An al Qaeda member known as Abu Dzeit has been killed in the Russian internal republic of Ingushetia. "A joint operation with the Interior Ministry was conducted in a private house in a village in Ingushetia on February 16," spokesman for the Federal Security Service Sergei Ignatchenko told reporters on Monday. "The operation first resulted in the death of two of his accomplices. Abu Dzeit hid in a special bunker built under the house. When the entrance was discovered, he blew himself up," Ignatchenko said. He said investigators identified the body as Abu Dzeit's.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/21/2005
9:39:38 AM ||
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#1
big deal! another will take his place.
he is a martyr frolicking in heaven with his 72 virgins - de-flowering the virgins in a 24 hour sexathon with the force of "thump, thump..." as per the prophet's saying (hadith).
of course let's not forget the 10,000 slaves to cater to his comfort.
Posted by: abdul ||
02/21/2005 11:46
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I would have preferred to see the pliers graphic here.
#3
raisins in hell more likely, stomach roasting, right Baghdad Bob?
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 13:32
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A friend of mine sent me a very funny email yesterday, with St. Peter telling Osama it was 72 VirginIANs. Email me if you'd like a copy.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/21/2005 13:56
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If the 72 are indeed virgins in perpetuity, Abu Dzeit is no doubt now reaching the stage of perpetual sexual frustration, O Abdul, for by definition deflowering such is not possible. The 10,000 slaves sound like a necessity, under the circumstances. Truly, I would wither and die if I were not permitted to anything of use or accomplishment for brain and body, but then I am a Western woman, and thus abhor mere decorative idleness.
Evil to be 'measured' in death-penalty cases. Psychiatrists develop 'depravity rating' to decide which convicted killers die.
Research psychiatrists say they can now quantify evil, and they will be lobbying state legislatures to adopt their "depravity ratings" for use by courts determining whether to impose the death penalty on convicted murderers.
Long seen as a subjective moral term, evil, two recent studies of criminal personalities claim, can now be measured objectively.
"People say evil is like pornography — they know it when they see it, but can debate whether or when it is harmful," Dr. Michael Welner, a forensic psychiatrist and professor at New York University, told the London Telegraph. "This is not true. We are finding widespread agreement about what is evil..." Welner's depravity scale is based on contributions of thousands of people who contributed their understanding of evil to a website. Democratic Underground?
#1
So how does Saddam Hussein compare to Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Hafiz Assad, Ho Chi Minh, etc? Not to mention Attila the Hun and Vlad the Impaler and Savonarola. I've always wondered how the Wicked Ones rate on God's scale.
#2
TW, as for Attila, he may have been a bit ruthless in battle, but otherwise, he was an honorable warrior. Beside that, he was also a shrewd diplomat. The tales of his bloodthirstiness were mostly rumors, dispersed by his agents to strike fear in hearts of the potential sujects.
Vlad is a tad different story, but still, his most horrible deeds were committed against musulman. He really got Turks scared shi'tless, they simply did not imagine someone would behave more barbaric than themselves. He prevented expansion of Khilafah in south-eastern Europe, singlehandedly, in his times.
I thought some Rantburgers might be interested in my thoughts after blogging at CPAC. A second article will be up later today or tomorrow about the media at CPAC and my adventures on radio and TV there.
Note: Fred et al - I understand if you decide you don't want to post this. Just thought that Rantburgers might find it interesting and the entry is way too long to post here.
Posted by: Robin Burk ||
02/21/2005
9:10:37 AM ||
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#1
Duh. That should be "Political" in the header. But y'all knew that .... LOL
Posted by: Robin Burk ||
02/21/2005 10:08
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I fixed it.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/21/2005 11:34
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Hi Robin! Very interesting post, with food for thought.
With the announcement that columnist and so-called 'gonzo journalist' Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide over the weekend, the field of potential replacements for Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News has "narrowed significantly," according to one network source.
Mr. Thompson, whose stock-in-trade subjectivity and vigorous injection of personal opinion became the template for much of modern journalism, was author of several books including Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 and A Generation of Swine. But he was perhaps best known to the elderly as the inspiration for the Doonesbury comic character, Duke.
"Hunter Thompson was a natural to inherit the big desk at CBS," said the unnamed network source. "Edgy, acerbic and not afraid to weave his political agenda into the story...many viewers would have simply thought that Dan Rather had ditched the toupee."
Posted by: tipper ||
02/21/2005
8:25:30 AM ||
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An office on Wyandotte Street East is recruiting Iraqis living in Canada to join a security force in their native country for $10,000 US a month. "They will protect the foreign companies when they do reconstruction. That is the No. 1 priority," said Baghdad-born Windsor resident Luma Al Tamimi, whose Iraqi Canadian Partnership for Democracy organization lobbied for the office, which opened last week. Similar recruitment centres, believed to be funded by the U.S., have opened across the border as close as in suburban Detroit.
Al Tamimi said the forces "will also be at the important places - hospitals, airports, banks, embassies." Although the exact nature of the job and its employer remains shrouded in secrecy, Al Tamimi suggested that the recruitment is part of a U.S. government initiative to establish a trustworthy Iraqi security force, separate from the Iraqi police...
Israel Air Force Commander-in-Chief Major General Eliezer Shakedi said Monday that Israel must be prepared for an air strike on Iran in light of its nuclear activity. But in a meeting with reporters, Shakedi wouldn't say whether he thought Israel was capable of carrying out such a mission alone, as it did when it bombed an unfinished Iraqi nuclear reactor near Baghdad in 1981. When asked whether Israel has a plan for the Iranian nuclear program, Shakedi replied, "You know that for obvious reasons, I won't say even a word."
"I can say no more!"
But when asked whether he was confident the air force could provide the answer to the Iranian threat, Shakedi replied, "I must be prepared for everything." The Israeli air force commander also discussed the fluid situation in neighboring Lebanon. The assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri "can create a new picture in Lebanon," Shakedi said. With Syria, Hezbollah guerrillas and Hezbollah's Iranian benefactors all operating in Lebanon, "we understand who has interests" in Hariri being out of the picture, he said. Asked whether the IAF has changed its deployment since the assassination, he replied, "Of course we won't let the other side hit us." "We have a job to protect the citizens of Israel," Shakedi said. "I hope that there won't be a war - but you know, no one knows."
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/21/2005
7:08:31 PM ||
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There have been suggestions from others that the three men were involved at the top of the IRA, but Mr McDowell is the first to make the direct accusation. He told Dublin's Today FM: "We're talking about a small group of people, including a number of elected representatives, who run the whole [republican] movement. We are talking about Martin McGuinness, Gerry Adams, Martin Ferris and others."
The republican movement is reeling from the worst crisis it has faced in years following Irish police raids which netted more than £2.3m linked by officers to a money-laundering ring.
Northern Ireland's chief constable, Hugh Orde, said yesterday the IRA had planted £50,000 in stolen Northern Bank notes in the toilet of a police sports club to divert attention from the investigation into republican money-laundering in the Irish Republic. The banknotes, in five shrink-wrapped £10,000 bundles, were this weekend the first notes confirmed to have surfaced from the £26.5m stolen from the Northern Bank vaults in Belfast in December, the biggest bank robbery in UK history, which police have blamed on the IRA. The notes were found in a toilet at Newforge country club in south Belfast, a leisure centre used by police, after a man claiming to be a police officer contacted the police ombudsman, Nuala O'Loan. Mr Orde said: "It's a distraction. It's people trying to take the focus off the key issue which is the operation run by the garda and the major crime inquiry we still have ongoing _ Places like sports clubs have become far more open; it was an easy thing to do _ I'm not particularly impressed by it, but I did ask them to give the money back _ and they have started to listen."
By Mark Jensen
United for Peace of Pierce County (WA)
I'm all for it...
Scott Ritter, appearing with journalist Dahr Jamail yesterday in Washington State, dropped two shocking bombshells in a talk delivered to a packed house in Olympia's Capitol Theater. The ex-Marine turned UNSCOM weapons inspector said that George W. Bush has "signed off" on plans to bomb Iran in June 2005, and claimed the U.S. manipulated the results of the recent Jan. 30 elections in Iraq.
Olympians like to call the Capitol Theater "historic," but it's doubtful whether the eighty-year-old edifice has ever been the scene of more portentous revelations. The principal theme of Scott Ritter's talk was Americans' duty to protect the U.S. Constitution by taking action to bring an end to the illegal war in Iraq. But in passing, the former UNSCOM weapons inspector stunned his listeners with two pronouncements. Ritter said plans for a June attack on Iran have been submitted to President George W. Bush, and that the president has approved them. He also asserted that knowledgeable sources say U.S. officials "cooked" the results of the Jan. 30 elections in Iraq.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/21/2005
6:37:56 PM ||
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Works for me. :-D
Nice of him to take time off from diddling to bring us this welcome news.
Think maybe we could convince him to go over there as a "human" shield?
Nah, me neither.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/21/2005 19:19
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And he would know this how . . . ?
Posted by: The Doctor ||
02/21/2005 19:21
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#3
"Journalist" Dahr Jamail is a columnist at antiwar.com.
Do you really need to know more about him?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/21/2005 19:23
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"any of you young girls want a photo with the "Scottster", I'll be backstage. Leave the parents out front, so we can get to know each other"
Posted by: Scott Ritter ||
02/21/2005 19:24
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#5
May sounds like a good month for street parties and giant puppets.
Posted by: john ||
02/21/2005 19:48
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It's well known that Americans can't fight in the Brutal Afghan Winter /DEL>Choking Arabian Sandstorm Blazing Iranian Summer.
At least his pro-Saddam propaganda can be explaind by the $450,000 "film" financed by Oil For Food or Iraqi blackmail for his underaged teen tendencies, but what expains his continuing propaganda on Iraq and now Iran? I really wonder if Ritter has gone muslim.
Posted by: ed ||
02/21/2005 20:11
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Damn here goes my vacation on the Caspian Sea with all those lovely chador clad hotties...
HAMBURG - ...In recent days 24-year-old Sibel Kekilli, currently on a world tour to promote the award-winning film "Head-On", received the best actress award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival for her work in German director Fatih Akin's raw portrait of two Turkish-born residents of Hamburg.
But home in Germany, Kekilli spends much of her time under police protection following threats from members of her Turkish extended family who say she has brought shame upon them. Be on honor-killing alert.
The scandal has enthralled Germany's tabloid readers since the mass-circulation Bild newspaper plastered its pages with still photos of Kekilli in highly candid poses in flicks with titles like "Heavy Pecking Down on the Chicken Farm". Beats ogrish be-heading vids. And why shouldn't chicken farmers have a little fun?
Kekilli's devout Moslem father, living in Germany since 1977, was tracked down by reporters and news crews, who badgered him for details about his daughter's upbringing. Yeah, Muslimutts really assimilate well over 28 years.
"The disgrace is too great for the family," Kekilli's father said. "Sibel moved to Hamburg two years ago. I thought she was working at city hall - and now this! I can never forgive her for it. I don't want to ever see her again," he said. Act 2: The Musmuts blame Jews for the porn industry.
Posted by: IToldYouSo ||
02/21/2005
5:50:49 AM ||
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Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 22:30
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#27
Hay has a sexual conotation in rural european folklore. Motels are fairly recent phenomenon in Europe. Most of the casual ilicit encounters happened ... in hay (I preferred in the middle of tall grass with blanket underneath; you could be 300 m from a 6-storey appartment building and not worry that your white ass would be iterpretted as wantom flashing; cars were not as accessible like in NA, so traditional backseats were not common setting. You could go a few clicks from a city due to small distances and find an appropriate rural settings for frolicking--until you got your own apartment or studio, which was no small feat. I put several neat branches in my bedroom for an artsy styling, not anticipating how that would come handy! Darn, the good ol' fscking times!)
Also,
chickenfarm=>farm=>hay
|=>chicken=>chick.
The synthesis => chick in hay
EFL
The European Union is on the verge of lifting the arms embargo it imposed on the People's Republic of China following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. If the E.U. carries out this threat -ââ¬" and make no mistake, this would be a genuinely hostile act against the United States -- the transatlantic tiffs of recent years could come to seem minor, and Bush could be saying a final farewell to old allies rather than renewing strategic bonds.
Over the past 18 months, Europeans have been asserting that the embargo, as French President Jacques Chirac told Chinese leader Hu Jintao during the latter's visit to Paris early last year, ''no longer makes any sense.'' On a return visit to Beijing last October, Chirac went further, declaring that denying China advanced arms was ''motivated purely and simply by hostility.'' German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder chimed in recently, telling Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao -- as the two signed another set of business deals -- that he, too, favored lifting the embargo.
It's hard to know at this point whether the Europeans are acting like fools or knaves in this drama. Chirac makes no secret of his dream of an E.U. that acts as a ''counterweight'' to American hyperpower, and he's often able to convince Schroeder that what's good for France is also good for Germany. On its own, Europe can do very little to balance the United States, as the experience of Iraq suggests, but it can accelerate the pace at which China may emerge to play that role.
But in preparing to lift the embargo, the Europeans are failing to take into account the potential blowback from the United States. Their myopia is understandable, given that the White House has said little about the consequences of arms sales to Beijing -- Rice was certainly in no mood for confrontation during her recent trip. Not to mention that the Bush administration has made plenty of sunny pronouncements about the overall state of Sino-American relations; last November, then Secretary of State Colin Powell called them "the best in 30 years."
In the short term, ending the ban on trading arms to China is almost certain to undermine what transatlantic defense cooperation remains after the Cold War -- and there's still quite a bit of it. The United States would have no choice but to assume that technology transfers to Europe would be likely to end up in Chinese hands. This should especially concern the British government, which has invested more than $2 billion in the $200-billion-plus Joint Strike Fighter program.
The long-term geostrategic implications are even more profound. European weapons in the hands of the PLA would help tip the balance in the Taiwan Strait against Taipei and pour fuel on smoldering Sino-Japanese relations. It's ironic that a Europe that takes pride in having extracted itself from centuries of great power rivalries could now exacerbate precisely such tensions in the Pacific.
There is still time for sanity to prevail. President Bush has an opportunity this week to speak frankly about the costs and consequences of lifting the embargo. He should propose a U.S.-E.U. strategic dialogue to keep an eye on China's threat to regional security and its human rights and proliferation records. Europe, in turn, would postpone its decision on the embargo as leaders from both sides work together to grapple with China's rise. Opening such a dialogue will help preserve a translatlantic relationship based, as Rice put it, on the "values that unite us."
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/21/2005
5:35:15 PM ||
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Whoa! This is from the Washington Post ... not the Times! I wonder what goaded them into printing this?
#3
The US has no right to to insist France and Germany not sell weapons to China. But they also have no right to sell BMWs, Airbus, cosmetics or anything else to the US. In addition, they should have no expectations that energy imports will be protected or otherwise not molested. They should have no expectations that US relations, forces and trade won't be shifted to states with a less than satisfactory history with France and Germany. Finally, France and Germany have no right to insist that the US not sell to Taiwan, or any other country threatened by Chinese expansionism, long range missiles that can reach out and touch Paris and Berlin.
Posted by: ed ||
02/21/2005 19:38
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Medium-range missiles to Ivory Coast, ed?
Posted by: Tom ||
02/21/2005 19:44
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#5
Ed, ever hear of the WTO? The problem is to get them not to sell to China, not to get them to replace us in NATO with China.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/21/2005 19:49
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OK, a few comments (some info from the Munich Security Conference where the issue was raised in private conversations):
The (sort of) official Schroeder position (given by defense minister Struck) is that lifting the embargo is a largely symbolic act as the "stringent" EU rules for arms exports would kick in and China wouldn't be likely to receive high tech stuff without a (secret) nod from the U.S. anyway. (Germany would never make arms deals with China that the U.S. clearly objects to). Schroeder believes that the embargo that makes it impossible to export a single pistol "offends" the Chinese sensibilities. He believes that Germany's (non arms) business with China will improve if this issue is resolved.
The German position may be only naive, the French position (given by defense minister Alliot-Marie) is not. She claims that China will be able to produce all those high tech weapons itself, so why not sell the stuff to them before and make some profit. (What she did not say of course that it suits France's idea of a multipolar world).
Interestingly enough the British who have the closest collaboration with the US in weapon technology seem no longer to oppose the lifting of the embargo (for reasons closer to the German positions), but will probably want very strict control and will not agree to selling anything that could worry the U.S.
One position shared by all three nations was that measures should be taken to avoid a closer military relationship between China and Russia. Mr Ivanov provided some interesting insights in that matter.
#7
So everybody has a good reason, once again, to ignore the security concerns of the U. S. Isn't anybody over there worried about the Americans doing something stupid, like getting fed up with the Europeans? The Democrats are going to be desparate to get in the White House in '08. The Republicans will have no obvious candidate. This will be the first election since 1968 that both Parties' nomination will be up for grabs. It is not outside the realm of possibility that one could run on an anti-European isolationist platform. The good guys need to win in '06 and put a stop to this nonsense.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/21/2005 20:15
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#8
typical French - he was gonna get it somewhere, why shouldn't I bend over and make some money at it...there's a word for that - whores
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 20:15
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#9
OK, I just found out that Alliot-Marie gave an interview published by the Financial Times and Les Echos making her points:
"Alliot-Marie argued in the interview also published in French economic daily Les Echos that the country would soon be able to develop such technology itself, regardless.
"China is rapidly developing its industry, and today our experts say that in five years China could make exactly the same arms that we have today," France's first female defence minister told the British newspaper.
"And they will do it if they cannot import," she said.
"So maybe if we can sell them the arms, they will not make them. And in five years' time they will not have the technology to make them."
#11
OK, I can't resist either: One more f'ing French a$$hole that's never gonna visit the ranch.
Posted by: Tom ||
02/21/2005 20:53
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#12
j'accuse - I rest my case LOL
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 20:58
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#13
Having seen Chinese manufacturing, I can say that it is much better to let the Chinese make their own military hardware, rather than letting them import top-quality foreign stuff.
It's a stereotype, but my experience is that Chinese manufacturers are great at making things that are already known, and terrible at innovating new goods. You give them some plans and a target date, and they'll whip things into shape and deliver on time and on budget. But throw them into a conference room together and demand a list of new ideas...I think most of them would chuckle to themselves if they considered the idea of making a new product all by themselves.
Declaring himself "the most dangerous man in America," former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura hinted Sunday at a possible campaign for president in 2008. Ventura, the featured opening night speaker at Dickinson College's 42nd Annual Public Affairs Symposium (PAS), officially spoke on "Fitness, Physique & Psyche." However, it was quickly clear that the political arena remains his passion. Ventura, 53, charmed the audience with anecdotes of his political past while taking risky positions on some of the most delicate issues of the day ââ¬" such as same-sex marriage and First Amendment rights. "Can anybody tell me something that government don't regulate?" he asked.
"Your sleep," a man yelled out.
"Sure they do," Ventura responded without pause. "They got them tags on the mattresses, don't they?.. There's nothing government don't regulate. And I don't think that's right."
For the record, the ex-pro wrestler assessed his chances of running for president as "unlikely." But he sure sounded like a candidate. "I can beat these guys —and they need to be beaten," Ventura said. "We have a two-party system in America and it sucks." If he were to run for president, Ventura hardly has to worry about being criticized for waffling on tough issues. He calls himself a fiscal conservative and a social liberal "just like most of you."
The First Amendment? Ventura claims America's government is siding with "morality over freedom." The war in Iraq? The former Navy SEAL and Vietnam veteran is opposed. Gay marriage? Ventura has a plan to solve that one too: have all marriages —gay and straight —officially recognized as civil unions by governments. He told a story of a gay former wrestler who was barred from his long-time companion's hospital room because he was not a spouse or next-of-kin. "Government has no right to tell you who to fall in love with," he said to loud applause. "Let the churches acknowledge marriage. Then the churches could decide not to acknowledge gay marriage — and they have every right to do that."
Now Ventura teaches at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government as a visiting fellow in the Institute of Politics, where his group study focuses on third-party politics. Urging Dickinson students to "become the third party movement," he reminded the audience that three political parties thrived during Abe Lincoln's day. To prepare for life as a college professor, Ventura grew a wild mane of long hair and a full beard that he had braided to resemble Captain Sparrow, a character in the 2003 cinema hit, "Pirates of the Caribbean." Pointing to his appearance, Ventura bragged: "There isn't a Republican or a Democrat in this United States who would have the (gumption) to do this." The picture at the link convinces me he's got a shot.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/21/2005
5:20:59 PM ||
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Personally, I think he should SAVE his money, time and effort. He probably figures if Hillary can run, JOhn Kerry ....why not ME?
Andrea
Posted by: Andrea ||
02/21/2005 17:59
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Can't he be nominated for Assisant Secretary of State for the middle east? Now that Richard Armitage is gone, there is a severe shortage of large bald mean-looking fat guys at State.
Posted by: ed ||
02/21/2005 18:05
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#3
Oh yeah, go for it, Jesse! A smorgasbord of solutions. A Candidate for every Faction. The Party of Diversity lives up to it name. Very Noble.
#4
Jesse doesn't seem as noble as he first did - his antics when Arnold ran made him out to be a low-rent John McCain, stabbing his friends for media time
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 18:11
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#5
God help us. How many floats in the inagural parade would be decorated with feather boas...
#8
Actually I wonder if Jessie would be Hillary's worst nightmare. He could potentially siphon off more Dems than Reps. Look for Hill to buy him off. He's just making noise to see who reacts.
Posted by: john ||
02/21/2005 19:57
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#9
Go for it, Jesse. Al Sharpton's no fun anymore.
Posted by: Tom ||
02/21/2005 20:05
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A Swiss think-tank has recommended teaching Islam in schools as it helps the second and third generation of the Muslim community integrate into society.
The Swiss Academy for Development (SAD) cited in a recent study the success story of teaching Islam in schools in the two cities of Kriens and Ebikon, central Switzerland, in the 2002/03 school year.
"The results of the experience exceeded all expectations and showed a positive feedback," said the study, released on February 15.
"It can serve as a model for all cities across the country. Such schools encourage Muslim students adhere to their identity as they learn their religion in the languages used in the country," it added, referring to the four official languages German, French, Italian and Romansch.
The study further said that the move is aimed at removing ethnic tensions as Muslims feel that they are being discriminated against for no reason other than their religion or background though a large portion of them do hold the Swiss citizenship or are permanent residents.
The academy called for providing basic finances for the project and enhancing cross-fertilization in the country.
Founded in 1991 and based in Biel-Bienne, SAD is a politically independent, non-profit foundation.
It is dedicated to the question of how societies handle social change and cultural diversity.
Federal authorities have put the study into consideration and signaled readiness to hold talks with academicians and experts in this regard.
In 2001, the Union of Muslim Organizations in the district of Luzern managed to get the government go-ahead for teaching Islam in Kriens and Ebikon, where a large number of Muslim students are enrolled in schools.
The body had offered to pay for schoolbooks, teachers' salaries and other expenses.
Appealing
The study further concluded that it was better for Muslim students to have their religion classes in schools other than in mosques.
"When they go to mosques, they feel as if they are doing it out of duty since most of these classes fall on weekends."
The program has indeed appealed to Swiss Muslims, who hailed its modern and endearing methods.
"My daughter has grown up here and speaks fluent German. She finds religion classes in her school very appealing," Bosnian-born Murad Mildic told IslamOnline.net.
Munira Bin Hassan, of Tunisian origin, said that ever since their three sons joined the religion classes in school, they demonstrated great enthusiasm for learning more about Islam.
"There is no problem with the teaching method in mosques, but it is too classic for my sons," she told IOL.
Pakistani-born Momtaz Khan is proud that his son and daughter can brilliantly defend their religion.
"They impress me when they talk about Islamic tenets like fasting or hijab," he said.
Many parents who spoke to IOL also paid tribute to Mrs. Regina Steiner, a Swiss teacher who embraced Islam 13 years ago, for helping their children love religion classes.
Right-Wing Obstacle
Experts, however, see right-wingers are a major obstacle to expand the teaching of Islam to other areas.
Officials in Luzern have already refused to support programs for qualifying imams and teachers of the Muslim faith in the district.
"The Muslim community in Luzern will definitely be disappointed at this kind of marginalization," Bruno Staehli, an educational expert, told IOL.
The right-wing Swiss Peoples Party (SVP) has launched a ferocious campaign warning of "Islamizing" Luzern, portraying its famous tower as a minaret.
In 2004, Swiss Muslims withstood media onslaught, demonstrating to the public that they were an integral part of society.
Day in and day out, headlines like "The Islamic Terror is Coming", "Country Vs. Radicalism", "Islamists Living With Us," "Hijab in Parliament" and "Swiss Funds for Islamic Terror" were splashed by newspapers.
Islam is the second religion in Switzerland after Christianity. The country is home to 330,000 Muslims representing a sizable 4.5 percent of the country's some eight million people.
Forty-three percent of the Muslim community is of Turkish origin.
Posted by: tipper ||
02/21/2005
5:19:24 AM ||
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#1
Want to bet the money actually comes from Saudi and one brand of Islam is being taught?
#2
Could be a good idea. This way muslims won't feel opresses, and others will feel "safe" about islamic beliefs. Muslims will no longer be seen as terrorists since the country is overseeing what they study. (not that it needs any. I bet swiss teachers are amazed at the peacefulness of Islam)
#3
I bet swiss teachers are amazed at the peacefulness of Islam
Does the word 'Beslan' mean anything to you? Remind yourself which religion the men who raped the schoolgirls, shot the teachers and blew up infants belonged to.
#9
GEntle: "claimed" they belonged to.
- I distinctly remember one of the Beslan murderers, being filmed by one of their number, reciting a muslim prayer in arabic. What exactly are you trying to say? - that these animals weren't muslim or simply that they misrepresent your religion?
Posted by: Howard UK ||
02/21/2005 6:32
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#10
"claimed" they belonged to.
In precisely the same way that people like you claim to be 'moderate' representatives of your religion yet never have a harsh word to say about your co-religionists who engage in murder in the name of your shared superstition. You are no moderate - you make evasions and excuses for murders committed in your name. You make me sick. I know plenty of moderate Muslims in the West. They're moderate because they don't take all your brand of ME primitivism seriously at all.
#11
I will never forget or forgive the Beslan baby killers. Anyone who defends them or the mad death cult they belong to deserves nothing but wrath and scorn.
The people who comitted that school crime, and I don't care who the hell they claim to be, are worse than animals, and I would sentance them all to death if it were in my hands.
They do NOT represent Islam. Even considering it is crazy.
Islam only allows killing in self defence, and in war (those who fight). In no case is the killing of a child allowed.
For Gods sake, Islam doesn't even condone abortain!
#13
Long time no comment, Gentle. Where's my hubby?
Sentance? Abortain? No offence, but take an English course, would you? Or atleast spring for a dictionary.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/21/2005 8:02
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#14
Hey, "Gentle", why don't you take some lessons in recent history. Islam is at the heart of hundreds of wars, massacres, and crimes all over the world. Once you look at the life of Mohammed (spit upon him) you realize that's what he wanted.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/21/2005 8:11
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#15
What do you want me to say?
For starters, you could acknowledge, without trying to deny the truth, that murderers such as the Beslan killers, al Qaeda, Hizb'Allah, Zarqawi's bunch etc. are members of the same religion as yourself and that their behaviour is first and foremost a problem for people like yourself to deal with. Don't try to pretend you're not in the same religious bed as them. If mainstream Islam wants to kick them out, it needs to do it itself. It needs to concentrate on issuing fatwas against terrorists, and stop issuing fatwas against apostates and critics.
Why is there so much support for the actions of terrorist groups like Hamas and the Iraqi 'insurgents' in the Islamic ME if in no case is the killing of a child [or non-combatant] allowed? You could not defend suicide bombing and random rocket attacks if you believe that.
Look at the other religions in this world and tell me the name of one other which has as many murderous groups associated with it as Islam has. To many people in the civilised world, terrorism looks like Islam's only significant cultural export.
#17
It is not what Prophet Mohammed wanted, may peace be upon him.
It certainly is. Go look up what Mohammed (piss, shit, and blood be upon him) said in the "Verse of the Sword". Then contemplate the doctrine of abrogation, and that this was one of the last things the barbarian pedophile king said.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/21/2005 8:26
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#18
You just can't be civil, can you?
He did not want it. Sword verse! There is no such thing. Just shows where you get your "so called" information!
#19
Well...well. Look who has returned. A prime representative of the Culture of Deceit. The undeclared hudna is over. She's back to spread her lies and half truths. Always the apologist for the rank and file of her ideology.
Posted by: Mark Z. ||
02/21/2005 8:48
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#20
Still lying after all these months? No Sword verse? LOL!
âAnd fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and polytheism, i.e. worshipping others besides Allaah), and the religion (worship) will all be for Allaah Alone [in the whole of the world]â [al-Anfaal 8:39]
âThen when the Sacred Months (the 1st, 7th, 11th, and 12th months of the Islamic calendar) have passed, then kill the Mushrikoon (see V.2:105) wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and lie in wait for them in each and every ambush. But if they repent [by rejecting Shirk (polytheism) and accept Islamic Monotheism] and perform As‑Salaah (Iqaamat-as-Salaah), and give Zakaah, then leave their way free. Verily, Allaah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Mercifulâ [al-Tawbah 9:5]
This verse is known as Ayat al-Sayf (the verse of the sword).
These and similar verses abrogate the verses which say that there is no compulsion to become Muslim.
(And I *AM* being civil. As civil as you deserve, you lying harpy.)
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/21/2005 8:52
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#22
Where do I start?
1) It should be:
"And fight them so it is not a Fitnah"
2) you've got the meaning of Fitnah wrong.
Oh' and just about everything else.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/21/2005 9:01
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#24
Where do I start?
Stop lying.
Or do you believe your lies are (yet another) religious obligation? Gotta hide the truth from the kaffir, so they don't realize what you want to do, eh?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/21/2005 9:03
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#25
Here we go. I'll bet this thread goes over 85. Any other predictions out there?
#26
Sorry Gentle, but you just pegged my BS meter.
What happened is Beslan *was* Islam - no major Islamic organization has denounced it (exept when asked - and then one-tenth-heartedly). What is happening in Sudan - the murders, rapes, etc... is being done by Muslims (against muslims true but then in Islam, Arab muslims are better or holier then other (black) muslims and who cares? According to Mohammed (may he roast in hell) blacks have the heart of a donkey anyway...).
And how about the people in Medina. Your Mohammed HIMSELF (may he roast in hell) had the jewish men beheaded in front of their own wives and children. But that wasn't enough, not for mighty mo (merih), he had to rape the women (and I suspect children too) that very night!
