a "Native American" too.
From now on, my Indian name will be:
Sits On Ass And Types.
Or you can just call me "Chief" if that's easier.
Posted by: Dar ||
01/19/2006 14:48
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#7
"If being white is just an empty plate," she says, "then being Indian is a gourmet buffet."
Yeah! God knows there's *NEVER* been a contribution to culture from the white man.
Many of the converts connect the indigenous existence with ideals such as equality between the sexes
A concept that the white man developed and introduced. Sorry, but there is NFW you can stretch the cultural practices from the Americas -- North, South, or Central -- into any shape resembling equality of the sexes.
Looking at pre-Columbian (but late!) practices, I have to point at Cahokia's Mound 72:
Primary mound 3 [part of mound 72] was constructed between the first two mounds and was built over a large burial pit containing over 53 young women ages 15 to 30 and four males with heads and hands removed.
Modern testing of the 53 sacrificed women established they were not native to Cahokia; they were either tribute supplied from other regions, captives, or slaves purchased in trade.
That's some real equality there...
more democracy
Bullshit. Utter bullshit. How democratic is a society in which a funeral of the absolute dictator's cousin involves the ritual murder of dozens of slaves and lower-caste tribesmen? Or in which the caste into which you're born -- and your role within society -- is fixed?
and a romantic affinity with nature
Again, bullshit. The Natives modified their environment to the best of their abilities, and the myth of the ecological Indian is as racist as blackface. Hint: maize isn't natural, and its ancestor grasses aren't native to North America, yet it was the primary staple of North American cultures at the time of Columbus. Other farmed plants were spread -- introduced despite being alien species -- and the fricking dog wasn't native to the Americas, either.
There's archaeological evidence of over-farming, of deforestation, and other supposedly modern crimes against nature.
The anthropologist found that two things were particularly attractive to the pale-faced Indians: the spiritual rituals and the idea of belonging to a group.
In other words, New Age religion and a feeling of belonging, exacerbated by the modern practice of treating European heritage and American culture as diseases and the racist noble savage myth.
I've got Cherokees in my family tree, too, and I'm certainly not ashamed of them. But I recognize where real progress -- technological and cultural -- has come from.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
01/19/2006 14:53
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#8
I'm a member of the Fakowee tribe. Whenever we go to a new place we introduce ourselves, "High, We're the Fakowee". People usually answer us with the name of the place we are at the moment.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
01/19/2006 15:30
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#11
Remember this when people start saying whites are a minority. Seems a little drop of ethnicity is all it takes to be non-white. We've nearly created the Bizarro world version of Aparthied.
#13
Crap like this is why I like putting down Human under race. People get all confused when they are talking about race and you ask them if they're aliens since their race isn't human.
What? I was born in this country. How much more native can I get?
Oh, yeah - I do also have a bit of aboriginal American in me courtesy of my maternal grandfather. ;-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/19/2006 20:39
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#17
Me? I'm 100% pure Central European immigrant. But Mr. Wife just learnt last month that one of the French Canadian g'g'g'-great-somethings actually married out about two centuries ago. So he has that single drop of Iroquois blood, too. Genetically speaking, the aboriginal peoples did pretty well in the way of decendents, considering that something like 90% died of various plagues between the time the first Europeans landed on the continent and the time they conquered those remaining.
House Democrats, led by liberal Michigan Congressmen John Conyers (who else), will hold unofficial hearings on the legality of President Bush's warantless wiretap programs Friday, and have added additional witnesses and congressmembers to their retinue. Which means every LLL moonbat is welcome to attend. Here is a sample:Among the more prominent witnesses include Bruce Fein, an Associate Deputy Attorney General under President Ronald Reagan, and James Bamford, an intelligence expert who has revealed details about the NSA spying project.
Also attending: George Washington Law School Professor Jonathan Turley, the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington Legislative Director Caroline Frederickson, Director of the Center for National Security Studies Kate Martin, and the Truth Project's Richard Hersh. I wonder if this will be on Cspan? Last time was very entertaining. That is if you like watching the Democrats commits suicide on TV (which I do). I am taking bets the they will come to the conclusion that Bush:
1. Had no legal right to perforn the wiretaps.
2. Stole the 2000 and 2004 elections.
3. Lied about WMDs
4. Is a poopyhead.
#1
Since you guys have enough time to hold "unofficial hearings", maybe you have time to go make some sandwiches while the grownups discuss important things.
#8
Hell, the Dhimmidonks used the Library of Congress yesterday for their latest memery (The Culture of Corruption) campaign, though it is supposed to be off-limits for political BS. Gutless Partisan Lying Asstards.
#9
Why haven't we heard anything from Hillary on this? I think it's because she thinks she will be the next President and she doesn't want to be as limited in her Presidential powers as the Democrats want Bush. She knows Billy Bob did worse (his spying was on domestic calls) and she doesn't want to call attention to that. Al Gore, on the other hand, can scream to High Heaven that GWB is usurping the Constitution because he WONT be the next President. I also don't expect the MSM to ask Hillary her opinion on this as she would have to come down on GWB's side and that would further alienate her to the far left. I really think she has no chance of being the Democratic nominee.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
01/19/2006 19:59
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A Russian governor said OAO Norilsk Nickel, the world's largest producer of nickel and palladium, has discussed a merger with state-run diamond monopoly Alrosa, marking a milestone in the Kremlin's drive to gain control of key sectors of the Russian economy.
Alexander Khloponin, governor of Krasnoyarsk province in Siberia, where Norilsk has its main production facilities, and a former chief executive of the company, said no final decision had been made regarding a merger. "Don't assume it's going to happen any time in the near future," he told local reporters. But he said shareholders in both companies had discussed "various approaches" to a tie-up that would leave the Russian government with a 25% stake in the combined entity and other shareholders with the rest.
His comments come in the midst of a Kremlin campaign to restore state dominance of strategic sectors of the economy -- a reversal of the legacy of the 1990s, when the state divested itself of some of its biggest industrial assets in often-controversial privatizations. During the past 12 months, state-owned energy companies OAO Gazprom and OAO Rosneft have expanded by swallowing up independent oil producers. Gazprom bought OAO Sibneft for $13 billion, and Rosneft acquired a big chunk of oil company OAO Yukos after it was broken up to settle a tax bill.
But the state's interest has increasingly spread from energy to other industries, such as car making and engineering. Rosoboronexport, the government's arms-export agency, recently took over management at Avtovaz, Russia's biggest auto maker, while state electricity monopoly RAO UES last year bought a big stake in OAO Power Machines, an engineering company. The pattern has worried economists from the World Bank and other international institutions, who say state companies are usually less efficient than privately owned ones.
Norilsk has long been seen as the next potential target. The company was acquired in 1995 by Interros, an industrial group controlled by tycoon Vladimir Potanin, in one of the controversial "loans for shares" auctions in which state natural-resource companies were sold to well-connected insiders in cut-price deals.
At the time, Interros paid $650 million for a 51% stake in Norilsk. The company is now valued at around $15 billion, and Mr. Potanin and another core shareholder, Norilsk Chief Executive Mikhail Prokhorov, are two of Russia's richest men.
Some have suggested Norilsk could go the way of Yukos, another company whose shareholders benefited from loans-for-shares and whose founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sent to prison last year for fraud and tax evasion. "Oligarch risk" is seen as one of the main reasons for the big valuation gap between Norilsk and its global mining peers. But it now seems clear that Norilsk will be merged with a state-owned entity, rather than broken up like Yukos or bought outright like Sibneft.
Mr. Khloponin's statement yesterday was the first official confirmation that discussions on a merger with Alrosa have taken place. Spokesmen for Norilsk, Alrosa and Interros all denied the talks, and Mr. Khloponin later put out a statement stressing there were "currently no plans" for a merger. "The companies are both being restructured and are not ready for such a process," he said.
Certainly, such a tie-up could take a long time to work out. Norilsk is spinning off its gold-producing assets into a separate company, Polyus, while the Russian government is trying to secure majority control of Alrosa.
The government currently owns 37% of the diamond producer, with the fiercely independent local government in the Siberian province of Yakutia controlling 32%. Moscow is trying to take over Alrosa's diamond mines, which the company leases from the Yakutian government. Analysts said Mr. Khloponin's merger proposal was more realistic than a leveraged buyout of Norilsk by Alrosa, which is a much smaller company. Alrosa posted about $380 million in net profit for the first nine months of last year, just 22% of Norilsk's net profit for the same period, according to Citigroup.
"It's debatable whether Alrosa is really the right proxy for the state's interests," said a Moscow-based Western banker.
DUBAI (Reuters) - Arab television al Jazeera station said on Thursday it would soon air a new audio tape said to be from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. No more details were given.
If he talks about the airstrike in Pakistan, we'll know it's a new tape. Otherwise, could be a rerun.
Wherein the Proprietor's hopes that Ayman new resembles 150 pounds of stewing beef are given a boost, even while his hopes that Binny is a shriveled corpse in an unmarked grave in Iran plummet.
Al-Jazeera aired an audiotape purportedly from Osama bin Laden on Thursday, saying al-Qaida is making preparations for attacks in the United States but offering a truce to build Iraq and Afghanistan.
The voice in the tape said heightened security measures in the United States are not the reason there have been no attacks there since Sept. 11, 2001. Instead, the reason is "because there are operations that need preparations, and you will see them," he said.
"Based on what I have said, it is better not to fight the Muslims on their land," he said. "We do not mind offering you a truce that is fair and long-term. ... So we can build Iraq and Afghanistan ... there is no shame in this solution because it prevents wasting of billions of dollars ... to merchants of war."
The speaker did not give conditions for a truce in the excerpts aired by Al-Jazeera.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/19/2006
09:57 ||
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#5
Osama's truce proves he's behind the Democrat's party agenda and vivious rumors. He wants Bin Laden Construction to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan instead of Halliburton! And how timely.
#10
We may have not hit Ayman but we did strike a nerve, heh.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/19/2006 11:22
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#11
I remember those days when AQ were telling US they were going to form the caliphate take over the world, drive the infidels out, Afghanistan / Iraq would be our graveyard blah blah blah...
Now we have this it just proves the fact of what the Dums have been saying, "we are losing, we cant win, Iraq was a mistake, blah blah blah" Sarcasm
I would like to see Bush bring the point out that this tape proves we are winning and our PLAN is working. But I am not holding my breath.
#15
On a serious note, all they offer is some crummy audio tape with bad audio. Why can't they make a video from some non-descript padded cell plain whitewashed room and smuggle it out to Al Jazz?
The reason that they cannot is that Binny or Ayman are either dead or not *ahem* good enough shape for even a make-up session. They are either hurt badly or dead and showing them on video would hurt their cause. Also, new images of the Grusome Twosome would be like updated worldwide wanted posters.
As far as their threats go, I believe that they are relatively empty ones. They would have done it if they had the chance. If they got lucky and got a chance, they would pull it off. It is getting more difficult to organize, finance, and carry out operations for them. Also, if they did pull one off, then they would lose their base, be it in NW Sh*tholistan part of Pakistan or Iran or elsewhere. It is difficult for them to maintain an effective base. There is a lot going on in the shadow war that we, the public do not know about.
So my take on the new Binny tape is that we are winning, despite having to drag a 5th column anchor behind us all the way. An effective attack against the US would release fury against their base that so far is restrained, for pollitical reasons. We all must realize that these guys will not quit until they and their financiers are all brought to room temperature, like the cancer cells that they are.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/19/2006 11:53
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#21
You try to make terms when you're losing. Seems to me Binny's on the ropes - let's finish him off!
(About "building" Iraq and Afganistan...is that with or without the Taliban in Afgan and Zark's boyz in Iraq? Or does he want to bring back the old, old days?)
#23
I have no serious doubt that the tape is genuine. He makes a reference to the Daily Mirror account of the leaked memo on Bush wanting to bomb al-Jazeera, so the tape could not have been composed before late November or early December, which tracks with the al-Jazeera internal dating.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/19/2006 12:18
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#24
"Our people are able to infiltrate through your security measures no matter how strong."
Unfortunately, I don't doubt that.
"As for the delay in similar operations in America is not because of your security measures; operations are being prepared and you will see them in your homes," he added.
Sounds like the plan Kerry kept referring to during the campaign.
"We are a nation that God has forbidden to lie and cheat."
Bwahahahaha! And I've got this great bridge I can sell you.
#25
well, I'll be darned. If it's true that he's alive, I wonder if the reason he's making audio instead of video is because he had plastic surgery and that doesn't want his followers to know that he did such a cowardly act.
U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton called for United Nations sanctions against Iran as it resumes its nuclear program and faulted the Bush administration for "downplaying" the threat.
She either hasn't been paying attention or she thinks the public hasn't. My guess is "yes" to both.
In an address Wednesday evening at Princeton University, Clinton, D-N.Y., said it was a mistake for the United States to have Britain, France and Germany head up nuclear talks with Iran over the past 2 1/2 years.
Why? Bush got criticized when he didn't let the Euros take the lead, now he's getting criticized when he does.
Last week, Iran resumed nuclear research in a move Tehran claims is for energy, not weapons. "I believe that we lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to downplay the threats and chose to outsource the negotiations," Clinton said.
Ooooh. Outsourcing. Bad. Republicans do that.
While Clinton was critical of the administration, she never mentioned the president by name and did not engage in the same sort of sharp rhetorical attack against him or other Republicans as she did earlier this week.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/19/2006
09:37 ||
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#2
the left line is that we shouldnt have outsourced negotiations to the Euros, cause WE should have been offering goodies to the Iranians ourselves. The right line, found here and elsewhere, is that we shouldnt have outsourced to the Euros, cause that gave the Iranians time, and wasnt tough enough (see Krauthammers latest) Hillary of course is trying to appeal to BOTH, which isnt easy, God bless her.
But bottom line, shes caling for sanctions, which the left is not doing.
Maybe not "the most uncompromising wartime president ..." but still doing the right thing.
#3
the left line is that we shouldnt have outsourced negotiations to the Euros, cause WE should have been offering goodies to the Iranians ourselves. The right line, found here and elsewhere, is that we shouldnt have outsourced to the Euros, cause that gave the Iranians time, and wasnt tough enough (see Krauthammers latest) Hillary of course is trying to appeal to BOTH, which isnt easy, God bless her.
But bottom line, shes caling for sanctions, which the left is not doing.
Maybe not "the most uncompromising wartime president ..." but still doing the right thing.
I know that you (like myself) have your political favorites, but she isn't going to get the nomination. It will be Bill Richardson or someone like that.
Outlaw killed in âshootoutâ in Mongla
Jan 18: An outlawed party leader was killed in a shootout between his cohorts and police in Dotter Meth area of Mongla upazila early Wednesday. Police said they arrested Monir Hossain Talukder alias Monir, 26, a regional leader of Purba Banglar Communist Party (Janajuddha) from Digraj in Mongla upazila Tuesday evening.
Another dead commie no one but his mother will miss
Acting on his confessional statement, police took him to Dotter Meth to recover hidden arms.
"Youse going for a ride, Monir. Stop crying, it's not gonna help"
As they reached the area early Wednesday along with Monir, his accomplices opened fire on the law enforcers forcing them to fire back.
Like it was planned, or something
Monir was caught in the shootout while trying to flee.
"Feet, don't ....BANG.. rosebud ..."
Doctors declared him dead when he was taken to Bagerhat Sadar hospital, police said.
"He's dead, Jim"
Four police constables were also injured during the encounter. Of them, Enamul and Fazlu were rushed to the hospital.
"Step on it, they've got fresh doughnuts in the coffee shop!"
Later, police recovered two guns, 11 rounds of bullet, four empty shells and some leaflets of Janajuddha from the spot.
Monir, son of Ismail Talukder, hailed from Badurtola village in Morelganj upazila of the district. He was wanted in four murder cases including that of journalist Manik Shaha, Editor of Janmabhumi of Khulna Humayun Kabir Balu, and Khulna AL leader Adv. Monjurul Imam, police said.
2 held with bomb, arms by police in Meherpur
Jan 18: Police arrested two terrorists along with a live bomb, one Indian shutter gun and bullets from Shinghati village in Sadar upazila Monday night.
On the RAB website, they list shutter guns in this group: "LG/Pipe gun/Shooter/Shutter Gun". Shotguns have their own catagory, so I think "shutter gun" is a homemade weapon, like a zipgun.
Acting on a tip-off, a police team led by SI Mollick and Baradi police camp in-charge Haider Ali arrested Golam Rasul, 47, son of Late Jamaluddin and Abdul Mannan, 55, son of Late Askaruddin, after raiding their houses at the village. On their confessional statement, they later recovered the 2-kg powerful bomb, the shutter gun, five rounds of rifle bullet and one cartridge from a pile of straw near a cowshed.
What, they not worth a 'crossfire'?
Jubo Dal leader chopped to death in Feni
Jan18: Unidentified terrorists chopped a Jubo Dal leader to death at Saheber Hat in Sonagazi upazila of the district on Tuesday night. The dead was identified as Nurul Afsar, vice president of Ahmedpur union Jubo Dal and convenor of Miar Bazar Zia Smriti Sangsad.
Ah, a union dispute
Local sources said the terrorists swooped on Afsar on his way home at night and chopped him to death. They fled the scene dumping the body into a waterbody. Being informed by the locals, police recovered most of the body Wednesday morning and sent the same to hospital morgue for autopsy.
"Doctor Quincy, we got another stiff."
Or parts of one, at any rate.
Police Super Mohammad Obaidullah visited the spot. Police said Afsar was wanted in three cases, including murder. President of Sonagazi upazila BNP Joynal Abedin Bablu blamed the Awami League supporters for the killing while local AL leaders said that Afsar was killed following internal conflict in the local Jubo Dal.
Huge cache of arms seized in Bandarban
Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) personnel recovered a huge cache of arms including machinegun, M-16rifles, Ak-47, explosives and bomb-making equipment from a den of Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) at Chhagalkhaia under Naikhongchhari upazila in Bandarban yesterday. According to BDR sources, acting on a tip-off, a squad of BDR led by Zonal Commander Lt. Colonel Abdul Awal conducted the drive at around 12.30pm. The members of BDR are continuing their drives in the area.
They recovered a Pakistani made HMG, three M-16 rifles, a AK-47 rifle, a 303 rifle, a long-range rocket shell, a solar charger, three binoculars, 3000 rounds of ammunition, a rocket lancer bomb, 25 mine fixing players, two sacks of gunpowder (about 100Kg), 40 detonators, 40 peace of sodium nitrate, some uniform used by the terrorists and a huge quantity of wires . Earlier, BDR personnel recovered a huge quantity of arms and explosives from Naikhongchhari area in a similar drive on January 3.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/19/2006
09:16 ||
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#1
.. a rocket lancer bomb, 25 mine fixing players, two sacks of gunpowder (about 100Kg), 40 detonators, 40 peace of sodium nitrate
Just when I thought only shutter guns were Bangla specific, here comes some more surprises! A lancer bomb? A mine fixing player? How much is a peace of sodium nitrate?
A suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowded pedestrian mall near Tel Aviv's central bus station Thursday and at least 20 people were wounded, police said. The area near the bus station is generally crowded with shoppers and travelers. There was no immediate claim of responsibility by Palestinian militants.
Bangladeshi security forces committed serious abuses in 2005 including extra-judicial killings and torture of detainees, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday in its annual report. âThe countryâs human rights record, already of pressing concern, worsened as Bangladesh security forces continue to commit abuses including extra-judicial killings, excessive use of force and custodial torture,â the US-based organisation said.
The government does not dispute the deaths but rejects the term âextra-judicial killings.â It says the killings are not unlawful because they occur when suspects resist arrest or are caught in âcrossfireâ between security personnel and suspected criminals.
"Just because they all take place at 4AM in a dark alley behind a deserted train station and the dead guys cadre always get away without leaving a trace doesn't mean it didn't happen!"
âBetween January and October 2005, an estimated 300 persons were killed at the hands of the security forces...human rights groups and journalists have demanded an inquiry into each death, but the government has refused,â the report added. Critics of the governmentâs Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), an elite crime-fighting unit responsible for many of the deaths, accuse personnel of acting as judge, jury and executioner.
The government came to power in 2001 with a mandate to crack down on lawlessness and claims that some crimes such as extortion have halved since the RAB became operational.
The report also accused the government, a four-party Islamist-allied coalition led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, of fuelling the persecution of the Ahmadiyas, a Muslim minority movement.âIn January 2004, the government placed a ban on all Ahmadiya publications in response to an ultimatum by the Islami Okiya Jote (a government coalition partner).â it said. Although the ban was later suspended by a court, the âBNP chose to save its coalition rather than defend the rights of the Ahmadiyas,â the report said.âAttacks on Ahmaidya homes and places of worship also continued in 2005. The government to date has not prosecuted any of the responsible individuals.â
Posted by: Steve ||
01/19/2006
09:03 ||
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#1
But that would mean no more Crossfire Gazette!
Miserable Corsairs! They can have my Crossfire Gazette when they pry it from my cold dead computer screen hands!
PRINCETON, New Jersey - US Sen. Hillary Clinton called for United Nations sanctions against Iran as it resumes its nuclear program and faulted the Bush administration for âdownplayingâ the threat. In an address Wednesday evening at Princeton University, a Democrat representing New York state, said it was a mistake for the United States to have Britain, France and Germany head up nuclear talks with Iran over the past 2 1/2 years. Last week, Iran resumed nuclear research in a move Teheran claims is for energy, not weapons. âI believe that we lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to downplay the threats and chose to outsource the negotiations,â Clinton said.
But I thought going it alone and not involving the international community was being "unilateral"?
While Clinton was critical of the administration, she never mentioned the president by name and did not engage in the same sort of sharp rhetorical attack against him or other Republicans as she did earlier this week.
In her wide-ranging speech before some 800 Princeton students, staff and alumni gathered to inaugurate the new S. Daniel Abraham Visiting Professor in Middle East Policy Studies Chair in Middle East Studies at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Clinton addressed several hotspots in the Middle East. She spoke about the United Statesâ close ties with Israel and called on Palestinian leaders to help forge a new peace process - and to provide better service to the Palestinian people. She applauded nations such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia for making recent gains in womenâs rights.
And Clinton called for the United States to reduce the number of American troops in Iraq, leaving a smaller strike force. âThis will help us stabilize their government and will send a message to Iran that they do not have a free hand despite their personal and religious connections,â she said. Clinton said that the United States has an important role in stabilizing the Middle East, in part because America offers a brand of optimism that can make a difference.
âHistory has weighed heavily on the Middle East. What we have tried to do over the last 30 years, starting with President Carter, moving through other presidents, including my husband, and now this president, is to send a uniquely American message: `It can get better. Just get over it.ââ
I don't know if I would have mentioned Jimmy Carter and Iran in the same speech, but I'm glad you did.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/19/2006
08:54 ||
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#1
She's been bleating about a lot lately, trying to raise her profile.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/19/2006 9:59
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#2
Her statement of a few days ago when she said the House of Representatives was run like a Plantation drew a some criticism from the more centrist members of the Democratic Party. She was playing to her true base, the really liberal Democrats. I think that was a very calculated statement to see just how much criticism she would get and it turned out to be not all that much. This statement was made to assure the more Centrist Democrats that she is not a falming leftie. She knows she can't win by being soft on Iran od the War on Terror and she also can't win by being waht the far left wants so she's trying to appear more to the center. I don't think it will work but who knows, they nominated Kerry the last time.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
01/19/2006 11:05
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#3
She is so clueless. The UN will never issue sanctions against Iran as long as China and Russia are getting oil and nuke development contracts. Never... If she was to exhibit any clue she would recognize that this situation can more likely be set up, as her husband did, just like Bosnia/Kosovo/etc., as a NATO action.
#7
TOMANON, I think she does know calling for sanctions is meaningless. This has nothing to do with actual reality and everything to do with political posturing. She can sit back and say the Bush Administration let Iran get nukes all the while ignoring the Democrat' insistance on letting Europe lead the way on this. The Media will forget all about how they villified Bush for doing things without "Our European Allies". This makes her appear to be tough on Iran. Appearance is everything.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
01/19/2006 11:46
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#8
"She is so clueless. The UN will never issue sanctions against Iran as long as China and Russia are getting oil and nuke development contracts"
in that case John Bolton and Condi Rice are clueless as well.
#9
Agreed, Liberalhawk. I don't think China would allow the Security Council to implement sanctions against Iran. Someone saying there should be is another matter. I still think this is posturing on Hillary's part.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
01/19/2006 14:18
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#10
Bullshit, lh. That's a novel form of moral equivalency - I'll give you the dubious credit for inventing it. BUT...
To draw the comparison you did is disingenuous and a slur upon two honest hard-working civil servants (real ones, go figure!) doing the incredibly thankless tasks for the President in the Tranzi Arena.
The entire current Tranzi Tower of Babble and Corruption must be consigned to history's dustbin - and it will be, just as previous failures. Many of us get it, have so for some time. Many more are beginning to get it. When enough get it, it will be gone. Until then, President Bush has to check off the boxes. Go figure, but he deals within the envelope of reality, unlike the brain-fartlet spewers.