Every religion has its share of wackos and extreamists (look at that Catholic school bombing in Northern Ireland... Which everyone (except the murders) quickly and fevorously denounced). But Islam makes it an insitution and glorifies it.
#28
What I find fascinating is that first she denies the existence of the Verse of the Sword, then when confronted with it, babbles something about us getting the terms wrong. Well, which is it -- does it simply not exist, or do we and 99% of the Muslim world just have it wrong?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/21/2005 9:22
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True. The literal meaning relates to discovery of impurities in metals by melting them. It has several meanings within Islam but sometimes refers to what Christians would call the trials & tribulations of man just before the end times. Mohammed in his ultimate wisdom prophecized signs of the impending apocalypse including:
They shall construct high-rise buildings.
Silk garments will be worn by men.
Divorces will become a common practice.
The weather shall be hot despite rains.
The people shall put on skin-garments.
Gold will become widely used.
Silver will be in great demand.
Lofty minarets will rise from the mosques.
Wine will be drunk freely.
Woman and man shall be partners in trade....
Men will imitate women and women will imitate men.Women engaged in the singing profession will be held in great esteem and accorded high status.
Musical instruments will be kept and preserved with care.
Wine will be drunk by road-sides.
The number of the Police will increase.
Appenzell Ausserrhoden (AR) was the last canton to give women the vote; Appenzell Innerrhoden (AI) had to be forced by the Swiss federal court ("Bundesgericht") to give women the vote (27-nov-1990).
#42
I'm not sure whether to mock the name of the think-tank or not, so I'll simply say that if this works, that's great.
A few additional thoughts, however:
- What does it say about the state of a religion when the state begins teaching it instead of the religous figures who are supposed to be leading? (I'm not saying that we should let the extremists teach their particular brand of idiocy, I'm just asking a general question).
- Why is Islam getting special treatment? Are they planning to do this with Hinduism and Christianity and Judiasm, too?
- Are non-Muslim students going to have to take these classes eventually?
Personally, I think it's one of those ideas that sounds real, real good, but will go terribly wrong in the end. And if Islam is being singled out as a "special" religion, does that mean it's special in the same way as the kid in my high school who got "special instruction" because he drooled and babbled incoherent sentences? (Not that I'm knocking him; he was a nice kid, never tried to blow anyone up . . .)
Posted by: The Doctor ||
02/21/2005 12:21
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#44
Actually women in Appenzell could participate in Federal votes, but not in State (Canton) votes. That's what made it easy for the Federal Supreme Court to impose a fix.
Note also that the "Landsgemeinde" was still used there until not very long ago, i.e. get all the men out in a large field and see if a majority can be divined by sight or sound... So, how was a field of men ever going to roar approval of a right for those who weren't allowed in?
#45
Where hypocrisy prospers, none dare call it hypocrisy. Muslim butt - especially Shiite - gets kissed here. I am the only one with butt-kick credentials. Muslimutts don't deserve democracy until they come around to my line of thinking. I love the smell of napalm in the morning, and charcoal in the afternoon. And don't talk back.
#50
MacNails:Switzerland didn't give women the vote till 1971 , don't think much of their esteemed 'think tank ' :)
MN-They were in the tank while they were thinking. That's why women couldn't vote 'till 1971...Remember, "The Swiss never take sides" {Egotistical, narcisistic, bastards)
anonymous2u:First we have to define child - then killing.
a2u - Or as Bubba Clinton would say, "It depends on what the meaning of child is..."
#52
Kalle, those are great! Those WWJDs always got on my nerves - Jesus being the Son of God, he's naturally going to be doing things slightly differently than the rest of us fallen humans. But those are far more applicable!
Posted by: The Doctor ||
02/21/2005 16:40
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#53
So, "Gentle" has returned . . . I predict Antiwar will also be returning soon. I don't know why they like to pop up now and then. They're just phoney-baloney-pretend-to-be-female-propaganda-slinging operatives whose goal is to attempt to "educate" bloggers in favor of Islam. And BTW, this time around, "Gentle's" manner of speech is significantly different from earlier posts. The GROUP is back!
Can't believe Switzerland is helping in the jihad. They probably think that if they themselves allow and promote the teaching of Islam, then the Moslems will respect them and leave them alone. Guess they don't too much about militant Islam. Hopefully, what is taught in schools will be a moderate version of the religion. We'll see.
The leader of an Islamic party who is expected to be named Iraq's new prime minister in the next few days has urged Tony Blair not to pull out British troops. Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who would be the first Shia to be in charge of the Iraqi government, confounded his critics by saying that his country could not maintain order without the help of foreign soldiers. "Iraq's security services need more personnel, training and equipment," he said yesterday. "We need their presence for a certain time till we can depend on ourselves 100 per cent. "There are many people still working for Saddam Hussein, terrorists from outside, and there is still the 'mafia'. Blood is spilled. How would it be if the troops left?"
Dr Jaafari, 58, the present interim vice-president, has emerged as the frontrunner to be premier after weeks of negotiations within the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shia list that received 48 per cent of the vote in the Jan 30 elections and a narrow majority of seats. The alliance is expected to appoint him as early as tomorrow. The physician, who lived in London for the past 20 years, heads the Da'wa Party, the oldest Islamic political party in Iraq, with close ties to Iran. It was founded with the goal of turning Iraq into a religious state based on Islamic law. In 2003 Dr Jaafari was insisting all foreign troops had to leave Iraq within a year.
But yesterday he said that if elected premier he would be guided by pragmatism not ideology. "Not all Iraqis are Muslim, not all Muslims are Shia and not all Shia are Islamic," he said. "You have to take into consideration the characteristics of a country and we are very different from Iran." He insists his "Sunni brothers" - including former members of the Ba'ath party - would be included in bodies drafting the new constitution as long as they had not been involved in violence.
Members may be appointed to make up for their lack of representation in parliament resulting from the Sunni boycott of the election. Though Islam would be the official religion of the state it would not be the only source of the constitution, he said. Dr Jaafari is widely respected, even among moderate Sunnis, and is one of Iraq's most recognised politicians. He fled Iraq in 1980 when Saddam began a crackdown on internal opposition. He went first to Iran and later to Britain, where his family home is still in Wembley, north London, and worked as a GP.
Posted by: Bulldog ||
02/21/2005
5:08:07 AM ||
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#1
Has the tiniest glimmer of reality peeked into his previous typically Arab (read: wildly exaggerated and scatterbrained) comments?
Lol! Breathtaking! I offer a massive F**kin' Duh! for the man! It's a little different when it gets real (read: your ass is on the line), eh, Dr?
The canning departure of CNN news executive Eason Jordan heh came swiftly after reports of his apparent claim at a forum in Switzerland that journalists in Iraq had been deliberately killed by American soldiers. Offering no evidence to support the charge, Jordan resigned under a hail of criticism.
In just months, CBS ousted senior executives held responsible for airing a disastrously flawed segment on President Bush's Air National Guard service. So, too, the New York Times and USA Today acted within months against serial falsifiers Jayson Blair and Jack Kelley, firing senior executives as well as the individual perpetrators, and instituting measures to guard against future infractions.
Far different has been the response of the influential France 2 Television network, in an infamous and unresolved case of gross misconduct by its journalists. Charles Enderlin, Israel-based correspondent for the network, and his Palestinian cameraman, Talal Abu-Rahma, are directly responsible for the calumny spread worldwide against Israel starting September 30, 2000 in the Muhammad al-Dura affair.
Enderlin's voice-over told France 2 viewers that they were seeing footage shot by Abu-Rahma at Gaza's Netzarim junction earlier that day. As images unfolded of 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dura cowering against his father, Enderlin stated the two are "the target of fire coming from the Israeli position. The child signals, but... there's a new burst of gunfire... The child is dead and the father is wounded."
France 2 then promptly gave the video — barely 55 seconds in length — free of charge to other media outlets. The image of the boy ostensibly shot dead by Israeli guns raced around the world.
Coming as it did in the first days of the Palestinian uprising, the dramatic scenes playing continuously on television stoked the violence.
In Arab nations, al-Dura was quickly mythologized as an emblem of alleged Israeli cruelty, with streets, parks, stamps and newborns named after him. Videos recreated the event, some with calls for young people to seek raisins, oops, virginians "martyrdom" and paradise with al-Dura.
Not everything is known about the chaotic events at Netzarim and the circumstances of the al-Dura case, but certain things are.
First, the footage contains no evidence at all that Israeli soldiers shot al-Dura. Neither in the 55 seconds broadcast around the globe nor in the 27 remaining minutes filmed by Abu-Rahma are there any soldiers in view. It is not logistically possible that the Israeli soldiers present that day, barricaded inside a building across the intersection, could have shot the boy and his father, huddled behind a concrete barrel blocking the line of fire. As James Fallows wrote in an investigation of the case for The Atlantic Monthly (June 2003): "Whatever happened to him, he was not shot by the Israeli soldiers..."
A recent column in the French newspaper Le Figaro (January 25, 2005) reiterated this, and emphasized what others have said - that a review of the terrain where the incident occurred incriminates Palestinian, not Israeli, bullets.
Second, the footage does not contain visual evidence that al-Dura died. Though he collapses, the tape ends abruptly with the boy inert; a further frame, omitted by Enderlin from the broadcast, shows al-Dura raising his head and arm. But this is the last image.
To explain the odd, truncated footage, Enderlin repeatedly claimed he omitted the "agony of the child" - his dying - because it was unbearable to witness.
However, when several French journalists prevailed on France 2 to let them view the unreleased 27 minutes, they found no "agony of the child" - no excruciating scenes of a suffering al-Dura.
Enderlin lied, and his lie heightened the sense of a brutal act committed by Israel.
Third, numerous analysts have noted that in footage taken of the crowds at Netzarim there are clearly instances of Palestinians staging events. The French journalists who viewed the France 2 footage saw this as well, including repeated instances of Palestinians faking injuries followed by the immediate arrival of ambulances to carry away the pseudo-wounded. While no video evidence proved the al-Dura incident was staged, the prevalence of such activity at the time is relevant to any inquiry.
Enderlin has replied to criticism by retorting the case may never be resolved, but for him the "image [as he conveyed it] corresponded to the reality of the situation."
Enderlin states that in his view Israel was using excessive force against Palestinians, and clearly in his mind a journalist can distort and embellish the facts to fit his political opinions.
Four and a half years later, France 2 has yet to issue any statement correcting its reprehensible and unethical al-Dura story, or to take action against Enderlin, Abu-Rahma or others with a hand in the matter.
This should concern everyone who appreciates the enormous damage caused by reckless and ideologically-driven journalism.
When he was arrested in Dubai in July 2001, Djamel Beghal, a French Algerian already known to French services, confessed he had been ordered by Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to set up a terrorist cell to strike US interests in France. He admitted he had attended meetings in Afghanistan's training camps in preparation to blow up the US Embassy in Paris. But when he was later extradited to France, Beghal denied any involvement in terrorist activities. During his trial in Paris, Beghal delivered a detailed testimony accusing Emirates interrogators of having psychologically and physically tortured him to accept an already established scenario. "This attack never existed, neither in my imagination, nor in reality," said Beghal.
Beghal, who is being judged with five co-defendants, is accused of recruiting terrorists and leading a terrorist cell in France with ramifications throughout Western Europe in Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom.
Last week, the prosecution requested a 10-year prison sentence against Beghal, 39, and his suspected accomplice Kamel Daoudi, 30, the legal maximum for the "association of bandits in connection with a terrorist enterprise". The verdict is expected on March 15.
Beghal's arrest subsequently led to the dismantlement of the so-called "Beghal network" in Corbeil-Essonnes, France, where he had lived until 1997, before leaving for the United Kingdom - where he met the influential Salafist preacher Abu Qatada - and later Germany and Pakistan. The kamikaze in the alleged planned attack would have been Tunisian Nizar Trabelsi, a former soccer player. Trabelsi was arrested in Belgium in September 2001, two days after the September 11 attacks, and sentenced to 10 years in jail two years later. He admitted he was preparing a terrorist attack, but said his target was a military base in Belgium.
Beghal's main co-defendant Kamel Daoudi, a computer scientist suspected of taking care of the logistics, was arrested in England and extradited to France. Last June, four members of the network were sentenced in the Netherlands, including French convert Jerome Courtailler.
Like Zakarias Moussaoui and shoe bomber Richard Reid, among others, Beghal attended the now famous Finsbury Park mosque led by Abu Hamza al-Masri. Several well-known Islamic radicals - among whom many have been involved in terrorism plots - found sanctuary in Great Britain, a country labelled "soft" on religious extremism.
From the early 1990s, North African militants - mainly immigrants who failed to fully integrate into their host country and turned to radical Islam, and a few converts - established sleeper cells in several European countries. At that time the ongoing Algerian civil war was partly fought from Europe, from the French neighborhoods to London, where Islamic leaders organized their support for armed groups in their war against the Algerian state.
According to experts, Algerian-linked terrorist groups were actually prominent until 2001. "They were fierce, they had grand schemes [they hijacked an Air France airbus leaving for Paris in 1994]," says Evan Kohlmann, author of al-Qaeda's Jihad in Europe.
Most al-Qaeda cells discovered in Europe have links to the Algerian Salafist Group for Prayer and Combat, known by its acronym GSPC, an organization suspected in several terrorist plots in Europe and the United States. A splinter group of the Armed Islamic Groups (GIA), GSPC was created under the initiative of bin Laden by GIA emir Hassan Hattab in 1998. A year earlier, the GIA had started losing foreign support due to its massive slaughter of Algerian civilians. Bin Laden, who had previously supported the GIA, financed this new Salafist organization which would distinguish itself from the then discredited GIA in order to continue to fight the "jihad" in Algeria.
The GSPC is accused of planning attacks during the soccer World Cup held in Paris in 1998 and against the Strasbourg Christmas market and cathedral in 2000. "GSPC remains a grave threat in Europe. There are networks linked to al-Qaeda and GSPC in England, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain ... This network of North Africans will continue to be a threat to international security in the short and long term," explains researcher Jonathan Schanzer.
According to Kohlmann, the Algerian branch is "still there but not as influential" today. More recent organizations like the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM), "the children of the GIA and GSPC", learned from their predecessors' mistakes and are now taking the lead of the terrorist network in the region. The GICM was involved in the terrorist attacks in Casablanca in May 2003 and Madrid in March 2004.
But although it has been weakened due to heavy losses in its ranks, the GSPC continues to be a nightmare for Algerian security services. On January 3, 18 soldiers and militiamen were killed in an ambush set up by the GSPC in the area of Biskra. Two policemen were later killed and one civilian was injured when suspected GSPC militants attacked a foot patrol in Tizi Ghenif, 100 kilometers southeast of Algiers.
While vowing to maintain efforts to fight the GSPC, Algerian authorities have publicly expressed satisfaction at the near eradication of the GIA. With the killing last July of former GIA chief Rachid Oukali - alias Abou Tourab - publicly announced, as well as the death last December of its last chief Younes - alias Lyes - they proudly claimed only "about 30" GIA fighters were still at large.
The GIA, responsible for the blind murder of civilians, the targeted killings of intellectuals and the Paris metro bombings in 1995, had greatly declined in recent years. An amnesty launched in 1999 by Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, followed by hundreds of fighters, divided the group, already torn by internal power struggles.
Lately, amid a heated debate surrounding an expansion of the amnesty, Algerian leaders promised the same fate to the GSPC, which has lost several members in military operations in recent months. But last Sunday, the GSPC announced the exclusion of its founder Hattab, officially for accepting the amnesty proposal. The group is now part of the global al-Qaeda nebula. Recently, it re-expressed its ties to al-Qaeda by vowing allegiance to al-Zarqawi. In a statement on January 24, GSPC leader Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud expressed his congratulations to al-Zarqawi in response to the latter's message to international al-Qaeda "affiliate" organizations, among which the GSPC was included.
Despite its weakening presence at home, the group may indeed be poised to pursue a different path on both shores of the Mediterranean Sea. "The European network of the GSPC is sufficiently distinct and separate from its Algerian counterpart that it can survive independently," explains Kohlmann. "I think it is significant that Hassan Hattab has surrendered [apparently] because he was not in favor of using international terrorism as a prime instrument of policy. Those who have succeeded him in the GSPC harbor no such reservations. You might say that Hattab's downfall may ironically serve to remove a previous political roadblock to GSPC-inspired terrorist attacks in Europe."
This article starring:
ABU HAMZA AL MASRI
al-Qaeda in Europe
ABU MUSAB ABDEL WADUD
Salafist Group for Prayer and Combat
ABU MUSAB AL ZARQAWI
al-Qaeda in Europe
ABU QATADA
al-Qaeda in Europe
ABU TURAB
Armed Islamic Groups
DJAMEL BEGHAL
al-Qaeda in Europe
Finsbury Park mosque
HASAN HATTAB
Salafist Group for Prayer and Combat
KAMEL DAUDI
al-Qaeda in Europe
NIZAR TRABELSI
al-Qaeda in Europe
RACHID UKALI
Armed Islamic Groups
RICHARD REID
al-Qaeda in Europe
ZAKARIAS MUSAUI
al-Qaeda in Europe
Armed Islamic Groups
Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group
Salafist Group for Prayer and Combat
Posted by: tipper ||
02/21/2005
4:34:00 AM ||
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Bush Presses Europe to Back Middle East Democracy
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany needs room to kneel "common ground" with the United States and the two countries have resolved differences over Iraq, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was quoted as saying ahead of President Bush's visit.
"I'm firmly convinced that Europe, and above all we Germans, need common ground with the United States," Schroeder said in an interview with the Allgemeine Zeitung Mainz newspaper.
Bush is due to meet Schroeder, whose opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq strained Germany's traditionally close ties with the U.S, in the southwestern city of Mainz on Wednesday. "There were differences in the past because of the Iraq war," Schroeder told the newspaper in an advance copy of the interview due to be published on Tuesday. "However, these differences have been surmounted."
Since the war, Schroeder has worked to mend ties with Washington but recently pissed off ruffled U.S. feathers by saying the transatlantic NATO alliance was in need of a revamp.
Although he said Germany and the U.S. had a collective interest in seeing a stable and democratic Iraq, Schroeder reiterated his country would not send any troops there.
"We will not send any troops to Iraq. President Bush knows our position. He accepts and respects it," said Schroeder.
Schroeder added that his talks with Bush would encompass ways of strengthening the transatlantic partnership and cooperation on environmental protection and climate control.
Speaking in Brussels on the first day of his European tour on Monday, Bush urged Europe to move on from divisions on Iraq and work together to advance Middle East peace, as well as put pressure on Russia to renew its commitment to democracy. Wot a wuss.
BAGHDAD ââ¬" U.S. Marines stepped up operations against insurgents in Ramadi on Sunday, part of an effort to clamp down on rebel strongholds as Iraqis tried to determine the shape of their new government.
Marines set up checkpoints, began inspecting vehicles and imposed a curfew on the city, capital of Sunni-dominated Al Anbar province, where Iraqââ¬s insurgents have been most active.
A Marine spokesman downplayed comparisons to the assault on the neighboring city of Fallouja in November, when more than 70 Marines and at least 1,200 insurgents were killed in an intense battle to expel guerrilla fighters.
The spokesman said the Ramadi operation was designed to ensure a peaceful transition from Iraqââ¬s interim government to the transitional government now forming after a national election last month.
The Marines also set up similar security measures in nearby villages along the Euphrates River.
The operation "is designed to be more proactive as opposed to reactive," said 1st Lt. Nathan Braden, with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. "The extremists from Fallouja are not taking hold in Ramadi. The insurgency in Ramadi seems to be more criminal in nature."
Ramadi residents said the Marine positions around the town had frightened locals and emboldened insurgents, who could be seen running through the streets with AK-47s and rocket-propelled-grenade launchers.
"The city is paralyzed. All the shops and offices are closed. We are waiting for the security situation to get worse," said Abdul- Altif Abdullah, a 43-year-old provincial official, in a telephone interview.
City officials said there had been sporadic clashes in industrial areas in the eastern part of the city and a steady flow of helicopters and other aircraft overhead. They described a tense mood in the city.
"The citizens think that maybe this is part of an American plan to attack the city," said Saad Sayadh, 40, another regional official reached by phone.
The new operation came after two days of bloodshed that saw hundreds of Iraqis killed or wounded, most of them while celebrating Ashura, the most solemn day of the year for Shiite Muslims.
Sunday saw a marked decrease in the number of incidents. A car bomber blew himself up near a mosque in Kirkuk in northern Iraq late Saturday. Nobody else was killed or injured in the blast, an Iraqi police official said on condition of anonymity.
Two Kurds were also killed in Kirkuk when a fire broke out in an ammunition depot, apparently detonating some of the munitions.
Three other people were killed there by gunfire from an unknown assailant, said Iraqi Police Col. Sarhad Qadir.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/21/2005
4:05:25 PM ||
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Other than the couple hundred thousand that Sammy whacked and tossed into mass graves, they mean.
LONDON, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Nearly two years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, women there are no better off than under the rule of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, the human rights group Amnesty International said on Tuesday. In a report entitled "Iraq -- Decades of Suffering," it said that while the systematic repression under Saddam had ended, ...
Oh yeah, that.
... it had been replaced by increased murders, and sexual abuse -- including by U.S. forces.
First hundred words and there it is, evil US forces.
Washington promised that the overthrow of Saddam would free the Iraqi people from years of oppression and set them on the road to democracy. But Amnesty said post-war insecurity had left women at risk of violence and curtailed their freedoms. "The lawlessness and increased killings, abductions and rapes that followed the overthrow of the government of Saddam Hussein have restricted women's freedom of movement and their ability to go to school or to work," Amnesty said.
Not that that corresponds to reality, but keep going.
"Women have been subjected to sexual threats by members of the U.S.-led forces and some women detained by U.S. forces have been sexually abused, possibly raped," it added.
How 'bout turning over any evidence you have on that to the Judge Advocate General? They'll know what to do with it.
Amnesty said several women detained by U.S. troops had spoken in interviews with them of beatings, threats of rape, humiliating treatment and long periods of solitary confinement.
Several.
The Pentagon said it had not seen the report, but took any allegations of detainee abuse seriously. "We have demonstrated our commitment to ensuring that kind of behaviour is identified and dealt with properly," spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Joe Richard said in Washington. "With this report, we would like the opportunity to review it and to test the validity of the allegations."
Exactly the right response.
Amnesty said women's rights activists and political leaders had also been targeted by armed insurgent groups.
And who might those "armed insurgent groups" be? Any possible clue here that the US is trying to protect wimmin by killing Ba'athists and jihadis?
Women continued to suffer legal discrimination under laws that granted husbands effective impunity to beat their wives and treated so-called "honour" killers leniently, the group said. "Within their own communities, many women and girls remain at risk of death from male relatives if they are accused of behaviour held to have brought dishonour on the family," Amnesty said, noting some attempts by religious zealots to make the laws even more repressive against women.
Sorta like the whole of the Middle East.
Here's the complaint in a nutshell -- it isn't perfect in Iraq today, therefore it's all wrong and we should never had invaded.
But on the positive side, the report said several women's rights groups had been formed -- including ones that focused on the protection of women from violence.
A committee! Awright! Send for the UN!
Amnesty called on the Iraqi authorities and newly elected members of the National Assembly to enshrine the rights of women in the new constitution. This included treating honour killings as murder, outlawing violence within marriage and making sure that the punishment was commensurate with the crime committed.
But even if they do, life still won't be perfect and therefore it was all wrong to remove Sammy, ya know?
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/21/2005
3:21:16 PM ||
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#1
Interesting, the report is not available on the AI site.
Also interesting is that the index of articles by country for Iraq shows AI report volume by year of:
None of the reports before 2003 concerned women. It doesn't appear AI knows much about the rights of women under Saddam or chose to hide what it knew. Perhaps Eason Jordan could find his next job at AI.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/21/2005 15:52
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Brilliant work, Mrs D.
It reminds me of that great Den Beste post about the drunk and the street light.
Amnesty International person was lurking around, one of our pilots was given a target where suspected unreformed Ba'athists were hanging out, and the A.I. person ended up flat as Rachael Corrie...
Therefore we were accused of targeting "Journalists"
#5
Thats is those women who, because they belonged to the Baas, weren't in danger of being raped or have their children tortured in front of them are not better than under Saddam
#6
AI is poop. I met a gal from Baghdad shortly after the US takeover and have been keeping in touch with her regularly. She spent her Saddham years in hiding, but has working full-time since things calmed down, and has never been happier in her life. Of course, she is unmarried and educated ... maybe AI is just interested in unhappily married uneducated women.
Posted by: ed ||
02/21/2005
22:08 ||
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#1
Yeah.Go down there at your own expense,sleeping in a bag for 30 days !!Ha Ha Ha.Most of those yahoos will end up in Tombstone or Bisbee getting drunk.
Yesterday, Little Green Footballs broke the story of Congressman Maurice Hinchey's (D-Havana) statement to a Cornell University audience that the CBS TANG memoes were most likely planted by Karl Rove.
One of LGF's operatives recorded the statement and challenged Hinchey on it, only to be told essentially that facts were not as important in determining the truth as Hinchey's own beliefs.
The initial LGF story included a full transcript of Hinchey's conspiracist remarks. Since then, LGF has run 3 more strings on the story, #2#3#4 and a number of other other blogs have picked it up.
Several legacy media outlets, mostly local idiotarian rags in the Ithaca area, have reported on Hinchey's speech but not one mentioned his lengthy descent into tin-foil hattery or the exchange with the audience member/LGF operative. National legacy media have not mentioned Hinchey at all in recent days.
BTW, Google News Index excludes LGF on the grounds that it is a news "aggregator" rather than an originator of content. Yet, LGF routinely publishes original and significant news stories from various operatives and has broken several important stories. Besides the CBS-Word matchup and Hinchey-foil, they were also first with the interception of Air France flight 68 on the last day of 2003, reporting the story before the plane landed (thanks to some amateur elint work by an operative).
#1
Another congressional conspiracy theorist, former Rep Cynthia McKinney, is an honorary professor at Cornell, along with the arch-druid of the Hate-America cult, Australian goebbelist *spit* John Pilger *spit*.
I believe this is an important story, as much for the calculated stonewalling of the legacy media as for the sheer lunacy of Hinchey's remarks to a friendly audience in LLL territory.
Hat Tip Al Rantel -
Last week Mr Rantel had the organizer of this website on his show and played him like a fiddle getting a lot of info out of him. The webmaster is a Lefty Dem from S.F. (They hate to be called S.F.)
He runs the site to aid Dems in thier purchases, but careful screening can make the site useful in the other way.
As to my link: Google is a 100% BLUE (EXTREME DEM) Organization. They don't want to give Charles Johnson, LGF any due they don't have to. Remember, LGF started the sinking of Danny Boy and the CBS gang!...
Don't tell me they can't manipulate the database to their own ends... We all know different...
#5
Frisco! I am going to Frisco! Faggy Froco Frisco!
The bay area needs to be excised from California just like LA.
As a news aggragator it's self Google is useless.
I expect all Bay area based companys and internet sites to have obvious left or left fringe bias. If anyone doesn't you should not be surprised. It is after all where many of our least liked Democrats come from in this state and even in the nation.
A paper on Eurabia and its recent developments, campaigning for the "No" to the constitutionnal treaty. Written in english by an aged french gentleman, a retired businessman who seeks to promote entrepreneurship and libertarian values, a desesperate struggle in social-democrat Europe and statist France. Check his site (shameless plug), the articles on France are a very good factsheet, assuming you're interested, of course :) !
#2
Of course. But I would have expected them to hitch a ride on the Chinese bandwagon. They are far less critical when the Saudis are inciting to kill the infidel.
Posted by: ed ||
02/21/2005 21:38
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Look at Chinese history. Whenever Chinese muslims got to be too much of a pain they just exterminated bunches until they got quiet again. I don't think the Saudis find that to their taste.
#4
I think this may be the hole in the dike that will become a flood. Lawyers make statements like this when they are softening the target up looking for a payout. The UN has no laws and is beyond the juristiction of anybody elses laws. So I'm curious as to where the lawyer thinks he can sue. Any US lawyers out there like to speculate if US labor laws or similar apply in the UN? Bottom line is the propect of a payout will bring out all kinds of past abuses at the UN that previously were hidden because the people had no redress.
An al Qaeda member known as Abu Dzeit has been killed in the Russian internal republic of Ingushetia, Russian authorities said Monday. "A joint operation with the Interior Ministry was conducted in a private house in a village in Ingushetia on February 16," spokesman for the Federal Security Service Sergei Ignatchenko told reporters on Monday. "The operation first resulted in the death of two of his accomplices. Abu Dzeit hid in a special bunker built under the house. When the entrance was discovered, he blew himself up," Ignatchenko said. He said investigators identified the body as Abu Dzeit's.
A source in the FSB, Russia's domestic security service, told RIA-Novosti that Abu Dzeit, eliminated in Ingushetia, was the leader of the so-called Ingush Jamaat and an emissary of the international terror network al Qaeda. He was also known as little Omar, and Abu Omar of Kuwait. Abu Dzeit reported directly to Abu Havs, a purported coordinator of all terrorist activities on Russian territory, a source said. Abu Dzeit had received special training in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Later he was appointed al Qaeda's envoy to Ingushetia. He was in charge of distributing cash funds provided by al Qaeda to radical Islamists in the Northern Caucasus.
Investigators believe Abu Dzeit was involved in the rebel attack on Ingushetia last summer and in the hostage-taking at a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, in September 2004. Earlier an Ingush Interior Ministry officially reported that Abu Dzeit was killed in June 2004 in Malgobek. Check out the graphic photo at the link. He looks dead this time.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/21/2005
1:41:33 PM ||
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The gunmen, killed in Nalchik on Sunday, were members of armed gangs, subordinated to Basayev and Maskhadov, Russian Deputy Interior Minister Arkady Yedelev told reporters on Sunday. According to deputy minister, they are members of the Karachayevo-Cherkess jamaat and were on the federal Wanted List for committing terror acts in the Rostov Region and Stavropol Territory and were hatching new terror acts.
In Yedelev's words, new methods were used during the special operation: officially permitted Cheremukha-7 gas was used to neutralize the bandits who entrenched themselves in an apartment. "Gunmen suffered a serious blow" in the two-day operation. On Saturday, "a laboratory, producing various explosives, was busted at a garage in Nalchik. "The laboratory produced explosives of heat and push types as well as remotely controlled devices," the deputy minister reported. Great quantities of TNT, plastic, RDX, saltpeter ammonia, aluminum powder and 69 detonators were seized there. Apart from the above killed gunmen, another five members of the same group were arrested on Saturday in Kabardino-Balkaria. The investigation of this case is being continued.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/21/2005
12:59:58 AM ||
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Haitian police on Sunday were hunting for nearly 500 prisoners who escaped after an armed attack on the national penitentiary that sparked a riot and left one guard dead. Two prominent allies of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been rushed to a secure location during the attack Saturday night, were returned to the prison, authorities said. Guards had rushed former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune and former Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert to a secret location when the attack occurred and inmates began rioting, and the two were later turned over to U.N. soldiers, Damian Onses-Cardona, a spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping mission, told The Associated Press. "They were taken back to prison in U.N. vehicles," Onses-Cardona said Sunday. "They insisted on returning to make clear they didn't try to escape."
Onses-Cardona said authorities were investigating whether the attack, which came as Aristide partisans prepare to mark the anniversary of his Feb. 29 flight from the country, was aimed at freeing Neptune and Privert. Chilean Ambassador Marcel Young denied reports that the two men had escaped and sought asylum from foreign embassies before being recaptured. Young said he met with them Saturday and "they were only concerned about their security. Once that was arranged, they asked to go back to the prison."
The two men are accused of orchestrating killings of Aristide opponents during a rebellion in the western town of Saint-Marc. Both men have said they are innocent. They are among dozens of Aristide officials and supporters detained since Aristide fled Haiti amid a three-week rebellion. None have been formally charged. Foreign Minister Herard Abraham said in a radio address that 481 of more than 1,250 prisoners at the prison had escaped. He said heavily armed men had attacked the prison, without elaboration, only adding that police were aggressively seeking fugitives. Privert's wife, Ginette Privert, was among of dozens of people waiting outside the prison Sunday for information about their relatives. "I haven't heard from him or seen him so I don't know if he's OK," she said of her husband. "I've been waiting three hours and they still won't let me in."
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/21/2005
12:58:25 AM ||
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#1
Jimmy Carter will extend to them, another burden for us, to cope with...more boat people,thank you Jimmy.
#3
So it turns out that Fred doesn't actually have a stash, it's merely the Steve's and Em doing high-speed collaborative knock-offs of Pulps on 3 hours demand.
The two countries whose nuclear programs have raised alarms of late may be cooperating more closely than previously known. North Korea agreed six years ago to stop flight-testing longer-range ballistic missiles, which could deliver nuclear or chemical warheads, in exchange for relief from U.S. economic sanctions. Pyongyang still claims it is sticking to the deal, but some Administration officials think it may be cheating by using Iran as its proxy.
Iran's new Shahab-3 medium-range ballistic missile is closely based on North Korea's Nodong missile. After Iran test-fired the Shahab-3 last summer, there have been indications, a top U.S. official says, that Tehran is giving North Korea telemetry and other data from its missile tests and that North Korea is using the data to make improvements in its own missile systems. In exchange, the official says, Pyongyang may be supplying Iran with engineering suggestions for further testing.
Even before the missile firings in August, Under Secretary of State John Bolton had told Congress that Iran's Shahab-3, which has a range of about 800 miles, is "a direct threat to Israel, Turkey [and] U.S. forces in the region." If its research and development program goes unchecked, Bolton warned, Iran could soon have missiles capable of delivering payloads to Western Europe and the U.S. And if that isn't scary enough, CIA director Porter Goss said in congressional testimony last week that North Korea's new, untested Taepo Dong-2 missile "is capable of reaching the United States with a nuclear-weapon-sized payload."
The implications of a North Korea--Iran deal to share and test these missiles are grim. Equally ominous, Goss said, intelligence shows that North Korea is seeking to raise hard currency by peddling its missile technology to new clients beyond Iran. To blunt that effort, U.S. officials say, the CIA and other U.S. agencies are redoubling their efforts to track and intercept North Korean shipments and covert communications about advanced missile technologies.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/21/2005
12:56:46 AM ||
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#1
KIM JUNG-IL and MOHAMMAD KHATAMI
Sing a duet at a KARAOKE BAR
"TWO LOST SOULS" From "DAMN YANKEES"
No Alteration necessary
Two lost souls on the highway of life
We ain't even got a sister or brother
Ain't it just great, ain't it just grand?
We've got each other!
Two lost ships on a stormy sea
One with no sails and one with no rudder
Ain't it just great, ain't it just grand?
We've got each udder!
Two lost sheep, in the wilds of the hills
Far from the other Jacks and Jills, we wandered away and went astray
But we ain't fussin'
Cuz we've got "us'n"
We're two lost souls on the highway of life
And there's no one with whom we would ruther
Say, "Ain't it just great, ain't it just grand?"
We've got each other!
Wherever we go, whatever we do
As long as you've got me, and I've got you
We've got each other
#2
And they made fun of Bush's "Axis of Evil" when he first used the phrase.
Sounds to me like several someones are getting really desperate. Question is, will they collapse before they can develop the means to take a good chunk of the planet's population with them?
Posted by: The Doctor ||
02/21/2005 12:29
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Spring is in the air and RantBurgs Community choir director is back in town!
Hat Tip M Drudge SHUT THE CELL UP
By ANGELA MONTEFINISE Can you hear me now? Unsuspecting cellphone users may find themselves saying that more often now that cellphone jammers illegal gizmos that interfere with signals and cut off reception are selling like hotcakes on the streets of New York. "I bought one online, and I love it," said one jammer owner fed up with the din of dumb conversations and rock-and-roll ringtones. "I use it on the bus all the time. I always zap the idiots who discuss what they want from the Chinese restaurant so that everyone can hear them. Why is that necessary?" Swe....r ch....pers and st...ce. Hello Hello did you g....
Hello He...
It could be necessary because they want to pick it up when they get there, not wait around for it. Who're you to be telling them what to use their phones for?
He added, "I can't throw the phones out the window, so this is the next best thing." Wise move. I don't think injuries received inciting a riot is covered by health insurance. But I am with you in spirit!
I'm not. Just because I disapprove of what somebody's doing, that doesn't mean I have the right to tell them not to. Teenagers use their cell phones constantly, I forget mine half the time. But when I do have it with me, I don't want some bystander censoring my calls.
Online jammer seller Victor McCormack said he's made "hundreds of sales" to New Yorkers. "The interest has gone insane in the last few years. I get all sorts of people buying them, from priests to police officers." Bless you my son, did you foget to put it on vibrate? Tsk, Tsk...
Jammers come in a variety of shapes and sizes, from portable handhelds that look like cellphones to larger, fixed models as big as suitcases. Their sole goal is to zip inconsiderate lips. The smaller gadgets emit radio frequencies that block signals anywhere from a 50- to 200-foot radius. They range in price from $250 to $2,000. And to make idiot drivers pay attention to traffic lights instead of conducting arguements, I imagine...
But don't expect to find jammers at the local Radio Shack they're against Federal Communications Commission regulations because they interfere with emergency calls and the public airwaves. They are illegal to buy, sell, use, import or advertise. Why are we reading about this. O-oh we are being watched. Shhhhhhhh
Why would you want to allow Mr. Dummschitz to jam your call to 9-11 after you've been mugged?
A violation means an $11,000 fine, but the FCC's Enforcement Bureau has yet to bust one person anywhere in the country. "This is not a crime that they're going after," said Rob Bernstein, deputy editor at New York City-based Sync magazine. He said jammers are here, and their use is multiplying. Just wait 'till a jammer ends up minus a couple of teeth for interfering with emergency traffic. Popcorn time.
"Right now, there's a growing curiosity about jammers in the United States and New York," Bernstein said. "There's no better way to shut up a loudmouth on the phone, so people definitely want them and are finding ways to get them." Like booze during prohibition.
One way is at a spy shop on Third Avenue, which sells medium-sized jammers out of a back room for $1,500. The sales clerk there said he had sold jammers to a 50-year-old man who bought one to use on the Long Island Rail Road, and to restaurateurs. Yes! I am a Left Coaster. LI Railway doesn't mean much, but the restaurant situation is universal.
Folks who run auto auctions also buy them to stop people from chit-chatting about prices and rigging their bids, the clerk said. OK Cheating at auctions? Fancy that!
An employee at a West Village spy store said the shop also sells jammers, but only to people from other countries. You mean like using one in the Frontier country of Pakistan and waiting to hear someone curse in Arabic to locate Binny?
Jammers aren't for locating people. All they do is put out a junk signal to disrupt communication.
One local purchaser bought a portable jammer last year, and said he likes using it at Roosevelt Field mall on Long Island. "One time I followed this guy around for 20 minutes," he said. "I kept zapping him and zapping him, until finally he threw the phone on the floor. I couldn't stop laughing. It was so cool." Tut tut tut -- Picking on the retarded is quite mean!
But was the guy actually retarded? I mean the guy with the cell phone? My customers sometimes call me if there's a problem with a website. Why does Mr. Dummschitz have the right to jam my conversation? A physician friend of mine occasionally gets calls from the hospital. Why should Dummschitz be allowed to jam his calls?
Jammers were first developed to help government security forces avert eavesdropping and thwart phone-triggered bombings. But by the late 1990s they were being sold to the public. There are suspicions that some hotel chains employ jammers to cut down on guests' cellphone use and boost in-room phone charges. I will exclude sanctions of assault against any hotel manager caught doing this. Most of them are oily bastards anyway...
Anybody remember CB radios, from the 70s? They became very common because of the national 55 mph speed limit, and they spread as a way for people to chat in a pre-computer age. Then the goofs started up and CB radio receded before a flood of 16-year-old potty mouths with RF amplifiers.
Anybody remember email? It used to be a way for people to communicate with each other. I watched "You've got mail" with the Little Woman the other night, and it occurred to me how quaint it was. Today, the anonymous lovers would be waiting for mail from each other, certainly, but would occupy themselves deleting a constant flow of ads for Viagra, hot women to use it on, doinker enlargement, business proposals from Nigerians, notifications that they'd won lotteries they never entered, and of course lots of emails with strange titles and attached viruses.
I bought my first cell phone about ten years ago. It lived in a bag and weighed about 12 pounds. I bought it after waiting for a customer to show up for an hour or so, without a working pay phone in sight to call the office. It cost me about $400. I had it for about six weeks before somebody broke into my car and stole it, which was a good business move for me because the air time cost more than the profit the thing generated. But they've gotten cheaper now, and lots of people have them, and the same nitwits that destroyed CB radio and email will do their best to destroy mobile communications, out of the sheer love of destruction. Pfui.
#1
i used to be a smoker. When I was a smoker I was sensitive to those aropund me who did not want to breath in my second hand smoke so I would smoke outside or away from the non-smokers. (YOU KNOW, MY SONS POOP THIS MORNING WAS REALLY RUNNY - WITH LITTLE KERNELS OF SOME HARD PELLETS FLOATING AROUND IN IT... LOOKED KIND OF LIKE SPLIT PEA SOUP...) Now if the non-smokers choose to come in to my 'smoking' area that is their choice.
I view cell-phones (along with heavy perfumes) the same way. If you want to use your cell phone on the bus or in a resturant be discreet and considerate of those around you. (LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY CYST!).
On the other hand I've had people on the bus who would talk non-stop on their cell phone. Not only talk but TALK LOUD AND ANNOYING.
It gets irritating - especially when you (and half the other bus riders) are trying to catch a few winks. (YOU SAY YOUR SISTER RELLY LIKES THAT KINKY STUFF? AND HER PHONE NUMBER IS 555-1212? THANKS!) Its almost as bad as heavy perfume.
In short, I'm willing to give the cell-phone users a break as long as they are discreet and dont abuse it.
#3
I usually like to help annoying people on their cell phone by adding in little comments (I know, surprising I would do that!). But theater talk during the movie earns a coke in the lap
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 17:37
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I usually like to help annoying people on their cell phone by adding in little comments
Theaters - No. But Yes!, in restaurants...
"Look over there! He showed up here? I thought he's on trial for murder! Imagine that!"
The cell phone guy gives you the finger as he tries to explain in an agitated voice that there are no Hollywood celebrities, nor thier cockatoos in the restaurant.
Of course of you are sitting around the clueless, they are duped too, and they spend the rest of the evening giving you dirty looks...
Controversial Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi says he believes he has the votes to become the war-torn country's new prime minister.
Mr Chalabi, once supported by the United States only to fall from favour, is part of the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) list that won 140 seats of the 275-member national assembly in the January 30 elections.
"I believe I have a majority of the [UIA] votes on my side right now" to become the new government's prime minister, Mr Chalabi told United States ABC television.
However, the former exile remained cautious, saying the choice of premier "will be decided by the parliamentary bloc", which he did not want to "second guess".
On Tuesday, sources in the Shiite coalition said it had chosen interim vice president and Dawa party leader Ibrahim Jaafari as its candidate for prime minister.
Mr Chalabi said he was ready to cooperate if he were not picked to lead the government.
"We want to change the way Iraq is governed," he said.
"It will no longer be the government of a leader with everybody else not counting very much.
"We want to have a cabinet form of executive authority in Iraq and I am perfectly willing to cooperate, as indeed are my other friends and colleagues who are competing for the job of prime minister, with any prime minister that will come out for the service of ... the country."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/21/2005
12:55:30 AM ||
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This Fellow has said quite a bit very little has come true. He doesn't seem to deliver everything he says he can. I am thinking they will pick someone else.
#2
Does anyone else think that his "falling out of favor with the US" was about as stage managed as a production of 'Cats'? This guy has proven to be as smooth as silk, definitely a serious contender to be the first president of Iraq. Cutting the cord with the US shows the Iraqis that he's not a puppet, even if he knows the advice the US is giving him is the best, and follows it to a 't'.
An Iranian national was arrested in Iraq on charges of smuggling foreign fighters and weapons into Iraq, the interim government said Sunday. Jaafar Sadeq Fetteh, also charged with sending Iraqis abroad to receive military training, was arrested near Balad Rose governorate last Thursday, the government said in a statement. It added the 45-year-old Fetteh was the leader of a "big terrorist cell" consisting of 100 persons. The cell members work on smuggling foreign fighters and weapons inside Iraq, as well as sending Iraqis outside the country to receive training to carry out "terrorist attacks" against the Iraqi security forces. The statement claimed that Fetteh admitted having links to the "Iranian intelligence," and that he had attempted to kill an intelligence officer and local dignitaries.
This article starring:
JAAFAR SADEQ FETTEH
al-Qaeda in Iraq
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/21/2005
12:54:01 AM ||
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#1
nice catch....tape his intel spills for broadcast
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 11:01
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But he had his "Matricula Consular" card signed by Ayatolla-President Khatami himself. Why are the Iraqis so upset??????
Maoist rebels attacked a convoy on a key highway west of Nepal's capital and killed a truck driver, an army officer said on Monday. The driver was killed on Sunday when the rebels hurled crude bombs and fired at the convoy at Charaundi, 80 km west of Kathmandu, to enforce a blockade roads linking the hill-ringed city with the rest of the country. "They fired at the convoy from the jungle along the highway," the army officer said. At least seven other people were injured in the first deadly attack on a convoy since the Maoists called the blockade nine days ago.
The guerrillas, who model their tactics on the Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong but are disowned by Beijing, are protesting against King Gyanendra's Feb. 1 move to dismiss the democratic government. Army spokesman Brigadier General Dipak Gurung told Reuters more troops had been rushed to the site of Sunday's attack and highway patrols had been boosted. "We have definitely beefed up security along the highways and helicopters are providing air patrols," Gurung said. He said more that 200 vehicles had entered the capital on Sunday carrying essential goods and petroleum products under army escorts -- much less than on a normal day. Traffic on the landlocked nation's highways has come to a near halt as the guerrillas have set up road blocks and barricades to cut off supplies in their latest attempt to bolster their campaign for a communist republic. Residents in Nepalgunj, a business centre, said dozens of tankers loaded with petroleum products from India had been stranded because drivers were too scared to enter Nepal. The blockade sent prices of vegetables soaring in Kathmandu, but there was no sign of panic buying.
"Gee, Mother, this means I can't any brussel sprouts."
"Hush, child, there's always tree bark."
Officials said they had enough stocks of petroleum products and essential goods, mainly supplied by India, for a month.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/21/2005
12:50:37 AM ||
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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said he believes the US government is planning to assassinate him. "If they kill me, the name of the person responsible is [President] George Bush," Mr Chavez said. Mr Chavez - who offered no evidence to back his claim - said any attempt on his life would backfire and threatened to cut off oil supplies to America. He was apparently reacting to growing criticism by top US officials of his left-wing government.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has recently described the former paratrooper as a "negative force" in Latin America, while CIA chief Porter Goss said Venezuela was a possible source of instability in the region. Washington blames Mr Chavez of being heavy-handed towards Venezuela's opposition, and has recently criticised Caracas for arms purchases from Russia. Diplomatic ties between Washington and Caracas have soured since Mr Chavez came to power in 1999.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/21/2005
12:50:11 AM ||
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Insurgent attacks to disrupt Baghdad's supplies of crude oil, gasoline, heating oil, water and electricity have reached a degree of coordination and sophistication not seen before, Iraqi and American officials say.
The new pattern, they say, shows that the insurgents have a deep understanding of the complex network of pipelines, power cables and reservoirs feeding Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.
The shadowy insurgency is a fractured movement made up of distinct groups of Sunnis, Shiites and foreign fighters, some of them aligned and some not. But the shift in the attack patterns strongly suggests that some branch of the insurgency is carrying out a systematic plan to cripple Baghdad's ability to provide basic services for its six million citizens and to prevent the fledgling government from operating.
A new analysis by some of those officials shows that the choice of targets and the timing of sabotage attacks has evolved over the past several months, shifting from economic targets to become what amounts to a siege of the capital.
In a stark illustration of the change, of more than 30 sabotage attacks on the oil infrastructure this year, no reported incident has involved the southern crude oil pipelines that are Iraq's main source of revenue. Instead, the attacks have aimed at gas and oil lines feeding power plants and refineries and providing fuel for transportation around Baghdad and in the north.
In an indication of how carefully chosen the targets are and how knowledgeable the insurgency is about the workings of the infrastructure, the sabotage often disrupts the lives of Iraqis, leaving them dependent on chugging, street-corner generators to stave off the darkness and power televisions or radios, robbing them of fuel for stoves and heaters, and even halting the flow of their drinking water.
The overall pattern of the sabotage and its technical savvy suggests the guidance of the very officials who tended to the nation's infrastructure during Saddam Hussein's long reign, current Iraqi officials say.
The only reasonable conclusion, said Aiham Alsammarae, the Iraqi electricity minister, is that the sabotage operation is being led by former members of the ministries themselves, possibly aided by sympathetic holdovers.
"They know what they are doing," Dr. Alsammarae said. "I keep telling our government, 'Their intelligence is much better than the government's.' "
Sabah Kadhim, a senior official at the Iraqi Interior Ministry, said he believed the sabotage was part of a larger, two-faceted plan that included the terror operations that have killed so many Iraqis over the last two years.
The new pattern of sabotage, he said, lays the groundwork for chaos - a deeply resentful populace, the appearance of government ineffectuality, a halt to major business and industrial activities. The second side - the suicide bombings, assassinations and kidnappings - he said, is aimed in large measure at sowing discord among ethnic and religious groups.
"And I think they, honestly, stand a better chance with the first than the second," Mr. Kadhim said.
Whatever the source of the plan, it shows clear signs of being centrally controlled, Iraqi and American officials say.
"There is an organization, sort of a command-room operation," Thamir Ghadhban, the Iraqi oil minister, said Thursday in an interview. In his area of responsibility, Mr. Ghadhban said, "the scheme of the saboteurs is to isolate Baghdad from the sources of crude oil and oil products."
"And they have succeeded to a great extent," he said.
Mr. Ghadhban supported his assertions with a map showing that in November, December and January, in widely scattered attacks, insurgents simultaneously struck all three crude oil pipelines feeding the Doura fuel refinery in Baghdad. The refinery is the nation's largest producer of gasoline, kerosene and other refined products.
During that period, more than 20 attacks occurred on a set of huge pipelines carrying things like oil, kerosene, gasoline and other fuels to Baghdad from oil fields and refineries in the north.
In contrast, in the same region, the map shows an economically crucial crude oil pipeline - one that carries oil for export - was not attacked even once.
The map was prepared by his ministry by cataloging the exact coordinates, dates and nature of the attacks and combining that information with a detailed schematic of the web of pipelines, fuel depots, roads and refineries in and around Baghdad.
Those attacks caused widespread disruptions, including severe gasoline shortages. And Mr. Ghadhban said that when he tried to make up for the shortages by trucking the fuel in with tankers, saboteurs went after the fuel convoys and the bridges that they crossed to reach Baghdad.
After allowing a reporter to view on a computer screen the map and an array of other graphs and figures describing the pattern of sabotage, Mr. Ghadhban declined to provide a copy, but his ministry's analysis has circulated among other officials in Iraq, and one of them agreed to give a copy of the map to The New York Times.
Oil and transportation are far from the only infrastructure that the insurgents have struck to isolate Baghdad and deprive its residents.
In mid-January, a bomb hit a water main from a treatment plant that supplies 65 percent to 70 percent of the city's drinking water. It struck in just the spot that would lead to a collapse of water pressure in nearly the entire system. Most Baghdad residents were left with little or no running water for more than a week.
Attacks on carefully chosen targets were also a major reason that the output of Iraq's national electricity grid recently slumped below the amount it produced before the American-led invasion in April 2003, despite billions of dollars of projects aimed at repairing power plants and transmission lines, and adding huge new electricity generators.
And although the overall output has recently reached prewar levels, that qualified success has been punctuated by repeated blackouts caused by breakdowns, sabotage and other problems.
With all of their knowledge, and a seemingly unquenchable hatred for the people now running the government, the insurgents have transformed their initially generic brand of sabotage into a more subtle science, said Gal Luft, executive director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security in Washington, which closely tracks Iraq's oil infrastructure.
The attacks now aim to "prolong the destruction," Dr. Luft said. Insurgents achieve that aim by going after critical junctures in the pipeline system and focusing on equipment that is difficult to repair or remanufacture - even taking into account what stocks of spare parts may be low in Iraqi warehouses, he said.
The insurgents also skillfully play on what Dr. Luft calls the "chicken-and-egg relation" between fuel and electrical power: without oil there is no electricity, and without electricity, oil cannot be pumped or refined. So an attack on one area of infrastructure can disrupt another.
With all those moves at their disposal, the insurgents have turned away from a single-minded focus on blowing up pipelines that export oil, he said.
"I feel that this is a very different approach," Dr. Luft said. "The main thing today is isolating the Baghdad area and making sure there is not enough oil going into the refineries."
That pattern has not gone unnoticed by American military and government officials.
"I do think there is a Baghdad regional plan," said Lt. Col. Joseph P. Schweitzer of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, who before moving to a new assignment this week spent seven months as director of the Reconstruction Operations Center, an umbrella organization for military and civilian infrastructure work in Iraq.
"It's a chess game," Colonel Schweitzer said. "This is a very smart, adaptive enemy."
He said he doubted that the plan was unified throughout the country, but that the observed patterns provided clues on how to fight the insurgency. "It is something that we're studying intensively, and we have been studying," he said. "We've come to some conclusions, and we're taking actions.
But a spokesman for the American-led forces in Iraq, Col. Robert A. Potter of the United States Air Force, said in a statement sent by e-mail, "It would be speculative to affirm or rebut whether or not these attacks are random or specifically aimed to cause a specific effect."
Whatever script the insurgents may be following, their attacks have been prolific, said Mr. Ghadhban, the oil minister. His ministry registered 264 acts of sabotage against the petroleum infrastructure in 2004 and more than 30 so far this year, he said.
No one tactic could turn back what amounts to a siege on the great circulatory systems of a nation, Mr. Ghadhban said. But he has already solicited contracts for a vast protection system that would include fences on both sides of pipelines stretching for thousands of miles in the desert, with infrared surveillance cameras, sensors, airborne surveillance and a nimble security force.
Whether Mr. Ghadhban will have a chance to carry out his plan as the oil minister is another question. Although he won a seat in the new national assembly, the gasoline shortages, fairly or unfairly, have hurt his public standing in this political season.
"If I'm chosen, I will continue, definitely," Mr. Ghadhban said. "And I think we would do better."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/21/2005
12:47:34 AM ||
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#1
This is where I am really mad at our government. When you have an insurgency you don't want heirarchial sources of anything (elect, water, fuel) . Rather you want everything as decentralized and anarchial as possible. That way when something is taken out it only effects small numbers of people and places.
The power restoration in Iraq should not have been centralize and distributed power. It should have been a mix of wind and solar that serve the local community. That way if the neighborhood looses its power. Tough. They should have protected it from terrorists and turned them in. Nobody is effected but the few people served by those units.
5 and 10 MW windmills scattered all over next to Iraqi villages would have helped. Places that need central power (like Baghdad itself) could then have resources to protect the infra-structure instead of protecting all the nation's infra-structure. This central way of thinking could be our downfall in Iraq.
#2
3dc
>Opinion..Lets get Iraqi's to sign the Kyoto treaty too!
and we can tell those rotten Sheikhs to start thinking GREEN and we could get Hollywood to pitch in and pay for all the windmills and get Jane Fonda and Michael-fatty-Moore to install them! and we...
#3
So we should have been building power plants from scratch instead of repairing and upgrading the wires going to the original plants?
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
02/21/2005 1:47
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#4
This is a New York Times story, so salt to taste. The Times of late has been printing stories of the world as it wishes it were rather than as it is. This does howver represent new ground for them. They've moved beyond quagmire to inevitable defeat. As Bugs Bunny used to say, "What a bunch of maroons!"
#5
I didn't comment on the article initially because I didn't want to put "NYT, salt to taste" I have come to accept the NYT will not be happy until the US is destroyed and Western Civilization is a memory. NYT = enemy of the United States.
#6
3dc: This is where I am really mad at our government. When you have an insurgency you don't want heirarchial sources of anything (elect, water, fuel) . Rather you want everything as decentralized and anarchial as possible. That way when something is taken out it only effects small numbers of people and places.
Water doesn't come from too many places. Power is already decentralized via portable backup generators.
This is just another New York Times piece about quagmire in Iraq, just like they had pieces on the brutal Afghan winter way after the opposition had folded. The insurgency is chugging along at levels way below Vietnam, but only time will tell when it finally dies out. I expect we could lose another 1000 men before it's all over.
I had estimated about 3000 dead (max) during the invasion of Iraq. Turns out that bypassing the major enemy units instead of vaporizing them wasn't quite the way to go. Still, 3000 for Iraq vs 58000 for Vietnam seems like a decent comparison, given that the Gulf region is much more vital than Southeast Asia will ever be (until oil ceases to be a major energy feedstock).
#7
The post-invasion goal on the domestic side should have been to put the economy on a working basis, providing enough improvements to give the Iraqis a taste of the rewards freedom from tyranny brings. While this did/does require improving the previous situation -- so much of which was being held together by duct tape & baling wire and the sheer stubbornness of the engineers -- not to mention establishing cell phone and computer network infrastructures to enable communications and a real banking system, surely it is the choice of a free and independent Iraq to entirely re-work their entire energy system.
We know from reports coming out of the military -- both official and individual -- that the various units have been engaged in building and supplying schools and local gov't centers, digging wells, making proper roads, repairing bridges, etc, on top of dealing with bad guys and their and Saddam's weapons stashes. I have to think that the systems are actually less vulnerable to the kind of sabotage reported in this article than it was when we invaded... its just that more of the people have become less accustomed to doing without.
I remember the "Where is Rael" blogger (who is now writing for one of the English papers, if I recall correctly), who wrote before the invasion about having electricity for only a random few hours each day, hauling rationed water in plastic jugs, and not being able to afford much beyond the government food ration ... and he was a child of Saddam's privileged class! There were reports during the invasion of villages that hadn't received even jugged water for weeks, so the troops gave away their own supplies.
#8
TW...shhh...that's supposed to be a secret. We are supposed to think the soldiers sit around and laugh at "hapless" Down Syndrome suicide bombers and fear the quagmire created by the brilliant masterminds.
Hey 3dc - so you are mad at our government because they didn't provide them with solar power? I guess they should dug everyone their own well too. Funny, I would have blamed the insurgents for being ruthless, callous barbarians, who when not blowing up synagogues are busy attempting to cut off vital services to millions of women and children - but hey, that's just me.
This does however represent new ground for them. They've moved beyond quagmire to inevitable defeat We're doomed, doomed I tell ya!
#9
No. I am mad because even the block size generators require fuel which requires infra-structure to supply it.
Its likly to dusty for solar to really make it but wind could and cheap and if they broke it tough luck.
I don't like the idea of having to protect things like power lines crossing deserts and fields. Even long oil pipes.... Short and sweet and to the point. We don't need to give them a society with industrial sized power supplies. Just enough for stablity. The Iraqis should have been the ones to build protect, and pay for modern industrial sized centralized systems. It could have happened a much later date as such materal is just a magnet to terrorists.
Example: If we put 1 windmill in 1 small village not connected to anything but their well and some lights and told them: "This is all you got... protect it, maintain it or enjoy a dry darkness" we would find an Iraq today that much more stable... (maybe not truely willingly but after a few villages remained dark the lesson would sink in.)
#10
And as to gifts... we are giving them 88 billion ... just hope that the material in the 88 billion is not all blown up in 5 years...
If stuff is small then divide and conq. works better. For the Shia and Kurds it is not as important but in the Sunni desert areas it makes sense.. Think about it 2b before getting mad and assuming I am a raving eco-nut. I am not. I just want systems that you can tell somebody this is yours. Its all you get for free. It beats the stone age. You know, if any terror types are eying it you can point them out to us. Otherwise, remember to protect what's yours.
#11
you are right, 3dc...the little brown people will be just fine with a windmill and a well. Civilization is just too complex for them. While we are at it, let's take away their cars and give them ponies.
#12
Ok..3dc - I'm sorry I was rude. I like solar to and I get your point - but there's the perfect world where we can just wish it and there's reality. It's condescending to think that they are little hut villagers from Africa who don't need the same modern conveniences that you, yourself, enjoy.
#13
Seeing as how this is a place to RANT (as opposed to necessarily playing by Marquis of Queensbury rules):
I would propose an infinitely inflatable spectrum of pain to be inflicted upon the Sunni population if Iraq. The more myahem that gets sown, the more the Sunnis suffer. I wouldn't know a Sunni from a Shiite if they both exploded in front of me - but it seems pretty obvious that the disenfranchised former ruling elite are doing their best to ensure that everyone suffers. Well, ramp up the suffering extra harshly at their end, until someone crys "uncle".
Let the Sunnis police their own ranks - its either weed out their own bad apples, or they all go into the trash heap. I wouldn't lose any sleep over their collective absence.