As for your comment - well - to be blunt, such apparent naive trust in blatantly corrupt institutions and the intentional slander of good people in favor of blatantly partisan politicians is, at this point in time, an indicator of either purely partisan bullshit - or BDS.
Hillary is not Dr Rice, nor is she John Bolton. She's not in the same class - and never has been - by a long shot. She's a lying political partisan with a wet finger in the wind. She's a media whore who wants to be The President - cuz that's all that remains for such an ambitious example of the lust for power.
#11
I'm waiting for some wit to scam the kooky left that not only is Hillary demanding to go to war *now*, but that the rest of the kooky left support her.
That is "Hillary is leading the whole herd! Are you conforming, or not? ON TO WAR!" Just to see how many would knee-jerk instantly to call for war with Iran.
SRINAGAR, India - Five Muslim civilians and two Indian soldiers were injured in a gunbattle with Islamic militants in a snowbound village in Kashmir, an army spokesman said on Thursday. âMilitants attacked an army foot patrol in the snowbound village of Surigam in (northern) Kupwara district late Wednesday, injuring an officer and a soldier,â said spokesman Vijay Batra. âIn the ensuing exchange of fire, five civilians were also injured,â Batra said, adding all five were out of danger.
Batra said the militants managed to escape from the area under cover of darkness. Kupwara borders Pakistan-administered Kashmir and is prone to infiltration by militants into the Indian zone of Kasmir. Indian Kashmir is in the grip of a 16-year-old insurgency against Indian rule that has so far left some 44,000 people dead by official count. Separatists put the toll twice as high
Posted by: Steve ||
01/19/2006
08:45 ||
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Proud townsfolk of the first Filipino-American female soldier killed in Iraq buried her Thursday with full U.S. military honors in the tiny village where she grew up before migrating to America nine years ago. A Roman Catholic chapel near the childhood home of Army Sgt. Myla Maravillosa in the village of U-og in central Inabanga town was too small to accommodate hundreds of people attending a funeral Mass.
A contingent of U.S. Army honor guards led by Brig. Gen. Gregory Schumacher provided traditional U.S. military honors, while Bohol Gov. Erico Aumentado directed all Philippine flags flown at half mast in the entire province. Schumacher, commander of the Military Intelligence Readiness Command at Fort Belvoir, Va., described Maravillosa as a 'true Filipino-American hero' who 'represented the very best of the qualities that we desire in our soldiers and indeed represented the very best of humanity itself.'
'The ties between the United States and the Philippines are deep and enduring and she is a symbol of that very strong relationship,' he said.
Schumacher knelt as he offered the folded U.S. flag that draped Maravillosa's casket to her mother, together with her daughter's medals, including the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart and the Meritorious Service Medal. Relatives and friends released white balloons with the message, 'We will always remember, we will love you forever.' Maravillosa's mother, Estelita, clutched the U.S. flag and watched quietly as people wept. 'What sorrows I have now, I have to accept because that is her fate,' Estelita Maravillosa said at the chapel. 'She died not in vain. She died for a cause - for the freedom of the whole world.'
Cindy Sheethead could not be reached for comment
Provincial administrator Tomas Abapo said Maravillosa 'died an honorable death in an important war' against terrorism, which is also plaguing the Philippines.
He gets it, unlike most Democrats
Maravillosa moved to Hawaii when she was 16 to join her mother, who migrated in 1986. She attended college in Wahiawa and enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserves in 1999.
On Christmas Eve, Maravillosa's Humvee was attacked by Iraqi insurgents firing rocket-propelled grenades, mortally wounding her, according to the Pentagon. Maravillosa, an interrogator assigned to the 301st Military Intelligence Battalion, had been in Iraq for only a little more than a month. She was the first Filipino-American woman soldier to die in Iraq. At least one other Philippine-born U.S. soldier has been killed in Iraq since 2003. Her grade school teacher, Dulce Betinol, said she could not imagine 'this cute, gentle girl, so sweet with a ready smile' joining the Army and marching off to war. 'None of us thought or even just dreamed that our (village would) ever produce such a young woman with such commitment, serving at the cost of her life,' Betinol said.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/19/2006
08:07 ||
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May God bless her and keep her, and grant her and those she loved that which she died to protect: freedom and peace. Sgt. Myla Maravillosa is the kind of person who makes me proud to be American, too.
French President Jacques Chirac has said France would be ready to use nuclear weapons against any state which launched a terrorist attack against it. Speaking at a nuclear submarine base in north-western France, Mr Chirac said a French response "could be conventional. It could also be of another nature."
Isn't the conventional French response to an attack a white flag?
That's not a white flag, that's the French battle ensign: a white cross on a white background. E'ryone knows that.
We have â or used to; I'm assuming we still do â a similar policy. An attack on us using Nuclear-Chem-Bio weapons can be answered by a counterattack using NBC weapons, which ones at the discretion of the president or senior surviving commander. There's no requirement for it to be the same type of weapon. Large areas of the U.S. being wiped out by anthrax or plague, for instance, could result in Ratholistan's capital getting vaporized, rather than us releasing a counter-plague in Ratholistan.
He said France's nuclear forces had been configured for such an event. France has had an independent nuclear deterrent since 1960, after an arms programme ordered by Charles de Gaulle.
I doubt they even have an offensive chem weapons capability anymore, though.
On a visit to L'Ile-Longue base in Brittany, Mr Chirac said leaders of states who would "use terrorist means against us, just like anyone who would envisage using, in one way or another, arms of mass destruction, must understand that they would expose themselves to a firm and adapted response from us".
I'm not sure what the response would be to a mass casualty conventional weapons attack. It wouldn't be technically difficult to assemble the makings of the WWII blockbuster, position several of them around a major city, and boom them all at once. The results might approach those of a small nuclear weapon, and would robably cause more casualties than a large scale gas attack.
If they don't cross the NBC line, we wouldn't either. A visit by a formation of B52s with conventional bombs would do nicely. Assuming we have a target, that is.
The president spoke of new threats in a post-Cold War world, without mentioning any specific threat against France. "In numerous countries, radical ideas are spreading, advocating a confrontation of civilisations," he said, adding that "odious attacks" could escalate to "other yet more serious forms involving states". Following the end of the Cold War, France scaled down its nuclear deterrent, scrapping a number of missile systems. It is believed to have a current arsenal of around 350 nuclear weapons.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/19/2006
07:59 ||
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#1
I got to give to Chirac this is I think the first time I have heard him say anything that I think our pres should be saying but donât have the stomach to say.
I think Chirac seeâs the writing on the wall Phase 4=Iran and the Iranianâs have along time seen their ability to war with the west in a conventional war hopeless, from that they long ago realized terrorism was their weapon to match the west. This will be interesting we of course will be target number one but Europe has a huge problem all the way up to large scale revolt. France literally could see Baghdad in Parris.
#2
If Iran uses a nuke, it would be against Isreal. That way, all the Muzzies would join them, and Iran would assume control over the ME. They might also toss one at our forces in Iraq, wrongly thinking that large scale body counts will cause the US to withdraw.
#3
This is absolutely something that I think our President *shouldn't* say. It is not a sign of strength, it is a sign of terrible weakness.
We are already in brinksmanship situation, and everybody involved knows it. The Iranians who created the situation not only *meant* to create a nuclear standoff, they are either crazy enough to think they can "get away with it", or worse, that the 12th Mahdi is going to save their sorry asses.
Now is *not* the time for imflammatory speeches of any kind--look what that has done for Iran's President--costing him all sorts of advantages and support internationally, with nothing to show for it. All just so he could bluff and bluster like a big man. He traded all sorts of valuable goodwill and support for 30 seconds of applause. Idiot.
All the while, the White House has been six to nine months in extremely quiet, but intense prepartations: figuring out every possible strategy to cool down the situation and get Iran acting responsibly; to calculating every possible war contingency imagineable. Without a single damn press release. No bragging, the most minimal threatening.
War is diplomacy through other means, but war also means that your diplomacy has failed. Some times this is inevitable, if your enemy is determined to fight; but often it just means you diplomatically didn't try hard enough--or that your hawks wanted war just as much as did your enemy.
Look at our strategy. We win if we can get *any* of the following to happen:
1) Iran behaves itself, allows IAEA inspectors and stops trying to make nukes. Nuclear energy is fine--a point the Iranians pretend is in contention.
2) The leadership in Iran proves so unbalanced that it is overthrown in a coup, and whoever replaces it is more moderate or willing to deal.
3) Iran itself becomes so unstable that its leaders must focus on keeping their country together instead of menacing the rest of the world.
4) If they do attack, they do it at a time, place, and with a means chosen by us, and before they are ready. Conversely, when our defenses are fully prepared and we can counter their every move. That through their diplomatic blunders, or through our diplomatic finesse, they lose support throughout the world, we gain allies to fight against them, and even those opposed to war decide to be neutral instead of standing against us.
And *none* of these would be helped in any way if our President shot his mouth off like Chirac.
#4
French President Jacques Chirac has said France would be ready to use nuclear weapons against any state which launched a terrorist attack against it.
Sounds like a throwaway line to me. A terrorist attack against Phrance is not likely to be something directly launched by a "state".
..Mr Chirac said leaders of states who would "use terrorist means against us, just like anyone who would envisage using, in one way or another, arms of mass destruction, must understand that they would expose themselves to a firm and adapted response from us".
Okay then, if an Al Qaeda operative managed to conduct a successful terrorist operation in, say, Paris, that claimed a large number of lives or resulted in significant destruction, which "state" would Phrance's response be directed at?
#5
French President Jacques Chirac has said France would be ready to use nuclear weapons against any state which launched a terrorist attack against it.
Not to worry, Jacques. Any terrorist attack against France will come from its own "citizens." Nice show of spine, though!
#8
Chirac knows that Phrance is on the verge of becoming totally irrelevant. He thinks that by flaunting his nukes that maybe someone will pay attention to him. They may have some viable weapons around but I question what delivery systems they could be used on. I donât think that Phrance has the global reach to carry this threat beyond the puddle right next to them. Ok Jacque, take off the fake cajones and go back to your room.
#11
I'd kinda like to see a successful test launch of one of La Belle France's vaunted nuclear deterrent missiles before I start shaking in my boots, please.
#12
Okay then, if an Al Qaeda operative managed to conduct a successful terrorist operation in, say, Paris, that claimed a large number of lives or resulted in significant destruction, which "state" would Phrance's response be directed at?
"[A]ny state which launched a terrorist attack against [France].' Which may take days to find out, weeks to verify, and months to really make sure. But Phrawnce can be brutal when it comes to applying violence outside their borders.
#13
This simply does not take into account the standard scenario of a state slipping a nuke to terrorists in a deniable manner, which is what we're saying Saddam would have done if he had a nuke, and what we're saying Iran will do if they get a nuke. Chirac is postulating a scenario in which no sane dictator, and most insane ones, would let themselves be caught. What a weasel.
#14
A previous RB post had terrorists threatening oil supplies in addition to Iran already having nuclear capable missiles from neighboring states and piecemeal Khan technology sharing, and now a new Binny tape surfaces with a conditional truce attached....Chirac sounds like he's responding to nuclear blackmail. Didn't think he had it in him.
#17
I agree with Anonymoose. Its a sign of weakness on Frances part. Its like kids on a playground. Everyone knows who the big kid on the block is - so he doesn't need to anyone. Its the average to pip-squeak kids that need to shout and wave thier arms trying to scare the other kids to leave them alone.
Also - what in the hell prompted this statement now????
Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
01/19/2006 12:12
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#18
Actually, that business of white flags ("white cross on a white field") as a French battle ensign isn't that far from the historical truth.
In the 18th century French battalions carried two flags into battle, the regimental flag "d'ordonnance", issued by the King, with all sorts of designs on them, and the colonels flag, intended to represent the presence of the colonel. The colonels flags were typically white with a white cross, or often just plain white. Really.
#19
My bad, I forgot they still had boomers. I was thinking of air assets. BTW do they have their boomers deployed or are they sitting in port getting overhauled?
#23
If the Muzzies knew Chirac was for real this might be a good idea. The problem is that he let France's own Muslims burn Paris and did nothing. So what are the odds of him suddenly growing balls and carrying through?
On the other hand if the Islamics knew we would nuke the Kaabaic Mecca if attacked on US soil, ya think the camel herders might think twice about going after us again?
#24
In the Crusaders' time, making fabric truly white took a major effort, and often enough wasn't possible at all. That's why white is the colour of purity throughout "Christendom" and the Ummah, and why the Madonna is shown dressed in white, pale blue and silver. In those days, white was when you cared enough for the very best.
#25
I'm not sure what the response would be to a mass casualty conventional weapons attack. It wouldn't be technically difficult to assemble the makings of the WWII blockbuster, position several of them around a major city, and boom them all at once. The results might approach those of a small nuclear weapon, and would robably cause more casualties than a large scale gas attack.
...I have heard a story that very early on the morning of 9/12, the President asked for an estimate of the amount of energy released in the airliner crashes and the WTC collapse - that is, did it equal that of a tactical nuclear weapon. He got two different answers, so that decision was put aside for the time being.
The thing to keep in mind here is that it was THAT close. If there's a next time, it may not matter - the birds will fly.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/19/2006 14:57
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#26
My best guess is that Phrance is making with the saber rattling as part of it's acceptance into the coalition. When the flag goes up, we need fighters, but until then, we need blusterers, and Jacks might make Iran dig itself. We ease in behind Jacks as if standing united. Looks good, might work. In any event, Jacks gets to look tough and he becomes a team player for a pleasant change.
#27
I did that calculation once. If I did it correctly, 1 million tons falling an average of 600 feet comes out to the energy of about 100 tons of TNT.
Posted by: ed ||
01/19/2006 15:17
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#28
Their are only 2 nations this is directed at. One is nuclear already and one is pre nuclear.
Their appears to be no doubt in Jacques' mind that the most dangerous one is really close to having them. Much closer than what is out for public consumption. That nation is going to use them when they get them. It's not going to be nuclear blackmail or used a deterent when this nation gets weapons. Chirac's epiphany that the leaders of this certain regime are crazy as shit house rats is what intersting.
The reason that Bush hasn't ever said anything like this is he doesn't have to. This is a long standing policy of the United States of America. Messages like this get delivered on a personal level. Saddam got one more than once I am sure.
When Kimi went missing in China I questioned myself at the time. Was he having a meeting with members of the MM regime?
#30
I think Chirac's comments show just how hot this situation has become. No more talk of nuance, he's cranking the shotgun, hoping the sound of it will make the bad guy think twice before climbing in the window.
A £50MILLION RAF Eurofighter has crashed â just weeks before the 1,500mph super jet is due to come into service. The Typhoon suffered âconsiderableâ front-end damage after it nose-dived on landing. The pilot and co-pilot escaped unhurt when the jetâs front wheel failed to go down properly. Last night Ministry of Defence insiders claimed that the Eurofighter had suffered a series of problems with its front wheel. But official sources insisted the accident at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire on Monday was the first involving a wheel failure.
The Eurofighter has previously been heavily criticised for its spiralling costs and teething problems. Britain has ordered 144 Typhoons â with the first due to come into service with the launch of a new squadron at the beginning of April. Last night RAF top brass insisted that the accident would not delay the start-up date of the Typhoon unit â Number 3 Fighter Squadron. An RAF spokesman said: âThe damage to the aircraft is being assessed and the incident is the subject of an inquiry.â
The Typhoon can fly at twice the speed of sound and above 65,000ft. RAF chiefs insist its agility means it can âout-dogfightâ any jet in the world.
So we'll just avoid dogfights and stick with killing them with long range missiles. The ones sold to "un-friendly" countries, that is.
Critics have said that the plane â developed by the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy â was designed for an enemy that no longer exists, the former Soviet Union.
Critics tend to avoid talking about China and other people buying Russian jets. I wonder why? Well, no I don't
Two new aircraft carriers ordered by the Navy are due to carry 36 Typhoons each.
#4
The UK will use the F35. It's a negotiating ploy to get the additional F35 technology, esp. the entire software suite, for the less than 10% share that they paid for.
In addition, Germany wants to cancel the third and last batch of Eurofighters and wants the other participants to agree to waive the cancellation fees, which are almost as expensive as building the planes.
Posted by: ed ||
01/19/2006 10:22
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..Every new aircraft has its share of teething (It could very well be that it was just a bad nose gear strut or oleo) problems and the Typhoon is no exception. It could very well be that it was just a bad nose gear strut or oleoFor example, the F-16 - which I worked on as a brand new bird and as a mature weapon system - had a flaw in the flight control system that killed some pilots before they got a handle on it. The cost of a modern fighter tends to magnify these flaws to a hideous extent - given what Typhoon REALLY costs (official figure is just under 63M Euro or 76.3M USD - I suspect it's closer to 100M Euro), it's likely that spares and repair funds are in VERY short supply and that the damaged bird will be grounded for a very long time, if it ever gets back in the air.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/19/2006 11:18
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#6
The Airbus has a lot of problems with its nosegear also. Seems to be a Euro weak area.
#8
how well it performs against a swarm of Unmanned Aerial Combat Vehicles?
That will depend on numbers and size. If it's thousands and tiny then the Typhoon is doomed like it's namesake which ran across tiny FW-190's over the channel while covering the Canadians at Diepe.
The Army announced yesterday that it will cut six National Guard combat brigades -- or up to 24,000 infantry and other combat troops -- as part of an effort to ease budgetary pressures and shift manpower into homeland defense missions.
In addition to scaling back the guard's combat brigades to 28 from 34, the active-duty Army will add one fewer combat brigade than it had planned, ending up with 42 instead of 43, Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey told a Pentagon news briefing yesterday.
As a result, the Army in coming years will grow to 70 instead of the anticipated 77 active-duty and National Guard combat brigades to respond to overseas and domestic contingencies, Harvey said. In 2003, the Army had 67 combat brigades, Army officials said.
"This force structure we think is appropriate to the threat," Harvey said, explaining that the change resulted from a broad review of Pentagon strategy and resources that will be made public next month with the new defense budget.
The changes suggest that budgetary pressures are exerting limits on the expensive manpower increases that the Army initiated in recent years in its struggle to meet demands in Iraq and Afghanistan. They also reflect recruiting difficulties, as well as a greater National Guard emphasis on homeland missions in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
The six National Guard combat brigades -- 3,500-to-4,000-troop infantry and armor units at the core of the Army's war-fighting force -- will be replaced by brigades made up of engineers, military police, civil affairs soldiers, and other support troops "very appropriate for homeland defense missions," Harvey said.
Still, some National Guard leaders strenuously objected to the cut in Guard combat forces, as well as an Army decision announced by Harvey yesterday to fund the National Guard at its current troop level -- 333,000 -- rather than the congressionally approved strength of 350,000.
"The adjutants general all agree that we need to be at 350,000 . . . and indications are that this year we can get there again, so in our view that has to be funded up front," said Maj. Gen. Roger P. Lempke, president of the Adjutants General Association of the United States.
Harvey said if the National Guard manages to recruit more members, the Army will fund them, but he did not indicate where the money would come from -- and Lempke and other Guard officials worry it would come from their existing budget.
Curbing the growth in Army combat brigades could give troops less time than officials had hoped between war-zone rotations, officials said.
The reduction of combat brigades "will put strain on the Guard even greater than it is today, because we will have to rotate more frequently," said retired Brig. Gen. Stephen M. Koper, president of the National Guard Association in Washington.
Harvey said the Army has not yet been able to achieve its rotational goal for active-duty brigades of spending one year in a war zone and two years at home; instead units are spending 15 to 22 months at home, he said.
On recruiting, Harvey said "the future looks promising" for meeting the enlistment target in 2006 after the Army fell short by about 7,000 soldiers last year. Yesterday, the Army said it is raising the age limit for active-duty enlistees from 35 to 40, and doubling the maximum cash enlistment bonus to $40,000 for active-duty recruits who choose a high-priority skill and will serve at least four years.
#1
Harvey said the Army has not yet been able to achieve its rotational goal for active-duty brigades of spending one year in a war zone and two years at home; instead units are spending 15 to 22 months at home, he said.
So, let me get this straight. The Harvey solution is to cut the number of available AC and RC deployers? Cutting the National Guard end strength, (which has the primary mission of state and local disaster relief.....) to increase the number of "brigades made up of engineers, MP's and CA soldiers, and other support troops very appropriate for homeland defense missions...?" I guess an 11B could never be trained to become an MP or a MRE tossing CA weenie. What was I thinking? Looks like a New Orleans and Iraqi billpayer to me.
#2
No sympathy here Besoeker. Back in 1993 the active duty watched as pols in Washington cut their strength from over 750K to 482K. The lobbying work of the National Guard Bureau which is nearly autonomous, kept significant cuts from the force structure of the ANG. While funding kept flowing the guard was not improved in training and professionalism that the active force went through. Yep there are some that can keep up, but there are many who can not. The Guard has had to play real world these past couple of years and as a consequence is the one element that is really having a problem keeping its force structure manned. They've had to play cause their cuts which didn't happen had to be carried by the active force. The budget is pie chart. If you can't decrease one part of it, some other part pays.
BTW, state duty and disaster relief seldom require infantry, armor, or artillery. What the governors really need is military police, transportation, engineers, medical, and other support skills. Those currently are in the Army Reserve rather than the National Guard structures. The NGB has spent a lot of political capital to keep the combat arms formations in house. The NGB looks out for its own interests. The history of that goes back to the early 20th century.
On recruiting, Harvey said "the future looks promising" for meeting the enlistment target in 2006 after the Army fell short by about 7,000 soldiers last year.
Again, lets remember that the Active Army ended fiscal year 2004 with 482,000 personnel, which was its Congressionally mandated limit, and fiscal year 2005 with 492,000 personnel. The 'difference' was the increase that Congress finally got around to authorizing three years after 9/11. You don't absorb 20,000 or more bodies in one year without having to take people out of the line to support the training base.
#5
This is a damned stupid beancounter proposal that's going to cause problems in the future. Whoever put this forward has never served in combat, and is nothing but a glorified accountant with mush for brains. We are going to need a much larger army - 60 to 70 brigades - to deal with the war against islamonazis, not a smaller one. The people in Washington don't want to spend money on the military - they'd much prefer wasting it on idiotic social programs, funding for all kinds of idiotic "research" and giving it away to people that will waste it worse than Washington can. This will do NOTHING to secure our borders or make us better able to react to another terrorist attack. All it will do is grease the palms of a bunch of criminals in the Washington "gimme" corps.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
01/19/2006 14:21
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#6
Patriot: They f***ed the dough away and continue to f*** it away on Katrina and Mayor Neeeegins chocolate sector. We can't even handle our affairs here at home. Not sure why we diddle in everyone elses stuff. Should walk softly and keep nukes ready and airborne at all times if we wish to survive our society through the 21st Century.
#7
OP, with respect, the Army officers I talk with do not want the Army to expand rapidly, for several reasons. First and foremost in the short run is the training load that would entail - it would bleed dry our experienced NCOs from operations just when we need them the most in the field. I know that you and Cyber Sarge and others here know just how crucial our NCOs are to our operational success.
Expanding the size of the Army right now would also have a retrograde effect on plans for Army transformation, because it would result in equipping the army, at great expense, with old technologies - necessary, because you have to train the newcomers in existing doctrine and equip them accordingly. That works against the rapid progress being made to transform both the equipment and the doctrine of the Army to face other-than-force-on-force operations.
The Army's plan is to augment a highly professional force of soldiers at the current strength with sophisticated technologies that are true force multipliers. The UAVs we are currently using are the smallest tip of that iceberg. I occasionally get to see what the existing prototypes for other stuff looks like and can do, and it's truly a huge leap ahead of today's systems.
Boots on the ground matter - a lot, sometimes - but ultimately it is not our numbers in uniform alone that are or will be our strategic advantage in the conflicts we face and are likely to face for the next decade or two.
SYCAMORE TWP. - Police and Metro officials remain stumped over the discovery of three homemade explosives found Monday on the seat of a bus. A video system on the bus, which might have yielded clues, wasn't working, officials said Tuesday.
The explosives could have seriously injured a passenger if they had exploded, the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office said. "They are like firecrackers on steroids," said Steve Barnett, a spokesman for the sheriff's office. "I wouldn't call it a bomb." The casing of each device, made of cardboard, was about 4œ inches long and Ÿ-inch in diameter. Each contained a high-grade flash powder, which could have exploded if exposed to a flame.
If the three devices had exploded together near or under a person, the blast could have caused severe injury or death, the sheriff's office said.
The explosives were found by the driver of Bus 946 after she parked it near the Dillonvale Shopping Center at the end of her route Monday evening. The bus serves the Montgomery Road corridor, including Kenwood Towne Centre, officials said. The sheriff's hazardous devices unit removed the devices after the driver notified authorities.
Bus drivers routinely inspect the buses looking for suspicious items, along with the usual lost sweaters, books and music devices.
They also have installed video cameras on buses. But the recording system for the four video cameras on Bus 946 was not working Monday, said Sallie Hilvers, a spokeswoman for the bus system. She said she hopes someone saw the person who dropped or intentionally left the explosives - and the witness will notify authorities. "All of us have been (wondering) why (explosives) would be set out in the middle of the seat," said Hilvers. "No one knows if it was intentional or accidental."
Hilvers said there is no reason to believe that riders of the bus system are in any danger. Metro received no threats related to the explosives found on the bus. "It is our position that (riding the bus poses) no different risk or concerns than people face in any public space these days, whether you are in a mall or a theater," Hilvers said.
I can't wait for my employer to relocate our offices. It's kinda nice to spend the commute time reading or sleeping, but at least my own car is IED free. That, and no more downtown...
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
01/19/2006 9:32
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YALA, Thailand : Some 200 militants set dozens of telephone towers ablaze overnight in Thailand's Muslim-majority south, in attacks officials said Thursday could be reprisals for government restrictions on cell phones in the region.
"There were more than 50 arson attacks in four provinces, but no one died," the regional police commander, Lieutenent General Adul Seangsingkaeo told reporters.
"The attacks involve more than 200 teenaged militants," he added.
The militants threw petrol bombs at mobile phone relay towers and phone booths, causing some interruptions to cell phone service.
Seven of the militants have been arrested, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra told reporters in northeastern Thailand.
He said the attacks could have been reprisals for government restrictions on cell phone use in the south, where users must register their lines so that authorities can try to track phones used to detonate bombs in the region.
"Last night's attacks aimed to incite more unrest and to show that the militants are still capable" of staging coordinated raids, Thaksin said.
"The attacks may have been to retaliate against government registration of SIM cards, because now they cannot use mobile phones to detonate bombs," he said.
Justice Minister Chidchai Vanasathidya urged security forces to step up precautions against further attacks.
"We cannot be complacent. The militants can strike back at us at any time," he said.
#1
"The attacks may have been to retaliate against government registration of SIM cards, because now they cannot use mobile phones to detonate bombs," he said.
Our cell towers are safe. The Dems and the ACLU would never permit this type of bomb detonation monitoring.
#2
Wherever Muslims are a majority, they make trouble with their non-Muslim neighbors. Just as it happened in the Paris' suburbs, it will happen in every city in the West. We have to not only halt all Muslim immigration, we must deport each and every one who rejects Secular values.
#4
LotR, I skimmed it yesterday. My epigrammic summary of the 322 pages of wonkery is: Thank G*d we are not the ones who have to make the call.
Seriously, unless there is an internal revolution (unlikely), we are going to **have** to invade and change the regime. The only question is, will this be before or after a city somewhere gets nuked.
Posted by: N guard ||
01/19/2006 10:40
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#5
After.
You can bet on that.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
01/19/2006 14:09
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#6
LotR, this one is beyond my ability. I got past the title page to the table of contents, then gave up. Fortunately, Nguard is cleverer than I.
The Iranian envoy in Baghdad acknowledged on Wednesday that the Iranian coastguard had stopped three Iraqi vessels in an incident which is testing improved ties between the former foes.
Hasan Kazemi-Qomi said the Tehran government was investigating the matter after Iraqi officials accused Iran of taking hostage nine Iraqis working on the vessels.
He said the Iranian coastguard had taken action against the boats because they had crossed into Iranian waters.
"The Iranian coastguard stopped an Iraqi vessel and two ships escorting it. Iran is investigating the matter and some answers should emerge in a few hours," Kazemi-Qomi told Reuters.
Mohammed al-Waili, the regional governor of the southern Iraqi city of Basra, said he believed the nine Iraqis aboard the boats could be returned as early as Thursday.
Iranian officials on Tuesday denied the incident. Iraqi officials said the Iraqi boats and crews had been seized on Saturday or Sunday.
An Iraqi government statement said the incident was raised on Tuesday in a meeting between Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari and Kazemi-Qomi.
It said Zebari, who handed Kazemi-Qomi a diplomatic memorandum on the incident, hoped the issue could be resolved in a brotherly spirit.
Kazemi-Qomi denied statements by Iraqi officials that there were clashes during the incident.
"There were no clashes. Relations between the Iranian and Iraqi coastguards are excellent," he said.
Waili told Reuters on Tuesday that the Iraqi coastguard had boarded an Iranian-skippered ship suspected of smuggling oil in Iraqi waters when they were overpowered by an Iranian patrol.
Lieutenant Colonel Ziyad Majid Wali, a coastguard commander in the Iraqi port of Abu Flous, told Reuters the problem began when a patrol approached the ship, the Nour 1, suspecting it of smuggling oil near Abadan, on the Iranian side of the waterway.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani stepped in to cool tempers on Tuesday, conceding the nine Iraqis might have strayed across the border in the shifting tidal shoals of the Shatt al-Arab and calling their arrest a "mistake" that would soon be sorted out.
Iraq and Iran have a long history of disputes along the waterway. Iran briefly seized three British naval patrol boats in the same area in June 2004, at a time when U.S.-led occupation forces were responsible for policing the border.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/19/2006
00:59 ||
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#1
Looks like an act of war to me. "Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Dogs of War."
#2
Iran is trying to push as many buttons as it can,hoping to get the US or Iraq to do something stupid. I'd expect Tater's tots to start causing trouble in the next couple of weeks, as well as a number of border incidents to take place along the Iran/Iraq border. That idiot that's president of Iran WANTS a war, thinking either he'll win, or that the "12th IMAM" will arrive and save his arse. I don't think the "12th imam" is any match for a division of US Marines.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
01/19/2006 15:12
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#3
I'm thinking the 12th Imam will serve only as a lesson of 'what not to do' for the 13th and 14th Imams...AKA "the radioactive ones"
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/19/2006 19:02
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AKA "the radioactive ones"
Lol! Melike. Resulting from a "work accident", of course.
France, with the support of the United States, rejected Iran's request for more negotiations on the Islamic republic's nuclear program, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice saying Wednesday "there's not much to talk about" after Iran resumed atomic activities.
As European countries pushed ahead with efforts to have Iran brought before the U.N. Security Council for its nuclear activities, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused them of trying to deprive Iran of peaceful technology.
"We are asking they step down from their ivory towers and act with a little logic," Ahmadinejad said. "Who are you to deprive us from fulfilling our goals?
"You think you are the lord of the world and everybody should follow you. But that idea is a wrong idea."
In Vienna, Austria, the International Atomic Energy Agency said a special meeting of its 35-nation board of governors would be held Feb. 2 at the request of Britain, France and Germany.
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said European nations were seeking the "greatest possible consensus" on dealing with Iran, and the upcoming meeting was a "very important moment."
"What we wish is that there is the greatest possible consensus to mark clearly the limit of what we can accept," he said in Berlin after meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Earlier, Iran's foreign minister said he did not believe the country would be referred to the Security Council, which has the power to impose economic and political sanctions. However, diplomats say the council is unlikely to take such action since China and Russia, two veto-wielding members, oppose referral.
Tehran's defiant tone came as France, with U.S. backing, rejected Iran's request for a resumption of negotiations, saying Tehran must first suspend its nuclear-related activities.
Iran asked for a ministerial-level meeting with France, Germany, Britain and the European Union, but its decision to resume some uranium enrichment-related activities "means that it is not possible for us to meet under satisfactory conditions to pursue these discussions," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Denis Simonneau said in Paris.
"Iran must return to a complete suspension of these activities."
In Washington, Rice and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana also rejected any return to talks.
"There's not much to talk about," Rice said during a photo session at the State Department with Solana.
Rice said Iran must not be allowed to have a nuclear weapons capability or "to pursue activities that might to a nuclear weapons capability."
Later, during a speech at Georgetown University, Rice said the international community was united in its belief that Iran "stepped over a line when it broke the seals" at its main uranium enrichment facility and resumed reprocessing nuclear fuel.
"The Iranians want to make this about their rights. It's not about their rights," Rice said. "It's about the ability of the international system to trust them with the capabilities and technologies that could lead to a nuclear weapon.
"They have a history with IAEA of not disclosing, with covering their activities and so no one does trust them with those technologies."
Solana agreed that "there is not much point" in resuming talks if there is "nothing new on the table."
The European countries have drawn up a draft IAEA resolution asking the Security Council to press Tehran "to extend full and prompt cooperation to the agency" in its investigation of suspect nuclear activities - though it stops short of asking the council to impose sanctions.
A European diplomat accredited to the IAEA said Wednesday there were no significant changes in the language of the draft resolution.
"We are pretty well where we were yesterday," the diplomat said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media about the draft.
Russia and China - as well as Egypt, which also sits on the 35-nation IAEA Board of Governors - are reluctant to support Iran's referral.
"In view of the overall situation, we regard the possibility of the hauling of Iran's nuclear case to the Security Council to be weak," Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told state radio.
"During the past 10 days we have tried to relay our message to all relevant parties, including the Europeans, about Iran's readiness to negotiate on the production of nuclear fuel."
Mottaki said he hoped European countries would avoid taking steps that could only worsen the current situation - an apparent reference to U.S. and European talk of sanctions.
Ahmadinejad shrugged off the draft resolution, calling it politically motivated and said he was unconcerned by the attempts to refer Iran to the council.
"There isn't any problem. This is their endeavor. We can't stop others from trying," he told reporters.
The United States accuses Iran of trying to secretly build nuclear weapons - a charge Iran denies. Britain, France and Germany, with U.S. backing, have been trying to persuade Iran to import nuclear fuel instead of having its own uranium enrichment program, but Iran has rejected this.
The Bush administration sent U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns to London to coordinate a strategy with Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia on dealing with Iran. Burns conceded differences remained after Tuesday's meeting.
"We reached a consensus on some points ... others need to be worked on," he said in Bombay, India, during a South Asia tour.
"There is a consensus that Iran should turn back, return to negotiations and suspend its nuclear program. But that's not the path Iran is on now."
A delegation of Israeli security experts was in Moscow on Wednesday to meet with Russia's Security Council and Foreign Ministry in hopes of winning Russian backing for Security Council referral.
Russia's Interfax news agency said the head of country's nuclear energy agency, Sergei Kiriyenko, met with the delegation led by Israeli National Security Chief Giora Eiland.
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy was scheduled to meet with Russian officials on Thursday.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/19/2006
00:57 ||
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British author Salman Rushdie said the West had failed to grasp the extent to which Islamic extremism was rooted in men's fear of women's sexuality.
I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that Islam isn't a religion, but a sexual fetish.
Rushdie told German weekly magazine Stern that his latest novel, "Shalimar the Clown", dealt with the deep anxiety felt among many Islamic men about female sexual freedom and lost honor. When asked if the book drew a link between "Islamic terror and damaged male honor", Rushdie said he saw it as a crucial, and often overlooked, point.
I think we've pretty much reached concensus here that it is crucial. We probably started arriving at that conclusion when we saw out of the left eye the Islamists jumping up and down and rolling their eyes and waving guns while they hollered about their "dignity and honor," while out the right eye we saw the Arab and Pak husbands/brothers/cousins/relatives/passersby either slaughtering women and girls in horrible manners, or slicing their noses or lips off, or splashing them with acid, or simply beating them to a pulp regularly, also in the name of "honor." Bill Quick, a long time ago, opened the discussion on "honor-shame" cultures, and his observations still remain valid.
"The Western-Christian world view deals with the issues of guilt and salvation, a concept that is completely unimportant in the East because there is no original sin and no savior," he said, in comments printed in German. "Instead, great importance is given to 'honor'. I consider that to be problematic. But of course it is underestimated how many Islamists consciously or unconsciously attempt to restore lost honor."
Not to mention the differences in the definitions of "honor." Islamic "honor" is not the same as Western honor. I'd also add for discussion the closely related lack of recognition on the part of proper Islamists of the concept of romantic love...
When asked why he probed the issues in his new novel in the context of a love triangle, he said: "It has a lot to do with sexual fear of women."
We're discussing a religion where it's haram for married folks to look at each other's pee-pees...
Rushdie, 58, said that much of the anger toward the West was provoked by that split on sexual issues. "(It is) because Western societies do not veil their women. Because they do not defuse this potential danger," he said.
And men aren't expected to be able to deal with the danger.
The Indian-born Rushdie, who lives in New York with his fourth wife Padma Lakshmi, told Stern that he has lived without security protection for seven or eight years. "I go where I please," he said. "I went to India often in the last few years, which I enjoyed."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/19/2006
00:56 ||
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#1
bomb em with porn?? The mark 1 xxx clusterfck munition showering the target with porno vids!
Posted by: Shep UK ||
01/19/2006 5:29
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#2
hold on hold on, shouldnt Rushdie be dead by now???? WTF they've been trying to get him for as long as my mind can remember. they cant even get an Author??? lol lol
Posted by: Shep UK ||
01/19/2006 5:31
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#4
Perhaps a wider distribution of "Brokeback Mountain" will help quell the deep confusion in the male Arab world.
Buggery has always been a feature of middle eastern Arab male culture. Lack of access to females often means that young Arab males play with each other, often finding in other males their first sexual experiences.
#8
TAF: Buggery has always been a feature of middle eastern Arab male culture. Lack of access to females often means that young Arab males play with each other, often finding in other males their first sexual experiences.
My feeling is that this isn't widespread, and more or less an urban legend tied to the fact that many Middle Easterners of the same gender hold hands - something we see as having sexual significance that isn't in the Middle Eastern context. Middle Easterners take heterosexuality seriously - the punishment for sodomy in many Muslim countries is death. And that's just the law. In many Muslim countries, private killings of gays in gruesome ways isn't something the Taliban invented.
#9
So there's no such thing as gay middle-easterners!
Posted by: Rafael ||
01/19/2006 23:07
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#10
Well, I can say that it is common in Saudi. It's no UL there. For example, it is common knowledge in al Khobar, in the news yesterday for the kid with the offensive car window sticker, that after last prayer the homosexuals congregate in the al Tamimi Safeway parking lot. Not sure when it began, exactly (didn't see it in 1992, but did in 2000), but most of the expats learned to get their shopping done during daylight hours - usually during that (approx) 1 hr gap between the 4th and 5th prayers - or wait until the "weekend" of Thur & Fri. I saw this little social phenom myself and asked Saudi acquaintences what was up. They laughed and told me it was the local meat market. I presume the "cops" know, too, but must leave it alone unless there's something flaunted.
BTW, these guys were the lucky ones - good jobs at Aramco, married, they made it. Untrue for those without their good fortune, the vast majority, who will not be able to wed until their mid-30's - a fact also confirmed by these guys. It's good to be King and it's good to be connected - which a job at Aramco requires.
The hypocrisy is beyond obvious and homosexuality is as common there as hetersexuality is here in the US. I ran across a couple of guys in the hallway at the Gulf Hotel in Manama, Bahrain - there were couches conveniently distributed at various points in the hallways. They didn't skip a stroke.
Same as the ritual that developed at the mall with the girls dropping little pieces of paper with their cell numbers through the atrium opening to the boys below. That's not puishable by death, of course, but it, too, is obviously against Shari'a.
Khaddam must be singing like a canary ...
The U.S. Department of the Treasury today named Assef Shawkat a Specially Designated National (SDN) of Syria pursuant to Executive Order 13338, for directly furthering the Government of Syria's support for terrorism and interference in the sovereignty of Lebanon.
"As the Director of Syrian Military Intelligence, Shawkat has been a key architect of Syria's domination of Lebanon, as well as a fundamental contributor to Syria's long-standing policy to foment terrorism against Israel," said Stuart Levey, Treasury's Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI).
Identifier Information
Assef Shawkat
Title: Director of Syrian Military Intelligence
DOB: 1950
POB: Tartus, Syria
Nationality: Syria
Address: Al-Akkad Street, Damascus, Syria
Major General Assef Shawkat is the Director of Syrian Military Intelligence (SMI), the strongest and most influential security service in Syria. Its broad internal and external responsibilities include working with terrorist organizations resident in Syria and overseeing the Syrian security presence in Lebanon.
In addition to the power he derives from his position, Shawkat also has access to the highest levels of the Syrian power structure by virtue of his marriage to Bushra al-Asad, the sister to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Shawkat is a close confidant of President Assad and an important member of his inner circle of advisors.
Through his position as Director of SMI, Shawkat has directed and significantly contributed to the Government of Syria's support for terrorism, including coordination with Specially Designated Global Terrorists Hizballah, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command ("PFLP-GC"), Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad ("PIJ").
Information indicates that in 2005, Shawkat met with Hizballah Secretary General Hasan Nasrallah, PFLP-GC chief Ahmad Jibril, PIJ Secretary General Ramadan Shallah, in addition to Hamas and PIJ officials. Shallah, Jibril and Nasrallah are designated Specially Designated Terrorists pursuant to Executive Order 12947. Shawkat and the officials discussed coordination and cooperation between the terrorist groups. Shawkat and Jibril hoped to ease the freedom of movement for Palestinian terrorist groups, including PFLP-GC in Lebanon, so that the groups could move between Lebanon and Syria, as well as receive weapons and ammunition more easily.
During his tenure as Deputy Director of SMI, Shawkat managed a branch of SMI charged with overseeing liaison relations with major terrorist groups resident in Damascus, including PFLP-GC, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), HAMAS, and PIJ. As SMI Deputy, Shawkat helped direct operations against Israel, some of which were coordinated with Palestinian terrorist group leaders, including PFLP-GC leader Ahmad Jibril and PIJ leader Ramadan Shallah.
Information shows that in June 2003, Shawkat, through his position as deputy director of SMI, ordered members of PIJ, Hamas, and PFLP-GC to lower their profiles. The SMI dictated a number of changes that needed to be implemented by the three terrorist groups. The SMI demanded that each of the groups seek approval from Shawkat's liaison to hold meetings and gatherings inside their respective office spaces. The SMI also demanded that the groups lower their presence and public profile as much as possible. In return, the SMI declared that they would not expel any of the groups' members from Syrian soil or close offices, provided their demands were met.
Information available to the United States Government indicates that in 1997, Shawkat instructed PIJ Secretary General Ramadan Shallah to surveil strategic targets in a neighboring country to prepare for possible future attacks.
By virtue of his position as SMI Director, Shawkat directs and significantly contributes to the Government of Syria's military and security presence in Lebanon. SMI is the primary entity responsible for coordinating and implementing Syrian Arab Republic Government's (SARG) policies in Lebanon. Shawkat has contributed significantly to the SARG's security presence in Lebanon through his oversight of SMI activities within Lebanon and his direct control over Brigadier General Rustum Ghazali, who commanded SMI activities in Lebanon.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/19/2006
00:51 ||
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Insurgents carried out two dramatic ambushes Wednesday, killing 11 people including two American civilians in a roadside bombing in Basra and an attack on an Iraqi convoy in Baghdad.
Meanwhile, Iraqi officials expressed hope that American hostage Jill Carroll would eventually be released, and kidnappers freed the sister of
Iraq's Interior Minister after holding her hostage for two weeks.
The ambushes, in which gunmen also seized two Kenyan engineers, were part of a surge in violence that left scores of Iraqis dead across the country Wednesday.
In the most gruesome development, police said militants used this week's downing of a U.S. helicopter to carve out a killing field north of Baghdad, slaying more than 40 people on remote roads that Iraqis were forced to use after American troops cordoned off the crash zone.
Thirty people were dragged from their cars Wednesday at crude checkpoints erected on unpaved roads and shot dead execution-style in farming areas in Nibaei, a town near Dujail, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, said police Lt. Qahtan al-Hashmawi.
Since Monday's crash of a U.S. Army AH-64 Apache helicopter that killed its two pilots near Mishahda, 25 miles north of Baghdad, American and Iraqi forces cordoned off a large section of the main road near Dujail, police and eyewitnesses said.
More than a dozen other Iraqis died Wednesday in attacks linked to the insurgency.
The increased violence came as authorities prepare to announce the results this week of the Dec. 15 election. U.S. and Iraqi officials expect more attacks as religious and ethnic groups jockey for power in the new government.
In the boldest attack, gunmen opened fire on a convoy of the mobile telephone company Iraqna, killing six security guards and three drivers in the Nafaq al-Shurta district of western Baghdad.
Naguib Sawiris, chairman of the Egyptian communications firm that controls Iraqna, said the attackers seized the two Kenyans.
The two American civilians were killed in a roadside bombing in the southern city of Basra. They worked for the Texas-based security company DynCorp and were training Iraqi police. A third American was seriously wounded in the attack, the U.S. Embassy said.
An Associated Press photographer at the scene said two four-wheel-drive vehicles were targeted. The area was surrounded by heavily armed British forces, whose main base in Iraq is in Basra.
The killings occurred as a joint American-Iraqi investigation was under way to find Carroll, the 28-year-old American journalist who was abducted Jan. 7 in Baghdad. The freelance reporter for The Christian Science Monitor was seen in a video aired Tuesday by Al-Jazeera television.
Al-Jazeera said the silent 20-second video included a threat to kill Carroll in 72 hours unless U.S. authorities release all women detainees in Iraq. U.S. officials said eight women were in security detention and none had been freed as of Wednesday night.
Nevertheless, Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal, a deputy interior minister, spoke hopefully about prospects for Carroll's release.
"Efforts are continuing to find the American journalist," he said. "We cannot say more because of the sensitivity of the matter, but God willing, the end will be positive."
President Bush ignored shouted questions Wednesday about what his administration is doing to find Carroll. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said her safe return was a priority for the administration" but refused to say more "because of the sensitivity of the situation."
David Cook, the Washington bureau chief for the Christian Science Monitor, said at a news conference Wednesday that Carroll's work has demonstrated she is respectful of Arab culture and people, and the newspaper has shown it treats different cultures and viewpoints fairly.
He did not answer directly whether the newspaper was involved in any negotiations for her release but told reporters: "the Monitor is undertaking strenuous efforts on Jill's behalf ... taking advantage of every opportunity we have at our disposal."
Insurgents in Iraq have kidnapped more than 240 foreigners and killed at least 39 of them. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, more Iraqis have been abducted either by insurgents or gangs seeking ransoms.
On Wednesday, the sister of Interior Minister Bayan Jabr was released and was at home, said Ali al-Khaqani, a secretary to Jabr. He refused to give details, including her name, when she was released or whether ransom was paid. She was abducted Jan. 3 in an attack in which a bodyguard was killed.
Also Wednesday, Iraqi officials confirmed that 35 men rejected for membership in the Iraqi police were abducted Monday by masked gunmen who stopped their bus en route from Baghdad to Samarra north of the capital.
In other violence:
* Two policemen were killed and five were wounded when a suicide bomber targeted a police patrol near the Baghdad home of Shiite politician Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.
* The bodies of five men, all wearing civilian clothes with bullet wounds to the head, were found floating in the Qaid River near Swera, 25 miles south of Baghdad, said Kut Hospital morgue employee Hadi al-Itabi.
* Three Iraqi police and an Iraqi civilian were killed when a roadside bomb struck a patrol in Saadiya, 80 miles north of Baghdad. Four police officers were wounded.
* The bodies of three men, including a Sunni Arab leader related to Iraq's defense minister, were found Wednesday with gunshot wounds to the head in a Baghdad apartment, police said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/19/2006
00:49 ||
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#1
âThirty people were dragged from their cars Wednesday at crude checkpoints erected on unpaved roads and shot dead execution-style in farming areas in Nibaei, a town near Dujail, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, said police Lt. Qahtan al-Hashmawi.â
WTF is wrong with these people set up a roadblock kill 30 innocent people for no reason. These were not police or military they were just some poor sap either going or leaving work. What is wrong with the LLLâs when they see stories like this yet still claim the terrorist as âfreedom fightersâ âinsurgentsâ hell man these guys donât even qualify as terrorist the are just plan old MURDERERS.
#3
"Thirty people were dragged from their cars Wednesday at crude checkpoints erected on unpaved roads and shot dead execution-style in farming areas in Nibaei, a town near Dujail..."
Sounds like an area that should have been cordoned and searched immediately. But 'now' is still better than never - these poisonous fish need water to swim in.
#4
The irrational murders are the handiwork of irriational, power-hungry savages who are funded by either the Saudis or by Iran. Until we shut off the funds totally and completely from both nations, it will continue. It would be there if we were there or if we would leave. It's time to put the pressure on the sources of the funding. A nuke or two on Riyadh, Tehran, Qom, Damascus, Natanz, and a few other places would end the funding once and for all. Follow with an armed takeover of those nations until they could build governments that can play nice with one another and the west. Unfortunately, we don't have the manpower in uniform to do that at the moment, and the people aligned against us will continue to see that we don't by bribery, threats, and any other means possible.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
01/19/2006 15:47
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#5
Old Patriot:
Qom and Mecca? About 20 years ago, a Hindu nationalist told me that if we cut the head off the Muslim snake, the body would die. I never doubted him.
Nuking Mecca wouldn't arouse the ire of 1 billion Muslims; it would cause hundreds of millions to abandon the murder cult. Muslim accounts (fabrications) of Muhammed's bloody return the Mecca, paint him as fighting with angels on his side. If angels couldn't protect Mecca from nukes, then maybe there is no such thing as angels, and Muhammed must have concocted his so-called "recitations" (quran) from "gabriel." Life in America has caused 300,000 Iranian ex-pats to abandon Islam.
Philippine security forces arrested a Muslim rebel suspected of ties to foreign Islamic militants in connection with bombings in the capital in 2000, officials and rebels said on Wednesday.