Advocating genocide is not very PC - and I have no active wish to annihilate the Sunnis - but if they can't eliminate their evil cohorts, then they should pay the heaviest price.
I have never seen any hint that the "kinder, gentler approach" gains any ground in the muslim battlegrounds of the world. All it does is bleed our armed forces white, one wound at a time. 'To hell with that.
I'd start by holding a muster of all the former ministries - go dig them all out of whatever holes they are hiding in. If it takes five years to round them up - so be it.
As Martin Luther King once said (something to the effect): "Never give upon a dream on account of how long it will take to bring it to fruition - the time will pass anyway."
#14
Its likly to dusty for solar to really make it but wind could and cheap and if they broke it tough luck.
Even before they broke it, they'd be stuck with a power supply less reliable than what you're trying to cure.
There are reasons we don't use wind power, and they don't come from a diabolical cabal.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/21/2005 8:46
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#15
I'd like to get back to the topic outlined in the article.
Dismissing the content of this article because it's from the NY times is a bit short-sighted. Sure, it was published mainly to give Bush, our armed forces, and the new government a black eye. Nothing new. However, the writer cites events that can be fact-checked. If none of these events occurred, then fry his ass. Until then, let's just assume its true.
Firstly, kudos should be given to the Iraqui minister who did the research. This is a branch of systems analysis called Operations Research, and is an analysis of ad-hoc and formal systems to determine functionality, strengths, and weak-points. Credit O.R. for the shift in the strategy in fighting the Battle of the Atlantic during WWII, where we were losing lots of convoys to the German U-boats: they shifted the effort away from fighting the convoys to improving counter-submarine efforts, such as fielding Baby Flattops that extended the patrol area to include the zone where the ships were being sunk the most. That area, not coincidentally, overlaid the area where aircraft patrol coverage was lacking due to the limited range of the aircraft. The OR guys used the same techniques of overlaying maps of incidents over other maps of related resources. They figured that priority 1 of the U-boat captains was NOT sinking ships, but survivial. By being more agressive in hunting the subs, they raised the anxiety factor in the minds of the U-boat captains that they ceased attacking, since that would have given their position away to the submarine hunters.
Map overlaying is a technique that harnesses the overwhelming parallel/pattern matching powers of our visual systems.
The article, however, DOES show typical MSM spin: We do this stuff all the time on enemy Command and Control systems, identifying junction points and blowing them away. Ho-hum. Not news when the thugs you support are getting the shaft by the Armed forces you hate. When the Jihadis do it, its NEWS, NEWS, NEWS!
The same experts in the same field can tell you how to design your networks to be redundant, but redundancy==time and money. Trust me, we here in the US have the same problem: Two years ago, I could tell you when and where to plant a bomb in Chicago that could totally bring down the banking system. Lord knows if they ever fixed that problem.
Having outlined how utterly obvious this plan of attack should be, let's consider how it came about. Like I said, this stuff does require some technical education and information. However, I very much doubt that Saddam's ministers are involved. Why? Because this sort of thing requires attention to details, and Arab Ministers and managers are simply too high on the totem pole to bother themselves with details. I'm, sure .com will attest to the reluctance of Saudi management to soil their hands with the details that are at a level that would facilitiate this to carry it off. Hell, did the author really think these ministers carry this sort of info, down to maps of electrical and pipeline layouts, in their heads? Exactly how many American Utility CEOs could sit down and draw out their electrical distribution network from memory? Saddam's minsters were chosen more for their ass-kissing ability than technical competence. Besides, we attacked, and won, so fast, they left behind incriminating documents. They were the types who would work to burn THOSE first, and not have time to TAKE the technical documents.
So, clue #1: Whoever is doing this had to have access to information? Two locations: The first location are obviously the ministry offices: the manac centralization of all Arab governments would dictate that this sort of information be kept as close to the power center as possible: Saddam's ministers wouldn't know how to read the maps, but they'd have enough sense to know that knowledge was power, and seek to control and limit desemination of that knowledge. The OTHER location would be, provided most of the infrastructure was built by foreign contractors and paid for by oil money (very likely if I am not mistaken, .com), would be in the original offices of the contractors. German? French? Russian? Hmm???? Those people would not only have copies, they'd have the expertise to finger the weak points.
Another clue: the timing. WHY NOW, IN RECENT MONTHS? Why not immediately after the initial victory? Maybe it has something to do with the election? Or is this perhaps "revenge of the nerds", where after the first, second, and third wave of hard boyz got killed, Z's desperately turning to his Jihadi nerds, who'd be able to grok this stuff in their sleep, but who would have been relegated to the basement in favor of the more glamorous Warrior caste.
Second possibility: Iran. The syrians don't have the technical know-how to pull this off, but you betcha the Iranians do. I've worked with Iranian students: They're the sharpest knives in the drawer. You have to bet that SOME have sold their souls to the Mullahs: who else would be putting together the Iranian Bomb? If the mullahs are desperate enough, maybe they'd listen to THEIR nerds, who said, "You're trusting us to build you The Bomb. You're running out of options. PUT US INTO THE GAME." Revenge of the Nerds, Iranian style.
The third possiblity is the most chilling: WE DID THIS ANALYSIS OURSELVES. It's the VERY sort of pre-invasion planning we'd do, only we'd use Tomahawks and smart bombs. It has hints of our fingerprints all over it. Is there a mole leaking or selling this stuff?
This may sound like I'm smoking good shit, but I ain't.
#16
Sounds good to me Ptah. Thanks. I'll take door #2.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/21/2005 9:19
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#17
2b, you are a darling. Thank you.
Ptah, whew! I'm going to come back to your post later today when I've had time to think it over for a bit. Lots of meat there, which is why I read you so carefully. Only question: could our clever boys and girls (Old Spook??) be using these developments to trace down the malevolent ones? In all the spy stories I've read, the culprit was eventually pinpointed by who knew the leaked info.... More questions later, when my brain has caught up.
#18
trailing wife: InFlow produces a civilain software package that uses many of the same features that the military tools use to find the bad guys.. INSNA is another vendor.
Many of the tools at CAIDA are transferable to realms like intel analysis.
If you care to note many search out the freindship links and that lets you define a system and take it out. When objects are many and localized its much harder to take it all down. That, was the basis for my windmill argument. Unfortunately it gets into a meme space where there is a idelogical war in the US. Bush and his big financial supporters prefer the big centeralized model as part of their business meme and have a hard time seperating a business meme that is profitable to them from practical warfighting...
Sorry if looking at it from a scientific viewpoint upsets some like 2b. Having spent my life in science, I have learned a few things, one is that what one wants because of what one believes is not always the best way to accomplish something... Same in business. Counter intutitive is many times the way to go.
#19
When objects are many and localized its much harder to take it all down. That, was the basis for my windmill argument.
And the basis of my comment is that wind power is not reliable. You're simply trading failure of transmission lines for failure of the wind to blow. One of those factors is controllable; the other is not.
In business and warfighting, you try to eliminate or reduce the uncontrollable factors. Your idea would instead MULTIPLY them.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/21/2005 10:44
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#20
Forget windmills, the Iraqis are ready for a major turkey+camel gut free-power for the masses non polluting and throw in some plastic power plant. These plants will also spit out at no extra cost paving material, mineral water of the highest quality and Rib-eye steaks.
#22
Yikes! Baghdadgrad. I guess this means that hundreds of thousands of American troops are going to be trapped behind enemy lines. Soon, their leather jumpboots are going to start looking real appetizing, as their MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) rations start running low. Well, as far as water goes, I understand the SAS reuses bodily fluids. I'm sure our boys will do what they have to do.
#24
As someone who spent a major part of his life picking out primary interdiction points, I can say truthfully that it's NOT THAT HARD. However, I do believe much of the information is coming from outside of Iraq. I'd love to know where the targeting is coming from - it would make a nice glass plain. Unfortunately, there are far too many possibilities. I think .com will gladly tell you it's not coming from the Arab world - they just don't think that way. 9/11 was a good example - great for shock value, but terrible targeting.
The problem with Iraq's infrastructure is that everything is centered on Baghdad, and there's not been enough time to create any redundancy in the system. The 'backup' capability that most American cities have doesn't exist in Iraq, and won't until things are stable for awhile. The terrorists are bound and determined not to let things be stable. While I agree that there is the potential for adding non-petroleum generating power to the power grid in Iraq, the first thing that has to be done is rebuild the grid. It still has major holes. The diversification of generating capacity would help greatly - generate the power near the petroleum source and send it to Baghdad or elsewhere, rather than sending the petroleum to Baghdad and redistribute the power to the rest of the country. The original concept was enacted by the central control authority of the center of power, for the purpose of controlling the population. If everything's in one location, it's easier to control and manipulate. It'll take a generation to overcome that philosophy, but when the next generation manages to understand distributed power, Iraq will be secure, both in its freedom and in its power grid.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/21/2005 14:36
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#25
If the windmills could be used to charge up batteries against power outages, rather than as primary source, that could work nicely. But, rather than build them for the Iraqis, make the plans available and let them build the things themselves. That way they have even more ownership, and the very fact of its existence is a reward for individual/group pro-activity.
3dc, I think most of us who come to Rantburg ongoing prefer to know reality rather than hide in wishful thinking. Disagreements are natural though, in such a strong-minded group, over exactly the best way to go, all the more frustrating sometimes because very few of us can do more than think on the subject and share the results here amongst ourselves. (My father the biochemist and my husband the chemical engineer used to have fascinating -- to me -- arguments that were really expressions of their slightly different world views.) And reality takes so darned long to catch up with our pretty plans for it!
Just to satisfy my nosiness, which particular branch of science has been your home for so long?
#26
Personally, I'd listen to LTC Joe Schweitzer. OP, your points are very valuable. This article is way too deterministic. I could just as easily attribute the changes in enemy tactics to:
* Coalition forces making it too hard to attack the major pipelines forcing the enemy to attack smaller branches on the distribution system.
* A geographical constriction of the scope of the Sunni revolt causing more attacks to be focused on Bagdad.
* A breakdown in the C^2 structure of the revolt, making it harder for cells to coordinate attacks on bigger targets.
* More propaganda from crypto-Baathists in the government seeking to blame the Coalition for the already broken power grid. (Almost any Sunni gripe about power can be automatically discounted. Under Saddam, the Sunni areas got power 24/7. The rest of the country got 6 hours a day. Power is now rationed fairly.)
* Zarqawi falling into line with OBL and prohibiting attacks on oil infrastructure by his cells.
There is only one intelligence service in the area that has the people and capability to do this and is hostile to the US. Its the last Baathist regime in the region:
Syria.
Aided by the escaped high level technocrats (and their considerable amount of looted cash) in the Hussein kleptocracy, they know where to strike. They have been busted for allowing people and equipment to cross from their borders, so they can put men and material on target. And Assad thinks he can get away with it, as he has been since the initial liberation.
Pretty simple: the largest most active intel agency has launched this campaign. We need to squelch it at the source. Simply blow up the HQ for Syia's intel agencies. Truck bomb full of ANFO - a McVeigh special. Navy Seals clandestinely can get that in there.
That should be enough of a warning shot.
If that doesnt work, then start trashing their air defense sites, to lay them bare. And then remind Assad that we can take him out - or that Israel can do whatever they want now and we will look the other way now that our "punitive" raids are over (Thats who he fears more than the US - Israel will go for the throat).
#28
3dc---Windmills are neat things, but they are a sophisticated method of extracting energy. For success in any kind of scale larger than an individual, they will take a wind survey and some good engineering. They are large targets that do not handle bullets to gracefully. I have worked with individual systems with batteries and inverters, and my firm and a rural utility are working on putting a couple of 250 kw units out on a job in western Alaska. They will sit on 80 ft towers, 6500 lb. There are also serious dust issues with machinery to address over in Iraq. Windmills may be a good alternative in isolated areas of Iraq away from the big grid and the oil patches. They may be even be a part of a combination of wind/solar/diesel generation sytem. But that needs to be looked upon after the terrorists and saboteurs are all killed convinced of the error of their ways, and everything is Kumbayah.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/21/2005 16:26
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#29
Ptah, OP, OS - I just love following your lines of thinking. It's one of the things that makes this site so great, and I hope that someday I'll be able to analyze stuff this way (college isn't great at teaching this kind of thing; I'm working on it on my own time).
Praise aside, I'd have to agree that the conclusion that it's the former ministers is unlikely, at best. We're up against an adaptive enemy, but I suspect he's running out of his best men fast. We might want to also consider, especially if Syria and/or Iran are involved, whether we've got any double-agents running around. As prevalent as Soviet agents were during the Cold War, I would think that Muslim double-agents would be even easier to get, since there's a strong religious angle and a religious justification for deceit when it's being used to trick non-believers (in one of the Qu'ran verses, I think, but I don't remember which one).
This strikes me as a desperate gamble, however. Because they're striking directly at the things that keep the Iraqis alive and society going . . . well, it's almost as though they're admitting that nothing else has worked. They're going to have a tough time passing the blame onto the Americans for this one - and so if they let themselves be caught, they're basically saying they're the enemy not only of the Americans but of the Iraqi people as well, and that isn't going to make many Iraqis happy. And with operationst this sophisticated it's unlikely that it's being run by a couple of jihadis in the desert, even if they're nerdy jihadis. That would imply a level of communication between these groups of thugs that I don't think could be easily maintained with the number of guys getting bumped off every day. No, this is being coordinated somewhere else.
Posted by: The Doctor ||
02/21/2005 16:36
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#30
AP you working with the Alaska Villages Co-op? Used to do prop ganda for REA/FL.
#32
trailing wife
A long and twisted trail - EE -> Computer E -> early email and office software -> that great bat light. Last stuff there was complete analysis of cellular infra-structure based on analysis and timing of every signal in the system. We could even tell that something was brewing just before a certain leader when to a certain mount.... even tell you what and when %x individuals certain overseas markets did what and why and which brand and lot of phone.
BTW... the relationship software and CAIDA's are really neat. However, I tried them and didn't find them useful to my needs so we would roll our own. As to terrorist's and their attraction to cellphones... Well, if you are building a bomb you really want to connect it to a new phone with a new number so you don't get any telemarketing calls before you are ready....
Since it's now so regulated in the USA with the don't call reg. it seems that the mil. could pick up a lot of those machines on e-bay for a song....
#33
Ptah, I'm sorry but recent history precludes me from giving the NYT a presumption of truth until proven false. The Times has approximately the same orientation and validity as Pravda. However, because the topic is interesting and the conflict ongoing, it's worth discussing. My take is that the correct answer is all of the above. I suspect that the Baathists and the Jihadis are taking on the soft targets because they have been so singularly unsuccessful in attacking the hard ones, but that the sources of their information and the plans they are following have many fingerprints on them. I think the real story here is not that they are attacking the infrastructure, but rather that they have had so little success in doing so.
#35
This article is inflating a tactic into strategic thinking. The islamists and Baathists will attack anything that they think will weaken the new government. They have tried attacking oil exports, with limited success in the north, and dismal failure in the south. Pipelines are attacked because they cover large areas and can be attacked with minimal risk of detection, but is easy to repair. In addition multiple pipeline routes can be laid and burried deeply. Fuel can also be trucked in. If they were serious about besieging Baghdad, they would attack critical nodes like bridges, water purification, electric generation, and sewage pumping plants. Only then can the real mechanisms of a seige: hunger, thirst and disease have any effect. Until then, all they accomplish is to annoy the citizens and increase the reservoir of ill will against Baathists, islamists, and sunnis.
Posted by: ed ||
02/21/2005 19:59
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#36
Worse and worse, 3dc. You appear to be an engineer rather than a scientist... concerned with constructing real-world robust systems, and fixing those that aren't, rather than a what-makes-the-world-tick researcher. I married one: you folks are dangerous to the untethered dreamers whose dreams are based on moonshine, magic and poetry. ;-)
AP, looks like you killed the windmill idea -- reality intrudes its ugly face!
Lots of stuff to think about -- thanks all. Rantburg U comes through again!!
#37
Trailing Wife---not trying to knock down windmills. They are great where appropriate. Just trying to prevent the Don Quixote Effect of jousting with them, heh heh.
Shipman---We do quite a bit of work for AVEC. Tank farm design and construction, waste heat recovery. Even helped on the power plant modules for the villages. Send me an email and I will tell ya about it.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/21/2005 22:19
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#38
same here TW - engineers aren't the bad guys, they just tell you what will work at what cost/benefit. Except when you dick with us, you can count on your water/sewer not working properly ("ohhhhhh sh&t!") and your voltage fluctuating wildly, if at all. Other than that, no probs :-)
have a nice day
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 22:22
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#39
Its fairly simple and all of you missed it.
There is only one intelligence service in the area that has the people and capability to do this and is hostile to the US. Its the last Baathist regime in the region:
Syria.
Aided by the escaped high level technocrats (and their considerable amount of looted cash) in the Hussein kleptocracy, they know where to strike. They have been busted for allowing people and equipment to cross from their borders, so they can put men and material on target. And Assad thinks he can get away with it, as he has been since the initial liberation.
Pretty simple: the largest most active intel agency has launched this campaign. We need to squelch it at the source. Simply blow up the HQ for Syia's intel agencies. Truck bomb full of ANFO - a McVeigh special. Navy Seals clandestinely can get that in there.
That should be enough of a warning shot.
If that doesnt work, then start trashing their air defense sites, to lay them bare. And then remind Assad that we can take him out - or that Israel can do whatever they want now and we will look the other way now that our "punitive" raids are over (Thats who he fears more than the US - Israel will go for the throat).
There is only one intelligence service in the area that has the people and capability to do this and is hostile to the US. Its the last Baathist regime in the region:
Syria.
Aided by the escaped high level technocrats (and their considerable amount of looted cash) in the Hussein kleptocracy, they know where to strike. They have been busted for allowing people and equipment to cross from their borders, so they can put men and material on target. And Assad thinks he can get away with it, as he has been since the initial liberation.
Pretty simple: the largest most active intel agency has launched this campaign. We need to squelch it at the source. Simply blow up the HQ for Syia's intel agencies. Truck bomb full of ANFO - a McVeigh special. Navy Seals clandestinely can get that in there.
That should be enough of a warning shot.
If that doesnt work, then start trashing their air defense sites, to lay them bare. And then remind Assad that we can take him out - or that Israel can do whatever they want now and we will look the other way now that our "punitive" raids are over (Thats who he fears more than the US - Israel will go for the throat).
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez said Sunday that he would stop oil exports to the United States if the U.S. government tries to assassinate him. ``If anything happens to me, forget about Venezuelan oil Mr. (George W.) Bush,'' said Chavez during his weekly radio and television show.
Somebody set the Zionist death ray to 'deep fat fry'!
Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro accused the United States last week of planning to assassinate Chavez. ``If I am assassinated, there is only one person responsible: the president of the United States. You must take action if this happens,'' Chavez said to listeners of his show. Relations with the United States, Venezuela's main oil buyer, have deteriorated in the past months due to Washington's criticism of weapons purchases by Venezuela. Chavez has accused the U.S. government of being behind a 2002 coup attempt that it was slow to condemn.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/21/2005
12:46:58 AM ||
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#1
Venezuelan oil doesn't have a lot of markets - mostly only US refineries can process that low-grade crap. If Chavez stops selling to Uncle Sam, he'd better make sure he's got a lot of cash in the piggy bank, or find a way to turn low-grade crude into food.
#2
OK lets make a deal... US would stop buying Venezuelan oil, but will reserve the right to toe up Chavez thusly at the nearest opportunity.
Fair and square.
#5
Hugo needs a clue. Can someone send him an email on the range and accuracy of Tomahawk missiles, and remind him that Puerto Rico is US territory? Not to mention that they're carried by most Destroyers, Cruisers, Aircraft Carriers and Submarines, plus can be fitted to B-52's, B-1's, and B-2's? Maybe he'll understand that if we wanted to do him in, he'd be pushing up daisies - all over Venezuela.
This really reminds me of something I've seen before - make some rash accusations, try to bribe the US. That was the OLD US, Hugo, we don't play those games any more. Condi has enough control over the State Department ALREADY to ensure we don't. Give it up - it's a loser's hand (ask Saddam and Kimmie if you don't believe us).
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/21/2005 16:35
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#6
Remember the deals China just made with Chavez. He doesn't need us quite as much as he did before.
#7
assuming Chinese tankers make it to Venezuela. It's a big ol mean Pacific Ocean out there. Ships in less than excellent shape disappear all the time. I'm just saying.....
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 18:42
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#8
Yeah, and they have to go through the Panama Canal. What? Hutchison Whampao, a wholly owned subsidiary of the PLAN controls that now. Hmmm. Maybe we'd better be careful about whose ships we sink.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/21/2005 18:47
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#9
Alaska heavy crude is closer Mrs. Davis. We export quite a bit of that Oil and China is a buyer of Oil. The Midway Sunset Oilfield which I am stilling on top of also produces heavy crude. It is also closer to China. We can undercut Chavez any time we want. China wants energy. It has no other use for Chavez.
China accused Japan and the United States on Sunday of meddling in its internal affairs, and criticized a new joint security statement in which the two countries declared a peaceful Taiwan Strait as among their "common strategic objectives." The mention of Taiwan in the statement issued Saturday by senior American and Japanese officials drew a firm response from China, which considers Taiwan a breakaway province and is acutely sensitive to what it regards as outside interference. By contrast, Taiwan's foreign minister cautiously welcomed the statement.
In Beijing, the official New China News Agency described the statement as "unprecedented" and quoted China's Foreign Ministry as saying that the country "resolutely opposes the United States and Japan in issuing any bilateral document concerning China's Taiwan, which meddles in the internal affairs of China, and hurts China's sovereignty." The joint statement was issued at a diplomatically fragile time in East Asia. Japan and the United States want China to persuade North Korea to return to talks over its nuclear weapons program. North Korea declared Saturday that it would not take part in any new rounds of talks, and over the weekend, China sent a delegation to the capital, Pyongyang.
The American-Japanese statement dealt foremost with North Korea but included a short, cautious mention of Taiwan. It noted that both countries called for "encouraging the peaceful resolution of issues concerning the Taiwan Strait" as part of a list of "common strategic objectives." But American and Taiwanese officials, and the New China News Agency, said that mentioning Taiwan by name was a shift for Japan, which has in the past been leery of publicly inserting itself into the Taiwan issue. Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at People's University in Beijing, said the change signaled a greater assertiveness by Japan and reflected the deteriorating relationship between China and Japan. He said the Japanese government and people appeared to regard China increasingly as a hostile force.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/21/2005
12:45:30 AM ||
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#2
Pumping money into o'Bill's presidental reelection campaign was a bit of meddling in internal affairs too there China. If you play that game, prepared to be burned.
The European constitution cleared its first major hurdle last night when Spanish voters overwhelmingly endorsed the historic document in the first of 10 referendums that will be held across Europe over the next 18 months. With all the votes counted, 77% of voters approved the constitution, which is meant to simplify the work of the EU. Only 17% of Spaniards voted no and 6% of ballot papers were recorded as blank, said the interior ministry. European leaders, who had hoped that voters in one of the most pro-EU countries would turn out in large numbers, will be disappointed that nearly 60% of the population failed to vote. Turnout was 42%, the lowest in any Spanish vote since the death of Franco in 1975, and below the 45.9% in last year's European parliamentary elections in Spain.
#2
Yesterday, I made a comment late to a posting about the Kum-By-Ya nature of the EU Constipation.
It should be repeated here, as Zappy got his minions to the polls and the rest of Spain was disgusted...
Convinced that, while remaining proud of their own national identities and history, the peoples ofEurope are determined to transcend their ancient divisions and, united ever more closely, to forge a common Convinced that, thus "united in its diversity", Europe offers them the best chance of pursuing, with due regard for the rights of each individual and in awareness of their responsibilities towards future generations and the Earth, the great venture which makes of it a special area of human hope,
There was a clause that was later deleted, particularly at the behest of the Poles, Brits, Italians and Czechs...
We proclaim; There she was just a-walkinâ down the street,
Singinâ, do-wah diddy-diddy down diddy-do
Snappinâ her fingers and shufflinâ her feet,
Singinâ, do-wah diddy-diddy down diddy-do
She looked good, looked good
She looked fine, looked fine
She looked good, she looked fine
And I nearly lost my mind
#7
"Turnout was 42%..."
"...77% of voters approved the constitution..."
Thus 23% did not approve it. 23% of the 42% turnout is 10% of the voters in Spain, or one in 10.
"One in 10 voters in Spain... said they understood the constitution."
Thus the percentage that said they understood the constitution is equal to the percentage that turned out and not approve of it.
Posted by: Tom ||
02/21/2005 12:53
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#8
2b> "Where's Aris"
[waves] Here I am, laughing and pointing at y'all. :-)
Mrs. Davis> I'd bet that's not even true of he-who-shall-not-be-named.
Hmm, no, I *was* waiting for it eagerly actually. 4 down, 21 to go. :P
Let's see what were the euro-hating chaps saying before now, whenever the Constitution was being ratified via parliament in countries of "New Europe"? That the eeeevil undemocratic EU wasn't letting the people approve via referenda (ofcourse in all those cases those countries had approved via referenda their membership in their Union just the past year when the shape of the Constitution was already clear enough for all to see and there was no further significant dispute about it).
Now the "Old Europe" is letting people vote on it, and the doublethinking duckspeakers ofcourse seek to focus on the turnout instead. The turnout is ofcourse always smaller whenever a contest is clear-cut, so that leaves the naysayers an automatic out. Just count all abstentions as if they were "no" instead and you'll always have a majority opposing the Constitution. Calvinball whenever you lose! :-)
--
Anyway, dedicating this to the occasion, from "Speaker for the Dead" by Orson Scott Card:
"The tribe is whatever we believe it is. We become one tribe because we say we are one tribe. Then we are one tribe, and our greatness is your greatness, and yours is ours. You say to us, we must see all other tribes the same way. As one tribe, our tribe all together, so that we grow by making them grow."
#10
"The tribe is whatever we believe it is. We become one tribe because we say we are one tribe. Then we are one tribe, and our greatness is your greatness, and yours is ours. You say to us, we must see all other tribes the same way. As one tribe, our tribe all together, so that we grow by making them grow."
OOOOOH OOOOOH NOW WE CAN ALL SING DO WAH DIDDY!!!!
"The referendum is not legally binding and will now need to be ratified in the Cortes, the Spanish parliament, but significant opposition is not expected."
This, folks, sums up nicely what is wrong about the EU
#14
The referendum is not binding because the 1978 Spanish constitution only allows consultative referenda.
"This sums up what is wrong about the EU"? TGA, I expected better from you than to blame the EU for the contents of the 1978 Spanish constitution.
Better to thank the EU that it becomes the cause for referenda (or atleast the cause to open discussion on referenda in countries where there doesn't exist such a tradition) continent-wide. Spain has has only had two referenda since 1978 -- one in 1986 about remaining in NATO, and this here now.
Consultative or no, 77% of the voters said yes. And Spain is a democracy -- no democratic parliament would dare go against such a clear-cut statement.
#15
Aris :no democratic parliament would dare go against such a clear-cut statement
Watch 'em - If not them, then somebody will balk. I Predict at least one country will have to go through the process a second time with either threats, or what we call in this country, PORK! (And I don't mean the kind you eat)
#16
Aris, the German Basic Law doesn't allow for national referenda at all.
Yet the German parties changed another paragraph of that constitution in a heartbeat to suit the new "European Warrant". The German Basic Law didn't allow German citizens to be extradited from Germany. The provision was changed and I doubt that most Germans are even aware of it.
No such changes are planned concerning the referendum. But actually my comment was more directed at the "but significant opposition is not expected".
This is what has happened with major decision concerning the EU: The Euro, the European Warrant and now the EU Constitution.
#17
A decent concern for the opinion and welfare of the people would translate into a requirement for a super-majority with a sufficiently high degree of participation.
E.g. at least 66.66% of yes (vs the nos and blanks) with at least 75% of registered voters participating. That would be a mandate for such a fundamental change as adopting a new Constitution.
Instead of this Giscard d'Estaing and his friends are bringing a con to the EU.
#18
TGA, I consider that to be a problem with the political elites of each country, not with the EU.
Perhaps the European Union should *force* nation-states to use referenda when approving treaties. I'd have no problem with that.
IIRC, there *did* use to be a suggested version of one of the articles in the Constitution that said IIRC that new versions of it would be ratified via EU-wide referenda, and you'd need to have a majority of voters and qualified majority of member-states, for such amendments to the EU Constitution to pass.
But ofcourse that'd be a radical departure from the "all member-states must ratify amendments" which currently governs the process-- it was perceived as an even more dangerous loss of national sovereignty by eurosceptics and a true move towards this being a real Constitution instead of a treaty. So that article was dropped and further changes keep on needing the member-states ratify "according to their constitutional requirements".
Hold on a sec, and I'll try to find the version I am talking about.
#19
E.g. at least 66.66% of yes (vs the nos and blanks) with at least 75% of registered voters participating.
Hah. How very deceitful. In this case it would not be 33.33% of nos and blanks, but a mere 25% that would simply need to avoid voting, and would also be augmented by all the people that didn't bother voting.
Tell me, in such a scenario, what motivation would you (as a "No" voter) have to go and vote? You'd do a much better job for your cause by abstaining.
The turnout quota which has been established in atleast one country which has tinkered with such things (either Czech Republic or Hungary, I forget) is this: For the vote to be valid you need a 50% majority of the votes cast, plus that result to also represent a 25% of the eligible voters.
In which case, Spain's vote still qualifies: 77*41.5 = roughly 32.5%, which is over the 25% barrier.
#23
Not deceit, just decent concern with the opinion and representation of the people.
If more than 25% can't be bothered to participate in the vote then it's not a worthy change. If more than 33% of the participants won't say yes then there is a lack of legitimacy.
But we already know the EU is not about representation.
#25
What we see is 8 Spaniards having a proposal put in front of them, 3 of them accept to vote and 5 aren't interested, and of the 3 voters only 2 are in favour.
#28
Just talking about the adoption of a new Constitution
Then tell me what's the turnout quota for ratifying Constitutional amendments via referendum in America or Britain or any other place in the world. Many American states changed their constitutions recently believe in anti-gay marriage amendments, so why don't we check the turnouts and quotas there, shall we?
If more than 25% can't be bothered to participate in the vote then it's not a worthy change
When you place any such quota (or atleast any quota that's over 50%), what you're doing is strongly encouraging "no" supporters not to vote at all, so as to invalidate the referendum.
That has always been the case wherever such a quota has existed -- the minority side always urges voters not to vote, knowing that's the only way it has to invalidate the result.