Ustadz Abdulgani Pagao was on his way to pay his respects to a dead relative in Maguindanao town on the southern island of Mindanao when a team of soldiers and police arrested him on Tuesday, said an army intelligence official.
"The police served him an arrest warrant for multiple murder," the official told Reuters.
A police official said Pagao, a member of the country's largest Muslim rebel group Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), had been implicated in five coordinated bombings in Manila in December 2000 that killed 22 people and wounded more than 100.
The government said the attacks were planned and funded by the regional militant network Jemaah Islamiah and carried out by local Muslim rebels in revenge for the military's capture of guerrilla bases on Mindanao.
The intelligence official said there were reports Pagao had attended an Islamic school in Libya with Ustadz Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani, the late founder of Abu Sayyaf, one of four Muslim rebel groups in the mainly Roman Catholic Philippines.
The military said Pagao's arrest could prove that active links exist between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and groups such as Abu Sayyaf, al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah.
MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said Pagao was a member of the group's Islamic education committee but dismissed military claims about his ties with Abu Sayyaf as "baseless and mere speculation".
"Our ceasefire panel filed a complaint against the government for the arrest of Ustadz Pagao," Kabalu said.
A military official told Reuters the government panel agreed to a request by the MILF to visit Pagao at his detention cell at the national police headquarters in Manila "as soon as possible".
A rebel delegation would be accompanied by representatives from the government and a Malaysian-led team of international peace monitors to check on Pagao's conditions at Camp Crame.
On Monday, the chief negotiator for the MILF, Mohaqher Iqbal, told Reuters the two sides were "on the final stretch" of talks to strike a peace deal.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/19/2006
00:38 ||
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New southern Philippines military commander Major General Gabriel Habacon ordered tightened security in all military camps and posted photographs of a fugitive coup leader who is accused of trying to overthrow the Arroyo government.
"We have to be very careful. We don't want government destabilizers going around camps. I have ordered tight security in all military camps and the arrest of those trying to overthrow the democratic government," Habacon said Wednesday.
Photographs of escaped coup leader Marine Captain Nicanor Faeldon were posted in different areas of the Southern Command headquarters, the largest military installation outside Manila, and in army camps across Mindanao.
Faeldon, one of the leaders in the failed Oakwood mutiny in Manila's financial district of Makati, escaped on December 14 after a postponed rebellion hearing. Days later, he sent video clips to media organizations that showed him inside the Western Command.
Habacon's order came after Faeldon last week released a set of photographs and a video clip showing he was inside the Southern Command. Just this week, Faeldon again released a new video and pictures showing him inside the national police headquarters Camp Crame in Manila.
Four other coup leaders--lieutenants Lawrence San Juan, Nathaniel Rabonza, Sonny Sarmiento, and Patricio Bumindang--also escaped late Tuesday from a military prison in Manila and triggered a massive government manhunt in the country.
The five helped lead a failed rebellion against President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2003.
San Juan was commander of the US-trained anti-terror Light Reaction Company, who helped crush Abu Sayyaf forces in Basilan and Jolo islands in 2002, while the three were members of the Army's infantry, ranger, and armor brigade.
The ring leaders accused senior military officials of corruption and Arroyo of abetting it and called on her to resign so a junta could be established. The coup leaders and their followers eventually surrendered and were jailed. They later apologized, saying their actions were sparked by an honest desire for change.
Habacon said the posting of Faeldon's photographs in military camps was to allow troops to properly identify the fugitive coup leader. "With Faeldon's photos all over the camps, soldiers can now identify him properly and take the necessary actions if they see him the next time," he said.
A local television report said a soldier saw Faeldon on January 8 inside the Southern Command, but did not report the matter to his superiors thinking the man was a look-alike.
Philippine Army chief Hermogenes Esperon earlier ordered an investigation into Faeldon's claims that he sneaked inside the Southern Command.
"He cannot hide all the time, and eventually we will arrest him. Faeldon should not let himself be used by groups with vested and destructive interests. You must not allow yourself be used by persons who are not accountable to the people," Esperon said.
The military previously said the clip was digitally manipulated.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/19/2006
00:37 ||
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You must not allow yourself be used by persons who are not accountable to the people,"
one of the "corrupt" generals said this!
Ameture hour once again in the Philippines...
Posted by: bk ||
01/19/2006 10:04
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This whole series of events is an ongoing tragedy. LT San Juan commanded one of the US trained LRC, Light Reaction Companies. In that training he was exposed to discipline, honor, integrity, and putting ones unit and nation above ones self. He was equipped with the best equipment money could buy, trained by the best soldiers in the world, 1st SFG, and shown how a well trained unit can win in combat and sustain minimal casualties. The US trained the LRCâs on the US model, officer led, NCO driven. What was not trained to the LRC was how to deal with being the only honorable unit in a corrupt and undisciplined military. They were exposed to what âRightâ looks like and they were victorious in battle.
The hopes of training units like this is that when the officers and NCOâs move on they will take this training and integrity with them to their new units and instill it across the AFP, Armed Forces of the Philippines. LT San Juan looked at his leaders, the generals, and found institutionalized corruption, graft, and conspiracy with the enemy. They went to their leader, the president, and asked her to investigate the corruption and they were met with a promise in the dark. Out of frustration they took matters into their own hands and took the Makati district of Manila. They had planned this carefully as to not incur civilian casualties and took care not to use the US equipment given to them, in an effort not to put the FMS programs at risk. They released all the hotel guests and insured their safety on departure. Their demands were simple. They wanted the boots that were promised to the soldiers by the president. The money for the boots were taken by generals and put into private off shore accounts. They wanted the AFP intelligence chief removed from position. He was a former NPA commander and they believed, and had evidence of his continued involvement with the NPA. They wanted the AFP G4 arrested and the millions he filtered into the US returned. They also had a list of, I believe seven other corrupt generals they wanted investigated. Basically they wanted reform in the military there. Last they wanted amnesty for all the enlisted soldiers taking part in the coupe. They felt they were doing the right thing for their country, they knew they would not succeed, and they knew they would probably die for their acts. But they felt without action, their country would never get better, and they never wanted to take the country over.
Fifteen minutes before the assault by the police and other troops, the mutineers asked to surrender. They had got their point to the world and wanted no violence. They were arrested and thrown in prison. Months later the enlisted were released to their units. Officers that were not key leaders were released also. The AFP intelligence chief was investigated and place under house arrest. The G4 had all his assets seized and is on trial at this time, his son was caught smuggling hundreds of thousands of dollars into the US. Other officers on the list quickly retired and were also investigated. The actions of LT San Juan did not clean up the AFP, but it did end one generation of corruption.
From a civilized perspective, what they did was wrong. Their intentions were honorable, their execution was criminal. To some they are heroâs, to others villains. This story is not over. The question is: In a corrupt government and military is this act justifiable?
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
01/19/2006 20:34
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BAGHDAD: Iraq needs $20 billion over the next five years to solve a chronic electricity crisis after U.S. reconstruction funds failed to flick the right switches, the Iraqi electricity minister said. "When you lose electricity the country is destroyed, nothing works, all industry is down and terrorist activity is increased," Mohsen Shlash said Tuesday.
Power cuts are part of daily life for millions of Iraqis who paradoxically have an ever increasing need for energy because of an influx of electronic goods, such as air conditioners, over the past three years.
Total power production is lower than before the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion, at about 3,700 megawatts, because of insurgent attacks and other reconstruction problems, according to a Western diplomat with expertise in the sector. Prewar production peaked at about 4,300 megawatts - well under half of Iraq's potential capacity.
The United States earmarked $4.7 billion for the neglected electricity sector in 2003, but much of the money has gone and there is little to show for it, Shlash said. The Iraqi government has a few projects under way to rebuild or replace parts of the country's dilapidated electricity infrastructure, he added. "But this is not enough. There is a big need to build more power plants and of course this needs time and money - and we lack both," Shlash said.
"From this day, we need $20 billion over five years to cover the expected increase in the [electricity] load and the necessary reserves."
Such funds, however, must appear quickly and go toward competitively priced projects by Iraqi firms, in contrast to much of the U.S. money, which went to U.S. primary contractors, with large overheads and huge security costs, Shlash said. "The American donation is almost finished and it was not that effective. They did a few power plants, yes, but that definitely is not worth $4.7 billion," said the minister, adding that some of the work carried out was worth just one-tenth of the money being spent.
Does make you wonder where the rest of the money went.
Daniel Speckhard, director of the U.S.-funded Iraq Reconstruction Management Office, painted a slightly rosier picture of the U.S. efforts, which included projects to repair or rebuild many of Iraq's 32 power plants as well as maintenance work on transmission and distribution lines. "Electrical services today as a result of our entire program are more evenly distributed through the country than before the war, but as you are aware challenges continue in that sector," he told a news conference on Monday.
Power in southern and northern Iraq, where most plants are based, is slightly higher than before the war, when Saddam Hussein used to divert electricity to Baghdad, the Western diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity. But now the capital and much of the central regions are suffering some of their worst power shortages, with just two to six hours of electricity per day.
Shlash said U.S. reconstruction money would have gone further in the hands of Iraqi contractors who charge a fairer price and carry a lower security risk. Had this happened, "by now we would have had very little power problems or maybe no power cuts at all," said Shlash.
A U.S. official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said Washington was increasingly contracting Iraqi companies for its electricity jobs. But he insisted that it had been necessary to employ large, foreign firms with experience in organizing the projects at the start.
The Western diplomat, meanwhile, said progress on the U.S. reconstruction front had been slow because Washington underestimated the dire state of Iraq's electricity infrastructure and the inadequate training of its technicians. In addition, daily attacks on power stations and transmission lines further damaged the infrastructure, destroying or delaying repair work.
As a result, the United States pushed back a goal to lift Iraq's power production to 6,000 megawatts from the middle of 2004 to the end of this year.
Going forward, Shlash said the $20 billion needed to generate power 24 hours a day should come from Iraqi coffers or in the form of loans rather than slow-to-emerge donations from the international community. Iraq, however, is severely strapped for cash. The Electricity Ministry asked for $1.8 billion for this year's budget, but the government only approved one-third of that amount, some $650 million, said Shlash.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/19/2006
00:37 ||
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From friends who have been in Iraq, there are two major problems with the electricity network. One is the incredibly rapid grouwth of the Iraqi economy and the second is the theft of power cables by some of those new Iraqi Enterpeneurs. They make very nice copper coffee sets to sell to the State Dept people and reporters!
#5
I'm so sick of the MSM's comparison of "pre-war" vs. "post-war" conditions of Iraq's infrastructure. Yeah, everything was so rosy under Saddam. It's almost as if the reporters don't get that things get blown up, torn apart, damaged and intentionally destroyed during a WAR!
Posted by: BA ||
01/19/2006 9:25
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"Does make you wonder where the rest of the money went."
A retired colonel who recently spent a year over there told me we have a truly spectacular bureaucracy in place. Money is loosed slowly, and he described State people in the project as naive.
I dunno: corrupt Iraqi contractors or dumb bureaucrats. Take your pick.
Posted by: James ||
01/19/2006 12:19
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Iraq needs to be stabilized and the terrorists killed. When enough of them have been killed, then they will be gone or have given up. Then you can ramp up building electricity infrastructure with Iraqi oil funds. More terrorists eliminated means the oil flow will increase, revenue will increase and rebuilding will increase. Otherwise Iraq will remain a typical ME sh*thole.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/19/2006 21:16
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Federal troops clashed with armed militants in a southern region of Chechnya, killing at least two fighters, regional law enforcement said Wednesday.
The clash on Tuesday between the fighters and the special Defense Ministry security force, called Vostok, took place near the village of Nozhai-Yurt, 40 miles southeast of the capital Grozny, a statement from Chechnya's Interior Ministry said.
Troops recovered two bodies armed with automatic weapons and other weaponry, while the remaining fighters fled into the nearby forest, the ministry said.
In Dagestan, which borders Chechnya to the west, police on Tuesday detained a fighter wanted on suspicion of training armed militants in Chechnya. Regional Interior Ministry spokeswoman Angela Martirosova said Valid Umayev also was wanted for allegedly participating in terror attacks in the two regions.
On Wednesday, police detained a man returning to Dagestan from the annual hajj religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, said Akhmed Magomayev, an Interior Ministry official in Dagestan. The detained man, a municipal administrator identified as Aburakhman Gadzhiyev, was arrested at the airport and detained for alleged murder and illegal weapons possession, Magomayev said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/19/2006
00:36 ||
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There are currently no more than 250 militants active in Chechnya, the acting prime minister of the North Caucasus republic said Wednesday.
"Our information shows that there are between 150 and 250 militants active on the republic's territory," said Ramzan Kadyrov, who is carrying out the duties of premier Sergei Abramov while he recovers from injuries sustained in a car crash.
His statement contradicts figures given by Lieutenant-General Oleg Khotin, head of the joint provisional Interior Ministry force in the North Caucasus, who said at a Chechen Interior Ministry meeting Tuesday that there were between 70 and 75 small armed groups operating in the republic, with a total of about 730 militants.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/19/2006
00:34 ||
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wo al-Qaida militants reported missing and suspected killed in Friday's U.S. missile attack in Pakistan are key regional commanders along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Afghan and Pakistani analysts said.
The administrator of Pakistan's Bajaur border district said Tuesday that four or five non-Pakistani militants had died -- along with 13 to 18 Pakistani residents -- in the missile attack on homes in the village of Damadola. Two of the dead may be an Egyptian known as Abu Ubaidah and a Syrian, Marwan As-Suri, said an Afghan source with links to al-Qaida.
Abu Ubaidah, in his mid-40s, is deputy commander of al-Qaida forces in Kunar, a ruggedly mountainous province where U.S. troops fought offensives last year to clear out militants, said the source, who asked not to be identified. Kunar is one of three or four Afghan provinces where the war in Afghanistan remains at its most intensive -- and one reason is that guerrillas have been able to flee across the border into Pakistan.
Marwan As-Suri, believed to be in his 30s, is a Syrian who recently had been appointed to head al-Qaida operations in part of the Pakistani areas bordering Kunar, the Afghan said.
ABC News reported yesterday that a third militant, known as al-Qaida's master bomb maker and chemical weapons expert, also was killed. Pakistani authorities identified him as Midhat Mursi, 52, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri. ABC also cited Pakistani officials as saying Khalid Habib and Abdul Rehman al-Magrabi, both al-Qaida operations chiefs, were killed.
The missiles destroyed three homes in Damadola hours after a dinner for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. Bajaur district's administrator, Fahim Wazir, said Tuesday that 10 to 12 non-Pakistani militants had been invited to the feast. Pakistani intelligence sources have told journalists in Pakistan that one invited guest who did not attend was al-Qaida's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri.
U.S. officials, apparently concluding that Zawahri was present, ordered the attack, for the first news of the strike came from American intelligence sources in Washington who said al-Zawahri had been killed.
According to the Afghan source, another important al-Qaida invitee to the dinner was Abdul Hadi Al-Iraqi, who reportedly has served as a liaison between al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida-backed guerrilla leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It was not clear whether Al-Iraqi attended and there was no report that he was missing.
The valleys of Kunar and Bajaur are separated by a mountain ridge that rises to 10,000 feet. An Associated Press reporter who visited the main border crossing, in the Nava Pass, reported yesterday that "a rusting gate," manned by inattentive guards, "is all that divides the two countries." U.S. forces and the Afghan government are trying to reinforce the border by creating an elite force of local tribesmen to guard it.
Both Kunar and Bajaur have deeply rooted Islamic militant groups that help make the area a haven for guerrillas of various groups.
In Kunar, "I got them all," a U.S. Army commander, Lt. Col. Peter Munster, told the AP last summer. "Taliban, al-Qaida ... [Hezb-I-Islami, an Afghan guerrilla faction led by the the militant Gulbuddin Hekmatyar], foreign fighters, smugglers and other criminals. They are like the Mafia."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/19/2006
00:29 ||
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mmmmm... no mention of the presence of fwuffy bunnies in the area as initial reports from the BBC suggested.
Posted by: Howard UK ||
01/19/2006 3:26
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"Pakistani intelligence sources have told journalists in Pakistan that one invited guest who did not attend was al-Qaida's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri.
"
Dose'nt this sound like what they claim the Jews did on 9/11.
"No, you guys go ahead, this cough will be gone by tommorrow, meet ya then"
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - Almost 1,500 Iraqi officers passed through NATO's training program for the country's military last year, two-thirds receiving instruction inside the country and the rest at facilities in Europe, the alliance said Wednesday. "The alliance aims to achieve the same results in 2006," NATO spokesman James Appathurai said in a statement.
NATO trainers have been working in Iraq since August 2004, and focus on midlevel and senior officers. Training is based at a staff college opened by NATO last September on the outskirts of Baghdad and run by about 160 NATO personnel. NATO's role in Iraq has been limited to the training mission, supplying equipment to Iraqi forces and some logistical support for a Polish-led contingent of the U.S.-led coalition. Opposition led by France and Germany prevented a wider role. The training had a $13 million budget last year.
NATO coordinated the supply of $120 million worth of military equipment to Iraq's armed forces last year, including 77 tanks from Hungary and 17,000 AK-47 rifles from Slovenia.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/19/2006
00:27 ||
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The good news is that it is to NATO standards, less that it is probably not the best NATO training.
I'm sure that parallel to these courses, the US has set up discreet facilities for serious training of senior officers, in the best tradition of WT Sherman.
It behooves our army to insure that it is burned into the brains of every Iraqi officer that we are their allies, that when you fight on our side and in our way you win, and that only a damn fool raises arms against us. Such lessons last for generations, and are the cutting blade of foreign policy.
When is it safe to release a captured Islamic terrorist from prison or detention? According to a top official of Canadaâs intelligence service, the answer is: never.
In public testimony at a court hearing in Ottawa last November, which got no attention south of the border, the senior Middle East analyst for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), identified only as âP.G.,â declared his agencyâs âbeliefâ that people who have joined militant ânetworksâ linked to Al Qaeda and affiliated Islamic movements âmaintain their ties, and their relationships to those networks, for very long periods of time. These ties are forged in environments where relationships mean a great deal, and it is our belief that the dedication to the ideology, if you will, is very strong, and is virtually impossible to break.â
In an official paper that he drafted outlining the serviceâs position on the release of alleged jihadi detainees held by the Canadian government under a controversial post-9/11 security procedure, P.G. wrote that âIndividuals who have attended terrorist training camps or who have independently opted for radical Islam must be considered threats to Canadian public safety for the indefinite future. It is highly unlikely that they will cast off their views on jihad and the justification for the use of violence.â The paper adds that âIncarceration is certainly not a guarantee that the extremist will soften his or her attitudes over time; quite the contrary. The Service assesses that extremists will rejoin their networks upon release.â
In a section of the paper carrying the subhead âOnce a Terrorist, Always a Terrorist?â, P.G. noted âthere have already been instances where released detainees have rejoined extremist groups ⊠At least 10 detainees released from the Guantanamo Bay prison after U.S. officials concluded they posed little threat have been recaptured or killed fighting U.S. or coalition forces in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and one of the repatriated prisoners is still at large after taking leadership of a militant faction in Pakistan and aligning himself with Al Qaeda.â
The CSIS paper cites several well-known cases as evidence that Islamic militants are likely to maintain, and even intensify, their extremist views and violent tendencies as a result of imprisonment. In one case, Allekema Lamari, an Algerian âextremist,â was released from a Spanish prison only to later mastermind the deadly March 11, 2004, bombing attacks on Madrid commuter trains. Then there are the cases of Ayman al-Zawahiri, who, the paper, says spent three years in an Egyptian prison for his involvement in the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat, only to emerge as Osama bin Ladenâs principal deputy, and Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, the militant who spent seven years in prison in his native Jordan for extremist activities, only to emerge as self-proclaimed creator and leader of Al Qaedaâs ultraviolent affiliate in post-Saddam Iraq. The CSIS paper also pointedly notes that after serving half of an eight-year terrorism-related sentence in a French prison, Algerian Islamic militant Fateh Kamel returned to Canada; Kamel, the document says, once boasted: âKilling is easy for me.â
The CSIS paper and the testimony of P.G. were made public during court hearings on the detention of Mohamed Harkat, a former Ottawa gas-station attendant and pizza delivery man who was arrested by Canadian authorities in December 2002 based on information gathered by the CSIS. After 9/11, Canada instituted new antiterror laws that gave the government power to expel foreign terror suspects based on secret intelligence information and to jail them without trial pending deportation hearings.
Lawyers for Harkat went to court to argue that their client should be released on bail, subject to electronic monitoring by authorities and tight control over his activities, while officials examine whether it would be appropriate to deport him to Algeria, where some say he could suffer human-rights abuse. In a similar case involving an alleged Islamic militant from Montreal, a judge ruled that the suspect could be released on bail while deportation proceedings continued. In Harkatâs case, however, a judge ruled that the suspect must remain in prison.
Barbara Campion, a spokeswoman for the CSIS, said her agencyâs view is that Harkat is âsuch a threat that he shouldnât be releasedâ on bail. As to P.G.âs wider assertions that it was unsafe to ever release a jihadi militant, Campion noted that Canada only was detaining a handful of militants under its antiterror laws. She said that there might be a qualitative difference between the Canadian detainees (whom authorities believe could be truly dangerous terrorists) versus the hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo (many of whom were rounded up with Taliban forces in Afghanistan and may not pose a serious terrorist threat ).
While the Canadian government regarded them as dangerous, there might be a qualitative difference in the relative dangers posed by the release of the suspects held by Canada and the release by the U.S. government from the Guantanamo Bay detention center of captured suspects who fought with Taliban forces in Afghanistan rather than with Al Qaeda.
Two U.S. counterterror officials, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject, said that whatever the Canadians believe about the risks of releasing detained jihadis, the Bush administration was likely to continue to release detainees from detention who were not regarded as serious risks to resume terrorism, in full recognition that some of them might return to the battlefield.
Under cross-examination by Paul Copeland, a lawyer for Harkat, P.G. made statements which raised questions about the policies and procedures of the CSIS. For one thing, P.G. acknowledged that the information in his paper about how 10 detainees released from Guantanamo Bay had rejoined terror groups originated in a Washington Post story. Copeland noted that P.G.âs official paper omitted information indicating that the 10 suspects who re-offended were among 202 detainees released from the U.S.-run prison facility and asked why this figure was not in the paper. P.G. said that when he wrote the paper, âit did not seem as if [the 202 figure] was important for the paper,â at least in part because CSIS did not have information on what had happened to the other 192 suspects who had been released.
Copeland also asked P.G. if he had looked into whether any of the information that the CSIS had collected regarding Harkatâs alleged terror links had come from captured Al Qaeda leaders who might have been subjected to âtortureâ by foreign agencies that had held or questioned them. Copeland noted that the Canadian government stated that some of the information it used to build its detention and deportation case against Harkat came from Abu Zubaydah, the captured Al Qaeda training-camp chief who, according to U.S. news reports, may have been subjected to harsh treatment while in U.S. custody. (Zubaydah is believed to be currently held by the U.S. government in a secret CIA detention facility overseas.) P.G. told the court that while he was concerned about the possibility that some of the intelligence may have come from detainees who had been tortured, he had ânever, personally, asked any individual whether or not specific information was obtained under torture.â
CSIS spokeswoman Campion said that as a small agency, her service had to rely heavily on intelligence-sharing relationships with foreign intelligence services, and she insisted that it was CSIS practice not to rely on âsingle sourceâ information. She said that while the CSIS does âtake what weâre given,â the service is concerned about possible mistreatment of sources and âalwaysâ corroborates the information from multiple sources before using it against someone. She noted that earlier in the Harkat case, a judge ruled that because of concern that Abu Zubaydah may have been been mistreated, the court would ignore any information he supplied about Harkat. Nonetheless, the judge ruled there was sufficient other evidence for authorities to detain Harkat. Campion added that CSIS operations were subject to detailed and regular scrutiny by a government oversight panel called the Security and Intelligence Review Committee.
Apart from his pessimism about the possibility that jihadi suspects could somehow reform and be released back into society, P.G. predicted that Al Qaeda and related groups are likely to persist and prosper whether or not Osama bin Laden remains alive and at its helm. âIn this regard, we are in a no-win situation,â P.G. testified. âIf Osama bin Laden remains at large, he remains a rallying cry, and a symbol for his organization, and as a paragon, if you will, of resistance to the West. If Osama bin Laden is killed and/or captured, he becomes a martyr to the cause of Islamic extremism and the war against the West. I think in either case, Mr. Bin Ladenâs removal from the scene is irrelevant, in the sense that Al Qaeda has already set the standard for international Islamic extremism.â
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/19/2006
00:26 ||
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Good post, Dan. Islamic sunnah requires emulation of the phony prophet. That fraud engaged in 59 known terror operations. Ergo: Muslims will emulate the founder of the cult. We either engage them with total commitment while we have overwhelming advantage, or buy Bush's nation-building snakeoil and aid and abet the enemy buildup.
The Officers Club blog has posted an account of the terrorist's effective tactics against helicopters. Hmmm...how could ambush bombs be planted without general public complicity? Deny.com Deny.com Deny.com
#2
does this mean Merkel is being too optimistic on the Guantanamo detainees? Or is she grandstanding?
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
01/19/2006 6:37
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#3
I imagine that the Liberal government listens to this gentleman about as well as they listen to the military heads of their sadly neglected Armed Services, which is to say, not at all. What sense of duty keeps such a man from throwing up his hands and moving south -- if the Conservatives don't win, they don't deserve to keep him.
#4
As with common pedifelia, recidicism for released islamic terrorists is documentably high. Not sure why this requires such an enormous leap of faith.
#5
If it is never safe to release captured Islamic terrorists then there is no point keeping them locked up - in fact it is counterproductive to keep them locked up (other terrorists grab hostages to try to trade for the prisoners). So Islamic terrorists should be tried, and if convicted sentenced to death and executed without delay.
Investigators said on Wednesday that they had found two empty graves at the site of a controversial US air strike in the Bajaur Agency, a day after officials said that up to five foreign militants had died in the attack. However, there was no information about the identities of the insurgents who died in the raid, despite initial US intelligence reports that Al Qaedaâs Egyptian number two Ayman al-Zawahri may have been among them.
Officials said that local militants may have shifted the bodies before their scheduled burials to stop authorities from DNA testing the remains and finding out who was killed in Fridayâs missile attack. Residents of Damadola village in Bajaur, however, have reported that 18 civilians died in the attack, for whom as many graves were dug, and that no militants were in the area. âThe residents dug 18 graves but buried 16 people and two graves were left vacant before they covered them over,â a senior security official said, citing a report by intelligence officials in the region.
On Tuesday, the Bajaur regional administration chief said that the missile strike was aimed at foreign militants invited to a dinner and that four or five were killed â the first such public confirmation by Pakistan. The tribal administration said that two local militants, Maulana Faqir Mohammad and Maulana Liaqat, had removed the bodies of the foreign extremists killed in the attack to âsuppress the actual reason of the attackâ, but gave no evidence.
On Wednesday, Shah Zaman Khan, director general of media relations for the tribal areas, said that the terroristsâ bodies are now probably in âinaccessible mountainous areasâ along the rugged, ill-defined border. âEfforts are underway to investigate further,â Khan said. âThe administration is also trying to arrest those clerics who were believed to be there.â A counter-terrorism official said that several of those killed were believed to be Egyptian.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/19/2006
00:25 ||
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Something you don't hear mentioned in all of this is who invited Zawahiri to dinner in the first place? Are they still breathing, or were they among the 18 killed? Will Zawahiri be that welcome in the future? Will any members of the Taliban or Al Qaida? I think we're focusing too strongly on just the foreigners that were killed, and not considering the "collateral" damage to the supposed Taliban/Al Qaida welcome mat.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
01/19/2006 14:34
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George Tenet, the former CIA director who assured President George W. Bush that finding unconventional weapons in Iraq would be a "slam dunk," will give his account of the conversation in a book to be published by HarperCollins, the publisher said on Wednesday.
The News Corp.-owned company said it agreed to publish a Tenet memoir that is tentatively entitled, "At the Center of the Storm." The release was expected late this year or early in 2007.
Representatives for HarperCollins and Tenet declined to discuss the deal's dollar value.
HarperCollins said the book would shed light on Tenet's role at the CIA during the agency's campaign against al Qaeda that started in the 1990s, the Sept. 11 attacks, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the rise of the Iraqi insurgency.
The book will also provide "the real context of Tenet's own now-famous slam-dunk comment" about Saddam Hussein's suspected prewar weapon of mass destruction cache, the publisher said. The expression, used originally to describe a basketball move, has come to mean something which can be achieved with complete certainty.
The "slam-dunk" quotation first surfaced in journalist Bob Woodward's book, "Plan of Attack," which portrayed Tenet as assuring Bush that finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq would be a virtual certainty.
The 2003 Iraq invasion was justified largely by intelligence that Saddam Hussein had such weapons. No such weapons were found, and the prewar intelligence effort has since been condemned by a presidential commission as one of the most damaging failures in recent U.S. history.
Tenet, who served under both Bush and former President Bill Clinton, resigned in July 2004 amid widespread criticism over intelligence lapses that also involved the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. civilian award, in December 2004.
Tenet initially had a $5 million book deal with Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. But he postponed his publishing plans last March.
"He never entered into a contract with Crown," said Tenet spokesman Bill Harlow. "Then he decided to hold off to gain some perspective. Now he's ready and has decided he's most comfortable with the folks at HarperCollins."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/19/2006
00:21 ||
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The bodies of the men have not been recovered, but the two officials said the Pakistani authorities had been able to establish through intelligence sources the names of three of those killed in the strikes, and maybe a fourth. Both of the officials have provided reliable information in the past, but neither would be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the news media.
American counterterrorism officials declined to say whether the four Qaeda members were in fact killed in the raid, or whether the men were among those who were the targets of it. But one American official said, "These are the kinds of people we would have expected to have been there."
If any or all were indeed killed, it would be a stinging blow to Al Qaeda's operations, said the American officials, who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized by their agencies to speak for attribution. They said all four men named by the Pakistani officials were among the top level of Al Qaeda's inner circle of leadership.
The Pakistani officials agreed that the deaths would be a strong setback to Al Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal areas, but acknowledged that hundreds of foreign militants might still be at large in the region.
Among those Abu Khabab trained was Abu Zubaydah, Al Qaeda's No. 3 operative, who was captured in 2002 in the Pakistani town of Faisalabad, one of the Pakistani officials said.
Another Egyptian, known by the alias Abu Ubayda al-Misri, was also believed killed, the Pakistani officials said. He was the chief of insurgent operations in the southern Afghan province of Kunar, which borders Bajaur in Pakistan, the area where the airstrikes occurred, according to one of the Pakistani officials. As chief of operations, Abu Ubayda commanded attacks on American forces in his part of southern Afghanistan, and trained the insurgent groups active in the area. He also served as a liaison for senior Qaeda leaders, and provided logistics and security for the top Qaeda people in the region, the official said.
After the fall of the Taliban, Abu Ubayda moved to the Pakistani town of Shakai, in South Waziristan, but left the area when the Pakistani military mounted operations against the foreign militants there in February 2004, the officials said.
The third man believed to have been killed was a Moroccan, Abd al-Rahman al-Maghrebi, who is the son-in-law of Mr. Zawahiri, the officials said. Mr. Maghrebi was in charge of Qaeda propaganda in the region, and may have been responsible for distributing a number of CD's showing the activities of Taliban and Qaeda fighters in southern Afghanistan in recent months.
A fourth man, Mustafa Osman, another Egyptian and an associate of Mr. Zawahiri's, may also have been killed, one Pakistani security official said. But he was less certain of his fate. There may have been one or two more foreign militants killed as well, he said.
One of the American officials said another senior Qaeda figure, identified as Khalid Habib, might have been at the site of the attack. His name was circulating among Pakistani officials as someone who might also have been killed, though again they were uncertain.
Mr. Habib is Al Qaeda's overall operational commander in Pakistan and Afghanistan, an important post, and would be the most significant of those who might have been at the site of the attack, which occurred in the village of Damadola, about 3:15 a.m. last Friday. After an initial investigation into the strike, Pakistani provincial authorities said in a statement on Tuesday that 10 to 12 foreign militants were believed to have been invited to a dinner in the village on the night of the Jan. 13 strike.
One of the men who died with his family in the wreckage of his home, Bakhtpur Khan, was named by a Qaeda operative, Faraj al-Libi, as a sympathizer, one of the Pakistani officials said. Mr. Libi, who was captured in Pakistan last summer, told an interrogator that he had met Mr. Zawahiri in Mr. Khan's house in Damadola previously, the official said. It is unlikely that Mr. Zawahiri was in the house at the time of the bombing, because he would have been accompanied by a larger entourage, one of the Pakistani officials said. Villagers, many of whom are sympathetic to Taliban and Qaeda elements, continue to insist there were no foreign militants in the village at the time of the airstrikes.
Al Arabiya television reported that Mr. Zawahiri was alive, quoting a member of Al Qaeda, in the days after the strike. A news agency in Afghanistan, Pajhwok Afghan News, has also reported that a Qaeda member telephoned the agency to say that Mr. Zawahiri was safe.
The news agency identified the caller as Ahmad Solaiman, a Moroccan who serves as a spokesman for the group. In a dispatch Wednesday, the agency quoted him saying that "Mr. Zawahiri is alive. Reports about his death are false." An American counterterrorism official said the claim was being viewed with skepticism, because Al Qaeda usually chooses more mainstream outlets to issue public statements. A Pakistani security official said soon after the strikes that he was confident that Mr. Zawahiri had survived.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/19/2006
00:19 ||
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"One of the men who died with his family in the wreckage of his home, Bakhtpur Khan, was named by a Qaeda operative, Faraj al-Libi, as a sympathizer, one of the Pakistani officials said."
With these kinds of hits, it does appear that if Dr. Zawahiri has a mole within his ranks. Assuming that he indeed was NOT vaporized in this latest attack, the good doctor's rest and relaxation time is over.
No more comfortable sleep-overs and if you're inclined to have him over for dinner or tea, you might want to rethink the invite.
#2
...And the best part is that now Zawahiri has to do an al-Zarkawi every night - no more than one night in the same place, can't trust anybody with him, never know if that glint you see in the sky is a far-off airliner or a Predator that has finally come for you.
Gee, Ayman...not as much fun when they shoot back, is it?
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/19/2006 14:30
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Indonesian anti-terrorism police have detained a close aide to the country's most-wanted militant, Malaysian Noordin M. Top, a senior police source said on Thursday.
"This is one of Noordin's boys from his inner circle," said the source, who declined to be identified and gave few details. The source said the man was detained in the central Java city of Semarang on Wednesday. One of his roles was to recruit bodyguards for Top, said the source. A police spokesman in central Java said he was aware of the detention of the aide but declined to give details.
Top worked closely in Indonesia with fellow Malaysian Azahari bin Husin, who was killed in a police raid on his East Java hideout in November. Azahari was also a senior Jemaah Islamiah operative. Police say they almost caught Top hours before the November raid and he is thought to be still in Indonesia. ADDITIONAL: (AKI) - Indonesian police have arrested two suspected aides of the country's most wanted terrorist, Noordin Mohammed Top, considered responsible for the bloodiest attacks in the country including the 2002 Bali bombing which killed 202 people. Subur Sugiarto, also known as Abu Mujahid, who is accused of helping hide Noordin, was picked up aboard a Jakarta-bound bus in central Java, a police commander said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/19/2006
00:17 ||
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At least two senior Al Qaeda commanders and a son-in-law of Osama bin Ladenâs second in command, Dr Ayman Al Zawahiri, are believed to have been killed in last weekâs attack in the Bajaur tribal region, credible sources said.
Sources told Dawn that the pre-dawn US aerial assault on three compounds in Damadola, Bajaur, on Friday killed four foreign militants. Eighteen civilians, mostly women and children, were also killed in the deadly attack causing public anger and protest demonstrations. Pakistan condemned the attack and summoned the US ambassador to lodge a formal protest. The government, however, on Tuesday issued an official statement claiming the death of four foreign militants in the attack.
According to the sources, intelligence officials believe that among those killed in the missile attack was Midhat Mursi Al Sayid, Al Qaedaâs chemical and explosives expert, who carries a $5 million reward. Born in April 1953, the Egyptian-born Midhat was known as Abu Khabab Al Masri. According to the sources and information available about him on âRewards for justiceâ website, Abu Khabab was a lead explosives and poison expert and served as an instructor for Al Qaeda and the Taliban. He operated chemical laboratories and trained militants in explosives at Darunta near Jalalabad in Afghanistan between 1996 and 1998 and later in Kabul until 2001. After Talibanâs fall, Abu Khabab moved to Pakistan and was widely believed to have lived in Shakai, South Waziristan, till February 2004.
According to the website, Abu Khabab produced training manuals containing recipes for crude chemical and biological weapons. Some of these manuals were recovered by US forces in Afghanistan.
Also believed to have been killed in the attack is Abu Obaidah Al Masri, Al Qaedaâs chief of operations for Afghanistanâs eastern Kunar province. Abu Obaidah, according to the sources, was leading attacks on US-led coalition forces in Kunar, training and providing material support and liaising between senior Al Qaeda figures, besides providing them with logistic support and security. Some officials believe that he could have been a replacement for Hamza Rabia, Al Qaedaâs operational commander, who was killed in a similar missile attack in Asory village in North Waziristan on December 2.
The third figure believed to have been killed in Bajaur is Abdur Rehman Al Maghribi. A Moroccan citizen, Al Maghribi is son-in-law of Dr Ayman Al Zawahiri and incharge of Al Qaedaâs media department.
There are also reports of the death of Mustafa Usman, an Egyptian national. There is little information available about him.
If intelligence reports about the death of senior Al Qaeda commanders in the attack are correct, this could mean a serious blow to the organization that has recently suffered a string of setbacks, including the death of Hamza Rabia and the capture of Abu Faraj Al Libbi.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/19/2006
00:16 ||
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Why does Allan look down with disfavor on al Qaeda ? What have they done wrong ? Perhaps Allan would like some young blood to manage al Qaeda. Maybe Allan's trying to tell them to quit hiding in the mountains and fight like men on the battlefield. Yes, go forth, young warriors. Heh heh heh.
Prisoners at the Guantanamo base in Cuba provided important information in connection with last summer's London transit bombings that the United States shared with authorities in the United Kingdom, the general in charge of the prison said.
The July 7 suicide bombings by four young British Islamists on three underground trains and a double-decker bus in central London during the morning rush hour killed 52 people and wounded more than 700 others.
"After the attacks in London, there were a number of questions asked trying to understand who these people were and where they had been," Army Maj. Gen. Jay Hood, who oversees the Guantanamo detention operation, said in an interview late on Wednesday.
"A significant number of the men we're holding here, a number, have lived in London, have lived in the United Kingdom," Hood said.
"And so where we could answer their questions and provide background on movements, travels, financing, communications, means of communications, recruitment, training, that sort of thing, I think we have played an important role."
British anti-terrorism officials have said it was unclear what support or international links the bombers had. But in a videotape aired in September, al Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri claimed the group had carried out the bombings to strike at "British arrogance."
All of the UK citizens who had been held at Guantanamo have been released but non-citizens who lived in the United Kingdom are among the nearly 500 prisoners at the remote U.S. naval base.
Hood did not discuss which prisoners gave information potentially linked to the London bombings, nor did he provide specifics.
The general said U.S. intelligence agents had shared with U.S. allies "literally everything" learned from the prisoners.
"Of course if we had people here at Guantanamo Bay who had some specific knowledge â locations, personalities, monies, communications during their time in the United Kingdom, we'd certainly provide that," Hood said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/19/2006
00:14 ||
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Thanks a bunch guys.. now throw another Koran in the kazi.
Posted by: Howard UK ||
01/19/2006 8:58
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THE REVELATION that Saddam Hussein's Iraq trained thousands of Islamic terrorists has important ramifications for European counterterrorism efforts. According to officials, one of the groups trained in Iraq prior to the war was al Qaeda's Algerian affiliate, the Algerian Salafist Group for Call and Combat ("GSPC"). The GSPC and its predecessor, the Armed Islamic Group ("GIA"), are well-known to European counterterrorism officials: Within the last several months, in fact, the GSPC has been at the center of several substantive terrorist plots.
Just last week, Spain arrested 20 suspected terrorists who are alleged to have been recruiting and funding suicide bombers to send to Iraq. The New York Times covered the arrests, noting that according to a statement from the Spanish Interior Ministry the group included 15 Moroccans, 3 Spaniards, a Turk, and an Algerian. The suspects were "detained in Madrid and Barcelona, and in the Basque region, and had ties to two Islamic militant organizations . . . the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat [GSPC], based in Algeria, and the Moroccan Islamic Combat Group."
The Interior Ministry did not indicate how many suicide bombers were ultimately recruited and sent to Iraq by the cell. But officials "determined that one of the recruits was responsible for a suicide attack in November 2003 in Nasiriya, Iraq, that killed 19 Italians and 9 Iraqis." The Times noted that at the time, "it was the most lethal attack by insurgents since the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in April 2003."
THE RECENTLY-ARRESTED CELL in Madrid and Barcelona is just the latest incarnation of the GSPC to be detected on Spanish soil. Spanish authorities have arrested numerous GSPC suspects over the last several years. In December of last year, for example, a Spanish judge remanded three Algerians from another terror cell to prison. According to one Spanish daily, the judge's writ stated that the GSPC has "a vast financing activity based on a constant labor of common crime," which includes "drug retailing, offences against property" as well as "forgery of documents and credit or phone cards." The judge's writ also noted the close ties between the GSPC and bin Laden's al Qaeda.
Italy--a crossroads for Islamists seeking access to Europe from the Middle East--has also been recently targeted by the GSPC. In November 2005, Italian authorities arrested three Algerians affiliated with the group. Authorities had been eavesdropping on the suspects for some time. Through intercepted phone conversations and bugging devices they learned of the Algerian's plans for a massive terror attack.
According to published reports, the intercepts revealed that the Algerians were discussing plans to kill "at least 10,000 people" and the possibility of packing a Titanic-sized ship with explosives. The three were being recorded as they cheered on video footage of the July 7, 2005 bombings in London and openly discussed their desire to dwarf the carnage of September 11, 2001.
Il Giornale, an Italian daily, published excerpts of these conversations. In one conversation a suspect claimed he had a map of Spain. Another awkwardly replied, "That is a problem, do you want to place a bomb on the subway?" In another, the Algerians discussed an attack on unnamed tourist village with an airplane. It is not clear how far along the Algerians' plots were.
BUT WHILE the GSPC certainly poses a threat to Spain and Italy, France is the group's preferred target. "The only way to make France disciplined is jihad and Islamic martyrdom," a September 2005 statement from the GSPC's leadership reads, "France is our enemy number one, the enemy of our religion, the enemy of our community." (The group also accused the Algerian president of ruling in France's name.)
In January 2005, French authorities arrested 11 suspected terrorists with ties to the GSPC. Like their brethren in the Spanish cell, the 11 were charged with recruiting suicide bombers to send to Iraq.
In September 2005, the same month that the GSPC named France its "enemy number one," authorities rounded up several members of the group who were allegedly planning attacks on the Paris metro, Orly airport, and the French intelligence headquarters. Press reports indicate that they had also considered a chemical weapons attack using ricin, but decided against it because it would be too difficult to carry out.
That French GSPC cell was led by a terrorist named Safe Bourada, who had served several years in prison for his involvement in a string of bomb attacks in France in 1995. At the time of the 1995 attacks, Bourada was a member of the GSPC's predecessor, the GIA.
The GIA, which took part in a brutal civil war in Algeria, had a long history of attacking France and her interests. One such incident proved to be an eerie precursor to September 11, 2001. In December 1994, four GIA terrorists hijacked an Air France flight leaving Algiers. Their goal was to force the pilot to fly the plane into the Eiffel Tower. Their plan failed when the plane landed in Marseille and French Special Forces boarded it, killing the hijackers in the process.
In addition to the 1994 Air France hijacking, investigations into a series of 1995 bombings on French soil led to the convictions of several GIA members, including Bourada. Another bombing in France in 1996 also turned up leads to the GIA.
THE GIA'S HISTORY is especially notable because both bin Laden and Saddam took an early interest in the group. Bin Laden's "Arab Afghans" were among the first leaders of the GIA in the early 1990s. His patronage proved especially beneficial as hundreds of former veterans from the war in Afghanistan were redeployed to Algeria to swell the GIA's ranks. By some accounts, bin Laden is said to have personally arranged for the financing and necessary travel documents to be provided to upwards of 1,000 "Arab Afghans" who returned or relocated to Algerian soil.
But bin Laden did not just finance the building of the GIA with money from his own pockets. He also received help from Saddam Hussein: At least one former CIA official has confirmed that some of the money bin Laden funneled to the GIA came from Saddam's Iraq.
In a USA Today article from December 2001, Stanley Bedlington, a senior analyst in the CIA's counterterrorism center until he retired in 1994, explained, "We were convinced that money from Iraq was going to bin Laden, who was then sending it to places that Iraq wanted it to go." He added, "There certainly is no doubt that Saddam Hussein had pretty strong ties to bin Laden while he was in Sudan, whether it was directly or through (Sudanese) intermediaries. We traced considerable sums of money going from bin Laden to the GIA in Algeria. We believed some of the money came from Iraq." [emphasis added]
Later, in an interview with THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Bedlington elaborated on the relationship. "Osama bin Laden had established contact with the GIA," Bedlington explained, "Saddam was using bin Laden to ship funds to his own contacts through the GIA."
The GIA's leadership had a falling out with the core of al Qaeda in the mid-1990s. Out of that schism, the GSPC was born. Under the guidance of both bin Laden and Zawahiri, an emir named Hassan Hattab broke from the GIA and reconstituted al Qaeda's Algerian affiliate as the GSPC.
TODAY, the world is infected with an Algerian plague. In Europe, counterterrorism officials scramble to stop GSPC members and their recruits from executing their lethal plans. In Iraq, GSPC members fight alongside Zarqawi, killing coalition troops and international aid workers. It is unknown how many of these fighters were first trained by Saddam. But the connection between the former dictator and this particularly deadly strain of international terrorism should be a cause of concern for us all.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/19/2006
00:12 ||
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But there could be no connection between the secular Arabist fascist Saddam Hussein and the Islamist fascist terror groups. So that's ok.
#3
trailing wife. i agree.. Given that Bin Laden & Co accepted aid from the US in the 80's, there's no reason why they shouldn't have been dealing with Saddam.. Bin Laden is full of a rhetoric, but his actions often contradict this
U.S. counterterrorism officials said Wednesday that al Qaeda's chemical weapons expert was "in the vicinity" when CIA airstrikes last week hit a dinner gathering believed to include terrorists in a Pakistani mountain village.
They said Midhat Mursi could have been killed in the attack, but stressed they cannot confirm that he was.
Mursi, a 52-year-old Egyptian commonly known as Abu Khabab, ran a chemical and explosives training camp for terrorists in Derunta, Afghanistan, before the fall of the Taliban, officials said. The United States has offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his death or capture.
A counterterrorism official said Abu Khabab "was thought to have been in the vicinity" when the missiles struck a compound in Damadola, Pakistan, Friday. Two officials said, however, that they "absolutely cannot confirm" that he was killed.
The U.S. network ABC News reported on its Web site that he was killed in the attack, quoting "Pakistani authorities." However a number of Pakistani officials have told CNN they cannot confirm whether Abu Khabab was killed in the strike.
U.S. counterterrorism officials also said they had reason to believe Khalid Habib, al Qaeda's chief of operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Ubayda al Masri, its operations chief for the Konar province of Afghanistan, were in the area when the CIA missiles struck and could have been killed.
They stress they are not sure who was killed in the strike.
U.S. officials have said that four to eight al Qaeda-affiliated "foreigners" were killed in the attack, including some Egyptians. The bodies were quickly removed by accomplices and buried elsewhere, knowledgeable sources have said.
Pakistani officials have said that "four or five" foreign fighters were killed in the strike, along with 18 civilians, including five children and five women.
U.S. officials have said "very solid" intelligence indicated that senior al Qaeda members were expected to be attending a dinner celebrating the end of the Muslim holiday of Eid at the time of the strike, and that Osama bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, could have been among them.
There has been no evidence so far, however, that al-Zawahiri was there.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/19/2006
00:11 ||
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The carrying of the Olympic flame 7,000 miles (11,300km) across Italy, through 140 cities, ahead of the winter games in Turin has been plagued by almost daily confrontations after becoming the focus of protests by anti-global and environmental activists. Demonstrators have booed the flame, blocked its passage and caused it to be temporarily extinguished.
I'd ask whether these people have anything better to do, but this is Italy.
With three weeks to go before the Olympics start, the mayor of Turin, Sergio Chiamparino, has pleaded with protesters on the radio to demonstrate peacefully and leave the flame alone. Police, however, have registered 36 separate disturbances since the relay began on December 8. The majority of protests centre on a campaign to boycott Coca-Cola, whose sponsorship of the sporting event is reputed to be worth £36m.
'cause every true Leftist knows that Coca-Cola is evil. Says so in the Communist Manifesto. You could look it up.
Environmentalists opposed to a planned high-speed railway link between Italy and France and to the Mose plan to save Venice from high tides have also been protesting.
If they don't build the train, people will just ... drive.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/19/2006
00:10 ||
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West Africa's leading peace broker made an emergency trip to Ivory Coast last night to try to prevent a resumption of the civil war after days of violence intensified with an attack on UN peacekeepers.
The president of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, who is a key regional mediator, flew to Abidjan to talk to his Ivorian counterpart, Laurent Gbagbo, whom rebels accuse of orchestrating this week's unrest to undermine a new transitional government.
Yesterday UN peacekeepers were forced to pull out of a base at Guiglo, in the south-east of the country, after an armed group attacked the compound. Four people were killed, none of them from the UN's 200-plus staff.
Elsewhere, supporters of Mr Gbagbo blocked streets with burning tyres and stopped vehicles on the road to the international airport.