Let's illustrate with a concrete example
Let's not. Nations aren't "groups of friends", and even if your example were to apply, that'd mean that the non-voters had given a blank-check to the other people to do as they will.
#29
Aris, here is an example -- the US Constitution requires 2/3 to propose (both Houses) and 3/4 to accept (the States). The principle is that the law of the land should require an extraordinary majority to be adopted and/or changed -- because it is a binding compact for all the people. Anything less than that is an insult to the decency of the people.
U.S. Constitution: Article V
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress...
#30
You insist that people who don't participate in a vote should simply be ignored. Have you heard of the concept of a quorum?
Quorum requirements are standard in formal organizations, and are standard throughout the US political system. To conduct business in Congress, a majority of U.S. Senators must be in attendance; the same is true for U.S. Representatives. In the Oregon Senate 20 of 30 senators must be present; in the Oregon House it's 40 of 60 representatives. Three of five Portland City Commissioners are required to conduct business: that's a 60 percent turnout. Further, to pass certain tax measures in Oregon, 50 percent plus one of those casting ballots must vote in favor of it -- HOWEVER Article XI, section 11(8) of the Oregon Constitution states a second condition that must be met: "at least 50 percent of registered voters eligible to vote" must cast a ballot.
#31
American states changed their constitutions recently believe in anti-gay marriage amendments, so why don't we check the turnouts and quotas there, shall we?
#34
And now you are comparing the attendance of a few hundred elected legislators with the turnout quotas in a population of dozens of millions citizens. Yes, our national legislations have similar quotas when amending the national constitutions. But that's not what we were talking about. Did America have referenda at all when passing its amendments or did it not? What were the turnouts in the *referenda*?
You're being intentionally deceitful.
And "Three fourth of states" is not a turnout quota --the equivalent in the EU is after all "ALL the member states".
The only actual turnout quota you mentioned is when you mentioned the 50% quota that exists in Oregon to pass "certain tax measures". But from what I read of the Constitution in general, it seems to me that amendments in the entirety of the Oregon Constitution need pass no such turnout.
Now, here in California, you need 2/3 by vote of the people to approve tax increases. Don't know about the Oregon laws. Never lived there.
And deceitful? He he he... Aris, You made a big thing about the turnout on the Gay Marriage Amendments in the 2004 election, appearing to be requesting the actual numbers. I provided such numbers.
Yes, but they had no turnout *quotas* that they ought to pass, right? Because if they *did* have a 50% turnout quote, then the opposing side could have boycotted the election, and thus invadidate them.
Check the calculations:
75*53=39.75%
75*56=42.56%
75*58=43.50%
Etc, etc, etc. Geez, seems none of these would have passed a 50% quota if the other side had chosen to boycott.
I think the 60% avg turnout in the US Prez Election beats the heck out of the 42% in the Spanish referendum....
Ofcourse. Most US Prez elections are much more hard-fought than this Spanish referendum was when the result was as clear as that. In hard-fought elections and referenda the turnout is always greater.
When Malta had a hard-fought referendum on EU membership, the turnout was 90.86% and the even-harder fought presidential battle was 96.95% turnout.
#38
The Spanish referendum will be remembered for three things:
1) "You don't need to read it to know that it's good".
2) Low turnout, with less than one third of the electorate actually voting in the Constitution's favour.
3) Nine out of ten Spaniards saying they didn't know anything about the contents of the Constitution.
And possibly "Spain has experienced a net cash inflow from the EU of £60bn", and
"The referendum is not legally binding and will now need to be ratified in the Cortes".
#39
My turnout #s are not registered voters, they are eligible voters. Some of which are not registered, if you include registered voters, your turnout will average higher, because most states require registration before the vote, and not all eligible voters register. Turnout percentage of registered voters runs about 70-85%, depending on registration rules, and state. A few states allow same-day registration with a driver's license or passport... North Dakota and Wisconsin being two that I know of. California's deadline is two weeks before the election.
For example California :
Eligible voters : 22,075,000
Registered Voters : 16,557,000
Votes Cast : 12,590,000 - 76% Registered, 57% Eligible
Valid Votes President : 12,421,000
#40
Afterthought - As you can see, About 170,000 people left it blank for president or spoiled it. They didn't want Bush, Kerry, Nader, or the half-dozen mini-minis. So I guess they should be counted as abstensions. How that would figure in your referendum scenario, I am not sure...
#41
Aris, it's so irritating to try to discuss something with you. You always focus on details and refuse to consider principles. Sometimes it seems you do it on purpose. Naughty boy. I suggest you read John Locke's 2nd treatise of government. Maybe you'll get a notion of what the source of a compact is, and why a super-majority ought to be required for the adoption or amendment of a constitution.
#42
My turnout #s are not registered voters, they are eligible voters.
Ah, well in Europe, these two tend to be the same thing. Turnout of eligible voters should be our concern.
You always focus on details and refuse to consider principles.
And you always focus on fantasies, and refuse to consider facts.
Here's the fact of the matter -- if you force a quota like 50% participation then all you end up doing is encouraging voters to boycott the elections. But you don't care about that -- that's just a detail for you.
And there's no country in the whole wide world that demands such a ludicrous turnout quota for referenda as 75%. But you don't care about that either. Another annoying detail for you.
I told you the solution, the solution that both encourages participation and does take into account how many people avoided. Insist that the winning percentage will include atleast 25% of eligible voters. Same as Hungary or the Czech Republic does. You ignored it.
If we just had 10% more people *objecting* to the Constitution, then Spain would have passed the 50% margin. Bad "no"-voters, that you don't exist in sufficient amounts.
Bulldog says that less one third of the electorate voted in the Constitution's favour. Ofcourse less that 7% of the electorate voted to oppose it.
It also means that 5 people or so supported the Constitution for everyone that opposed it.
And you are accusing *me* of focusing on details. Here's the non-detail of the matter - More than five people supported the Constitution for every one that opposed it. When Republicans were calling a 3% margin in the popular vote as a "landslide" and a "triumph", Spain's pro-Constitution vote occured with a 60% margin of victory.
A 60% margin of victory in a free and fair referendum. And still the anti-democratic crowd of Bulldog/Kalle/and so forth, don't seem to accept the legitimacy of the victory. Not enough turnout according to them.
#44
Aris, it's not the lack of turnout that is un-democratic.
It's the wilful lack of information and voter motivation on the side of governments that is. Because it's done out of fear that the informed citizen is more likely to vote against it.
Whenever in the last year there was a real heated campaign on important European issues, voters either approved in much smaller margins or even refused the deal. The Danish and Swedish Euro decisions come to mind.
#45
What you're saying is that referendum results reflect the stance that society as a whole takes on an issue. When an issue is divisive, you'll get a hard-fought result which is split roughly in half. When there's lots of agreement on an issue instead, you'll get clear-cut results.
How is that bad?
The Spanish government gave out millions of free copies of the European Constitution I believe. Is that supposed to be bad or meant to intentionally hide information about it? Unless the opposing side has been suppressed from stating its argument, where's the undemocratic nature of this whole affair?
#46
It also means that 5 people or so supported the Constitution for everyone that opposed it.
This would be infinitely more impressive (and meaningful) if it weren't also true the 9 people had no idea what was in the Constitution for every one that had a clue.
SITTING beneath a Dallas Cowboys T-shirt pinned to the wall of his office in Tikrit, Lieutenant-Colonel Jim Stockmoe lolled back in his chair and roared with laughter at the fatal idiocy of so many of his enemies. "We've had well over a dozen examples of these knuckleheads doing stupid things," he said.
"Here's a funny story. There were three brothers down in Baghdad who had a mortar tube and were firing into the Green Zone ... They were storing the mortar rounds in the car engine compartment and the rounds got overheated. Two of these clowns dropped them in the tube and they exploded, blowing their legs off." Abandoning the lifeless carcasses and smouldering wreckage of the car, the third brother sought refuge in a house. The occupants were less than impressed, Stockmoe said, slapping his thigh. "So they proceeded to beat the crap out of him and then turned him over to the Iraqi police. It was like the movie Dumb and Dumber."
There have been so many examples of such incompetence that Stockmoe, who left Iraq last week after a year as the senior military intelligence officer with the US Army's 1st Infantry Division, has been doling out unofficial Darwin Awards in honour of the most side-splittingly useless insurgents. Created in 1993 by a Stanford University student, the official Darwin Awards commemorate those who contribute to the improvement of our gene pool by removing themselves from it in stupid ways. According to Stockmoe, Iraq's gene pool is in better shape each day.
It is perhaps a rash soldier who mocks an adversary that has killed more than 1000 US troops in 18 months. But Stockmoe has a serious point, and a close look at insurgent attacks since the Fallujah offensive in November reveals that while the numbers might have increased, they are becoming less effective. The January 30 election certainly marked a political defeat for the insurgents, but it was also a crushing military one. Despite having 5200 polling stations to aim for, they could not bring off a major attack on a single one; one hapless suicide bomber apparently had Down syndrome. Iraq's insurgency is not about to end. Indeed, there is every chance it has several years to run. Despite the loss of thousands, it has consistently been able to regroup. So, no one should be declaring "mission accomplished". But as Stockmoe might cheerfully put it, the knuckleheads are in deep doodoo.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/21/2005
12:40:35 AM ||
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#1
Oh how nice the Law of Unintended Consequences can be! I'm quite happy that many of the thugs wind up getting theirs, while trying to get ours! Note to decency though, I think the innocent young lad with Downs syndrome was not a perp but was used mercilessly by the blood thirsty animals that bomb anything or anyone.
#2
typical sneering attitude towards soldiers. But it's still a funny story anyway.
lolled back in his chair and roared with laughter.
a rash soldier who mocks an adversary that has killed more than 1000 US troops in 18 months. But Stockmoe has a serious point,
Despite the media's insistence that the insurgents are mean lean fighting machines ...for an all out war and occupation of another country full of suicidal people from all over the dysfunctional middle east, pumped up by a well-funded madrassas, that's about as low as the numbers could possible be. I think it would be a safe bet to say we lose more women in our own country to psychos than we lose soldiers in a major world war. Mocking these guys with Darwin Awards seems like a good way to me, to counter the media propaganda that these "freedom fighters" are highly skilled experts rather than a bunch of stupid splodydopes.
one hapless suicide bomber apparently had Down syndrome
I'm guessing that this soldier didn't use the word "hapless" but rather the author did in an effort to make him look callous and mean.
Just another not so subtle effort by the media to portray our soldiers in a bad light.
#3
Heh. Re: Stockmoe - Funny stuff from a guy who knows which hand has the shit - and which the shinola. His comments are, indeed, welcome. No wonder there are "representatives" of the "insurgency" who want to meet and "negotiate"...
"there is every chance it has several years to run"
WTF? Says who? Toby Harnden abandons the authoritative source and tries to put the editorial agenda touch on the story. Wrong-o, wankoff. Where's your source for that conclusion, digger duud?
It seems the days of the Masterminds have run out in Iraq. Lol, Al Zarqi prolly left some time ago, frustrated with the surviving dopes available to him. When the Iran / Syria connection gets decapped, then there will be no more direction, no money, and no "glorious" insurgency or martyrdom. Now that's an ending, Tobe.
#4
Article: It is perhaps a rash soldier who mocks an adversary that has killed more than 1000 US troops in 18 months.
If the writer knew any history, he wouldn't say it was rash. It took the Japanese a week to kill 1000 GI's on Iwo Jima. It took the North Vietnamese a month to kill 1000 GI's during Tet. It has taken these death-defying(TM), fanatical(TM) holy warriors 18 months to kill 1000 GI's. That's not a record to be proud of.
#5
"They were storing the mortar rounds in the car engine compartment and the rounds got overheated. Two of these clowns dropped them in the tube and they exploded, blowing their legs off." Abandoning the lifeless carcasses and smouldering wreckage of the car, the third brother sought refuge in a house. The occupants were less than impressed, Stockmoe said, slapping his thigh. "So they proceeded to beat the crap out of him and then turned him over to the Iraqi police. It was like the movie Dumb and Dumber."
#6
The very essence of their movement is Darwinistic: the struggle between civilization and barbaraism. They know there is no way they can keep up with civilization, so their only alternatives are to utterly destroy civilization or fade away. Ironically, this would make them comrades of purpose with many others in the world who cannot cope with changing times, but who have opted for annihilation rather than adaptation. Civility, however, should not look to these individuals with nostalgic admiration, because while a single velociraptor is fascinating, a hundred million of them are a problem.
The U.S. 7th Cavalry, which won a place in history in the American Indian wars under General George Armstrong Custer, has sent all its helicopter borne troops back home to Texas from Korea, U.S. officials said. The two Kiowa helicopter troop units in the 4th Squadron of the 7th Cavalry, the U.S. Army's most forward deployed heavy cavalry unit, departed for Fort Hood last November. Of a total 750 soldiers, 400 and all 16 OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopters were shipped to aerial units in the United States.
Dubbed the "eyes and ears" of the 2nd Infantry Division near the inter-Korean border, the squadron provides aerial reconnaissance and ground security forces to guard against any North Korean aggression.
The deployment back home came as part of the squadron's transformation into a "super" modular brigade combat team as Washington pushes ahead with its plan to reduce U.S. troop numbers in Korea to around 24,500 by 2008. "This (deployment) happened because of the Army's transformation - this particular aircraft no longer is part of the heavy configuration that has characterized the 2nd Infantry Division," said Capt. Katrina Barnes, a public affairs officer at the 2nd Infantry Division. "As the division transforms... there are types of equipment that will no longer be needed."
The remaining 350 soldiers become an "Armored Reconnaissance Squadron," supporting the 1st Brigade Combat Team or "Iron Brigade Combat Team," under the 2nd Infantry Division. United States Forces Korea is transforming the brigade into a "super" fighting brigade to compensate for troop reductions.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/21/2005
12:37:45 AM ||
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#5
What are the going to use to replace the Kiowas?
What gromky said, the Army is going to UAV's. That's why Rummy killed the Commanche helicopter program.
Posted by: Steve ||
02/21/2005 11:28
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#6
What are the going to use to replace the Kiowas?
How about South Koreans?
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/21/2005 11:32
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Yes, Mrs. D. That is what we used in the first Korean War. There's a lot of lessons to learn and unlearn from the Korean experience of rebuilding a native fighting force for internal security. And a good perspective on what it costs in terms of casualties and timelines for the Coalition.
U.S. Marines and Iraqi security forces launched a new offensive Sunday against insurgents in troubled cities west of Baghdad after two days of carnage that left nearly 100 people dead. Sunni Muslim tribal leaders met to determine their place in a Shiite-dominated Iraqi government. As the Shiite majority prepared to take control of the country's first freely elected government, tribal chiefs representing Sunni Arabs in six provinces issued a list of demands - including participation in the government and drafting a new constitution - after previously refusing to acknowledge the vote's legitimacy. "We made a big mistake when we didn't vote," said Sheik Hathal Younis Yahiya, 49, a representative from northern Nineveh. "Our votes were very important." He said threats from insurgents - not sectarian differences - kept most Sunnis from voting.
What was that about people who voted being apostates, who must be killed?
Gathering in a central Baghdad hotel, about 70 tribal leaders from the provinces of Baghdad, Kirkuk, Salaheddin, Diyala, Anbar and Nineveh, tried to devise a strategy for participation in a future government.
[Scatches head]
"Wot are we going to do now, Ali?"
There was an air of desperation in some quarters of the smoke-filled conference room. "When we said that we are not going to take part, that didn't mean that we are not going to take part in the political process. We have to take part in the political process and draft the new constitution," said Adnan al-Duleimi, the head of Sunni Endowments in Baghdad.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/21/2005
12:37:08 AM ||
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#1
"We made a big mistake when we didnât vote," said Sheik Hathal Younis Yahiya, 49, a representative from northern Nineveh. "Our votes were very important."
Gathering in a central Baghdad hotel, about 70 tribal leaders from the provinces of Baghdad, Kirkuk, Salaheddin, Diyala, Anbar and Nineveh, tried to devise a strategy for participation in a future government. There was an air of desperation in some quarters of the smoke-filled conference room.
This is funnier than a Zawahiri tape. Perhaps these desperate tribal leaders should go the extreme step of getting a clue, recognizing they're in a fight for their lives, and commit their communities to exterminating the criminal vermin, Iraqi and foreign, that's responsible for their situation. If they don't, they deserve the fruits of being associated with mass murder, genocide, theft, and base criminality. Somehow I think Iraq and the world can struggle along without them.
#2
The AMS is hand and glove in league with the terrorists. Screw them. I say no to any "tribal leaders" who didn't allow or protect their people so they could vote. If these assholes want representation bring the government the Baath party leaders and terrorists causing the violence then the government might consider your request. Until then STFU.
#3
*snicker* I agree, Verlaine. First the Sunni Tribal Leaders (mustn't forget the caps, they're Important People) issue demands to be included in the political process then, realizing they completely misjudged the situation and the Iraqi people they used to control, they try to figure out how to jump on the train that's already left the station -- and is accelerating very quickly.
Heh, the Arab way - especially the Arab Tribe / Clan way. They presume the entire World works like their little world does and will accommodate them. That's how it works in their bubble, so...
This is so pathetic that it just screams cognitive dissonance... and no, we should not feel sorry for them or accommodate them. They're Saddam's collaboative killers, criminals, and thugs - the leaders, I mean - and they'll just have to catch on and catch up - or be replaced by people with a neuron count higher than two. They prolly feel like they just landed on another planet. Gooood.
#5
They should be told in no uncertain terms"You screwed the pooch on the elections,you now have 45 days to kill,capture and or turn-in the terrorist or be shut-out indefinatly".
#7
I have been ruminating over the following theory: These people are NOT UNIQUE: Their culture merely colors and affects the way they behave, but the ROOT behavior is universal. We call them Islamists when they're muslim, but we'd call them Socialists if they had been born in Europe, Communists if they had been born in Russia or China, and Leftists/Democrats/Moonbats if they had been born in the United States.
Conclusion: The MSM supports ALL these people, because if you peel away the cultural overlays of MSM members AND the people they support, THEY ARE KIN. They share the following:
1. Need to control people in order to provide support and sustenance for themselves, rather than support themselves.
2. Fundamental distaste when it comes to facing reality.
3. Difficulty in discerning cause and effect.
4. Tendency to blame others for problems THEY cause or are suffering from, coupled with a pathological drive to flee from personal responsibility.
5. Unshakeable belief in their innate superiority, with an attendant need to affirm and enforce the inferiority of others.
6. Theory based thinking. Insistence on viewing the problems in the world, if not the world itself, as a nail because they possess only a hammer.
7. Need to Justify their behavior and existance by resorting to moralizing. Due to #2 above, their moralizing usually has little in connection or appearance to traditional, or even natural, moral reasoning.
People, I'm telling you, under the cultural veneer, THEY'RE ALL ALIKE!!!!
As the Shiite majority prepared to take control of the countryâs first freely elected government, tribal chiefs representing Sunni Arabs in six provinces issued a list of demands - including participation in the government and drafting a new constitution - after previously refusing to acknowledge the voteâs legitimacy.
Really now, how different is this behavior from that of the Democrats, the MSM, the Socialists in Europe, the Communists/tyrranists in Russia/China, or the Palestinians?
#9
Ptah, have you read The New World of the Gothic Fox? You don't need to, but you might enjoy it.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/21/2005 9:36
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Ptah - Tribalism is, IMHO, one of the root causes beneath your points - from it we get systemic traits such as corruption, incompetence, and a pathological closed mind. I believe much of the rest springs from that point. Just my take - I enjoyed your post!
#11
"a powerful Sunni organization believed to have ties with the insurgents sought to condemn the weekend attacks that left nearly 100 Iraqis dead."
These mooks need to realize that the Arafat trick (talk nice while the people you support kill liek rabid dogs) doesn't work with the Bush Administration.
#12
Sweet. Interesting post Ptah...does help to explain why we should find such strange bed fellows in these 2 groups.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
02/21/2005 21:11
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"a powerful Sunni organization believed to have ties with the insurgents sought to condemn the weekend attacks that left nearly 100 Iraqis dead."
These mooks need to realize that the Arafat trick (talk nice while the people you support kill liek rabid dogs) doesn't work with the Bush Administration.
#14
"a powerful Sunni organization believed to have ties with the insurgents sought to condemn the weekend attacks that left nearly 100 Iraqis dead."
These mooks need to realize that the Arafat trick (talk nice while the people you support kill liek rabid dogs) doesn't work with the Bush Administration.
Peyamner reported Saturday that a member of the "American Security" informed them that Osama bin Laden is currently under guard in the Baluchistan region of SE Iran.
According to this source, he was captured three weeks ago while attempting to cross into Iran from the Vaziristan province of Pakistan. The Vaziris had begun to consider bin Laden's presence among them a burden after recent strikes against them by the Pakistan national army.
The source asserts that the Iranians are holding bin Laden as a potential barganing chip in its current talks with the US and Europeans.
Thanks to Medya for translating this for me.
According to Medya, bin Laden might have believed that he would receive safe haven in Baluchistan since the Baluch's are Sunni Muslims like him. They might have expected him to be as hostile to the Iranian Shi'a leadership as they are.
[UPDATE]
The Iranian goverment is denying that they have arrested bin Laden. "This information is wrong and bin Laden has not been arrested by our security forces," government spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh said at a weekly press briefing.
Britain has been preparing to extradite Arab insurgents to their native countries. Officials said the Home Office was preparing to launch talks with several Arab countries for the deportation of suspected insurgents who entered Britain as political refugees. They said many of the Arab immigrants have used Britain as a launching pad for attacks in the Middle East as well as for financing Al Qaida and related groups. "I think we should be prosecuting much more energetically our ability to deport the individuals concerned to the countries from which they come," Home Secretary Charles Clarke said.
Officials said the government would seek guarantees from Arab countries that they would not torture or execute any insurgent deported from Britain. They said all of the suspects would undergo trial in their native countries in proceedings open to British and other monitors.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/21/2005
12:33:49 AM ||
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#1
How about not worrying about what happens to them? Please get a clue UK. These people want to kill you. They want to destroy western culture. You have no moral obligation to protect people dead set on your destruction or the destruction of others. Send them back where they came from. Drop them from 3000 feet if you must but get rid of them they are infectious and deadly.
#2
Maybe they could use something like the message in a bottle approach. Get the leftover "balls" from The Prisoner, stick these fools in them, and set them adrift. If the shitholes that bred them want them back, they can organize SAR. Otherwise, they can drift with the wind, currents, and tides. Good solution for an island nation.
Posted by: Howard UK ||
02/21/2005 8:28
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#5
Show them what happened to Guy Fawkes.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/21/2005 15:13
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#6
I have a great idea - let's make them all shepherds in the Falklands. In bikini underwear. In winter (May-October). They can be ransomed from this durance vile by providing Britain with 3 million barrels of petroleum a month for three years, free. Otherwise, they stay there. Oh, and only ONE WAY radio communications - NPR satellite broadcasts, 24/7, with no ability to remove the headset.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/21/2005 17:45
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OP--NPR broadcasts would be comforting not demoralizing. NPR works for their side.
Posted by: Jame Retief ||
02/21/2005 18:01
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It is already clear now that the visit of the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to Georgia, which started on Thursday evening, will not bring any considerable changes in the character of relations between the two countries. They can still be described as stagnant: it is hard to expect anything else, if the Georgian government continuingly provokes scandals with Russia.
Georgian officials introduced sudden changes to the program of the Russian minister's stay in Georgia only one day before the start of the visit. The program was added with a ceremony at the Memorial complex in honor of the warriors, who fell in battles for the country's territorial integrity. The Russian minister refused to visit the complex. The head of the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry stated that it was incorrect to amend the program only a day before the actual visit. Such official matters are normally coordinated several months in advance. In addition, the minister said that the Russian Federation should take account of its status as a country assisting in the regulation of conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Such an undertaking as visiting the memorial complex would not be capable of creating the necessary atmosphere for resuming conflict-regulating talks. In other words, the minister implied that Russia was not intended to quarrel with Abkhazia and Ossetia with a view to do something pleasant for Georgia. As experience shows, it would take Russia too long to enjoy a friendly gesture in return.
The reaction of the Georgian government was rather predictable. The hysterics in the Georgian administration was arranged shortly before the Russian foreign minister's visit to Georgia. The speaker of the Georgian parliament, Nino Burjanadze, stated that there was no other example in the world diplomatic practice, when officials refused to lay flowers and wreathes to warriors' graves. "This is not neighbor-like. This is an inadequate gesture on the part of Russia. This is a question of elementary politeness," Georgian Foreign Minister Salome Zurabishvili said. The national Georgian television said that Russia's decision not to honor the memorial complex was "a spit in the face of the Georgian nation." As a result, the type of the visit was changed from the "official" to "work" visit.
South Ossetian politicians had a completely different attitude to Sergei Lavrov's refusal to visit the memorial complex in Georgia. "Sergei Lavrov, the Foreign Minister of Russia, of the country, which did everything possible to save South Ossetia from fascism, acted wisely when he turned down the blasphemous and provocative suggestion," the chairman of the committee for defense and security of the unrecognized republic, Yuri Dzidzoity said.
It is worth mentioning that the Russian foreign minister visited the grave of Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania, who mysteriously died in Georgia in the beginning of February. Sergei Lavrov believes that the former prime minister of Georgia was a "man, who did a lot for the peaceful solution of conflicts in Georgia."
It is possible to conclude that Georgia is not interested in normalizing relations with Russia. The Georgian government wouldn't have provoked a conflict about nothing otherwise. Lavrov's attendance of the above-mentioned memorial complex would mean that Russia agrees with the policy of the first Georgian president Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who incited conflicts with autonomies and eventually broke up the nation. It is also worth mentioning that thousands of Abkhazians and Ossetians were killed in those wars too - Georgians were not the only victims. It is virtually impossible to separate the good and bad in a civil war.
Colombia's conservative government and its troops look confused and disappointed as an unexpected offensive by Marxist rebels put an end to a 2-1/2 years retreat killing at least 50 soldiers in the last two months. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has taken the initiative in the 40-year war, upsetting government efforts to crackdown on them.
A quick glance at the CIA World Fact Book page for Columbia indicates that it has a coalition government between a Conservative Party, a Liberal Party, and numerous smaller independent groups.
The timing for hard-liner President Alvaro Uribe and his Washington allies could not be worse, as both have depicted their policy for Colombia as a great success. Accordingly, Uribe is asking the US Congress for another $700 million, which brings the total cost for Plan Colombia - a US military aid program - over the $4 billion mark.
However, as the US becomes more and more involved in the internal conflict of this South American nation, results are far from being good. The military record for the last two months speaks by itself.
An army column that had penetrated the mountains of northwest Colombia last month was hit hard, with 19 soldiers dead and five missing - the worst single military setback of the Uribe era. A week earlier, the FARC ambushed a remote naval infantry base in the south, killing 16 marines. Earlier that week, eight soldiers were killed in a FARC bombing.
Those actions came shortly after the Colombian government stated that the FARC's military threat has been contained. In fact, local authorities were in the offensive for almost three years, but judging for current events could not strike the FARC a decisive blow.
Apparently, rebels took this time to study new combat tactics to drive back regular forces, something that worries Colombian generals and the officially admitted 600 US officers stationed in the country. Analysts explained that guerrillas chop up army units in small pieces, encircle them and then eliminate them, while the army has had no answer to these tactics.
In the midst of the guerrilla offensive, 20 more Colombian soldiers were killed last Thursday when a US-supplied Blackhawk helicopter crashed during a night time anti-narcotics mission. The aircraft crashed in mountainous southwest Colombia deep in the heart of FARC country, but authorities denied it was shot down.
Colombian authorities have never acknowledged this kind of crashes as provoked by rebel fire. However, alternative explanations usually sound groundless to military experts.
I suppose that in the author's universe, helicopter flights in mountainous terrain are perfectly safe... I wonder what he thinks about Canada's problems with the Sea Kings. Is that caused by FARC ground fire too? But let's give them the benefit of the doubt...
No matter the good performance of its military side, the FARC keep on losing another decisive battle. While their actions cannot secure them a decisive victory bringing the whole scenario into a deadly stalemate, the FARC have dismissed any political initiative to get closer to a population that increasingly dislikes them. The powerful military apparatus looks comfortable in the midst of war and lacks of alternatives for peace.
It's occured to me that if Russia's casualties to the Chechens and associated terrorist groups were limited to twenty or so soldiers being killed a month instead of occasional large-scale attacks against civilians, they'd be much better off than they are now. Not that I wish ill of Russian soldiers, but usually people become soldiers and nations create armies in hopes of protecting their civilian population.
The Federal Service for the Execution of Punishments is ready to exhume the body of the Chechen warlord, Salman Raduyev. It was decided to carry out the infamous process in order to exclude all rumors about Raduev's violent death in a Russian prison. "The service is ready to exhume Raduyev's body for any kind of expertise," the director of the service said.
Let me guess... they need to check that he's not wandering around, muttering "brains..." Or maybe they forgot to put the stake in his heart, or check that the symbiote was dead too?
Salman Raduyev, who was known as "terrorist number 2," died on 15 December 2002 in the "White Swan" correctional colony in the Perm region of Russia. The colony is meant for extremely dangerous criminals sentenced to capital punishment - lifetime imprisonment (Russia has a death penalty moratorium in effect). Raduyev was convicted on 25 December 2001. The Supreme Court of Russia refused to revise the sentence of the terrorist in April of the current year.
Salman Raduyev was born on 13 February 1967 in Gudermes, Chechnya. According to his own words, he excelled in secondary school and then graduated from an economic department. Raduyev became a member of the Communist Party during his service in the army.
Raduyev commanded the so-called General Jokhar Dudayev's Army during the first Chechen war. He became known after the incursion in the town of Kizlyar in Dagestan in January of 1996. Raduyev was a very conceited person; Shamil Basayev's fame gave him no rest. Raduyev would claim responsibility for all terrorist acts, which were performed in Russia and threaten with new terrorist attacks. However, the guerrilla quickly won the reputation of a "talking head."
And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right?...Am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
MY GOD!...WHAT HAVE I DONE?
Raduyev's escapades deprived him of all his authority among terrorists. His ambition to leadership ended up in a series of attempted assassinations in April, July and October of 1997. Salman Raduyev vanished from the public eye for a certain period of time afterwards. As it was revealed later, he was operated on in Germany - the operations had a very negative influence on the unstable mind of the "general."
"Then I had that setback with the Cheez Whiz..."
When the counter-terrorist operation was launched in Chechnya in 1999, Raduyev and a group of his gunmen took part in battles with Russian federal forces. The terrorist's gang was virtually destroyed after several significant failures. It is noteworthy that he stopped talking about new terrorist attacks that he was going to organize in the Russian Federation.
I was starting to get the impression that he was just taking credit for the actions of others, in a "People's Front of Judaea" sort of way.
Agents of the Russian Federal Security Bureau arrested Salman Raduyev on 13 March 2000 and delivered him to a detention center in Moscow. The terrorist was sentenced to lifetime imprisonment 18 months later.
I do not believe reports of this incident were linked to from Rantburg before this. Maybe I should have been doing this earlier.
The huge dome of Moscow's water entertainment complex, Transvaal Park, collapsed a year ago, on February 14th, 2004. Twenty-eight people were killed as a result of the tragedy; over a hundred were injured. A lot of people became disabled individuals for the rest of their lives as a result of the visit to the Moscow aquapark a year ago.
The investigation of the tragedy continues for a year already. The Moscow Office of the Public Prosecutor has recently prolonged the investigation of the tragedy with the water complex till June 14th. However, the case still contains neither suspects nor defendants. The authorities have not announced the official reason of the tragedy either.
Transvaal Park was the first water entertainment complex built in Moscow. It enjoyed great popularity among Muscovites and people from other cities, especially in freezing winter weather. There was a very popular nightclub in the complex, in addition to the actual water park. The entertainment center was brining joy and pleasure to all of its visitors until February 14, 2004, when the roof of the huge complex tumbled down on its visitors' heads at 7:15 p.m.
A terrorist act version surfaced at once. The only evidence, which was exposed to the public eye, was a tape made by a surveillance camera inside the complex. The video footage showed the moment, when one of the bearing columns cracked, subsequently leading to the destruction of other concrete supports of the roof. It took mere seconds for the roof to collapse.
Shipman? Are you out there?
Some specialists, however, said that they had seen a cloud of smoke and concrete fragments gushing out of the support that collapsed first. Architect Nidar Kancheli, who designed the roof of the water complex, said that the burst looked like an explosion. According to the architect, it turned out during the investigation that all concrete supports were identically deformed as they hit the pool edge on the floor. Only one of the seven pillars was fractured in a different place. It was impossible to investigate the matter further, the architect said, because rescuers removed all the columns from the site of the tragedy and piled them up nearby, damaging their surface even more.
Investigators concentrate their attention on the following reasons of the tragedy: design mistakes, construction mistakes, improper operation regime and incorrect assembly. Needless to say that both architects and builders deny their guilt. Spokespeople for the companies that were involved in the construction of the water complex said that the glass-and-concrete dome of Transvaal Park and its concrete supports guaranteed ten years of reliable operation before the first need in repairs could occur.
Some experts believe that the tragedy in Moscow's water park could have been caused with a concourse of circumstances. There is a so-called "catastrophe theory" in the field of engineering. The theory says that if certain system parameters do not comply with a standard, it avoids a process of gradual worsening and results in an immediate catastrophe.
You can read about Catastrophe Theory here and here, and there's a collection of links here. There's also a couple of entries at Wolfram Research's web site. All of these descriptions are from a mathematical rather than an engineering point of view, however.
Russian authorities persistently reject the version of the terrorist act, paying all their attention to technical drawbacks. The terrorist version might not be good to Transvaal's real owners (the company Inteko is supposedly listed among them: the company is chaired by Elena Baturina - the wife of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov). The building of the entertainment complex was insured against all accidents, but a terrorist attack.
The terrorist version is not good for the authorities either. It is clear from the past experience, when the government strongly rejected the terrorist act version after the double air crash in Russia in August of 2004.
Dmitry Denisov and Tamara Papitashvili, two of the survivors of the Transvaal tragedy, filed lawsuits at a Moscow district court last Friday. Dmitry and Tamara lost their loved ones in the disaster; Tamara lost her both legs in the tragedy too. The plaintiffs can not make the authorities do anything about their case because the investigation has not been finished yet.
The investigation has been prolonged. However, it is impossible to say that law-enforcement officers will find the truth about what happened in southwestern Moscow a year ago. The Transvaal survivors will not be able to forget their grief during five months - the state must do everything possible to help them.
We should be happy? Is there therapy that can do this?
President Putin stated that Russia would continue the nuclear cooperation with Iran, because the latter does not intend to produce nuclear weapons. The Russian president released the statement during a meeting with Hassan Rowhani, the head of Iran's national Security Council in the Kremlin.
"We are certain that the global proliferation of nuclear weapons does not assist in the strengthening of security either in the region or in the world on the whole. The latest steps on Iran's behalf persuade us that Iran has no intention of building an atomic weapon. Consequently, we will continue to cooperate with Iran in all fields, including in nuclear energy," the Russian president said.
The head of the Federal Agency for Nuclear Energy, Alexander Rumyantsev, confirmed that Russia and Iran would sign an agreement for the return of spent nuclear fuel to Russia. The document is to be signed at the end of February, during Rumyantsev's visit to Iran. "We are going to sign an additional protocol to the inter-governmental agreement for the return of spent nuclear fuel," Alexander Rumyantsev said. The head of the Federal Agency also said that nuclear fuel is normally delivered to a nuclear power plant about six months before the launch of the reactor. "As far as the Iranian nuclear power plant in Bushehr is concerned, nuclear fuel deliveries to the station will be conducted within the scope of this condition," Rumyantsev added.
The United States suspect Iran of an intention to use the nuclear plant in Bushehr (the station was built in cooperation with Russia) for the production of nuclear weapons. Tehran has repeatedly emphasized, though, that Iran's nuclear program was of solely peaceful character. It was particularly said that Iran needed the program for solving energetic problems in the country. However, the US administration is not happy about the Russian-Iranian cooperation. The issue is expected to be raised during the forthcoming meeting between Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush in Bratislava on February 24th. Hassan Rowhani said during the meeting with President Putin that Iran was going to temporarily close the uranium enrichment program not to cause more concern in the West: "Everybody knows that our activity in the nuclear field is of absolutely peaceful character," Rowhani said.
We've been down this road before with North Korea. After Iran builds its first bombs using uranium, how does Russia plan to enforce any agreements that Iran return its plutonium to Russia for processing?
Which Problems in Russia Should be Given First Priority Attention in Their Solution?
...The opinion poll was conducted among 1,500 residents in more than a hundred of Russian cities and settlements. The respondents were offered to answer the following question: "Which problems in Russia should be given first priority attention in their solution?" The list of nation's major problems contained 20 issues. The people pointed out "the development of the Russian economy" much more often than all other issues mentioned on the list - 45 percent. Twenty-nine and 28 percent of respondents said that the government should struggle against growing prices and inflation to improve the national well-being.
Unemployment and communal problems ranked fourth among other priorities - 21 percent of people named those problems. Fourteen percent of respondents said that the government should do something about corruption, 13 percent pointed out healthcare problems, whereas eleven percent believe that it is very important to decrease oligarchs' influence on the government and deal with the problem of delaying wages and pension payments. Ten percent of respondents mentioned the situation in Chechnya, others named "taking greater care for elderly people" and "developing the social help for population."
Only three percent of Russians, who took part in the above-mentioned opinion poll, said that the further strengthening of democracy was a very important issue in Russia. This opinion was listed on the next to last line of the list of problems, marked as "miscellaneous," Itar-Tass reports.
A cynic might suggest that the economic problems faced by Russia are the result of corruption, which is strongly rooted in a lack of the rule of law, which in turn is exacerbated by a lack of democracy...
The Russian Federal Security Bureau (FSB) penetrated into all spheres of the nation's political life, when Vladimir Putin took the office of the president. Now the FSB launched an advertising campaign, asking the population to inform special services of imminent crimes. "Your call will tie terrorists' hands" - one can see such ads in the streets of Moscow. Billboards contain FSB's online address too.
The FSB welcomes any kind of information, because "Russian citizens cooperating with foreign intelligence services can contact the Russian FSB with a view to become double-agents." The fee that such agents receive from foreign services will be completely preserved for them, the "contacts" section on the webpage of the Federal Security Service says. Would-be secret agents can be certain that they will cooperate with high professionals of the Russian Security Service. There will be no criminal responsibility introduced for them either, if they did not commit other crimes or presented a timely notification about it to adequate agencies.
The FSB received 30 thousand emails from Russian citizens in 2004. Russian people are interested in such an endeavor - the FSB website has been receiving an increasing number of visits lately. Those, who are interested in history, can have a brief insight in the history of the Russian security service - from Felix Dzerzhinsky to Nikolai Patrushev.
The KGB, which was partially liquidated after the break-up of the USSR in 1991, was subsequently represented with two separate services (the Federal Security Service and the Foreign Intelligence Service). It is definitely the most distinct vestige of the Soviet system, on which it was based. The Russian political police have been reproaching, preaching, deporting, condemning, punishing and executing since the moment, when the service was established in 1917.
Russian specialists say that about 58 percent of people in the current presidential milieu used to serve in the KGB. Twenty percent of Federation Council members and 18 percent of State Duma deputies used to be KGB officers too. Special agents' experience is welcome in the business field too. Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov has recently urged the FSB to start working in the field of the economic espionage to create equal competitive conditions for entrepreneurs.
Because, of course, the FSB doesn't have anything better to do. Which leads to...
Is the Man to be Prosecuted for Spreading the Panicky Spam? Is The RF FSB's Website in Fact Unprotected at All?
A correspondent of UralPolit.Ru reports that some 32-year-old man from the Russian city of Chelyabinsk posted information about more acts of terrorism being schemed in the USA right on the website of the Russian Federation Federal Security Service. That occurred at the end of 2004. The young man, whom Chelyabinsk doctors know as a mentally diseased patient, posted the "sensation" claiming he was number one terrorist Osama bin Laden.
"Well, he started as an alterboy staying after church..."
It is reported that Internet providers managed to identify the hooligan within four hours; they found out the message had come from Chelyabinsk. An investigation has revealed that the man is registered at a local hospital as a patient suffering from schizophrenia. Soon, the police will consider institution of criminal proceedings against the man as based upon the RF Criminal Code clause #207 (deliberate spreading of misinformation about terrorist acts).
As soon as the information appeared, many people believed that was mere sabotage in a non-moderated forum of the FSB website. That often happens that official websites of governmental institutions run forums where any guest readily says what he wants, and there is no moderator to edit the publications. However, as it turned out later, there is no forum or even guestbook on the FSB website. In other words, the official website allows no opportunity for visitors to publish their personal messages. So, it means that UralPolit.Ru reported about hacking of the FSB website.
It may be even so that "Osama" from Chelyabinsk just addressed a message to some of the official emails published on the website. This is not a publication indeed, but it may be interpreted as a message about an act of terrorism and falls under the above-mentioned law.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
02/21/2005
12:33:31 AM ||
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#1
US President George W. Bush is a very modest person: he wears a 50-dollar Timex Indiglo watch.
Heh, for some reason this just makes me like Bush all the more.
#2
Heh, spot-on AzCat. I prefer men (and women) who've gotten past compensation mode. Every watch is right twice a day, but I'll bet that little Timex works just as well as the watches of the challenged guys... Heh, he's known for his punctuality. They're known for, um, other things.
#3
I wanted to throw in a comment that they probably got their watches from some dude in an elevator.
In reality, I doubt any of them actually got their watches for list price... do you really think there's $ 500,000.00 worth of stuff in Silvio Berlusconi's wristwatch? What does it have, a dilithium crystal?
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
02/21/2005 1:56
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#4
Some people like me destroy watches. GWB may be one. Why pay more than 50 bucks for a watch that will last a year max do to how you treat it, your body chemistry and how much static charge you carry?
#6
..Once In A Lifetime coffee alert on the TH lyrics...*G*
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
02/21/2005 7:23
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AzCat,have you seen Roosevelt Lake.It's magnificent.For Non-Arizonans,Roosevelt is the largest lake fully within Az,2 years ago it was down to .09% capacity.Now it is pushing 80%.We're talking close to 300 miles of shoreline.
U.S. President George W. Bush warned Russia not to stray from the path to democracy and said Europe and the U.S. need to remind President Vladimir Putin of the importance of a strong opposition, a free press and power-sharing. ``The Russian government must renew a commitment to democracy and the rule of law,'' Bush said in a speech in Brussels today during the first trip to Europe of his second term. ``The United States and all European countries should place democratic reform at the heart of their dialogue with Russia.''
Putin, who meets with Bush on Feb. 24, has stepped up control of the Russian media and ended the direct election of regional governors, whom he will now appoint. The U.S. and Russia have also clashed over Russia's help for Iran in building a nuclear power plant and over Putin's opposition to pro-western Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko in last year's election. The largest shareholder in OAO Yukos Oil Co. last week urged the U.S. to block Russia's quest for World Trade Organization membership, saying the government pushed Yukos into bankruptcy with its demands for $28 billion in taxes. The tax bill raised concerns that Putin is seeking to tighten control of businesses. Bush said the U.S. supports Russia's bid to join the WTO. ``America supports WTO membership for Russia, because meeting WTO standards will strengthen the gains of freedom and prosperity in that country,'' he said. ``Russia's future lies within the family of Europe and the trans-Atlantic community.'' It was a mistake to let China into the WTO and two wrongs won't make a right.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/21/2005
12:33:05 PM ||
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Al Qaida might be shifting its strategy and preparing to attack so-called soft targets in Kuwait. Western diplomatic sources said the Al Qaida network has been foiled in several attempts to attack Western military personnel in Kuwait. The sources cited the arrest of nearly 200 suspected insurgents and raids against four strongholds in the sheikdom during January. "Kuwait has responded very well to warnings of Al Qaida attacks," a diplomat said. "Security forces have been acting on information and intelligence has been collecting new leads." On Saturday, Kuwait captured two Al Qaida suspects said to have planned strikes on U.S. interests in the sheikdom. The suspected operatives were identified as Kuwaiti nationals.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/21/2005
12:33:02 AM ||
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South Korean and U.S. warships, including an American nuclear-powered submarine, conducted a mass naval exercise off the peninsula's east coast this month, the Navy said yesterday. The allies took part in the annual antisubmarine exercise, called SHAREM-148, in the East Sea from Feb. 12-18, a Navy officer said. The training is aimed at developing and practicing new anti-North Korean submarine operations and testing new antisubs weapons systems, the officer said, requesting anonymity.
The exercise included the fast-attack submarine USS Los Angeles and 8,000-ton-class destroyer USS Cushing, as well as five U.S. Navy warships and three maritime patrol aircraft P-3Cs, the officer said. South Korea used seven naval vessels, including a 4,500-ton destroyer and a number of submarines.
Sea of fire and spittle in 5 ... 4 ... 3 ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/21/2005
12:33:00 AM ||
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#1
Does North Korea have much in the way of submarines? Or is this more truly aimed at China?
#6
Does North Korea have much in the way of submarines?
A few. They're usually found smuggling terrorists and spies into South Korea.
But, yeah, this is probably a pointed reminder for China.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/21/2005 8:48
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I remember doing joint submarine operations with some S.Koreans in Tongduchon in '88. Tight ship designs they did have! Thunderrun down the arcade. New in town G.I.?
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 14:17
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Bwah ha Ship!
I wonder how many will get that reference (CZ *and* Romeo)
Hard to believe a Type XXI variant is still in service these days. 60 years later. Them Germans were pretty damn good engineers & designers. Do the Norks have Chinese discards - or are they old Soviet throw-aways? And don't the Egyptians have a couple of these rotting someplace?
#11
Harpoon is where I learned my modern naval knowledge. Well, game knowledge. :)
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
02/21/2005 21:43
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Bwah ha Ship!
I wonder how many will get that reference (CZ *and* Romeo)
Hard to believe a Type XXI variant is still in service these days. 60 years later. Them Germans were pretty damn good engineers & designers. Do the Norks have Chinese discards - or are they old Soviet throw-aways? And don't the Egyptians have a couple of these rotting someplace?
I wonder how many will get that reference (CZ *and* Romeo)
Hard to believe a Type XXI variant is still in service these days. 60 years later. Them Germans were pretty damn good engineers & designers. Do the Norks have Chinese discards - or are they old Soviet throw-aways? And don't the Egyptians have a couple of these rotting someplace?
Saudi security forces shot a man dead early on Sunday after he failed to stop at a checkpoint in the city of Jeddah, a security source said.
Golly, and they didn't even surround him first.
The Red Sea port city, scene of an al Qaeda attack two months ago, is on high security alert as it hosts a three-day economic forum grouping leaders including Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan's Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. Interior Ministry officials were not immediately available to confirm the incident, which the source said occurred when a Chadian man drove through a roadblock in the centre of Jeddah at 1.20 a.m. (2220 GMT Saturday). He gave no further details and did not say whether the man was wanted in connection with a spate of attacks in Saudi Arabia since May 2003.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/21/2005
12:28:57 AM ||
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#1
I hope all will be ok! The cops should use discretion and pay compensation to the dead gentleman's family ! He could be an innocent or maybe he wanted to make suicide ! Then he'll cremated by the State over his distraught family objections ! It's real sad !
#2
My goodness, I do hope A111111111 will be ok. S/he seems a trifle overwrought. Chamomile tea and a nice warm bath should help. Perhaps throw in some nice bath salts from the Dead Sea if it's a bad case. Do let me know, A1111 -- I've some other ideas, if that doesn't help.
Four former Taliban officials, led by a former U.N. envoy, said on Sunday they had had successful reconciliation talks with the U.S.-back Afghan government. The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency said the former Taliban officials returned to Pakistan on Saturday after a two-week visit to Kabul during which they met President Hamid Karzai. The agency quoted their leader, Abdul Hakim Mujahid, the former Taliban ambassador to the United Nations, as saying the talks aimed at "national unity, understanding and peace" had been successful. "We have reached an understanding," he said, without elaborating.
Khaliq Ahmad, a spokesman for Karzai, confirmed talks had taken place. "The reconciliation process is going on well and progress is being made," he said, but declined to give details. Mujahid stressed his group had not represented the Taliban but Khudam-ul Furqan (Servants of the Koran), a group some moderate Taliban members joined after the overthrow of the fundamentalists by U.S.-led forces in late 2001. Mujahid said talks with the Afghan government had been going on for the past two years and as well as meeting Karzai, the delegation met other Afghan leaders and elders. The other members of the delegation were Arsullah Rahmani, a former deputy minister of higher education, Rahmatullah Wahidyar, former deputy minister for refugees, and Habibullah Fawzi, former charge d'affaires at the Afghan embassy in Saudi Arabia.
A year ago, Karzai said he was considering talks with a former Taliban foreign minister, Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, in a bid to woo moderate Taliban supporters, but no details have emerged of any such meeting. Last week, U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said some senior Taliban members had taken up a government amnesty offer and Wednesday's Washington Post quoted a Western official as identifying them as the group led by Mujahid. None of Mujahid's group is known as a senior figure in the Taliban guerrilla campaign waged since 2001 against the government and a now 18,000-strong U.S.-led foreign force.
The Post also said 22 low-level Taliban members had agreed to lay down their arms in response to the amnesty offer made last year to Taliban figures not among the up to 150 blamed for atrocities during the group's rule, or linked with al Qaeda. Taliban guerrilla officials have dismissed talk of reconciliation and have vowed to continue their jihad, or holy war, again Karzai's government and foreign forces.
This article starring:
ABDUL HAKIM MUJAHID
Khudam-ul Furqan
ABDUL HAKIM MUJAHID
Taliban
ARSULLAH RAHMANI
Khudam-ul Furqan
HABIBULLAH FAWZI
Khudam-ul Furqan
Khaliq Ahmad
RAHMATULLAH WAHIDYAR
Khudam-ul Furqan
WAKIL AHMED MUTTAWAKIL
Taliban
Khudam-ul Furqan
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/21/2005
12:28:02 AM ||
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JEDDAH — Former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright yesterday reiterated the US position calling on Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon but said she did not support military intervention because Washington had "enough on the plate."
Who the hell asked you???
"The Americans have said a lot about the independence of Lebanon, and they supported the UN Security Council Resolution (1559) in terms of getting the Syrian forces out of Lebanon," she told AFP here after taking part in the 6th Jeddah Economic Forum.
So you're being paid to make these statements.
But she said she did not think that Washington, whose troops are fighting an insurgency in neigbouring Iraq, should launch a military operation against Syria. "I think we have enough on the plate at the moment," she said.
Speaking to the forum in the Saudi city of Jeddah, Albright said: "Our problem with Syria is that we tried hard (with them) in the negotiations with Israel. It (Syria) helps terrorist organisations, and is occupying Lebanon."
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/21/2005
12:25:12 AM ||
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#1
Who, other than the denizens of CNN, CBS, NYT, and the other handmaidens of the DNC, gives a flying f**k what Madeleine Albright thinks about anything? The woman was an embarrassment and, quite possibly, one of the most ineffectual
Secretaries of State we have ever endured. Her policies toward Iraq, North Korea, and al Quaeda should preclude her from ever commenting on anything in public. The same people who listen to her believe that Martin Sheen is the president. Her only saving grace was that she wasn't as goofy as Donna Shalala.
#2
I see how she makes her living, today: accepting Oil Tick money to posture and pretend she has a constituency - somewhere, heh - and that the evil US had better back off on the pressure thingy. I'm sure there are Kool Aid Krowd charter members who think she's still the SecState - but they're prolly too looney (or stoned) to find their local polling place, heh, or follow ballot instructions.
So, indeed, RWV - Who among the sane gives a rip what she has to say?
#4
You only listen to what you want to hear, don't you?
I met Madline Albright, and she has a very strong personality. I don't think she can be "bought", but that she says whatever she believes to be true.
I never thought I'd say this, but: Give her a break!
#7
I never thought I'd say this, but: Give her a break!
Which bone?
Where does Halfbrite get the idea it is her job to be involved in iterating or reiterating the U. S. position? She should be prosecuted if she returns to the country. She, Jimmah and all the 90's leftovers had their chance, blew it, and left it for W to clean up. They should STFU.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/21/2005 8:57
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I met Madline Albright, and she has a very strong personality.
That's not necessarily a good thing. Hitler had a strong personality, too.
I don't think she can be "bought",
Turned down the Saudi Pension you offered her, eh? I'm surprised at that.
but that she says whatever she believes to be true.
As opposed to saying what is actually true. That's another statement that damns with faint praise.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/21/2005 9:25
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Gentle : I met Madline Albright, and she has a very strong personality. I don't think she can be "bought", but that she says whatever she believes to be true.
The sincerest person can be wrong, and when you have the power of the Secretary of State, wrong can be deadly. Hence my Maddy and Kim Photo collection.
#12
When did Democrats get the idea they could go marching around the world, interfering with the current administration's delicate diplomatic negotiating positions? Was it Jesse Jackson and his Third-World Travelling Circus?
Between Carter, Albright, and Kerry, I can't see how the lower levels at Foggy Bottom keep track of which side is up. The next time the Donkey Diplomatic Korps wonders why the electorate won't trust them with the Keys to the Kingdom, somebody please remind them of crap like this, yes?
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
02/21/2005 17:33
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#13
That's not necessarily a good thing. Hitler had a strong personality, too.
Ahh, might want to buy another analogy. Hitler is a hero in the Muslim Middle East.
Posted by: Lil Kim ||
02/21/2005 17:59
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#14
I'd like to see Halfbright and Jimmah marooned on some tiny, Godforsaken Aleutian island for the rest of their natural lives. That would be the only thing (other than killing them) that would keep them from doing any more damage to the United States.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/21/2005 18:20
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#15
Madeleine could keep her brooch collection? It seems to've been what mattered most to her.
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 18:37
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The modus operandi in last week's Valentine's Day bombings were similar to the 2000 Rizal Day bombings and the attack on the SuperFerry 14 in February last year, police said. Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Director General Edgar Aglipay said the bombings were all triggered by cellular phones also the method employed in the bombing of a bus in Balintawak, Quezon City in October 2002 that left two passengers dead and several others wounded. "The bombs used were similar to other bombings (such) as the Rizal Day attacks, the bus bombing in Balintawak, the WG&A SuperFerry 14 attacks and the recent bomb incidents in Mindanao," Aglipay told The STAR yesterday.
Aglipay, however, refused to identify who could be behind the attacks pending the arrest and indictment of the culprits. The PNP chief made the statement as forensic experts of the Australian Federal Police wrapped up their investigation of the Feb. 14 bombings in the cities of General Santos, Davao and Makati that left 13 people dead and 140 wounded.
The Australian Federal Police confirmed the findings of local forensic experts that the explosives used in the Valentine's Day bombings were all triggered by cellular phones. Aglipay earlier said the PNP would coordinate further with the Australian police to determine if the Feb. 14 bombings were carried out in the same manner as the nightclub bombings in Bali, Indonesia in October 2002 that left over 200 people dead, and the Marriott Hotel bombing, also in Indonesia, in 2004. Both attacks have been blamed on the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah group.
Aglipay said the Australian forensics experts noted the bomb used in the Davao incident was fashioned out of a mortar shell while the explosive used in the Makati blast was placed inside a bag. While police authorities have pinpointed three suspects in the bombing, Aglipay stressed they are still in the process of completing their material evidence and investigation to build an air-tight case. "Having confirmed these (findings), we are preparing for the filing of charges," he said.
On several occasions, the government tried to downplay the possibility of the involvement of the Abu Sayyaf, but police investigators, in one instance, ended up linking the bandit group in the sinking of the SuperFerry 14 last year with the arrest of several suspects. Hours after the three explosions took place last Valentine's Day, self-appointed Abu Sayyaf spokesman Abu Solaiman spoke over the radio and claimed the bombings were their "love gift" to President Arroyo.
Although Aglipay refused to identify the Abu Sayyaf behind the bombings, crack police and intelligence operatives are already closing in on one of the suspected bombers, a ranking police official told The STAR. The official claimed their target is a former Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) guerrilla who joined the Abu Sayyaf. Top police officials have not ruled out that the Abu Sayyaf, MNLF renegades and some radical members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) may have formed a new terror alliance.
The Valentine's Day bombings came amid the hostilities between government forces and armed loyalists of ousted MNLF chairman Nur Misuari in Jolo, Sulu. Misuari is under detention at Fort Sto. Domingo in Sta. Rosa, Laguna facing rebellion charges.
In a related development, a Muslim group tagged in the attempt to bomb the Feast of the Black Nazarene in Quiapo, Manila last month issued a statement condemning the Valentine's Day bombings. Yusof Ledesma, spokesman for the Balik Islam Unity Congress, said innocent civilians should be spared from any bombing attempts. "We should outright condemn the bombing of civilians. It is not right to collectively target civilians. I don't know who did it or even indeed the Abu Sayyaf did it, but it is wrong to target civilians," Yusof said during a roundtable discussion with different religious leaders, student groups and non-government organizations (NGO) representatives at the Peacemaker's Circle last Friday. Ledesma also deplored the reported plan of including him in the "terror" watchlist on claims that he was one of financiers of local extremist groups in the country. Ledesma said the conflict between Muslim and Christians cannot be solved unless irresponsible police officers continue to label honest and good-intentioned Islam practitioners as terrorists.
This article starring:
ABU SOLAIMAN
Abu Sayyaf
NUR MISUARI
Moro National Liberation Front
YUSOF LEDESMA
Balik Islam Unity Congress
Abu Sayyaf
Balik Islam Unity Congress
Jemaah Islamiyah
Moro Islamic Liberation Front
Moro National Liberation Front
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/21/2005
12:24:35 AM ||
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Hunter S. Thompson, the acerbic counterculture writer who popularized a new form of fictional journalism in books like "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," fatally shot himself Sunday night at his Aspen-area home, his son said. He was 67. So long, Doc. Don't take any guff from the old bastard with the beard.
Posted by: mojo ||
02/21/2005
12:20:26 AM ||
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#1
Gosh. I don't miss him already.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/21/2005 0:26
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#2
I always thought he was a bit careless with firearms. That and being a drunk are a bad combination. I never agreed with his politics but he was a funny as hell fiction writer for people with a bent sense of humor like mine. Playing with guns finally caught up with him before the ruined liver did.
#3
I always knew Uncle Duke would come to a bad end. Poor Honey.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
02/21/2005 1:00
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#4
Well, he was a better writer than Arthur Miller, at least. His writing talent and wit were considerable but pretty much dried up 10 years ago. He was a ballsy guy so I'm a little shocked and disgusted to see that he offed himself - as opposed to accidentally shooting or blowing himself, driving off a cliff or OD-ing.
While I was a fan for a while, it's something you grow out of. I'm dreading the hagiography that will ensue in the next couple of days. Thompson avoided any sort of ideology or pathos like the plague. Nevertheless, I bet the 60's hippy generation blather gets reheated and served to an unwilling nation once again. Thompson would not approve.
Posted by: John in Tokyo ||
02/21/2005 1:44
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#5
I'll bet they'll talk about how the age of Bush-era conservatism got him so depressed, he ate his gun.
#11
I loved F&L in LA - ground breaking. Then I read his earlier book on the Hells Angels. It was turgid and pretentious. After I read a couple more of his books I realized that stoned he was great; sober he sucked. And I suspect he knew it too.
#13
TW: No great offence meant - he seemingly 'lost it' in later years - his recent biography was near nonsensical. I managed to read 1500 pages of his collected letters last year (50's-80's) and these provide an insight into the person as opposed to the demonised public figure I presume he became in the States. I'm not in a position to agree with his pronouncements on American society but he had a keen eye and sharp wit and duly commands a place in the American literary canon. Better writer than Miller tho'? Ptui! God I could weep. Hey - he kept himself well armed tho' ;)
Posted by: Howard UK ||
02/21/2005 4:29
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#14
The sucky sixties are dead. What was their left for him to live for?
#15
Just teasing, Howard. I'm smug and self centered enough to believe I couldn't possibly be a real philistine, even if I won't appreciate opera properly. Perhaps in a few more years, when the trailing daughters have progressed further in their voice studies....
Anyway, I'm in mourning. Mr. Wife is repainting the office, and announced we will purge the books before he lets me reshelve them. The infidel will get no virgins when he dies!!! That'll teach him (what exactly, I don't know -- but learn he will) ;-p
#16
TW: Don't you throw any HST's out - post them to me!!
Posted by: Howard UK ||
02/21/2005 4:51
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#17
tw, we've done that several times in our many household moves.
It hurts at first, but there's also this great sense of relief to be carrying less of the stuff around. Sort of like dieting.
Which I also find hard to do LOL.
Posted by: Robin Burk ||
02/21/2005 7:48
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#18
I thought the 2 collected letters were pretty good. I especially liked the ones to his bill collectors and ones explaining to his mother why he needed a black Jaguar salon car.