Mr Obasanjo took a lead role in negotiations to reunite Ivory Coast when it was divided between a government-held south and rebel-controlled north after a civil war in 2002.
The urgency of the situation was underscored by the fact that he left his own country amid a growing hostage crisis, with militants holding four foreign oil workers.
The latest unrest erupted in Ivory Coast on Monday after a UN-backed international mediation group recommended that parliament's expired mandate not be renewed. Mr Gbagbo is leading a one-year government of national unity that has diminished his executive powers.
The parliament, filled with his supporters, is viewed as Mr Gbagbo's last bastion of power, and the decision angered youth activists and the president's backers, who sent their followers on to the streets. Mr Gbagbo's party said it was withdrawing from the peace process and demanded UN forces leave.
The UN Security Council called on Mr Gbagbo to rein in the protesters and said sanctions were possible. A statement is expected today.
In Paris, the French army Chief of Staff, General Henri Bentegeat - who has peacekeepers in the former colony - called for UN sanctions against Ivory Coast, saying both sides appeared unwilling to resolve the conflict that has lasted for more than three years.
"It's an insurrection against the transitional government organised by Gbagbo and [his political party] to bring power back into their hands," said Sidiki Konate, a rebel spokesman.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/19/2006
00:09 ||
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Put a bullet in Gbagbo's head and all this his obstruction and game playing will end. Zutto.
Quite frankly he isn't even worth the life of a single Frenchman or Nigerian.
The United States and Europe, seeking Russia's help in bringing Iran's nuclear activities before the United Nations Security Council for review, have assured Russian officials that they are not pressing for sanctions against Iran right now, American and European diplomats said Wednesday.
The diplomats said that instead they were pursuing a limited effort to convene a Security Council debate and send the matter back to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear monitor, for further efforts to get Iran to suspend uranium activities that the West suspects are part of a nuclear weapons program.
"We are not seeking a sanction mechanism at this moment," a European diplomat said. "We are pursuing a gradual approach. We are trying to tell Iran that what the I.A.E.A. is telling them is exactly what the Security Council thinks. It's an empowering process for the I.A.E.A."
European diplomats said the Council could act either by passing a resolution or by allowing its president to issue a declaration in its name.
The West's incremental approach is a response to Russian and Chinese reluctance to press for immediate sanctions, despite their concern that Iran has broken its commitment to suspend uranium enrichment activities. The Russians and Chinese say they do not want Iran to retaliate by breaking off talks and forcing international inspectors to leave the country.
On the other hand, some diplomats eager to press Iran on nuclear matters said they were concerned that the steps being contemplated might be too small to be taken seriously in Tehran.
The diplomats who described the situation, from several nations, spoke on the condition of anonymity so that they could speak more freely while the negotiations continue.
The Bush administration has said for two years that its ultimate objective is to bring Iran before the Security Council for possible censure or sanctions. But it has proceeded slowly, deferring to European efforts to negotiate. That deference is still part of the American approach despite Iran's recent actions.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, after meeting with Javier Solana, the chief European Union envoy, said Wednesday that "it is now important for the I.A.E.A. board of governors to act so that Iran knows that the international community will not tolerate its continued acting with impunity against the interests of the international community."
Afterward, Mr. Solana said the Europeans and the United States were considering a Russian proposal presented as an alternative to the possible referral of Iran's case to the Security Council by the atomic energy agency. The Russian proposal was to have the Security Council take up Iran, but without a formal "referral" from the agency.
Whether or not there is a formal referral from the agency is technical but significant, Mr. Solana said. Without a referral, the Security Council could debate the matter but not consider sanctions.
"A referral to the Security Council is in itself a very important decision," Mr. Solana said, suggesting that the Russian idea did not go far enough. He said that there was "nothing fundamentally wrong" with the Russian idea but that it implied too much of a delay.
"Referral means something which has legal consequences for the relationship of this dossier to the Security Council," he said.
The European and American approach has been codified in a draft resolution to be presented to the International Atomic Energy Agency for possible adoption at an emergency meeting on Feb. 2. The Western timetable is for Iran to be "referred" at that meeting and then considered at the Security Council and then referred back to the atomic agency.
The Russian proposal, by contrast, calls for no formal action by the atomic agency on Feb. 2, but some kind of debate at the Security Council in February, possibly with the agency director, Mohamed ElBaradei, taking part. Then the agency could take up the subject of Iran in March.
American and European officials said they did not feel comfortable putting off the entire matter until March. Iran, many Western experts say, is perhaps only a year or two away from developing the capacity to operate centrifuges that enrich uranium and take other steps enabling it to make a nuclear weapon.
Mr. Solana and Ms. Rice also reiterated Wednesday that they would not accept Iran's latest offer to talk about its nuclear program unless it returned to a full suspension of its uranium enrichment activities.
It was Iran that effectively cut off negotiations by breaking the moratorium on enrichment, Ms. Rice said, adding, "As that condition exists, I am sensing from the Europeans that there's not much to talk about."
Britain, France and Germany, also representing Europe, have engaged in talks for a year with the objective of persuading Iran to suspend and then shut down its uranium processing and suspected weapons-making activities in return for economic, political and security benefits from the West.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/19/2006
00:08 ||
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NY Times - salt lick ready?
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/19/2006 0:14
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Just one of those open ended resolutions saying âunspecified consequences if this resolution is brokenâ kind of resolution will do just fine.
LONDON - Britain believes the CIAâs reported secret transfer of terrorism suspects to foreign countries for interrogation is illegal, according to a leaked government document published on Thursday. The Foreign Office memo says the practice, known as extraordinary rendition, âcould never be legalâ if the detainee is at risk of torture, according to extracts printed in the Guardian newspaper. It adds that British cooperation âwould also be illegal if we knew of the circumstancesâ, according to the newspaper.
Britain, a key US ally, has repeatedly sought to play down its role in the rendition controversy. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told parliament on Jan. 10 that Britain has approved only two CIA rendition flights. However, the leaked document, dated Dec. 7, 2005, says the CIA may have used British airports more often. âThe papers we have uncovered so far suggest that there could be more than the two cases referred to in the House (of Commons) by the foreign secretary,â the BBC News Web site quoted from an extract of the memo.
It was sent by an official in Strawâs department to an aide in Prime Minister Tony Blairâs office, the Guardian said. It was leaked to the New Statesman magazine and parts were reprinted in several British newspapers on Thursday.
The briefing documentâs author, named as Irfan Siddiq, appears to suggest the British government should seek to sidestep difficult questions over its role in the renditions. âWe should try to avoid getting drawn on detail and to try to move the debate on,â he wrote, according to the newspaper.â
A spokesman for Blair declined to comment. A Foreign Office spokesman had no direct comment. âThe government does not deport or extradite anyone to another state where there are substantive grounds to believe they would be subject to torture,â he said in a statement.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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*yawn*
Its the Guardian , what does anyone expect .. Sympathy for the war on terror , or sympathy for terrorists insurgents
When will they learn , its a war , not a frikkin parking ticket violation
#2
It's amazing how rumour and hearsay can help the leftist press perpetuate a story ad infinitum. BBC Radio 4's The Today programme just cannot shut up about this.
Question: How many USAF bases are there in Britain? Another question: Would the US really need to use civilian airports to shunt these shitbags around the globe?
This story will not be in the news tomorrow... but will be back next Wednesday when the left experience a quiet day for Anti-American news stories. NEXT...
Posted by: Howard UK ||
01/19/2006 8:29
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This speech echoes many of Fred's themes; that public and private diplomacy go hand-in-hand with the public displays of brute force, that the old diplo structures are collapsing, that the US has to take on the unpleasant task of rethinking and revising our world relations, and that (not in Condi's speech) once again, GWB will have to endure three more years of the catcalls, giant puppets, and seething violent hatred directed at him by the anklebiters of the world. Go Condi!
Note: the speech is really too long to post in full here, but do try to go read the whole thing.
Over the past 15 years, as violent state failure has become a greater global threat, our military has borne a disproportionate share of post-conflict responsibilities because we have not had the standing civilian capability to play our part fully. This was true in Somalia and Haiti, in Bosnia, in Kosovo, and it is still partially true in Iraq and Afghanistan.
These experiences have shown us the need to enhance our ability to work more effectively at the critical intersections of diplomacy, democracy promotion, economic reconstruction and military security. That is why President Bush created within the State Department the Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization. Recently, President Bush broadened the authority and mandate for this office and Congress authorized the Pentagon to transfer up to $100 million to State in the event of a post-conflict operation, funds that would empower our reconstruction and stabilization efforts. We have an expansive vision for this new office, and let there be no doubt, we are committed to realizing it. Should a state fail in the future, we want the men and the women of this office to be able to spring into action quickly. We will look to them to partner immediately with our military, with other federal agencies and with our international allies, and eventually we envision this office assembling and deploying the kinds of civilians who are essential in post-conflict operations: police officers and judges and electricians and engineers, bankers and economists and legal experts and election monitors.
#1
Civic Action programs will only work or survive in an environment of military and political stability. If you do not control the countryside, it'll all be up your arsss in no time with lives, money, and effort wasted. A synopsis of US foreign aid over the past 10 years with the resulting country updates would be an intersting read. I suspect all those dollars and effort have changed very little.
Lawyers for Iraq's former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, have asked Italy and Croatia to consider granting him asylum if he is released from U.S. detention, officials in both countries said Wednesday. The Italian and Croatian foreign ministries both confirmed receiving letters from Aziz's Italy-based lawyers asking if either government would be willing to grant him asylum. Aziz's family and lawyers have said he is in very poor health, and have petitioned several countries to accept Aziz for medical treatment if he is released. The Italian ministry said officials were evaluating the letter. In Croatia, Prime Minister Ivo Sanader said his nation "will in no way" grant Aziz, 69, asylum, the state-run news agency HINA reported.
Posted by: Fred ||
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consider granting him asylum if he is released from U.S. detention
Now that's a textbook example of wishful thinking, that is.
Pakistani intelligence sources on Thursday identified three of four al Qaeda members believed to have been killed by a U.S. airstrike last week, though they have yet to recover the bodies. One of the dead was said to be Abdul Rehman Al-Misri al Maghribi, a son-in-law of al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri. Another was Midhat Mursi al Sayid Omer, an expert in explosives and poisons who carried a $5 million U.S. reward on his head. The third man named was Abu Obaidah al Misri, al Qaeda's chief of operations in Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province.
That's two al-Misris (Egyptians) and an al-Maghrebi (Algerian or Moroccan). I can live with that. Madhat Mursi would have been worth the strike himself. Ayman's son-in-law's icing on the cake, and the Kunar ops chief would also be worth a strike. I notice they don't mention the fourth deader. I'm hoping he's somebody just as worthwhile â or maybe even moreso.
More, from Associated Press...
Pakistani intelligence agents hunted Wednesday for the graves of four al-Qaida militants believed killed in an airstrike near the Afghan border -- including at least one suspected high-ranking al-Qaida figure. ABC News and The New York Times reported that Pakistani officials believe a master bomb maker and chemical weapons expert for al-Qaida was killed in the attack on the village of Damadola last week. He was identified as Midhat Mursi, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, who ran an al-Qaida training camp and has a $5 million reward on his head. Also killed, Pakistani officials believe, was Khalid Habib, the al-Qaida operations chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan, ABC said. The Times, however, said officials were uncertain about whether he was killed.
The Times also reported that Pakistani officials believe Moroccan Abd al-Rahman al-Maghrebi, the son-in-law of al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the man who ran the group's propaganda in the region, was killed in the strike. ABC described al-Maghrebi as a senior operations commander. The newspaper said an Egyptian chief of insurgent operations in a region near the airstrikes also was believed killed and an Egyptian associate of al-Zawahiri's was possibly slain.
Pentagon officials said they had no information on the reported identities of the dead and CIA spokesman Tom Crispell said the agency could not comment. A Pakistani intelligence official said authorities still did not know the names of the dead foreign militants but suspect one was a ranking al-Qaida figure. "We have no names. We know one of them had value in al-Qaida. He had intelligence value in the network, but we are still checking his name," said the official.
Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao told The Associated Press the government does not know the identities of the foreigners believed killed in the missile strike Friday, which officials have said targeted Osama bin Laden's top aide, Ayman al-Zawahri. "We are still investigating. There's a possibility that some foreigners were there, but we still do not know," said Sherpao, who was in New York with visiting Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. Sherpao said the government had not retrieved the bodies of any of the four foreign militants reported killed in the raid. He said the bodies may have been taken by a local pro-Taliban cleric, Maulana Faqir Mohammed, who also is being hunted by authorities.
Al-Jizzles has essentially the same story, complete with the (corrected) mispelling of Mudhat Mursi's name â Rooters carried it as Murfi, but we know he wasn't an Irishman. They give the name of the Kunar large turban as Abu Obaidah al Misri, which'd be Khalid Habib's nom-de-guerre.
Posted by: Fred ||
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One of our smarter commenters yesterday proposed that we hint Zawahiri let these meet their virgins so he would skate, in a deal with the ISI. I fully support and encourage that plan, starting with release to Rep. Murtha, who obviously has al-Jizz on speed dial
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/19/2006 0:08
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Now *that* is what I call 'crashing a dinner party' :)
The recently-appointed governor of the Iranian central bank, Ebrahim Sheibani, has confirmed reports of a possible transfer of Iranian state deposits away from European banks. Iranian website Rooz-on-line reported on Wednesday that Tehran was considering shifting funds deposited in European banks to financial institutions in Asia, in particular South East Asia. It noted that the move followed the decision by the EU negotiating team (France Britain and Germany) to press the UN's atomic watchdog to refer Iran's nuclear case to the Security Council.
Surely they don't think the Euros are handling them with kid gloves for any reason other than large sums of cash? Why take away the club they've been using to beat them?
Posted by: Fred ||
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Punishment for recent strong words wafting from the EU3. Note that they are "warning" of a "possible" funds xfer.
#2
I take it that Switzerland, not a member of the EU, has no reason for concern. I wonder how the Swiss investigation of U.S. human rights abuses is coming?
Russia says it has accepted a request by former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to come to Moscow for medical treatment, and will guarantee to return him to his war crimes trial after treatment. Milosevic, suffering from a heart condition and high blood pressure, asked for a provisional release from detention in the Netherlands where he is being tried by the United Nations war crimes tribunal on genocide charges.
That assumes he's ever 'healthy' enough to be returned ...
Mikhail Kamynin, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, said: "Russia has sent the necessary folder of documents to the international tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, on the basis of which the tribunal could take a decision on the temporary release of Milosevic. "Apart from this, Milosevic himself has offered the tribunal guarantees that he will return to The Hague immediately after the completion of his treatment."
Posted by: Fred ||
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Syrian authorities released on Wednesday four political prisoners including Riad Seif and Maamoun Al-Humsi. -- Hassan Abdel Atheem, spokesmnan of the opposition Democratic Gathering, said in a statement to KUNA that the authorities freed the prisoners of the so-called "Damascus Spring;" Habib Issa, Riad Seif, Maamoun Al-Humsi and Fawwaz Tello.
"See? I can be the compassionate eye doc of death! This has nothing to do with my intel chief's assets being frozen! Nothing! Tell them, Hogan!"
Abdel Atheem, a lawyer, told KUNA that university professor Aref Dalilah would released within 48 hours. -- Abdel Atheem expressed hope that all political prisoners in Syria would be released, in addition to further steps on the path of political reforms, democracy, "because such steps pave the way for bolstering the national unity." Al-Humsi and Seif, both members of the parliament, were detained in 2001 and sentenced to five years behind iron bars "for seeking to amend the constitution with illegal means." The release of the prisoners occurred ahead of a meeting of the Arab lawyers, due in Damascus on Saturday.
Secretary General of the Arab Lawyers Union Ibrahim Al-Salami raised the issue of the political prisoners during a visit to the country earlier this month and was given a pledge by the authorities to let some of them go ahead of the lawyers' conference.
Mahmoud Abbas says he is ready to hold peace talks with Israel, but is warning that he might resign his post if the Palestinian parliament, to be elected on 25 January, opposes his platform.
When he resigns, will anybody notice?
The Palestinian president said talks with Ehud Olmert, Israel's acting prime minister, should be held as soon as possible. "I am ready to meet him as soon as possible and I hope to sit round the negotiating table immediately," Abbas said in Ram Allah on Wednesday. "The only way we can forge peace is through negotiations and not through killings, assassinations, attacks and unilateral measures."
However, Hamas, which has spearheaded the resistance against Israel in recent years, is expected to make a strong challenge to Abbas' ruling Fatah party and earn a place in the next government. A coalition government involving Hamas could make it difficult for Israel and the Palestinians to restart long-frozen peace efforts.
Yeah, and a gas tank full of sugar could make it difficult to start my car...
"If I feel that I can't fulfil this programme ... then the seat is not my ultimate ambition," Abbas said, referring to his post as Palestinian president. Abbas's comments came after Olmert said on Tuesday he hoped to resume negotiations with the Palestinian leadership after Israel's general election on 28 March.
Posted by: Fred ||
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"meet the new boss, same as the old boss"
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/19/2006 0:12
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'ABBAS READY TO QUIT' - Just do it, though i will miss the pics of him on LGF if he fades away
Posted by: Shep Uk ||
01/19/2006 5:45
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NOBODY is able to take the place of Arafat's mug, and Abbas is a poor replacement, Shep. However, with every change, there is a potential for improvement. It's just that, for Palestinians, "improvement" is best defined by a Clintonista language expert.
#4
"The only way we can forge peace is through negotiations and not through killings, assassinations, attacks and unilateral measures."
What went unmentioned is the fact that he's unwilling or unable to meet the ONE demand that would probably get the ball rolling - disarming and dismantling terr groups on his territory.
"If I feel that I can't fulfil this programme ... then the seat is not my ultimate ambition," Abbas said, referring to his post as Palestinian president.
Well hell, he should step down today then. If he can't/won't do anything about Paleo terrorism, then he's useless.
Gunmen killed at least six Iraqi security personnel and two engineers from Malawi and Madagascar went missing following an attack Wednesday on a mobile phone firm's convoy in western Baghdad, the company said. Iraqna, a cell phone company owned by Egyptian-giant Orascom, said in a statement that their convoy was attacked at about 8 a.m. in the capital's Nafaq al-Shurta area and that the fate of the missing engineers was unknown.
There was confusion about the number of dead. Police Capt. Qassim Hussein said at least 10 security personnel were killed in the attack, and hospital officials put the death toll at nine. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the differences, and it was unclear if some of the dead were assailants. An Iraqna engineer, Ali Jamil, told The Associated Press that the two engineers were abducted as they were heading to a project in Baghdad.
Posted by: Fred ||
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To exterminate or not to exterminate? Expatica blogger Alice in Germany describes the moral dilemma that overcame her vegetarian Buddhist flatmate when she discovered mice in their shared house.
I think there's a broader analogy to the giant genocidal rat currently pooping on the West's living room floor...
Bruno once told me that in Germany you could walk for days and never leave civilisation - the opposite from Australia. We, however, live in the middle of a farm. At first glance it is really special: a dirt track through the trees, over the lake filled with water birds, past the horse stables, not a house in site. Then Liana pointed out it is the perfect setting for a horror movie, with the lake being perfect for body disposal. A walk one night through the neighbouring woods did feel suspiciously like the Blair Witch Project.
The shock of mice
Of course that is all idle fantasy. The mice were another thing altogether. A true shock to a civilised lifestyle. There are a number of other students who live here, four live downstairs and seven others live upstairs with us. Most are German but there are a couple of Bulgarian exchange students. We share a bathroom and kitchen with Ivanka, who has retained the temperamental spirit of her Yugoslavian forbears.
Depths of courage
I was lying on the bed peacefully reading my book when I heard a terrifying scream coming from the kitchen (and I rather fancy a similar noise might be elicited from somebody being hacked apart with a chainsaw). Naturally, when faced with a potential serial killer in the next room, my first reaction was to lie there and play dead. But, dear Reader, when faced with the death of a loved one (well, a hypersensitive, domineering housemate), it is true: I found courage within me I did not know I had. As the noise did not subside, and not wanting to leave Ivanka to face death alone, I gathered my resolve and went to her rescue. On entering the kitchen I found her standing on a chair, whimpering, while two girls held her hand and tried to soothe her. The offending mouse, having most likely long since died of shock, was now nowhere to be seen. I have to say I shamefully found the whole situation rather amusing.
Agonising over beliefs
For the next few weeks Ivanka agonised over reconciling her belief that she is a Buddhist, love-everything, left-wing, vegetarian pinko and her huge desire to see all mice blown to smithereens and rotting in hell. This stress-inducing conundrum was antagonised by the numerous unanswerable questions that the appearance of mice had raised. Why were they here? Where had they come from? Are mice not dirty? And yet the house is German-clean! My suggestion, that every house without a cat has to deal with mice at some stage, was taken as a sign of my naivety. It was conceded that perhaps this was the case in Australia.
The landlord's responsibility
Her torturous reveries were regularly broken by yelling down the phone at the landlord. Apparently in Germany the elimination of mice is the landlord's responsibility. However the landlord, being an unorganised, un-German sod, never quite got around to it. When threatened with rent being withheld, the landlord got off his sorry arse and sent around a pest exterminator. There were numerous household meetings in the hallway where various legal options were discussed. These meetings went unattended by the eastern Europeans. Someone said they had heard that Nora 'did not care about the mice'. In hushed tones it was unanimously agreed that the Bulgarians must in fact 'care about the mice' but growing up in a police state they did not know their rights. Or if they did, they were too afraid to use them. That made sense.
A true professional
When threatened with rent being withheld, the landlord got off his sorry arse and sent around a pest exterminator: a large man who set poison everywhere. A true professional, he took great pride in his trade, gleefully explaining "the mice think it is coconut, mice love coconut, and it burns them from the inside."Ivanka translated this for me whilst trying to keep the huge relieved smirk off her face (think Buddhism, think Zen, everything deserves life, it is just unfortunate that the mice are disgusting vermin that must die etc. etc.) Ah, the agony of reconciling who we want to be with what we can stand.
#3
Every house that does not have a cat must, sooner or later, have mice. Or, in my own case, my house had an extremely elderly cat who found the temporarily resident chipmunk(!) running across his feet puzzling.
#4
I once had an excellent mouser, he would bring me his catches daily.
Problem was they were all alive and unhurt, not much help in the long run.
He'd lay them at my feet, they would sit up, look around and head for the tall timber, then he'd look down and was so puzzled when they weren't where he put them.
I suspect that the same mice got caught many times.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
01/19/2006 8:55
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Yes, and then there was the cat I "inherited" when I got married.
It too presented us with its trophies at night.
Unfortunately, the trophies came from the great outdoors. It seems that the mice IN the house were off limits. (must have been a union thing)
#6
Every house that does not have a cat must, sooner or later, have mice.
Or rabbits.
I never saw rabbits around the farm where I grew up. Maybe back away from the house, in the woods, but never within sight of the house. Then the cat we'd had for as long as I could remember died, and the rabbits showed up.
And the geese, but I don't think she kept them away.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
01/19/2006 9:54
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We don't have any inside our house but the cat catches them outside from time to time. She eats the lower half and leaves the head on the porch.
Apparently, cats bring us mice becuase they are trying to teach us how to hunt, the same way they teach their own kittens. Unfortunately, as a species we are very slow learners. The same cat that in his dotage was puzzled by the chipmunk had caught a large variety of things over the years -- our mighty hunter he was. He tried everything, poor darling: rodents of various species, ditto birds, baby things and adult things, dead and munched upon, dead but beautiful, half dead, and alive but in shock; on the doorstep, at my feet, and once, memorably, a live pigeon in my lap as I was braiding trailing daughter#1's hair before Kindergarten. She got there late that day.
PARIS: Using military force against Iran to prevent it pursuing its nuclear programme would be 'completely mad', the chief of France's defence staff said on Wednesday. General Henri Bentegeat said the idea of Iran possessing a nuclear weapon was 'a real nightmare' but added that the way for a negotiated solution remained open.
Which of course the Mad Mullahs⢠will do because they're so reasonable and all ...
"I don't think it would be reasonable to envisage military action against Iran to prevent it having this nuclear programme," Bentegeat told Europe 1 radio. "That would create a dreadful drama in the Middle East ... I think that at the moment it would be completely mad," he said. "Maybe one day we will get to that point. But today it is exclusively the diplomats who are having their say." "There are still paths of negotiation which have not been explored," Bentegeat said. "Russia in particular is offering help to find a solution to the problem."
Posted by: Fred ||
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... "Maybe one day we will get to that point... let's just wait till a military action would be even madder when Iranians start feeding coordinates into their target batch!
#5
I don't agree with the General but .... Besoeker, I wonder if you really are advocating punching women who walk by at work - which is what your link showed.
Egypt has decided to release 143 Sudanese who were among 469 detained by police after the break-up of a protest last month, the Foreign Ministry said. Egyptian police originally rounded up more than 600 Sudanese who were part of a three-month demonstration that ended in violent clashes in December. Egypt had said it wanted to send all of them back to Sudan but has since released some of them. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which has appealed to the authorities not to send any Sudanese back to Sudan, has been interviewing those still in detention to determine whether any are entitled to be labeled refugees. Those with refugee status would be exempt from deportation.