#19
I figured he offed himself because he finally realized he'd never write a decent novel. The Rum Diaries absolutely sucked and it took him what 40 years to get that pile o crap published.
#22
The Denver "Rocky Mountain News" made sure to point out Thompson was a member of the NRA and had accidently shot an assistant in 2000 while trying to cahse a bear of his property.A "source close to the family" said she "knew this call was coming...He was a raging addict and an abusive man. He had so many guns and they were always loaded." But she "loved Hunter." Yup.
#25
I wouldn't list Sandra Dee as the third on that list. She is another Hollywood star that drank herself to death, but never the raving moonbat variety Hunter Thompson and Arthur Miller degraded into. She certainly twanged my heartstrings back in the 60's - which kinda dates me, doesn't it?
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/21/2005 17:31
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#26
Chavez? He's trying as hard as anybody to join the list
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 17:47
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#27
#25- OP, she kinda got to me and she wasn't even doin' anything, I was born in 1972.
Posted by: Jame Retief ||
02/21/2005 17:53
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#28
Howard, what are HSTs?
Robin, in all our moves, we've happily purged everything except books. My clothes, sweaters and shoes now fit easily in 1/2 a dresser and half a closet. But we have somehow always made room for more bookcases ;-) We Jews, after all, are "the People of the Book[s]"
LISBON - Portugal's opposition Socialists won their first outright majority in parliament since the country returned to democracy in 1974 in a snap weekend election as voters swung left for a new government and looked for answers to rising unemployment.
The party, led since September by pro-market former environment minister Jose Socrates, won 120 seats in the 230-seat assembly, interior ministry figures showed. Prime Minister Pedro Santana Lopes' centre-right Social Democrats, in power since 2002, won 72 seats, their lowest showing in over two decades. The Socialists won 45 percent of the vote in an election marked by higher-than-usual voter turnout compared to 29 percent for the incumbent Social Democrats (PSD).
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/21/2005
12:20:24 AM ||
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#1
"...led since September by pro-market former environment minister Jose Socrates..."
If he's a socialist, how "pro-market" can he be? Or does he simply give lip-service to a free economy, all the while destroying it (like our Democrats)?
#2
Sounds like your common-or-garden 'Third Way'er, same as Clinton, Blair, Schroeder, Zapatero, etc.
"Hillary Clinton once reportedly portrayed the Third Way as 'a unified field theory of life' that will 'marry conservatism and liberalism, capitalism and statism, and tie together practically everything: the way we are, the way we were, the faults of man and the word of God, the end of communism and the beginning of the new millennium.'"
Mussolini liked to use the phrase to describe fascism as something between communism and capitalism. P J O'Rourke describes it as "a sort of clarion call to whatever".
#4
Portuguese socialists defeat Portuguese social-democrats. Hmm. Only in Europe can Social-Democrats be called "center-right". Fact is that Socialists are Communists who want to enable the dictatorship of the proletariat, but let's not start the revolution today. Tomorrow, maybe, or after it stops raining. Social-democrats are Socialists who want to enable the dictatorship of the proletariat, but let's get there by vote instead of a revolution. In the end, they all believe in Marxism.
Consider the fall of Spain and Portugal to dedicated socialists, and the likely coming return of France to socialist rule (their only real alternative to Chirac) -- how long until the EU is officially renamed Union of the Socialist European Republics?
#5
The third-way, or middle-way is what Thatcher so aptly described as the dangerous location that will get you run over by traffic going in both directions.
It's also a Marxist construct (revolutionary forces arise out of the merger of contradictions). This is part of why leftists are so prone to holding contradictions -- they have no problem with that. They want to have their cake, and eat it, too. They think it's better thinking -- things are not what they are, therefore they're free to make up whatever they feel like, and the world will magically obey (if enough people believe in it).
#6
No because of the revolution in 1974 everyone needed to have a leftist name. PSD is a soft Republican party maybe a RINO:) they sent 150 policemen for Iraq in agreement with Socialist President they would came back after elections. PS is like a the German SPD or every other social democrats in Europe. They are against privatisation of health services for example but will not vouch for nationalisations for example.
We have Communists of course, worst Trotskystes grow from 3% to 6,5% due to help from journalists and the failing scholar system.
Personal infighting inside PSD and the extreme innability of hadoc prime minister (he earn the place after Durão Barroso went for European Commission)
So we are heading for a thirld world country with 60% of left votes. President helped when he demissed the government something that never happened before when there was a majority in national assembly. Expect news from Portugal in 1-2 years, they wouldnt be pretty.
Posted by: z man ||
02/21/2005 15:07
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#7
Z, cross-border comparisons are interesting. European social-democrats are similar to openly leftist "Democrats" in the USA. European social-democrats do not believe in individual rights -- they use the word "rights" as a club to confiscate property (for the sake of the needy and the homeless) and undermine the right to self-defense (ask them about gun ownership).
And Swedish social-democrats (+ their trade unions) are more marxist than the communist party in Switzerland.
A recent series of gun battles here between Islamist militants and the police is forcing Kuwait for the first time to take a long hard look at the influence and impact of domestic Islamic extremism.
In tandem with a tough security crackdown that has so far netted some 18 militants and killed eight others, the Kuwaiti government is launching an awareness campaign to promote moderate Islam and counteract extremism.
But as a staunch ally of the United States and host to some 25,000 American troops, Kuwait represents a tempting target for militant Islamists and many Kuwaitis are wondering if the violence plaguing neighboring Iraq and Saudi Arabia is set to spill over into their own nation.
"These clashes are a small drop in the ocean to what is coming. Kuwait is becoming a top priority for Al-Qaeda," said Mohammed Mulaifi, a writer and member of the austere Salafi branch of Sunni Islam who has close contacts with Kuwaiti militants.
So far the Kuwaiti authorities have remained one step ahead of the militants, busting cells, seizing weapons and arresting suspects before attacks are carried out. Kuwait is a relatively small, close-knit country, making it easier for the state security branches to keep tabs on potential troublemakers.
At least three cells of Islamic militants have been identified in the crackdown, say Kuwaiti officials. One of the ringleaders, Amer Khleif al-Enezi, died in custody last week, eight days after he was arrested. Enezi reportedly had confessed to planning attacks against U.S. military convoys. Kuwait remains a vital logistics hub for American forces in Iraq.
The Kuwaiti authorities traditionally have turned a blind eye toward extremist Islamists living in the country so long as the militants refrained from directing their activities against the state. But the recent violence has compelled the government to take action.
"These events mark a real watershed in terms of Kuwait dealing with the problem of extremists in their midst," a Western diplomat said.
The security scare also has led Kuwaitis to ask some searching questions about the Islam practiced in Kuwait and how to dissuade impressionable youngsters from turning toward the ideology of Osama bin Laden.
"These incidents have turned the majority of the religious believers against the militant trend," said Shafeeq Ghabra, president of the American University of Kuwait. "They are asking how it is possible that their 15- or 16-year-old sons can be recruited by militants to murder in the name of God."
Although Kuwait's Constitution is secular in nature, conservative Islamists wield considerable influence in how laws are applied in society.
Kuwaiti Islamists were in uproar last year at the staging of a pop concert for the hit Lebanese television program Star Academy. A fatwa was issued banning women from singing to men and prohibiting dancing at concerts.
Some schools even ban clapping and the playing of the national anthem, believing that they are expressions of secularism. The education curricula is coming under close scrutiny, particularly some religious school text books which contain inflammatory language about jihad and disparage the Shiite branch of Islam.
Among the challenges facing the Kuwaiti authorities is deciding where to draw the line between legitimate conservative Islamic rhetoric and extremist incitement.
"There seems to be a disagreement on where fundamentalist Islam becomes extremist Islam, becomes violent Islam," the Western diplomat said. "The real question for Kuwaitis is in deciding where preaching [extremism] stops and the picking up a gun and killing kaffirs (infidels) begins."
The government is beginning to fight back against the pervasive influence of the conservative Islamists - a confrontation which analysts say will define the future shape of the country.
"The battle will never be won if the interpretation of Islam continues to be hijacked by a minority of Muslims who have taken Islam out of context and turned it into a fighting religion instead of one of peace and enlightenment," Ghabra said. "This battle will define the Muslim world for generations to come."
The government has allocated 5.5 million Kuwaiti dinars ($18.8 million) toward an awareness campaign organized by the Awqaf and Islamic Affairs Ministry to promote moderate Islam. The ministry is planning to hold live television debates between the public and the families of arrested militants.
"We will also follow up on what Islamist Web sites are publishing and fight their arguments with our arguments on chat forums," said a ministry official who requested anonymity.
Although most conservative Islamists say they welcome the government's initiatives, they doubt that it will have a lasting effect.
"The violence won't stop because it is a deep-rooted feeling among some Muslims," said Mohammed Tabtabai, the dean of the College of Sharia and Islamic Studies at Kuwait University. "All you can do is try and reduce it."
Indeed, Mulaifi says that although the authorities are staying on top of the situation for now, the nebulous nature of Al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic militancy - what he calls the "ghost of ideas" - makes it very difficult to control in the longer term.
"This ghost will live in one young man, then another and another. That's how people become Al-Qaeda without any formal introduction or membership," he said. "They don't wait for orders; they carry out operations based on their convictions. That's what makes them so dangerous. There's no real structure or organization for governments to attack."
Mulaifi said he expects the violence in Kuwait to intensify.
"Kuwait was not part of Al-Qaeda's plan of action in the past," he said. "But that changed after Al-Qaeda realized that Kuwait had become a launching pad for the crusader forces to enter and strike Iraq and crush hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis."
Mulaifi said he does not support the violence of the radicals, but follows their discourse closely.
"I read the books that Al-Qaeda leaders read and I knew many youngsters who were sympathetic to Al-Qaeda who fought and died in Iraq and Afghanistan," he said. "That's why I can say that the calm in Kuwait was only a postponement. Kuwait is now under the Al-Qaeda spotlight."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/21/2005
12:19:14 AM ||
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Article: Although most conservative Islamists say they welcome the governmentâs initiatives, they doubt that it will have a lasting effect.
"The violence wonât stop because it is a deep-rooted feeling among some Muslims," said Mohammed Tabtabai, the dean of the College of Sharia and Islamic Studies at Kuwait University. "All you can do is try and reduce it."
Indeed, Mulaifi says that although the authorities are staying on top of the situation for now, the nebulous nature of Al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic militancy - what he calls the "ghost of ideas" - makes it very difficult to control in the longer term.
"This ghost will live in one young man, then another and another. Thatâs how people become Al-Qaeda without any formal introduction or membership," he said. "They donât wait for orders; they carry out operations based on their convictions. Thatâs what makes them so dangerous. Thereâs no real structure or organization for governments to attack."
This is just a holy warrior incubator making the case for why the government should keep its grubby hands off his person. The reality is that most holy books have passages involving killing the infidel. Muslims are getting all worked up in the here and now because specific priests are inciting their followers to kill the infidel, and organizing the logistics for them to do so. Take care of the priests - and the temperature level falls. The Israelis took out Hamas's top two guys, and saw attacks fall precipitously. No matter what the "political wing" of these holy warrior recruiting organizations say, it just ain't natural to reach out to kill complete strangers - infidel or not - it takes structured indoctrination no different from that of formal military organizations.
#2
Good analysis, ZF, and it mirrors the logic of tipper's fine link from yesterday on scale-free networks: to break the network, identify and take out the hubs. The imams of Islam are the local hubs that light the fires and feed children into the flames. The Mad Mullahs, The "charity" organizations, and the House of Saud are the funding and facilitating hubs providing cash, state paperwork, and cover. The middle tier becomes less than irrelevant if you decap and kneecap.
A senior foreign bureaucrat has been arrested for drunkenness and suspicion of sexual assault on a flight to London. The man was questioned by police after allegedly attempting to grope a female passenger and exposing himself to cabin crew. Other passengers claimed he had consumed "vast quantities" of duty-free alcohol. One female passenger had to be moved from her seat and upgraded to business class after she claimed the man attempted to fondle her. Passengers on the Virgin Atlantic flight, including a party of schoolchildren, watched as cabin crew were forced to grapple with the 55-year-old and escort him to the lavatory, where he is then alleged to have exposed himself.
"Thish ish my doinker, girliesh! [Hic!]"
Problems on Virgin flight VS22 began barely an hour into the 6 hour and 40 minute journey from Washington to London after the man began drinking alcohol he had carried on to the aircraft. Part of the flight's passengers included a group of students from Oundle School, returning from a field trip. "He started digging into his duty-free and power drinking as soon as we took off," said fellow passenger Douglas Robb, 34, a politics master at the £20,000 a-year school. "As time wore on, he became very chatty with a woman seated next to him. Soon he became very tactile, groping her hand. He told her who he was and began flashing his business card and saying that she should come and visit him in his country. She wasn't exactly welcoming the attention. Then he groped her chest. She shrieked and cabin crew intervened."
"Sir! Let go of the booby! Drop it now!"
Cabin crew admonished the man for his behaviour, with one allegedly telling him that he was a "naughty man and Allah would be cross".
Doesn't say that he's a Moose limb, but we can prob'ly guess he is...
A police spokesman said: "We can confirm a 55-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of being drunk on an aircraft and sexual assault."
Posted by: Fred ||
02/21/2005
12:18:16 AM ||
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a naughty man and Allah would be cross". LOL! Was he in kindergarten? Oh no wait... Douglas Robb, 34
Man, If I was on that flight and he was sporting entire bolts of fabric, with a tablecloth on his head, I'd be freaking out wondering if it was some sort of diversionary tactic while his buddy's unsheath their razor blades...cause I hate to fly anyway and besides weather, the engines falling off or a bolt coming loose somewhere, the Mad Muslim syndrome is just one more thing I've got to worry about.
#8
Chuck,
That's a British Aerospace 146. It was designed for service into austere airports that had previously only been accessible to turboprops.
Aspen Airways used them at one time, but I don't know if they still do, and they are fairly common in Alaska.
Back in the mid-80s, when the 146 was brand-new, I went to the Lubbock airport to pick up a friend who was flying in from Denver. The jetways wouldn't match the 146's doors of course so they rolled out a ramp-stair to debark the passengers. As we were watching from the terminal, a college-age sputter-mouth next to us commented authoritatively to his friends, "That's gotta' be an OLD plane, you just don't see that anymore. It must really be really old." In fact, it was far and away the newest plane in sight, and the newest type. Probably one of the same shitheads who asserted that the Chinese couldn't put a man in space because "they don't have the technology."
I forgot that's the Lubbock INTERNATIONAL Airport, given this designation because it has a port of entry for flights from Mexico.
The terminal is built in the run-down Morroccan fortress style of many public buildings in this area and looks like a munitions bunker from a distance. Actually, it looks like a munitions bunker close up, too. It is severely under-utilized because it was planned in the 70s on the basis of wildly optimistic growth forecasts from the booster club of that era.
It seems to be under construction all the time in spite of the vast empty spaces and the surplus gates. I suspect this is because local boosters noticed that all big airports, like LAX and DFW, seem to have some kind of irritating renovation going on all the time. Inconveniencing the public with construction work is therefore part of the "big airport" image they seek to promote.
#13
.com gald to see you perused the photos I pointed you to. Rantburg could get interesting in the comming days...
PS. You reminded me. I need to check out today's photo.
MADRID — Jordan's King Abdullah believes the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Al Hariri was too sophisticated to have been the work of terrorists, the monarch told Spanish newspaper El Pais."We have to be careful with accusations. What I can say is that because of the sophistication of the attacks, as well as the means used, I don't believe it was a terrorist group," King Abdullah said in an interview published yesterday. He gave no further hints as to who he suspected in the attack.
Should be noted that he hates the Syrians too.
Many Lebanese instinctively blame Syria for the death of Hariri, a wealthy businessman, though Damascus condemned the killing and denied involvement. King Abdullah, who is due to visit Spain tomorrow, also said any efforts to limit a possible nuclear arms programme by Iran would have to be part of a regional effort that would also address any Israeli programme.
And he said antagonism towards the United States in the Arab street had reached dangerous levels and anger was now being directed at the American people and not just US foreign policy. Arab people have long seen as an "injustice" US policy in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, and the US occupation of Iraq has only aggravated anti-American sentiment. "We are beginning to see, for the first time, that animosity is not being directed at the foreign policy of the American government, but against the American people. And that is very dangerous. That's where our concern over the clash of civilisations comes from," the King said.
Yeah, yeah, blah, blah. Don't you understand that it's the American Street you should be worried about? When we start getting angry, people start dying in large numbers. Think about it.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/21/2005
12:17:08 AM ||
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Article: And he said antagonism towards the United States in the Arab street had reached dangerous levels and anger was now being directed at the American people and not just US foreign policy. Arab people have long seen as an âinjusticeâ US policy in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, and the US occupation of Iraq has only aggravated anti-American sentiment.
Here's what how an American official could have responded:
And he said antagonism towards the Muslim world in the American street had reached dangerous levels and anger was now being directed at Islam and not just Muslim foreign policy. American people have long seen as an âinjusticeâ Muslim policy in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, and the 9/11 attacks have only aggravated anti-Muslim sentiment.
#2
Well King Person really you think so? I am pretty sure Jerkoff J. Jihadi didn't do the killin' I think it was a trained agent of a foreign country with lots to lose if their influence in Lebanon were to wane. Unlike you Kingly personage I'll be frank. It was Syria.
I think these âArab streetâ people would be well served to think about the nuclear weapons we do have under the ocean in a neighborhood near them. I as a member of the âAmerican streetâ have had it with their retarded religion cum death cult. So much that I would at this point not be against lighting a miniature sun in some Arab urban area as a demonstration of how little what they think matters in the 21century.
#3
Most Arabs genuinely like Americans (the years I was there) it's just the urban 'elites', schooled in the west..their just like our MSM assholes who rag 24/7/365 about regular Americans and GW Bush.
BTW from Morocco to Egypt in the desert (Sahara), every person I or we ever met would offer us shelter, food and water/tea!..They do this for anyone...salt of the earth!
Posted by: Syria govt. did it ||
02/21/2005 2:49
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#4
SGDI - I was always amused when, pre 9/11, they would say they loved Americans, but hated the American Govt. Coming from Thug, Klepto, KingyThingys, and Mullahcracies they forget how America works... I would remind them that WE are the Govt. We elect, we choose, those people whom they claim they hate - and the reason they got our vote? Well, because they said they believe and want what we believe and want. They're us. Real conversation stopper, heh.
#5
Headline: Hariri killing too sophisticated to be terrorists, says King Abdullah
But of course - Allah himself reached out and struck Hariri down. All that explosive residue - well, you know what they say about Allah working in mysterious ways.
#8
.com is quite right: We take our government as being us quite seriously.
I once told the Iranian Students while I was at Graduate school to stop referring to the United States Government in their railing against the Shah, because the American people (who they said, to me, were good people) would take it personally. Instead, I advised them to talk about the Damn American POLITICIANS and CAREER BUREAUCRATS f*cking up international relations in the AMERICAN PEOPLE'S Name. We may identify with our government and our army, but are quite ready to believe in rogue congresscritters or state department bureaucrats screwing up our good name the world over. They never took my advice, which only shows how incomprehensible American Jacksonians seem to be to everyone else in the world (especially the Aris'es thereof, who think themselves as being cleverer than they really are).
OBL's biggest mistake was making the intellectual and theological jump away from pushing the standard line that the American people are okay, but the elections are rigged to present only bad/evil people as their leaders, to the one where he said that the American people are to blame and deserve total war to be waged upon them (but it is NOT okay to wage total war upon the Islamic peoples because their governments are dictatorships and not representative of the people.) The MSM is taking up this line: witness the British paper that moaned about 26+ million Americans being wrong when they voted for Bush.
Forget about Social Security being the Third Rail. We Americans are the Third Rail of the World, in more ways than they can imagine, even if the majority of our fellow Americans do not see it.
They will be in even deeper shit when our fellow Americans DO see it.
#9
Syria govt. did it, when I lived in Germany, I was frequently complemented as not being at all like an American, which the complementer would then proceed to tell me all about. You have to be careful about those who like you -- that is no indication of their opinion of Americans in general. And I have no doubt that your Arab interlocutors were much politer than my Germans -- Germans are fond of proving their intelligence by trotting out their book learning. A friend thought I was possibly a genius because I mentioned that Einstein wrote a specific as well as general theory of relativity (granted, he had a degree in mathematics, and could prove both, so he may have assumed the same of me. Silly of him, but there it is. ;-) ).
#13
âWe are beginning to see, for the first time, that animosity is not being directed at the foreign policy of the American government, but against the American people."
What's this "we", king dude? Been hangin' with the commoners again? Shut up and schedule an election.
Posted by: Matt ||
02/21/2005 13:19
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#14
I can work up a proposal with our friends at the pentagon to repave the angry Muslim street. Typically we use 1-1/2" to 2" asphalt. But if ashes and dust are all that's available it works for me....
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 13:48
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#15
Fused sand makes good bricks, Frank G. There are lots of streets in the world made of bricks. Just start fusing some sand...
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/21/2005 18:26
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#16
:-) and as .com sez, we can always drill for oil through the massive sheet of glass
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 18:39
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#17
I recall many of his persuasion claiming that the destruction of the World Trade Center was too sophisticated for Arabs to have carried out ...
BHUBANESWAR — Maoist rebels triggered six landmine blasts in Orissa [N.B. Northeast India] yesterday in a bid to free three of their cadres from police custody but there were no casualties. The blasts occurred at 10.30am in Malkangiri, when police were transporting three suspected Maoists, police said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/21/2005
12:14:28 AM ||
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One would hope the trigger was steping on them.
Turkey holds the option of unilateral intervention in northern Iraq if Kurds declare independence and claim the oil wealth of disputed Kirkuk, considered the main spoils in the uncertain Iraqi equation.
In bellicose tones, Turkish officials have served notice that Kirkuk, with 40 percent of Iraqi petroleum and 6 percent of the world's known oil reserves, is a multi-ethnic city and the home of Turkomens (northern Iraqis of Turkish stock), and as such should have a "special status".
Turkey's sharp reaction challenges claims by Kurdish leaders that Kirkuk is a Kurdish city destined to be the capital of an autonomous Kurdish entity in a federated Iraq - or a fully independent one.
"Kirkuk is the Jerusalem of Kurdistan," Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) leader Jalal Talabani has publicly announced. Masoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) calls Kirkuk the heart of Kurdistan. "We are ready to fight and sacrifice our soul to preserve its identity," he said.
Turkey officially alleges "manipulations and irregularities" in the Jan. 30 elections where a unified Kurdish ticket claimed 59 percent of the vote in Kirkuk, with Turkomens gaining only 18 percent.
It cites reports that Kurds from other areas were brought to Kirkuk to boost their votes against Turkomens and Arabs. Kurds say that their people driven out of Kirkuk in Saddam Hussein's "Arabization" drive are coming back.
"Some people are looking the other way while mass migration takes place," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan said recently, referring to the United States. "This is going to create major difficulties in the future. Everyone must know that Turkey...won't allow this geography to be delivered to chaos that will last for many years."
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has said that "in case of fighting in Kirkuk, Turkey cannot remain a spectator." Kurdish leaders have warned Turkey that any intervention would lead to disaster.
Modern Turkey's predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, ruled both Kirkuk and Mosul, another oil-rich city in the north, until they were ceded to Britain in the 1920s. Although it had legal right to a share of the oil wealth, Turkey gave it up for a lump sum in a decision Turks still regret.
How credible is the Turkish threat of military intervention in northern Iraq? Can it risk confrontation with the United States, still smarting over Turkey's refusal to open a "northern front" against Saddam? On the other hand, the United States enjoys cordial relations with Kurds who backed it against Saddam.
Early sabre-rattling is soothing a Turkish populace concerned that their country is a mere spectator to vital developments in bordering Iraq. But a military strike is "highly unlikely", says Swedish expert Henrik Liljegren.
There are significant "restraining factors", said Liljegren, former diplomat and now senior associate at the Istanbul Policy Centre. He cited them as damage to Turkey's bid to join the European Union, international law, public opinion (particularly in Muslim countries) and above all the United States.
Turkey appears to be having as much trouble with the United States as with Kurds in northern Iraq. Its traditional "strategic partnership", while still active on paper, suffered a serious blow when the Turkish parliament voted against Turkey joining the war on Saddam, or allowing US troops to cross its territory.
Recent opinion polls indicate that 60 percent of Turks are anti-American. Turks are particularly irked by the US refusal to move against about 5,000 Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas holed up in mountains in northern Iraq bordering Turkey, despite declaring the PKK a terrorist organization.
When US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she sees no difference between Kurdish PKK guerrillas and Al Qaeda, Turkish columnist Semih Idiz wrote: "If that is the case, why aren't you going after the PKK like you are going after Al Qaeda?"
The United States has said the PKK will be dealt with later, and that the current priority is developments in Iraq. But Liljegren believes that should PKK guerrillas slip back into Turkey, re-kindling fears of civil strife that took 30,000 lives in the 1980s and 1990s, Turkey can strike at them in Iraq in "self-defence" or "hot pursuit". Turkey has maintained a few thousand troops inside northern Iraq for years.
The Turkish foreign ministry says its approach to Iraq has "a strategic perspective" and is not confined to PKK guerrillas, Turkomens or Kirkuk. But some analysts say the Turkish establishment, both military and political, suffers from a "Kurdish phobia" that drives it to seek military solutions.
Turkish analyst Dogu Ergil says Turkey should encourage Turkomen-Kurdish reconciliation rather than "driving a wedge between them". Iraqi Kurds say publicly they do not harbour anti-Turkish designs, while never hiding the fact that full independence remains their ultimate ideal.
In an unofficial ballot accompanying the Jan. 30 elections, some 95 percent of Iraqi Kurdish voters are reported to have favoured independence. "When the right time comes, it will be a reality," Barzani has said.
Whatever form its takes, a strong Kurdish entity in land-locked northern Iraq would need friendly relations with Turkey, observers say. "Despite mutual distrust, ours and the future of Kurds are inter linked," says Mehmet Ali Birand, a leading Turkish commentator on Kurdish affairs.
"Kurds should know that without Turkey they will never ensure their security. On the other hand, Turkey should realise that without the Kurds, Turkey cannot influence what's happening in Iraq. It might be a historic joke, but Turks and Kurds need each other."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/21/2005
12:11:43 AM ||
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#1
The Turks are working themselves into a lather over nothing. The reality is that a Kurdish state is far preferable to the incorporation of the Kurdish areas into Iraq. Then Turkey can deport Kurds into the ethnically-based country at will. It can do cross-border raids into Kurdistan without having to worry about stirring up trouble with a unitary Iraq. Strategically, Kurdistan would provide a landlocked buffer state between Turkey and Iraq. That is a good thing. Anytime your neighbors fragment into smaller pieces, your strategic position improves, since the threat from them decreases. I think all of this outrage is just a Turkish bid to steal Kirkuk and its oil reserves.
#2
Turkey's wild-eyed tantrums and Tourette Syndrome fits rank right down there with Madeline Halfbright's opinions on the US-Syria situation. Digital birdcage liner. Or less. They forfeited 2 years ago. Run along, Tayyip.
#3
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has said that "in case of fighting in Kirkuk, Turkey cannot remain a spectator." Kurdish leaders have warned Turkey that any intervention would lead to disaster
So they get a few Turkmen to stir up trouble and use it as an excuse to invade. More sabre rattling from a country aligning itself with Russia, Iran and Syria to make a united front.
#6
If the Turds start any trouble, there'll be a butt-kicking they won't soon forget coming their way in a hurry. Useless bunch of sods.
Posted by: mac ||
02/21/2005 4:58
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Turkey holds the option of unilateral intervention in northern Iraq if Kurds declare independence and claim the oil wealth of disputed Kirkuk, considered the main spoils in the uncertain Iraqi equation.
#9
Arak is a strong liquor drunk in Middle East. I think this is Arabic name. Turkish tell raki. Greeks name it Ouzo and is not a good idea to ask for a "raki" in Greece.
#10
Part of the problem is the Turks are in shock that Turkmens only got 18% of the vote in Kirkuk. Their propanganda was Turkmen were equal to Kurds in the city. The story I heard is that in the past when Turks controlled distribution of UN aid they only gave it out to Turkmen, as a result many kurds registered as Turkmen. A case of believing your own BS.
Al Qaeda's deputy leader said in a videotape broadcast that governments could not stop its attacks and that the security of the West depended on respect for Islam and an end to aggression against Muslims. The leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, also said that the "new crusader campaign" would end in defeat. The tape was broadcast by the Arab television network Al Jazeera on Sunday, but it was not clear when it was made. Mr. Zawahiri said he was speaking three years after the first prisoners were taken from Afghanistan to the United States Naval base at Guantänamo Bay, Cuba. "If you Western nations believe that these cartoon governments will protect you from our responses then you are deluded," he said. "Your real security lies in cooperating with the Muslim nation on the basis of respect and ending aggression."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/21/2005
12:11:10 AM ||
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JERUSALEM - Israel will free 500 Palestinians on Monday in its largest prison release in nearly a decade as a goodwill gesture to bolster peace efforts with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Further strengthening Abbas's hand, legislators from the dominant Fatah movement approved a keenly awaited new Palestinian cabinet that puts his loyalists in key positions.
Palestinians say Abbas needs large-scale prisoner releases to get the armed groups to formalise the ceasefire he agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at a Feb. 8 summit. Some 8,000 Palestinians are held by Israel. The planned freeing of the prisoners comes a day after Israel's cabinet approved a plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip.
None of the prisoners—the first of 900 to be freed in coming weeks—had been found guilty of attacks that killed or injured Israelis. Most had already served at least two-thirds of their sentences. They will be released at crossing points to the West Bank and Gaza in the biggest release since 1996, when 800 were freed.
Mohammed Dahlan, a close Abbas adviser set to join the cabinet, said Palestinians awaited a wider release. Palestinians want those who carried out attacks on Israelis to be included in future releases. Israel has so far ruled out freeing prisoners with "blood on their hands".
Big mistake to let this group go, but the Israelis will prolly cave in over the next month or so. Then some more Israelis will die, and the Paleos will get thumped again.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/21/2005
12:10:57 AM ||
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None of the prisonersâthe first of 900 to be freed in coming weeksâhad been found guilty of attacks that killed or injured Israelis. Most had already served at least two-thirds of their sentences.
So these men would have been released soon enough anyway. This way Israel gets a PR bonus, and the idiots are free to take part in current PA "politics" until they get themselves killed or Israel arrests them again. And Israel saves the cost of feeding them in the meantime. Not bad.