The ministry said in a statement, issued late on Tuesday, that the authorities would release 56 Sudanese from Darfur, the war-torn western region of Sudan, and 87 women and children, leaving 326 still in detention. The UN agency would have until Jan. 26 to determine the legal status of those still being held, the ministry said.
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President George W Bush nominated former State Department spokesman Richard A Boucher as assistant secretary of state for South Asian Affairs on Wednesday. Boucher replaces the incumbent, Christina Rocca.
Posted by: Fred ||
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A Taleban commander said yesterday hundreds of his guerrillas were ready to launch suicide attacks across Afghanistan to drive out foreign forces. The threat of violence came as several thousand people gathered in the town of Spin Boldak, on the border with Pakistan, to denounce a suicide attack there on Monday that killed 23. âHundreds of Afghan Taleban mujahedeen are ready for suicide attacks,â said the Taleban commander, Mullah Dadullah. âThey only await orders from the Taleban leadership,â he said by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location.
I haven't seen anything on the identities of most of the boomers. I wonder how many are Afghans and how many are actually Paks, or Arabs.
Nice crop of Algerians this year ...
Afghanistan has seen a wave of 19 suicide attacks in the past year, including 13 in the past 10 weeks, the United Nations says.
That would seem to imply that there's a single organization doing the recruiting, training, and dispatching. Take out the organization and the booming stops until they build a new one...
Security analysts suspect the Taleban have stepped up suicide attacks after seeing Al-Qaedaâs success in Iraq. The attacks have come as the United States hopes to cut back its troop strength in Afghanistan from more than 18,000 to 16,500 in the next few months. Members of NATO, who have an Afghan peacekeeping force of almost 10,000, are due to increase their numbers to 15,000 and take over responsibilities from US forces in the restive south.
That's going to introduced both a qualitative and a tactical difference...
The government says the insurgents appear to be trying to frighten NATO members from their expansion and to unsettle aid donors due to meet in London at the end of the month to draw up a long-term plan to help Afghanistan. Dadullah said attacks would increase. âTaleban mujahedeen are present in all cities of Afghanistan and they will continue to increase their attacks,â he said. âAn increase in the number of foreign forces in Afghanistan will make it easier to attack and inflict losses on them.â
Posted by: Fred ||
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perhaps we could get them to "group a little closer...closer...closer...say cheese"
spectacular!
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/19/2006 0:18
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Isn't the army working on a device that prematurely sets off explosives? I thought I read something about it a month or two ago, it would be like a metal detector you walk through, and BLAMO!
#5
One thing that stands out from what I've read on Rantburg over the last couple of months is that most of the suicide bombers are young - 14, 15, 16. I believe a lot of them may be paleostains brought to Afghanistan for the sole purpose of blowing themselves up. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that a lot of them were doped to the gills before making their attempt (common practice, I believe, in Iraq). A-Q has no conscience and no soul, and will do anything to inflict casualties and gain power. They have obviously taken control of the Taliban and use it any way they please. They can't be killed off fast enough.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
01/19/2006 13:52
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Yoots are impressionable.
Posted by: ed ||
01/19/2006 14:35
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As cold as this will sound, this development is actually in our favor. The boomers in Iraq pushed several of the major Sunni tribes over to the "Kill the Terrorists" position in the past year; splattering crowds in markets will eventually do the same to the Pushtans. And besides which, using foreigners to do this makes all foreigners working for the Taliban the enemy. Lots of intel will be coming our way in a couple of months.
JEDDAH â In a novel way to fight unemployment and make jobless Saudis self-reliant, the Abdul Latif Jameel Fund (ALJF) for Vocational Training and Development has launched a scheme to train Saudis in Islamic calligraphy so that they could start their own mirco enterprises in this aspect of decorative arts.
Boy, there's just gotta be a market for .. one or two of these guys.
The fund has sponsored a group of 11 Saudis to qualify them as Islamic calligraphers. It is the second initiative of its kind by the ALJ Fund, which had earlier conducted a training programme for Saudis in cookery to help them own micro business establishments in this field.
The young Saudis will study at Balqa University in Amman, Jordan, which specialises in this art and offers the training programme in collaboration with the Prince's School for Traditional Arts in London, which is located in Shoreditch. The school's patron is Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales.
Yet another connection between Chuckles and the House of Saood ...
Omar Al Thebaiti, manager of ALJ Fund for vocational training and development, said that looking at the renewed interest witnessed in the society in these handicrafts and the changes in taste of Saudis in the fields of design, decoration and traditional works of art there was definitely a market for creating an Islamic ambience in the interior and external designs of houses and villas.
"Next on HGTV..."
"The six-month training course aims to qualify young Saudis, especially as there is a noticeable increase in demand for qualified people in these skilled areas. After completion of the training course, the trainees will be appointed in companies dealing in this business," he assured.
But that means that the trainees would have to .. work. Isn't there a Pakistani or a Filipino who could do this while the young Saoodi just gets paid?
He said that the course would concentrate on gypsum, metal and wooden decorative work. Students would be trained in brass work, design and implementation of gypsum work, as well as the art of wood carving and moulding work. The course will enable its graduates to have their own small businesses with the help of ALJ Fund for Micro-projects, which would also equip these enterprises and provide administrative and financial support to them.
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But that means that the trainees would have to .. work.
Yes, but they would be working in houses. Houses wherein women are ensconced, women who are bored out of their skulls, who may even not remember to wear those black tent thingies. Young women, even, who might find a man devoting himself to the arts to be so *sigh* romaaaantic, especially if he can quote classic Arabic poetry to show his education and depth of feeling.
#3
This all sounds suspiciously like...Art. Which is unIslamic. The words of Allan via the Profit need no embellishing. Art distracts the mind of the Believer from performing the obligations of the Ummah. Especially the part about the obligation of jihad.
#6
Can you say "eunuch"? Fun for the husband and lil veiled woman!
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/19/2006 15:44
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Desert Blondie, there has to be some compensation for those many Saudi households that can't quite afford a pool -- with built-in Filipino labour -- right?
The US is to reduce the number of its diplomats posted to Europe, and will send more to other countries, including China, India, Nigeria and Lebanon.
"Mon dieu!"
"America must begin to reposition our diplomatic forces around the world," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday. She said it was an anomaly that the US had the same staff levels in Germany as in India, more than 10 times the size. She said the redeployment would help foster democratic and economic change. Ms Rice told students at Georgetown University that President George Bush's administration was committed to "transformational diplomacy". The philosophy was an attempt "to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world," she said.
Even the tyrannies with the really good restaurants, ready cash, and willing wimminz?
"Transformational diplomacy is rooted in partnership, not in paternalism," she said, adding that it was based on "doing things with people, not for them."
Talk about a disturbance in the Force...a million International Relations students just screamed out in pain...
Although the state department has 7,440 diplomats in foreign countries, there are nearly 200 world cities of more than a million people in which the United States has no formal diplomatic presence, she said. "This is where the action is today, and this is where we must be."
#1
IIRC, the CIA went thru this a few years back. The howls of pain from Langley over the lost cushy postings reasons for being there were exquisite. It will be even worse with the Diplos from Foggy bottom. But it was/is necessary and past due.
Europe has become a backwater. The end of the cold war was the end of the last reason to pay much attention to the place. The Euros are contracting, not expanding. They are not a military threat. Most of "old Europe" has the smell of death on it. The trade issues will essentialy take care of themselves. We have higher priorities, like survival.
It may become an area of major interest in the future when the AlQ wannabees in the housing projects take over, and the various states like france becomes al-Franjistan for instance. But it won't be nearly as pleasant duty station then.
Posted by: N guard ||
01/19/2006 0:34
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howls of pain from Langley
Yeah, and then the spooks tripped over each other to be the first to the phone booth to leak to the NY Times.
Can you imagine the leaks that will be flooding out of State?
#5
Europe has become a backwater. The end of the cold war was the end of the last reason to pay much attention to the place. The Euros are contracting, not expanding. They are not a military threat
It could be that Europe is not a military threat but it has some technology who could be put into bad guy hands. Chirak (may a million pigeons shit on him) is trying hard to provide Rafales (equal if not superior to the F15 or F16 between other things because it is 15 years newer) to the Chinese and while the Raptor is superior (between other things because it is 10 or 15 years newer) fighting a Rafale-equipped Chinese air force on Rafales will be _much_ harder than a Chinese air force flying the crap they are presently flying.
Isolationism is not a solution: while you don'ty pay attention the bad guys are forming a coalition that even America cannot defeat. The bastards like Chirac (may he die smothered by teh sit of amillion pigeons) are dreaming of an alliance withn China and Russia against you just like Hitler did with Japan and planned to create trouble in South-America. The solution is not isloationism but to do an ideological D-Day: land on the hearts and minds of Europeans and drive out the bad guys. The same that America slept while Bin Laden prepared 9/11, the same America has slept while both the leftists and teh Euro-supremacists (those who dream with Europe ruling the world) have been hard at work poisoning minds both in REurope but also in South-America.
But for that it is crucial that you first drive out of business the two bit "intellectuals" a la Chomski, Ward Churchill or Genocide Fonda who make big $$$ on denigrating America.
BTW: When I told America had to fight the ideological battle in Europe I was not telling you should reach for them and try to be like them otr other non-sense. More on the opposite: you should show them how the European way is in fact a scam aimed at keeping a self-appointed elite in power while the serfs strive to feed it and democracy is voided by pseudo-democratioc electoral systems.
Read this (magnificent) text about the conversion of a European into an American
#6
Maybe I should just start mainlining caffein as soon as I awaken.
You might want to reconsider that plan TW, as IV-coffee is a bad trip and way habit forming. Nine out of ten Drs. say you'll be driven on to the shoals of bacon and eggs no time.
#7
Not to worry, TW. We love you anyway, even if you do sometimes post when you're not quite awake. Would that was the worst commentary we'd see here on the 'Burg!
Posted by: mac ||
01/19/2006 9:57
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Perhaps I should not have been so emphatic JFM. While diplomaticly and militarily Europe as a whole is yesterdays news, it does not mean that the U.S. is going to retreat into Fortress America.
Quite the contrary. We are going to be even bigger pests in the future than we are now. I was commenting on the fact that we have limited resources (manpower, money). So we will focus our efforts on the immediate problems that are trying to kill us.
Remeber, unlike the servants of the ruinous powers...er, fanatical Muslims, the various European states don't see the US as a existential threat. Just a major power to be managed. This relationship can be managed with fewer diplomats.
(Yes, I've been playing Warhammer 40k. Why do you ask?)
Posted by: N guard ||
01/19/2006 10:24
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It was funny to watch/hear the Spooks go nuts about leaving Europe for other areas of the world. Funny because given the HUGE effort they had in Europe not one of them predicted or knew about the Soviet collapse. Most of the old gang probably blames Reagan/Bush for the Soviet collapse and their clueless ness. Personally I think they became so complacent that they had a working relationship rather than an adversarial one (which was their job). Heck most of them made careers writing political and military estimates on Soviet union rather than engaging in espionage against them. I still remember sitting in Hawaii reading a classified report about Gorbachavs âGreat moderationâ of the Soviet bloc into a modern economic and military power that would âcompete with the west well into the next century.â Too bad we canât get stuff like that declassified, because I bet that most of those soothsayers are the naysayers of today.
#10
Condi is just trying to reduce the State Department workforce. Transfers from Paris, Rome and Copenhagen to Thimbu, Bujumbura and Bishkek will generate some healthy turnover.
#12
RD, mac, you are darlings. I'll stick to getting my caffein the old fashioned way, as you suggest - room temp Diet Coke straight out of the can. ;-)
JFM, I wept reading Misha I's love letter to America. I commented, too -- you may need to vouch for me over there (please lie as necessary to give me a good character... mercy buckets!)
Iran said yesterday it was confident US-European efforts to refer it to the UN Security Council will fail amid reluctance from Russia, China and Arab countries to take the step. Iranian president chided the West, saying it should deal with Iran with more "logic."
They seem pretty convinced the fix is in. Sammy was, too...
But Iran's attempts to resume negotiations on its nuclear program met rejection from Europe and the United States. France insisted Iran must first suspend its newly resumed uranium enrichment activities before any talks can be held. "Iran must return to a complete suspension of these activities," Foreign Ministry spokesman Denis Simonneau said in Paris. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, also rejected any return to talks, which Europe called off after Iran ended its freeze on enrichment research earlier this month. "There's not much to talk about," Rice said during a photo session at the State Department with Solana.
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Iran said yesterday it was confident US-European efforts to refer it to the UN Security Council will fail
Oh.
O.K.
So we won't bother then.
So what's after sanctions? Did we just skip a step?
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/19/2006 20:39
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A senior United Nations official says the international community's top priority should be forcing a peace deal in Sudan's troubled Darfur region. Antonio Guterres, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said on Tuesday, it was perilous to have such instability in a country with so many neighbours. Sudan is bordered by Kenya, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Chad, Libya and Egypt.
Somehow I can't see the UN "forcing" anyone to do anything, starting with Sudan and its duplicitous government...
At a news conference, Guterres said: "In my opinion, it is the most dangerous crisis point in Africa and in the world in general. That is why I think that the top priority of the international community should be to create the conditions to force a peace accord."
The conditions to force a peace accord would involve Bashir dangling from a rope and Turabi ripped apart by an angry mob. I'm all in favor, but I'm not sure how Antonio intends to accomplish it...
Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state said on Monday she favoured a major UN role in Darfur and told Khartoum it must cooperate in accepting international help. Sudan has rejected UN suggestions that western forces should be sent to Darfur, and argues the international community should instead provide more cash to African Union forces already on the ground.
Forces which have so far been phenomenally successful...
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UN Force? Oxymoron anyone?
Posted by: BA ||
01/19/2006 9:31
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Nigerian officials have made contact with an armed group holding four foreign oil workers in order to negotiate their release, Information Minister Frank Nweke has said. Separatist militants seized the four men - an American, a Bulgarian, a Briton and a Honduran working for subcontractors to the energy giant Shell - on January 11 and have vowed not to release them until their demands are met.
In an interview with the US news network CNN, Mr Nweke said that Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo had ruled out a military reponse to the crisis and had ordered negotiators to seek a "political solution".
"We have no doubt in our minds that this is going to come to an end very quickly. In a few days the team should revert to the President with a status report and we'll hopefully see these people's release," he said. The minister could not, however, clarify the growing confusion over who exactly has taken the men. There is a consensus that the gang, which has also recently blown up oil pipelines and attacked government soldiers protecting a Shell oil plant, is made up of militant members of the Ijaw ethnic group. But several email claims of responsibility have been sent to the media, and it is not clear who exactly the attackers represent.
Mr Nweke said that some prominent figures initially thought to have been behind the kidnap had come forward to deny involvement and that the government was not sure whom it was dealing with. Most of the email statements, however, have demanded the release of jailed Ijaw guerrilla leader Mujahi Dokubo Asari and the former Bayelsa governor, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, who has been accused of large-scale embezzlement.
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Spain's Supreme Court has ordered a retrial of the leader of the banned Basque Batasuna party, after overruling his conviction for promoting terrorism. The court ruled that Arnaldo Otegi, who was facing a 15-month prison sentence, had not received a fair trial. He was convicted for praising fallen Basque militants at a funeral in 2001.
The appeal ruling came after a court banned a Batasuna rally on Saturday. Batasuna was banned from politics in 2003 over alleged links to Eta. Mr Otegi was convicted in 2004 for his part in the funeral of Basque separatist Olaia Castresana, who died after explosives she was handling blew up. At the burial, Mr Otegi offered his "warmest praise to all gudaris (Basque soldiers) who have fallen in this long fight for self-determination". The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that the judgement had not been impartial and ordered a Basque court to retry Mr Otegi before a new panel of judges. A High Court judge ordered a new two-year ban on Batasuna's political activities, saying that it was controlled by armed separatists. Batasuna has always denied being the political wing of ETA but has refused to condemn attacks by the group.
Mr Otegi kept his seat in the Basque regional parliament after the party changed its name. He lost his MP's immunity from prosecution last year when Batasuna candidates were barred from standing in April's regional elections. He spent four years in jail for kidnapping in the 1980s.
"I'm just a soul whose intentions are good - Dear Lord please don't let me be misunderstood..." Always hated that song.
Yep, yep. Hunky dory. Couldn't be better. But hey, don't ask us too many questions, ok? Ya never really know who's listening...
In Iran, an Islamic theocracy, Christians and Jews occupy an unusual place. But it's not necessarily uncomfortable. From the choir loft, a haunting aria rises and falls through an air thick with ceremony and incense. At the altar, candles illuminate a large painting of the Madonna and Child. It is nearly midnight on New Year's Eve, yet it is standing room only at St. Sarkis Church in downtown Tehran. Here some of the faithful from an estimated population of 100,000 Armenian Christians in Iran come to celebrate the end of one year and the beginning of the next.
Armenian Bishop Sebouh Sarkissian sees his people as Iranian citizens, not a religious minority. (Read the transcript.) The Armenians say they've been in Iran for hundreds of years. Many were brought by force, enslaved by Persian ruler Agha Mohammad Khan during his wars in the Caucasus. But now many claim Iran as their own. "We identify ourselves with Iranian society and nationality because Armenians have been living here for centuries and centuries," says Bishop Sebouh Sarkissian of the Archdiocese of Tehran. "Sometimes they call us religious minorities -- a word I've never liked, even hated, because we are not a religious minority. We are citizens of this country."
Citizens who, some say, have more privileges under the Islamic government than even Iranian Muslims. In the Armenian Club near the church, a more festive New Year's celebration is under way. Dozens of couples twirl around the floor, their hands held high in the traditional style of Armenian dance, with live music performed by a band brought in from Armenia specifically for the occasion. One man tells me, pouring a glass of Johnny Walker Red whisky over ice, "We have more freedoms than even the Muslims. They would never be able to do this." Christians are allowed to have alcohol in their homes and sometimes for holiday celebrations, but for the Muslim population it's strictly forbidden.
Others at the party agree, saying they don't face discrimination in Iran and can even travel more freely, usually to Armenia and to the United States. One woman is more circumspect about life for Armenians in Iran. "We have a little hole here in Iran," she says, "but we're very good at filling it with happiness."
Iran also has a Jewish minority, which at its peak numbered about 80,000. Shortly after the Islamic Revolution, many immigrated to the U.S. and some to Israel, leaving a community of about 25,000 today. Still, it is the largest Jewish community in the Middle East, outside of Israel. At the Jewish Community Center in Tehran, Dr. Unes Hammai-Lalehzar says the Jewish population has had its ups and downs, but he doesn't believe there's any discrimination from the general public. I ask him about the yarmulke he's wearing and if he is comfortable wearing it in public. "Most people here don't even know what this signifies," he laughs. "No, it's not a problem."
But I ask him if there's been any change in the climate since Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent remarks both questioning the Holocaust and calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map." He's clearly uncomfortable with the topic and says my questions are getting political. But I press him on it. "As far as daily life goes here, there hasn't been an impact on us," he says, "We don't see any difference in our lives. But maybe others feel differently." He continues, saying the Iranian government has made a clear effort to distinguish between Zionism and Judaism.
"Zionism is a political party that enjoys Jewish symbols and ideals, but it's not the same thing," he says. "The law that is being enforced in Israel is not Jewish law, it's not religious, its anti-religious." In the nearby synagogue, David Zakaria, who owns a rubber factory, agrees. "His comments were directed more to Israel as a political entity," he says of President Ahmadinejad. "I'm connected to Israel religiously, it's the Holy Land, but not politically." But even with that religious connection, Iranian Jews, along with the rest of the population, are not permitted to travel to Israel. And while they say they don't face discrimination from their fellow Iranians, Jews here can't be considered for jobs as teachers, unless they are teaching members of their own community. Government jobs, even junior level positions, are also off limits.
At least on the surface, the dominant Shia Muslim population seems, if anything, curious about their countrymen in the religious minority. Back at St. Sarkis Church on New Year's, Muslims Bahrehman Shaker and Jawad Dae-Zadeh have both brought their families, 20 people in all, to witness the Christian celebration, even though they don't know anyone in the Armenian community. "We just wanted to see," says Shaker. "We've been to [Christian] New Year's before in Australia with fireworks, but this is very different." "We want to share their happiness," says Dae-Zadeh, "and congratulate them on their Christmas."
#1
Iranian government has made a clear effort to distinguish between Zionism and Judaism =
If you behave like a proper dhimmi and pay jiziya, you'll be just fine.
#3
But I ask him if there's been any change in the climate since Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent remarks both questioning the Holocaust and calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map." He's clearly uncomfortable with the topic and immediately pissed himself saying my questions are getting political as he bolted from the room.
Beirut wants U.N. peacekeepers to stay in southern Lebanon at least through January 2007, it said on Tuesday, promising in the meantime to keep trying to extend its own authority to the South. The request for the mandate of the U.N. force to be prolonged to Jan. 31, 2007, came in a Jan. 11 letter to Secretary-General Kofi Annan from Lebanese U.N. envoy Ibrahim Assaf. The letter was circulated at the world body on Tuesday.
The mandate of the 2,000-strong U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, will expire July 31 unless it is renewed by the U.N. Security Council. The 15-nation council is to discuss the mission in a closed-door meeting on Wednesday. Annan and the Security Council have pressed Lebanon's government to extend its authority across the South since Israel pulled out of the region in May 2000, ending 22 years of occupation.
After the Israeli withdrawal, the militant group Hizbollah dominated the area, profiting from a power vacuum there. Hizbollah guerrillas have since sporadically clashed with Israel forces. Hizbollah last year entered into the Lebanese government, the first formed since a September 2004 Security Council resolution demanding that all armed groups on Lebanese soil be disarmed and dismantled. Largely as a result of that U.N. resolution, neighboring Syria withdrew its troops from Lebanon in April 2005. But the new government has shied from trying to disarm Hizbollah, which has strong popular support.
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BAGHDAD â A mass grave containing the bodies of 22 people believed to have been killed during a failed Shia uprising against Saddam Hussein in 1991 has been found near one of Iraqâs holiest cities, security officials said on Tuesday. At least 12 people were killed in attacks across the country, including seven workers slain as they were preparing rations for the Iraqi army and one person killed in an attack on a Kurdish political partyâs office.
Security sources said the remains of 22 people had been uncovered near the holy Shia city of Najaf, where a number of mass graves have been found since the fall of Saddam in April 2003. They are believed to be victims of a violent repression by Saddamâs regime of a Shia uprising in 1991 following the Gulf War which ousted Iraqi invasion troops from neighbouring Kuwait. âThe remains were found by accident at a building site in the Kifl region on the road between Najaf and Kerbala,â one source said.
âA search is ongoing to find other bodies,â the source said, adding that at least five mass graves dating back to 1991 have been found in the region in recent years.
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LUCKNOW â A suspected militant of the Laskhar-e-Tayyaba escaped from a train near Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh early yesterday while being taken from Kolkata to Jammu under police protection, officials here said. Police said Ali Ahmed, 28, jumped off the Sealdah-Jammu Tawi Express at around 4.30am somewhere between the Varanasi and Mughal Sarai stations. All trains slow down while traversing the 30km distance between the two stations for a technical reason and that is when Ahmed made his escape, said Varanasi Senior Superintendent of Police Navneet Sikera. "Our men have fanned out in different directions and we are doing our best to get him," Sikera said. Four Jammu and Kashmir policemen who were accompanying him from Kolkata to Jammu for a court case are being questioned.
They have stated that they got off at Mughal Sarai for a cup of tea. Hinting at some connivance, Uttar Pradesh police said they could not have slept off in just 20 minutes and pointed out that all criminals are supposed to be handcuffed and chained to a policeman. This had probably not happened. "How could it be possible that the cops dozed off immediately after the train started from that station and the undertrial managed to jump off?" asked Sikera.
Gee inspector, what do you think?
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STOCKHOLM: Sweden's security service warned in December that Al Qaeda had threatened the country over its peacekeeping troops in Afghanistan but said on Wednesday the alert was over. The SAPO security service said the threat came after parliament backed plans to boost the country's contingent with the NATO-led force in Afghanistan, a decision taken despite the killing of two Swedish peacekeepers there in November. "We saw comments from Al Qaeda that were directed against Sweden and we also received other information that constituted a heightened risk scenario," SAPO chief Klas Bergenstrand told Dagens Nyheter newspaper.
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RAWALPINDI: The Rawalpindi bench of the Lahore High Court (LHC) directed the government on Wednesday to reply within three weeks to a petition challenging the ban on religious outfit Hizbut Tahrir. The bench admitted the petition for hearing and sought the government's response. The petition, filed by group spokesman Naveed Butt, said that the ban imposed by state authorities on the group was "illegal and unlawful". The group's counsel Muhammad Ikram Chaudhry said that Hizbut Tahrir is an international Islamic organisation active in 40 countries for the promotion of Islam through literature and conferences.
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A couple who planted a human finger in a bowl of chilli at a Wendy's fast food restaurant has been sentenced in California to nine years in prison. "Greed and avarice overtook this couple and they lost their moral compass," Judge Edward Davila said of Anna Ayala and her husband Jaime Plascencia in handing down the nine-year sentence.
The scam caused a sharp fall in sales at the third-largest US burger chain, resulting in millions of dollars in lost revenue and a lingering impact to this day, officials say. Plascencia was given another three years and four months for not paying support for the five children he has with another woman in an unrelated case, giving him a total sentence of 12 years, four months behind bars. Mr Davila also ordered the couple to pay almost $26.7 million in restitution but Wendy's officials indicated to the court they would only seek to collect approximately $227,000, representing the wages lost by employees at the San Jose restaurant where working hours were cut back after a downturn in business. "The crimes committed by the defendants have done immeasurable damage to Wendy's image, not only in northern California, but across the country," Denny Lynch, a Wendy's senior vice president, told the court.
Her apology: "I am truly sorry. I owe Wendy's and its employees an apology," a sobbing Ayala told the court.
"Wendy's had always been my family's favourite fast-food restaurant."
She called her actions "a moment of poor judgement" and told her family: "For all the shame I brought upon them I am sorry, I am so sorry."
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Her finger story had all the right elements: ick factor, fast food contamination and the mystery of the finger itself. Wendy's offered a reward of $50,000 for information about the source of the finger, later doubling it. At one point, Sandy Allman, a Nevada woman, came forward and suggested the fingertip belonged to her, lost during a tiger attack. It was not hers, instead turning out to have belonged to a coworker of Ayala's husband at a paving company. The unfortunate victim, Brian Paul Rossiter, lost the digit on the job when his hand was caught in a truck lift mechanism.
Hey Rossi, give me da finger dude.... no, no, no, the one lying on the floor.... I'm sick of this hot asphalt job. I now have a neat Chilli idea, eheheheheez.
#4
"I am truly sorry [that I got caught]. I owe Wendy's and its employees an apology [and a sh*tload of money]," a sobbing Ayala told the court.
"Wendy's had always been my family's favourite fast-food restaurant [and, 'til recently, our favorite target for fraud]."
She called her actions "a moment of poor judgement [--if I may call countless days and nights of plotting and intrigue 'a moment']" and told her family: "For all the shame I brought upon them I am sorry, I am so sorry. [However, I am still sorrier that I got caught.]"
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THE Indonesian military used starvation as a weapon to exterminate the East Timorese, according to a UN report documenting the deaths of as many as 180,000 civilians at the hands of the occupying forces.
The 2500-page report, obtained by The Australian, has been suppressed for months by the East Timorese Government and will infuriate Indonesia, which has punished only a handful of soldiers for the murders, assaults and rapes that occurred during its 24 years of occupation.
Napalm and chemical weapons, which poisoned the food and water supply, were used by Indonesian soldiers against the East Timorese in the brutal invasion and annexation of the half-island to Australia's north, according to the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation report.
The violence culminated in the 1999 reprisals for the independence vote, when the Indonesian military and its militia proxies rampaged through East Timor, killing as many as 1500 people and destroying most of the towns.
The report blames the Indonesian Government and the security forces for the deaths of as many as 183,000 civilians, more than 90 per cent of whom died from hunger and illness.
It claims Indonesian police or soldiers were to blame for 70 per cent of the 18,600 unlawfull killings or disappearances between 1975 and 1999.
Based on interviews with almost 8000 witnesses from East Timor's 13 districts and 65 sub-districts, as well as statements from refugees over the border in West Timor, the report also relies on Indonesian military papers and intelligence from international sources.
It documents a litany of massacres, thousands of summary executions of civilians and the torture of 8500 East Timorese - with horrific details of public beheadings, the mutilation of genitalia, the burying and burning alive of victims, use of cigarettes to burn victims and also ears and genitals being lopped off to display to families.
Thousands of East Timorese women were raped and sexually assaulted during the occupation and the report concludes that rape was also used by the Indonesian military as a weapon of war.
"Rape, sexual slavery and sexual violence were tools used as part of the campaign designed to inflict a deep experience of terror, powerlessness and hopelessness upon pro-independence supporters," the commission found.
The deaths amounted to almost a third of East Timor's pre-invasion population.
The report found that after taking into account a peacetime baseline mortality rate, the number of East Timorese whose deaths could be directly attributed to Indonesia's deliberate starvation policy was between 84,200 and 183,000 people from 1975 until 1999.
East Timor, one of the world's poorest nations, with a population of just over one million people, had a pre-invasion population of 628,000.
The Indonesian security forces "consciously decided to use starvation of East Timorese civilians as a weapon of war", the report says.
"The intentional imposition of conditions of life which could not sustain tens of thousands of East Timorese civilians amounted to extermination as a crime against humanity committed against the East Timorese population."
A culture of impunity prevailed in the occupied territory and "widespread and systematic executions, arbitrary detention, torture, rape and sexual slavery was officially accepted by Indonesia", the commission found.
"The violations were committed in execution of a systematic plan approved, conducted and controlled by Indonesian military commanders at the highest level."
The report, due to be handed by East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan tomorrow, also criticises Australia for its long-term de jure recognition of the Indonesian occupation and its failure to try to prevent the use of force in East Timor.
It recommends reparations from Indonesia and the members of the UN Security Council, including Britain and the US, who gave military backing to Indonesia between 1974 and 1999, as well as those nations that provided military assistance to Jakarta during the occupation, including Australia.
The report will worsen the already noxious reputation of the Indonesian military, which has largely escaped punishment for human rights crimes in East Timor. All bar one of the accused at the Indonesian tribunal on East Timor was acquitted or found innocent on appeal.
The commission carefully notes that many of the Indonesian military officers who played key roles in the occupation have since been promoted and details their ascension in the military.
The report said many of the current senior members of the Indonesian military "could be held accountable" for the violations in East Timor.
Titled Chega!, which means "Enough!" in Portuguese, the report is one of the most detailed and comprehensive of its kind ever compiled.
Sponsored by international donors, including Australia, and 3 1/2 years in the making, the report was given to Mr Gusmao in October. But he is only now preparing to publicly release it.
It is understood he was both concerned about offending East Timor's giant neighbour and worried the report's detailed and trenchant criticism of the resistance - which also summarily executed and tortured civilians, particularly in the 1970s - could lead to social and political anarchy.
A former resistance hero, Mr Gusmao prefers reconciliation with Indonesia over seeking justice for the occupation. He said on Tuesday he would present the report to Mr Annan in New York tomorrow.
Russian military exports to other countries were estimated at USD six billion in 2005, said Defense Minister Sergey Borisovich Ivanov on Wednesday. In a report raised to Russian President Vladimir Putin over military issues, the minister said that Russian military firms signed USD 22 billion contracts with other countries, said the Russian TV. He also said Russia is to take several measures to boost and maximize military exports even more.
You Russo experts will have to help decide if that number is right or just fairytales from the Information Ministry. I don't doubt that Russia is planning to ramp up its weapons exports...
Six people were detained in France on Tuesday as part of a probe into a group suspected of recruiting insurgents to fight in Iraq, according to a source close to the investigation. The suspects, four men and two women, were detained in or near the southern city of Montpellier, the source said. Three of the four men were Moroccans and the fourth was French. Several other people have been detained in connection with the investigation which has been ongoing since 2004, the source said.
As President Pervez Musharraf appeared on state-controlled radio and television to condemn the activities of some Baloch tribal chiefs, one security man was killed and two injured badly in Kohlu the area where Nawab Khair Bux Marri dominates the society and at present is engaged with government forces in rocket firing and armed clashes. A soldier of the Frontier Corps was killed and his two colleagues were injured, sources said yesterday. "Militants had planted a land mine between Dera Bugti and Kohlu which was exploded with a remote control device killing a soldier," sources said.
Beside planting land mine on a road linking Dera Bugti with Kohlu where normally Frontier Corps men conduct day-and-night patrolling to weed out militants, a few rockets were also fired in Kahan where the FC has established its local headquarters in a fort. Former Chief Minister of Balochistan Akhtar Mengal claimed that so far more than 50 people have lost their lives in armed clashes with the security forces.
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SRINAGAR: The police investigating a Kashmiri politician's alleged ties to Islamic militants say the man has admitted to taking part in a plot to kill the former chief minister of held Kashmir. Last week the police arrested Abdul Wahid Dar, a city councillor in Srinagar, the state's summer capital, after intelligence reports indicated that Dar was a supporter of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, said police superintendent Anand Jain said. Dar was once an Islamic militant who turned to politics after spending a few years in jail in the early 1990s. It is not uncommon for Kashmir militants to be released from jail if the authorities no longer consider them a threat. Since the arrest, Jain said that Dar has admitted that he helped work out the logistics for a number of Lashkar suicide attacks.
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KARACHI: A two-member appellate bench of the Sindh High Court (SHC) on Wednesday set aside death sentence for two activists of the banned religious outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ) and ordered their release. An anti-terrorism court had given death to Attaullah alias Qasim and Mohammad Riaz for killing a man called Syed Kazim Shah during sectarian violence in Mehmoodabad.
In another case, the SHC set aside life terms and other punishments for five accused in a kidnap-for-ransom case, including Salim Khan Tanoli, former protocol officer to a former Sindh chief minister, Khalid Moin and Muhammad Altaf, and ordered their release. An anti-terrorism court had given them life terms for taking Rs 15 million ransom from Ilyas and Rafiq after kidnapping them from the Jamshaid Quarters area.
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People will be banned from carrying guns on 25 January when Palestinians go to the polls in general elections, under an agreement between Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction and its main rival in the election, the radical Islamist group Hamas. The announcement was made on Wednesday at a joint news conference in Gaza by senior officials from the two organisation - Fatah's Samir Mashharawi and Hamas' Saeed Seyam. The 25 election day should be a ''a celebration of democracy" the men said, warning that any Hamas or Fatah militant who did not comply with the order would be expelled from their respective movement.
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The 25 election day should be a ''a celebration of democracy"
Six tribesmen, accused of kidnapping five Italian tourists in northeastern Yemen earlier this month, appeared before a state security court in Sanaa yesterday. The six men, Ali Saleh Ubad Al-Zaidi, 24, Muryee Ali Ahmad Al-Ameri, 35, Ubad Saleh Al-Zaidi, 21, Naji Mahdi Al-Zaidi, 20, Hadi Muhammad Ali Al-Ameri, 24, and Muhammad Saleh Al-Zaidi, 30, appeared in court in handcuffs and blue prison uniforms. Chief prosecutor Saeed Al-Aaqil read out the charges saying that the six men, all from the Al-Zaidi clan, âtook part in forming an armed gang to kidnap foreigners.â
The defendants confessed to the kidnapping but pleaded not guilty on the charge of forming an armed gang. The tribesmen freed the five Italian captives, three women and two men, on Jan. 6 after holding them hostage for five days in a mountainous village in the Marib province, about 195 km northeast of Sanaa. Under a deal brokered by tribal dignitaries, the abductors released their hostages unharmed and gave themselves up to security forces besieging their hideout. Yemeni officials refused to give details of the deal under which the hostages were freed.
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The defendants confessed to the kidnapping but pleaded not guilty on the charge of forming an armed gang.
'Cause they kidnapped them furriners using noodles and a feather boa, that's why.
BALAKOT: The Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) has distributed tin food that expired twenty years ago among the earthquake survivors of Balakot, the use of which is causing skin allergies and stomach murmurs to those who consume it. The tins, containing tuna fish and baked beans, were produced in the year 1983 and were to be used within two years. The manufacturing date on top and bottoms of the tins clearly states their date of manufacture and expiry. Some heath officials from Frontier gave the expired stuff to patients at the leprosy hospital and their children. The expired tins were distributed directly without the knowledge of the district heath officer or the district health department. Neither the World Health Organisation (WHO) nor the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) know about
The expired food caused itching and skin rashes in children and stomach problems for adults. Prepared by the Varamin's Agro Industries of Iran, the tins were donated by the IRCS. The tins carry a caption outlining the fundamental principles of humanity %u2013 voluntary service, independence, impartiality, neutrality, unity and universality.
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`Just for curiosity, what do they normaly eat?
Could be plain old indigestion from eating "Foreign" foodstuffs.
I mention this because as I once had an opportunity to eat "C" rations, easily a good 30 years old at the time, they were quite good, far better than legend has it, (Except the canned bread, the shortening had turned) and still good after all that time
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
01/19/2006 19:56
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Redneck Jim,
the canned bread was already *turned* way back in the 60s.
EFL
The United States acted Wednesday to financially clamp down on Syria's military intelligence chief, Assef Shawkat. The Treasury Department ordered US banks to block any assets found in the United States belonging to Shawkat. Americans also are barred from doing business with him. The department alleged that Shawkat has played a role in furthering Syria's "support for terrorism and interference in the sovereignty of Lebanon."
It marked the United States' latest action to turn up the heat on Syria. In June, the department moved to block the assets of Syria's interior minister, Ghazi Kanaan, and its chief of military intelligence for Lebanon, Rustum Ghazali. The power for the department to take the action stems from a May, 11, 2004, executive order by President George W. Bush.
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Sudan's Army has committed the first serious violation of a final cease-fire signed a year ago to end Africa's longest civil war in its south, a UN peacekeeping official said yesterday. The former southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement said the army sent around 1,200 troops last week into the rebel-controlled eastern area of Hamesh Koreb and has threatened to expel the SPLM. A joint UN-led team is still in the area to defuse tensions between the two sides. "This is the first serious cease-fire violation," said Parminder Pannu, the military chief of staff of the UN peacekeeping mission in Sudan, adding the Sudanese army was responsible. The United Nations later clarified another, higher-level investigation within the UN mission was ongoing into the Hamesh Koreb attack.
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A militant group attacking oil installations in the Niger Delta has said it will widen its range of targets to include more multinational companies. So far, only Royal Dutch Shell has admitted to being attacked by the group, which is holding four of Shell's foreign oil workers hostage. But the group said on Wednesday it had now attacked platforms operated by Total and Agip - which both denied having been attacked - and said that it also intended to target Chevron. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta said in an email statement to Reuters: "The reports of attacks on Agip and Total flow stations are correct. We have decided not to limit our attacks to Shell oil as our ultimate aim is to prevent Nigeria from exporting oil. We will attack all oil companies including Chevron facilities."
The group began a wave of sabotage on the world's eighth-largest oil exporter a month ago, and Shell has shut 226,000 barrels a day, roughly 10% of Nigerian output. "Pipelines, loading points, export tankers, tank farms, refined petroleum depots, landing strips and residences of employees of these companies can expect to be attacked. We know where they live, shop and where the children go to school," the group said.
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Spain's most important modern art museum has confessed it has lost a 38-tonne sculpture by the prestigious American artist Richard Serra.
According to police, the bomber blew himself up in the restaurant's bathroom and may have been trying to prepare the explosive device when it went off prematurely. Of the wounded, one person was in serious condition, five people sustained moderate wounds and 14 others were lightly hurt. All the wounded were evacuated from the site of the attack within a short time of the blast. They were taken to Wolfson Medical Center in Holon and Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv.
LONG FORK - The steep mountainsides in western Pike County are painted in the drabbest of winter browns and grays now, but already there is a feeling in the air that the land is ready to break out with spring color in a few weeks, bringing new life, new hope. Maybe that's a good omen for a young man back home after surviving the meat grinder of Iraq but still struggling to cope with the psychological shocks of all he's seen and done, shocks that ultimately cut short his career in the U.S. Marine Corps.
DUBAI (Reuters) - Arab television al Jazeera station said on Thursday it would soon air a new audio tape said to be from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. No more details were given. 
U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton called for United Nations sanctions against Iran as it resumes its nuclear program and faulted the Bush administration for "downplaying" the threat.
Outlaw killed in âshootoutâ in Mongla
âHistory has weighed heavily on the Middle East. What we have tried to do over the last 30 years, starting with President Carter, moving through other presidents, including my husband, and now this president, is to send a uniquely American message: `It can get better. Just get over it.ââ 
Proud townsfolk of the first Filipino-American female soldier killed in Iraq buried her Thursday with full U.S. military honors in the tiny village where she grew up before migrating to America nine years ago. A Roman Catholic chapel near the childhood home of Army Sgt. Myla Maravillosa in the village of U-og in central Inabanga town was too small to accommodate hundreds of people attending a funeral Mass.
French President Jacques Chirac has said France would be ready to use nuclear weapons against any state which launched a terrorist attack against it. Speaking at a nuclear submarine base in north-western France, Mr Chirac said a French response "could be conventional. It could also be of another nature." 
Investigators said on Wednesday that they had found two empty graves at the site of a controversial US air strike in the Bajaur Agency, a day after officials said that up to five foreign militants had died in the attack. However, there was no information about the identities of the insurgents who died in the raid, despite initial US intelligence reports that Al Qaedaâs Egyptian number two Ayman al-Zawahri may have been among them.
The carrying of the Olympic flame 7,000 miles (11,300km) across Italy, through 140 cities, ahead of the winter games in Turin has been plagued by almost daily confrontations after becoming the focus of protests by anti-global and environmental activists. Demonstrators have booed the flame, blocked its passage and caused it to be temporarily extinguished.
LONDON - Britain believes the CIAâs reported secret transfer of terrorism suspects to foreign countries for interrogation is illegal, according to a leaked government document published on Thursday. The Foreign Office memo says the practice, known as extraordinary rendition, âcould never be legalâ if the detainee is at risk of torture, according to extracts printed in the Guardian newspaper. It adds that British cooperation âwould also be illegal if we knew of the circumstancesâ, according to the newspaper.
Lawyers for Iraq's former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, have asked Italy and Croatia to consider granting him asylum if he is released from U.S. detention, officials in both countries said Wednesday. The Italian and Croatian foreign ministries both confirmed receiving letters from Aziz's Italy-based lawyers asking if either government would be willing to grant him asylum. Aziz's family and lawyers have said he is in very poor health, and have petitioned several countries to accept Aziz for medical treatment if he is released. The Italian ministry said officials were evaluating the letter. In Croatia, Prime Minister Ivo Sanader said his nation "will in no way" grant Aziz, 69, asylum, the state-run news agency HINA reported.
Pakistani intelligence sources on Thursday identified three of four al Qaeda members believed to have been killed by a U.S. airstrike last week, though they have yet to recover the bodies. One of the dead was said to be 
The recently-appointed governor of the Iranian central bank, 
Russia says it has accepted a request by former Yugoslav President 
Syrian authorities released on Wednesday four political prisoners including Riad Seif and Maamoun Al-Humsi. -- Hassan Abdel Atheem, spokesmnan of the opposition Democratic Gathering, said in a statement to KUNA that the authorities freed the prisoners of the so-called "
Gunmen killed at least six Iraqi security personnel and two engineers from Malawi and Madagascar went missing following an attack Wednesday on a mobile phone firm's convoy in western Baghdad, the company said. Iraqna, a cell phone company owned by Egyptian-giant Orascom, said in a statement that their convoy was attacked at about 8 a.m. in the capital's Nafaq al-Shurta area and that the fate of the missing engineers was unknown. 
Bruno once told me that in Germany you could walk for days and never leave civilisation - the opposite from Australia. We, however, live in the middle of a farm. At first glance it is really special: a dirt track through the trees, over the lake filled with water birds, past the horse stables, not a house in site. Then Liana pointed out it is the perfect setting for a horror movie, with the lake being perfect for body disposal. A walk one night through the neighbouring woods did feel suspiciously like the Blair Witch Project.
PARIS: Using military force against Iran to prevent it pursuing its nuclear programme would be 'completely mad', the chief of France's defence staff said on Wednesday. General Henri Bentegeat said the idea of Iran possessing a nuclear weapon was 'a real nightmare' but added that the way for a negotiated solution remained open. 
A Taleban commander said yesterday hundreds of his guerrillas were ready to launch suicide attacks across Afghanistan to drive out foreign forces. The threat of violence came as several thousand people gathered in the town of Spin Boldak, on the border with Pakistan, to denounce a suicide attack there on Monday that killed 23. âHundreds of Afghan Taleban mujahedeen are ready for suicide attacks,â said the Taleban commander, 
JEDDAH â In a novel way to fight unemployment and make jobless Saudis self-reliant, the Abdul Latif Jameel Fund (ALJF) for Vocational Training and Development has launched a scheme to train Saudis in Islamic calligraphy so that they could start their own mirco enterprises in this aspect of decorative arts.
A senior United Nations official says the international community's top priority should be forcing a peace deal in Sudan's troubled Darfur region. 
Nigerian officials have made contact with an armed group holding four foreign oil workers in order to negotiate their release, Information Minister Frank Nweke has said. Separatist militants seized the four men - an American, a Bulgarian, a Briton and a Honduran working for subcontractors to the energy giant Shell - on January 11 and have vowed not to release them until their demands are met. 
LUCKNOW â A suspected militant of the Laskhar-e-Tayyaba escaped from a train near Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh early yesterday while being taken from Kolkata to Jammu under police protection, officials here said. Police said Ali Ahmed, 28, jumped off the Sealdah-Jammu Tawi Express at around 4.30am somewhere between the Varanasi and Mughal Sarai stations. All trains slow down while traversing the 30km distance between the two stations for a technical reason and that is when Ahmed made his escape, said Varanasi Senior Superintendent of Police Navneet Sikera. "Our men have fanned out in different directions and we are doing our best to get him," Sikera said. Four Jammu and Kashmir policemen who were accompanying him from Kolkata to Jammu for a court case are being questioned.
Six people were detained in France on Tuesday as part of a probe into a group suspected of recruiting insurgents to fight in Iraq, according to a source close to the investigation. The suspects, four men and two women, were detained in or near the southern city of Montpellier, the source said. Three of the four men were Moroccans and the fourth was French. Several other people have been detained in connection with the investigation which has been ongoing since 2004, the source said.
As President Pervez Musharraf appeared on state-controlled radio and television to condemn the activities of some Baloch tribal chiefs, one security man was killed and two injured badly in Kohlu the area where Nawab Khair Bux Marri dominates the society and at present is engaged with government forces in rocket firing and armed clashes. A soldier of the Frontier Corps was killed and his two colleagues were injured, sources said yesterday. "Militants had planted a land mine between Dera Bugti and Kohlu which was exploded with a remote control device killing a soldier," sources said.
SRINAGAR: The police investigating a Kashmiri politician's alleged ties to Islamic militants say the man has admitted to taking part in a plot to kill the former chief minister of held Kashmir. Last week the police arrested Abdul Wahid Dar, a city councillor in Srinagar, the state's summer capital, after intelligence reports indicated that Dar was a supporter of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, said police superintendent Anand Jain said. Dar was once an Islamic militant who turned to politics after spending a few years in jail in the early 1990s. It is not uncommon for Kashmir militants to be released from jail if the authorities no longer consider them a threat. Since the arrest, Jain said that Dar has admitted that he helped work out the logistics for a number of Lashkar suicide attacks.
KARACHI: A two-member appellate bench of the Sindh High Court (SHC) on Wednesday set aside death sentence for two activists of the banned religious outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ) and ordered their release. An anti-terrorism court had given death to Attaullah alias Qasim and Mohammad Riaz for killing a man called Syed Kazim Shah during sectarian violence in Mehmoodabad. 
People will be banned from carrying guns on 25 January when Palestinians go to the polls in general elections, under an agreement between Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction and its main rival in the election, the radical Islamist group Hamas. The announcement was made on Wednesday at a joint news conference in Gaza by senior officials from the two organisation - Fatah's Samir Mashharawi and Hamas' Saeed Seyam. The 25 election day should be a ''a celebration of democracy" the men said, warning that any Hamas or Fatah militant who did not comply with the order would be expelled from their respective movement.
Six tribesmen, accused of kidnapping five Italian tourists in northeastern Yemen earlier this month, appeared before a state security court in Sanaa yesterday. The six men, Ali Saleh Ubad Al-Zaidi, 24, Muryee Ali Ahmad Al-Ameri, 35, Ubad Saleh Al-Zaidi, 21, Naji Mahdi Al-Zaidi, 20, Hadi Muhammad Ali Al-Ameri, 24, and Muhammad Saleh Al-Zaidi, 30, appeared in court in handcuffs and blue prison uniforms. Chief prosecutor Saeed Al-Aaqil read out the charges saying that the six men, all from the Al-Zaidi clan, âtook part in forming an armed gang to kidnap foreigners.â
Sudan's Army has committed the first serious violation of a final cease-fire signed a year ago to end Africa's longest civil war in its south, a UN peacekeeping official said yesterday. The former southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement said the army sent around 1,200 troops last week into the rebel-controlled eastern area of Hamesh Koreb and has threatened to expel the SPLM. A joint UN-led team is still in the area to defuse tensions between the two sides. "This is the first serious cease-fire violation," said Parminder Pannu, the military chief of staff of the UN peacekeeping mission in Sudan, adding the Sudanese army was responsible. The United Nations later clarified another, higher-level investigation within the UN mission was ongoing into the Hamesh Koreb attack.
A militant group attacking oil installations in the Niger Delta has said it will widen its range of targets to include more multinational companies. So far, only Royal Dutch Shell has admitted to being attacked by the group, which is holding four of Shell's foreign oil workers hostage. But the group said on Wednesday it had now attacked platforms operated by Total and Agip - which both denied having been attacked - and said that it also intended to target Chevron. The 