#4
Someone needs to start the rumor that the wall is radioactive, and anyone getting within 300 feet of it will be sterile forever. Let the Israelis continue to build until there's a wall between them and all the paleodupes.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/21/2005 18:13
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#5
even better - the releasees were implanted with GPS/listening chips. Oh the fun! Finding all the non-existent chips with machetes and butcher knives, when they could've just read snopes....LOL
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 18:37
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U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers are conducting secret talks with Iraq's Sunni insurgents on ways to end fighting there, Time magazine reported yesterday, citing Pentagon and other sources.
The Bush administration has said it would not negotiate with Iraqi fighters and there is no authorized dialogue, but the United States is having "back-channel" communications with certain insurgents, unidentified Washington and Iraqi sources told the magazine.
The magazine cited a secret meeting between two members of the U.S. military and an Iraqi negotiator, a former member of Saddam Hussein's government and the senior representative of what he called the nationalist insurgency.
A U.S. officer tried to get names of other insurgent leaders while the Iraqi complained that the new Shiite-dominated government was being controlled by Iran, according to an account of the meeting provided by the Iraqi negotiator.
"We are ready to work with you," the Iraqi negotiator said, according to Time.
Iraqi insurgent leaders not aligned with al Qaeda ally Abu Musab Zarqawi told the magazine that several nationalist groups composed of what the Pentagon calls "former regime elements" have become open to negotiating.
The insurgents said their aim was to establish a political identity that can represent disenfranchised Sunnis.
The White House had no immediate comment on the report.
When asked about the contacts, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a member of the Senate foreign relations and intelligence committees, said it is important to "reach out" in Iraq.
"We've got a very complicated and dangerous situation over there, and you are going to have to reach out, you are going to have to develop some relationships and networks," he said on CNN's "Late Edition."
Controversial Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi told ABC's "This Week" yesterday that any deals between insurgents and the U.S. military would not be binding on a new Iraqi government.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/21/2005
12:07:31 AM ||
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Iraqi security forces have killed a propaganda chief of al-Qaeda's frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the government said on Sunday. Security forces "killed the terrorist Adel Mujtaba, known as Abu Rim, who disseminated propaganda for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terrorist network", it said in a statement.
One of Abu Rim's associates, Abu al-Izz, was also killed in the same raid on February 11, it added, without saying why it was only now releasing news of the raid. "Abu Rim specialised in creating terrorist websites which encouraged terrorism," the statement said. "He glorified the murder of innocent people and published images which included terrorists torturing hostages." Abu Rim is the third Zarqawi propaganda chief to be killed or detained after the alleged first and second in command, Abu Sufiyan and Husam Abdullah Muhsin al-Dulaymi, were respectively killed and detained, the statement added, without providing further details.
This article starring:
ABU AL IZZ
al-Qaeda in Iraq
ABU MUSAB AL ZARQAWI
al-Qaeda in Iraq
ABU RIM
al-Qaeda in Iraq
ABU SUFIYAN
al-Qaeda in Iraq
ADEL MUJTABA
al-Qaeda in Iraq
HUSAM ABDULLAH MUHSIN AL DULAIMI
al-Qaeda in Iraq
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/21/2005
12:05:02 AM ||
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#1
Happy vergins (or their fruity substitutes thereof)!
#2
It's a pityful damn shame that this particular beast couldn't have had his life extracted in a delicately slow but hideously painful manner for several weeks!!
At least now The HAGS of HELL have his rotten soul for an eternity!!!
Posted by: Mike ||
02/21/2005 5:40
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#4
There is no proof that this Al-Zarqawi is a living breathing person, is there?
Seems to me like he might be an imaginary figure set up by some anti-iraq agency.
#9
Allah is your god, Gentle. A primitive deity who was originally a moon god (that's the the reason you guys use the crescent moon as a symbol for Islam). Not one of the better gods, if you ask me. And purely a figment of mens' imagination. What's he ever done for you?
BTW - You used to try to sound sensible. What happened?
#10
Some muslims use the moon because we use "moon years", and "moon months" along with "sun years" and "sun months". Not something unique to Islam. Just an old custom kept.
Deah!
#13
The signficant thing here is that the new Iraqi government regards the agony of a prolonged beheading to be torture and terrorism.
Sets the legal stage to try Zarqawi et al - i.e. this was not the act of a pious Muslim in accordance with the Quran, it was torture. Interesting.
Posted by: too true ||
02/21/2005 7:39
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#14
Well, Gentle, we do have pictures of a man that is claimed to be Zarqawi. There is an actual history of his existence and he regularly shows his mug on released tapes. If we only catch the guy who is masquerading as Zarqawi, that ought to be good enough.
BTW-Allah was the God of War of the old pantheon of tribal Gods, before Mohammed. Think about that for a moment and consider the mandate of Islam to force the rest of us to live under their rule.
Posted by: Jame Retief ||
02/21/2005 7:59
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#15
Jame - clarify it - when you say 'the rest of us', you mean 'the civilised world'.
Gentle, dear, if you are on break, it would be good if you were to do the reading I assigned when last we spoke. That way you can argue your points based on knowledge. At your age and achievement, charming ignorance will no longer do.
Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri warned the West it faced defeat in what he termed its "new crusade" against the Islamic world, as well as thousands of dead and economic collapse, in a videotape aired by Al-Jazeera television. "Your new crusade will end, God willing, with the same defeat as its predecessors, but only after you have suffered tens of thousands of dead and the destruction of your economy," Zawahiri said in his message to "the peoples of the West" broadcast by the Qatar-based satellite channel.
In his message, which he said was to mark the third anniversary of the internment of Islamists at the US military base of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Zawahiri also hit out at US plans for reform in the Arab and Islamic worlds. The US prison camp at Guantanamo "exposes the reality of the reform and democracy that the United States claims to be trying to establish in our countries", said the voice attributed to Zawahiri but whose authenticity could not immediately be verified. He said that reform proposed by Washington would be based on the US prison camps in Cuba and in Afghanistan, as well as the Iraqi prison of Abu Ghraib, where US troops' abuse of Iraqi prisoners shocked the world. It would also be based on "bombardments with fragmentation bombs and missiles, and on the installation of people like (Afghan President Hamid) Karzai and (outgoing Iraqi prime minister Iyad) Allawi," he added. "If you, people of the West, think that these cardboard governments are going to keep you safe from our reaction, you are mistaken," said the Al-Qaeda number two, who appeared in good health and spoke with an automatic weapon at each side of him.
Zawahiri, hunted by the US and believed to be hiding on the Pakistani-Afghan border, warned the West: "Your real safety lies in treating the Muslim nation on the basis of respect and ceasing aggression (against it)." The United States is currently holding hundreds of detainees from more than 20 countries in Guantanamo Bay. Most were captured in Afghanistan in autumn 2001, suspected of supporting the Taliban rulers of the country or Al-Qaeda. It was the Islamic militant leader's second message in 10 days, an audiotape having been aired by the same Qatar-based channel on February 10. That voice recording hit out at the US concept of freedom, charging that it was a cloak for spreading corruption and injustice in the Islamic world.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/21/2005
12:02:34 AM ||
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#1
Iraqi prison of Abu Ghraib, where US troopsâ abuse of Iraqi prisoners shocked the world One of the problems the jihadis have is they see the West through the lens of the MSM and don't understand how it distorts.
#2
My, my, whatever happened to the new caliphate and an offensive against the west, you pathetic psycho? Beg for mercy all you want, nutjob, we're hunting you and your loser ilk down and won't stop til we're done. Guess this idiot never got out much. He's trying to impress the Third World with the horrors of US prison facilities? Hilarious.
I've probably screwed all sorts of things up, but I've added Page 3, which would be for non-WoT stuff, like our EU conversations, lurid scandals, and the SAST. I'm sure we'll be discussing Page 3 girls soon, but as yet I have no plans.
Page 2 will be for WoT-associated politix, diplomacy, financing, and military-related articles.
Page 1 will be reserved for WoT operations — attacks, shoot-outs, arrests, trials, and executions.
When I initially wrote Page 1/Page 2, I set it up as a binary, either WoT or not WoT. Naturally, I set WoT as 1 and Not-WoT as 0. I've redesigned and set all the 0s to 2, and 3 will follow naturally enough. But because I designed it one way, and now I'm building it another way, there'll be bugs crawling all over the place for a few days, until I can Flit them all.
To make matters worse, I've also done away with the physical Page 2. It's now all one page, only with different filters. Be patient...
On quite another subject, we've been getting an increasing number of spam postings. Today there was a link to a Paris Hilton porn site in Opinion. Most of the junk posts show up in the holding tank, where they can be gracefully deleted, so I'll be tightening up the security on the opinion page today, as well. My apologies for the crap.
I know spammers don't actually read the sites they infest, but the only advertising I'll accept is through Blog Ads and Google Ads. I don't allow NSFW. And if you want to advertise your dog products, don't do it in comments here.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/21/2005
12:01:07 AM ||
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#1
Fred, for those of us who are somewhat forgetful, please do me a favour and title the pages -- perhaps something along the lines of Page 1: WoT Violence, Page 2: WoT Other, Page 3: Of Interest.... Six months from now (when I remember) I'll be grateful. Thanks lots!
#6
Fred, I've yet to make it to through the new format without my ancient W98 machine locking up. Not saying it's the format, but it's either that, or some coding in Memri.org, or I've got an undetected virus.
#7
I'll ditto the request for more "user-friendly" names for the pages so their content will more readily apparent than by number. Of course, if page 3 will have "Page 3" girls, the name suffices as it stands!
Posted by: Dar ||
02/21/2005 9:46
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#8
gromky, click on "all articles." That will give you absolutely everything -- except opinion -- on one very long page. That's what keeps me from hitting the computer. ;-)
The link to Page 3 is on the left side. I don't think you'll enjoy it quite as much as I do, but that's how the wiring diagram is intended to work... i.e., it's not a bug, it's a feature, heh.
#11
Hmmm...that's a disappointing development for a few of us rantburg readers, who come here for a moment away from the MSM sexual fixation. Some rantburgers may seek a Page 4 soft porn page for women in the spirit of equality, but that wouldn't really spin my wheels. I come here for levity sometimes, but mostly for political discourse.
#13
I think the lock-up comes from photos. If they're hosted somewhere else there's a lag as they're pulled, barely noticeable if you're lucky. If they're not there, then your machine will keep trying to pull them until it gives up. That's more lag, and definitely noticeable.
It also takes longer to pull a very large picture. I try to keep the stock photos here under 15k.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/21/2005 10:39
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#14
And Page 0 is bugs... I gotta find them and kill them. Arrrr....
Posted by: Fred ||
02/21/2005 10:44
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#15
Jeez, fevered brows and everything! What a great site!
#16
Also, how do I tell Rantburg to always display articles with comments? I hate it when it collapses them because there's too many articles
When comments are collapsed, doesn't that actually use up more bandwith? I load through a lot of extra pages to see the comments. Sometimes I am not even really interested in the details of article in question. Perhaps there is a compromise where comments are either available longer before collapse or page can be requested with collapsed articles but all comments available. Also maybe only articles with many comments could be collapsed, showing a number of the first comments where we could perhaps see if comments are degenerating into a spat.
Posted by: DO ||
02/21/2005 12:20
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#17
The comments collapse after they've reached 200 on a page.
#18
I just reset it so that it won't fold up until the combined article and comments count reaches 500. With fewer articles per page (3 pages vice 2) it shouldn't be a problem.
I think.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/21/2005 13:28
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#19
Shipman, luv, I think when Rantburg manages to add flashing eyes and heaving bosoms... why then .com will never leave ;-) even if Fred does keep it safe for work and my quietly amused female wiring.
#20
Fred, can you have the front page (rantburg.com) actually redirect to the Page 1 viewing page? Clicking (non-comment) links from the front page makes it load the whole damn thing again instead of just plopping down to the relevant part of the page. In Firefox, at least.
#22
Got that one fixed, I think. Holler when something else goes wrong...
Posted by: Fred ||
02/21/2005 14:27
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#23
Dang, when I hit the precedent day on page 2 or 3 to review the page 2 or 3 of that said precedent day, it redirects me to that date's page 1 only. That's depressing, I think I'll go slumming on porn sites to cheer me up.
#26
Why Phil? Just print everything out each day and keep it in a big honking binder and do your own indexing on key words. I'm still working on "what" from three years ago. DeHaveline usered it a lot.
#29
hmmm - after starting, I think Ship was playing with you. I've got 10 pages each with "Ima" and "thinkr" links
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 18:49
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#30
Format Changes- Fred I like the new look, I was going to suggest that to the web master/rant and rave designer. Yes, Save Paris Hilton type posting's for another life! Some of the W.O.T.
become depressing- I enjoy a "well rounded" choice of posting's. **THANKS**
Andrea
Posted by: Andrea ||
02/21/2005 18:50
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#31
Page 1, Page 2, Page3, Fred has quite the newspaper running here. Now all we need is sports....
Time to renew my subscription.
Posted by: john ||
02/21/2005 19:43
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#32
occasional glitches when I hit View All Day
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 19:46
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#33
everything else - great!
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 19:47
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#34
Thanks BD, I just tried and Google Advanced Search does find stuff in comments. Working currently, so I guess Fred didn't change any archive links.
(2005-02-21) -- After achieving another in a series of unilateral Israeli concessions to the Palestinian Authority, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced today that he would hold a peace summit with himself in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm El Sheik later this month.
Over the weekend, Mr. Sharon persuaded his cabinet to give final approval to an Israeli pullout from the Gaza strip and the military said it would release of 500 Palestinian prisoners today without receiving anything in return from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
"I believe that I can extract even deeper concessions from myself in the heady atmosphere of a peace summit," said Mr. Sharon. "I'm sending my aides ahead to negotiate the groundwork and protocol for the talks. When I arrive, I will have several hours of one-on-one time with the Israeli prime minister, whom I now consider a partner in peace."
An American soldier overseas is fuming over letters he received from Brooklyn middle-school children accusing GIs of destroying mosques and killing civilians in Iraq. Pfc. Rob Jacobs of New Jersey said he was initially ecstatic to get a package of letters from sixth-graders at JHS 51 in Park Slope last month at his base 10 miles from the North Korea border. That changed when he opened the envelope and found missives strewn with politically charged rhetoric, vicious accusations and demoralizing predictions that only a handful of soldiers would leave the Iraq war alive. "It's hard enough for soldiers to deal with being away from their families, they don't need to be getting letters like this," Jacobs, 20, said in a phone interview from his base at Camp Casey. "If they don't have anything nice to say, they might as well not say anything at all." One Muslim boy wrote: "Even thoe [sic] you are risking your life for our country, have you seen how many civilians you or some other soldier killed?"...
#1
Stop It!! Stop it Now! I am tired of the incompetence coming from our educational system that is being used to indoctrinate our children. As copied from the source article
"The JHS 51 teacher, Alex Kunhardt, did not return phone calls, but the school principal, Xavier Costello, responded with a statement:
"While we would never censor anything that our children write, we sincerely apologize for forwarding letters that were in any way inappropriate to Pfc. Jacobs. This assignment was not intended to be insensitive, but to be supportive of the men and women in service to our nation."
This is not a free speech issue, this is just false information spread thru incompetent teaching by this Social Studies teacher. Much as with Ward Churchhill the facts do not even come close to supporting what these "children" have been fed.
#2
lucky it's a holiday for these two - tomorrow the NYPost will have the magnifying glass on the teacher and principal. Better polish up those resumes
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 13:50
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#4
It is not about a freedom of expression a case. It is about an adult using a child for its purposes. It is not that different from a rape.
It is also about a teacher using time who belongs to the tax payer (or to the parents if he works in a private school) for purposes who are not those he is being paid for. He should be forced to refund the state or parents for ALL his salaries since he started his carreer. And add a substantial interest for the damage done to these children who have should have been studying in order to later get a better university/better job and instead spend that time (they will never gat back) being used as propaganda tools by this loser. He should refund a million dollars per child.
#5
The JHS 51 teacher, Alex Kunhardt, did not return phone calls, but the school principal, Xavier Costello, responded with a statement:
"While we would never censor anything that our children write, we sincerely apologize for forwarding letters that were in any way inappropriate to Pfc. Jacobs. This assignment was not intended to be insensitive, but to be supportive of the men and women in service to our nation."
I keep getting more & more pissed off about this.
Take JFMs suggestion and send Kunhardt and Costello to that State penitentury in Arizona, to work of the millions in expense, where the convicts do hard labor and are fed only Baloney Sandwiches and water.
#6
It's the Maricopa County Jail run by Joe Arpaio, who could defeat McCain in a nano second and would probably do a better job. Could someone from Az explain why he has never moved up the political ladder? Is he just having more fun than a human being should be allowed?
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/21/2005 14:51
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#7
The unit they sent this to isn't even in the Middle East! Its 10 miles from North Korea.
Both the teacher and his principal have engaged in outright theft for using school time to force-feed their bullshit on children who don't know any better.
#9
Propaganda, hell. Thems well fed American leftists are good eatin'.
Posted by: Lil Kim ||
02/21/2005 15:05
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#10
Typical B.S. from New Jersey.
My wife loves it when the recruiters come to her school. Many of her students enter the military. For lots of them it will be the best thing that has happened in their lives up to that point. You have to realize these 2 clowns are a minority. Like anything the atypical are what sticks out and focused on by the media. My wife like many who she works with is a life long Republican conservative. Bashing educators it easy since most of them are to busy to fight back.
#11
I have to add that I strongly advocate for the right of this guy to say whatever he wants as slong as it is outside school and on his own time.
What I find repellent is the use of defenceless children and of time who belongs to his employer.
#13
All this kind of crap, and the thousands of Ward Churchills in our education establishment, are allowed to continue because they have a virtual monopoly on what our children hear. My daughter barely scraped by with a "D" average in High School because I wouldn't let her be propagandized, and taught her how to think. Her teachers hated her and me! I spent so much time talking to her principals I could almost declare them dependents on my income tax.
It's time the true potential of the Internet is realized, and a full conservative K-up curriculum was developed and posted online, free for all to use to identify and counter the propaganda our children are force-fed in school. Even better, make it multiple curricula covering every aspect of thought, including the left so we can make fun of their stupidity and incoherence.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/21/2005 18:00
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#14
You MUST be real careful as to what is sent overseas to our soldier's. I have a cousin who is an elementary school teacher and she read (authorized) every card, letter, photo etc that her student's sent overseas- so that she would NOT have to send out a RESUME (cover your ass).
If I had a son or daughter I would encourage to aim for higher than a "D' average. If the school is the problem and NOT the student- switch schools- FAST***************RUN DONT WALK.
The Cost of IGNORANCE is far more costly than a good, well rounded education.
Andrea Jackson
Posted by: Andrea ||
02/21/2005 18:13
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#15
I wonder if the teacher put the students up to it, or it they were just parroting what they hear from the MSM.
If the teacher put them up to it, that's simply inexcusable. Grown-ups shouldn't use kids in political propaganda schemes. It's unethical and the teacher should be fired if that's the case. If the kids were just writing what they hear from the media and their parents, and the teacher didn't take time to read ALL the letters, and just sent them anyway, disciplinary action should be taken.
It's totally correct that the good teachers don't have time to respond to, or defend themselves against the kind of nonsensical things idiot teachers do.
#16
# 15 ex- lib My cousin, Stacy elementary school teacher does NOT have time to review all the writing's----she took all the card's, letter's, etc home and between her and dear Dad (Army vet.). HE knew what could be sent and what letter's were subjective. Stacy then gave back the subjective letter's and advise to re write, which the student's were happy to do...and being so young, they were NOT aware of anywrong doing.
Again, Parental descretion is advised.
Andrea Jackson
Posted by: Andrea Jackson ||
02/21/2005 19:18
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#17
My cousin, Stacy elementary school teacher does NOT have time to review all the writing's
#18
# 17 Stacy DOES NOT have time to review all the writing's...she also Volunteer's her time to special ed student's- where the BUDGET has been CUT. She is young and can't allow herself to burn out. Many teacher's don't event think of the soldier's overseas- they pass the buck to another teacher or department.
Andrea Jackson
Posted by: Andrea Jackson ||
02/21/2005 19:30
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#19
Why didn't Stacy get Mary to help out? Mary's the ex-con, right?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/21/2005 19:32
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#20
Andrea that is complete BS - if you can't handle the job, quit. Don't complain that you're "young and can't allow herself to burn out". I'm a gov't engineer and I've done all-nighters when the work requires it. Stacy should grow up, do her f&*king job, and quit crying the blues on your sympathetic shoulder. If you can't review product, don't ship it - rule #1
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 19:34
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#21
Stacy does NOT know Mary. Stacy has a Father who is a U.S. Army Vet and is happy to assist her.
Mr. Crawford- what do you do to help the soldier's. Many web site's out there to surf
and the soldier's need our help. (If you knew Mary you would like her- she is not all that bad).
Andrea Jackson
Posted by: Andrea Jackson ||
02/21/2005 19:36
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#22
FRANK- SHE does REVIEW THE PRODUCT. I HAVE NOT SAID OTHERWISE. I'm not an engineer, but I cannot compare a 6th grade teacher's job to a
Gov. engineer. I don't know what dept you work for and it does not really matter...however, I did work for the State gov for 3 year's and not too many broke a sweat or VOLUNTEER time when there were budget cuts. Many did NOT show for work or document it with payroll. I guess you could call them M.I.A.
Andrea Jackson
Posted by: Andrea Jackson ||
02/21/2005 19:42
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#23
WTF? Stacy elementary school teacher does NOT have time to review all the writing's
Don't get someone else to do your job. Where I work, a MIA is gone the next week. No playtime. I think schooling children is a tough, hard, job. It's not like teachers didn't know that when they signed on. Excell at it, or quit
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 19:46
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#24
Frank - she does not have time to revew all writings while class is in session (other tasks to complete in alloted class time). Which is why she had brought the soldier's letters, card's, photo's home- her Dad a Vietnam Army Vet. knew what was "acceptable" anything subjective was given back and the student's could rewrite and submit. I'm not playing favorites- she went the extra mile.
Hats off to your department* I commend a good, hard worker whether public service or private**
Andrea Jackson
Posted by: Andrea Jackson ||
02/21/2005 19:52
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#25
Stacy got quality control accomplished - what's the problem?
Don't assume the teacher dictated the contents of the letters - you know I'm not the most unquestioning supporter of every detail in Iraq (love the goal, worry about some of the execution), but I have to do serious damage control on this subject with my 10 year old after every visit with his WV yellow dog dem grandmother (in-law). They can hear it everywhere.
#26
I'd assume it, barring other info - typically the students are used as propganda background - but we'll see. I'd be happy to apologize if wrong
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 20:21
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#27
I would like to think that the student's are not being used in such a fashion. Anyhow, let it all REST and continue to support the soldier's who are fighting for our freedom.
Andrea Jackson
Posted by: Andrea Jackson ||
02/21/2005 20:45
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#28
Let it rest? Not a f&^king chance. Find out what the truth is, and IF the teacher used the students to make ugly letters to harm the morale of the troops, FIRE the teacher and strip their credentials
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 20:57
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#29
Andrea's right about her cousin asking Dad to help. She is also right about teachers who put in time way, way above and beyond the call of duty. Don't let bad apples like this character in NJ sour you on the teaching profession as a whole. For every moonbat in a school there are a lot of honest people like Stacy who do their best work. And yes, sometimes a teacher needs a second opinion when looking over papers. I had 150 HS Freshmen--35 each in the two "advanced" classes, 35 each in the two "average" classes, including one kid with schizophrenia; and 12 kids reading at 3rd grade level or lower. I asked my husband to look over my comments on their papers to make sure I hadn't missed anything; I'd get bugeyed after the first 75 papers.
So I sincerely hope Frank G et al are done grousing about teachers asking for a little extra help; his last comment at least got back to the main issue.
A former adviser to George W. Bush said yesterday that he secretly taped Bush over a two-year period when the latter was running for president for "historic" purposes, and that he had planned eventually to give the recordings to Bush for his archives. Doug Wead, 58, an author and onetime religious adviser to Bush, said in a telephone interview that after excerpts from the tapes appeared yesterday in the New York Times, he was approached by a Bush intermediary suggesting that he turn over the recordings sooner rather than later.
But Wead -- who used the conversations for his new book, "The Raising of a President" -- said that no one from the White House has expressed anger at him for revealing portions of the tape. Asked whether Bush would view the actions as an act of treachery from a trusted friend, Wead said, "It depends on what else is on the tapes. . . . Ninety percent of the tapes have not been heard. He can see that my motive was not to try to hurt him. "If I released all the tapes, it would be an act of betrayal," Wead said. "Most of them have never seen the light of day and never will."
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
02/21/2005
11:35:10 AM ||
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#1
The problem is that they were recorded without W's knowledge, AND released.
What he says on them is essentially the "W" we know today.
He seems a decent honorable fellow who smoked a little pot in his 20's, and got over the immaturity. And the issue is?
#3
Might be nice for historians, but the fact that it was recorded without Dubya's knowledge makes me suspicious - and did he ask Dubya's permission before releasing them?
Something like this could be a gold mine for scholars, but more likely will become a target for the leftists who want to dig stuff up and bash GWB. Best left in the vault for another fifty years or so, I'd say.
Posted by: The Doctor ||
02/21/2005 12:28
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#4
The guy is a) pushing his new book and b) pissed that he got dissed when he pushed an anti-gay agenda too far w/ GWB.
Petty.
Posted by: too true ||
02/21/2005 12:51
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#5
The content of the tapes = No story. W is the same man behind closed doors as he is on TV.
The problem: Assholes like Wead who deliberately release tapes to reporters, THEN try to backpedal and claim that he never meant them to get out.
The second problem: Wead has yet to apologize to his supposed "friend".
The third problem: Wead just "happened" to release 7 year old "secret" tapes of W., and Wead just "happens" to have a new book coming out...
The conclusion: Wead is a fucking asshole trying to sell more books, and he owes George W. Bush a GIGANTIC apology.
Posted by: Chris W. ||
02/21/2005 13:10
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#6
The excerpts obtained by the Times and ABC show the aspiring president privately as he likes to portray himself publicly: very religious, very conservative -- and tolerant
maybe because he is??? NYT assholes
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 13:35
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#7
There should be some state attorney general where one or more of these tapes was made who is willing and able to prosecute. Or at least plea bargain.
Posted by: Tom ||
02/21/2005 17:55
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#8
Nah... this falls into the "no publicity is bad publicity" zone. The most Bush should do is issue a "saddened by the actions" statement, and leave it at that -- the implication being that this guy wasn't really close enough to merit anger at a betrayal. Suing or bringing in a State AG gives this person too much importance.
In many Vietnamese-American communities, touring pop singers and artists from Vietnam often face protests because of their country's communist regime. But a University of Washington professor thought Seattle would be an exception when he brought three artists from Hanoi last week to showcase their work. Instead, some Vietnamese community leaders yesterday announced they would protest the "Viet Nam Now" exhibit at the Billy King Showroom, 95 Union St., near Pike Place Market. It opened last Saturday and is scheduled to run through March 14.
Earlier, an Asian social-service agency declined to endorse the show, fearing a backlash from the local refugee community. And the artists, whose abstract and impressionistic paintings depict life in Vietnam, were glared at and disparaged by diners when they lunched in the Chinatown International District earlier this week. "If they protest, they protest. What can you do?" said assistant professor Jonathan Warren, who is sponsoring the artists. "But maybe this will prompt a discussion into why there are hard feelings and these political divisions." Any bets when was the last time this guy opened a history book?
For many Vietnamese refugees here, communism remains a highly charged issue, much like the antipathy Miami's Cuban exiles harbor toward Fidel Castro's regime. Their animosity is also fueled by Vietnam's poor human-rights record and restrictions on free speech. Refugees think the touring artists support communists because the Vietnamese government approved their trip to the United States. The artists say their work is apolitical. "Some Vietnamese in this country were imprisoned up to 14 years after the fall of Saigon," said Jeffrey Brody, a professor at California State University, Fullerton, and an expert on Vietnamese-American issues. "They are angry at the government that defeated them in battle and that has a stranglehold on the country."
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: CrazyFool ||
02/21/2005
11:34:00 AM ||
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The 64-year-old Olympia man has persuaded a dozen cities, including Olympia and Puyallup, to either ban the communist flag at international events or to fly the flag of the defunct South Vietnam government instead. He said his ill will comes from having heard that many fellow countrymen were tortured. He refuses to meet the three touring artists.
The cities of Westminster and Garden Grove, CA use the South Vietnam flag as thier city flag.
They moth have majority Vietnamese populations now. Ever hear of "Little Saigon"?
#2
I once dated a woman whose father had been a SV Colonel. His outfit actually fought - part of the Tigers. That cost him: he was "re-educated" for over 3 years after the war ended before they allowed him to join his family in the US. His feet were beaten daily and, when they let him go, he had long since lost the ability to walk. He lives with them in the LA area - Huntington Beach, I think. He would have a LOT to say about these "artists" being granted visas, much less touring and peddling their crap. I would joyfully dare any commie dufus, much less one from today's Vietnam, to get in his face, heh. He was curling 160+ lbs in his wheelchair at age 55 - back in 1990 when I last saw him.
#3
.com, great story. One good thing we got out of that war is Vietnamese Americans.
"But maybe this will prompt a discussion into why there are hard feelings and these political divisions."
It's just a complete mystery to you, Perfesser? Nothing comes to mind?
Posted by: Matt ||
02/21/2005 12:45
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Maybe the prof would spend a few minutes reading VietPundit, and learn a little about why most Vietnamese-Americans have bad feelings about the "Democratic People's Republic of Vietnam". But then he wouldn't have the grounds to support the desecration and corruption that Hanoi inflicts on the noble Vietnamese history.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/21/2005 19:56
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#5
hmmmm - he oughtta do a little stop'n'talk with the "Little Saigon" - Huntington Beach regulars. You were right, PD
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 20:14
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#6
OP, good call on Vietpundit. He's got some good stuff up.
Posted by: Matt ||
02/21/2005 20:19
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#7
Artists huh? I look forward to the Piss Ho Chi Minh piece or general Giap rendered in elephant dung and porno mag booties.
Posted by: ed ||
02/21/2005 20:19
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#8
America did get a major injection of South Vietnam's best and brightest. I remember one kid, in an algebra class, never having heard of it before and barely speaking English, who after a few months was explaining finesse points to the teacher. The cowboy clique didn't know how to relate to Vietnamese, so one of them picked a fight with the kid, who had been studying martial arts since about the age of 5. Being thoroughly whupped in the fight, the cowboys decided that those Vietnamese folks "is okay." Soon, he was sporting blue jeans and a cowboy hat, and his cowboy buddies had him up on a horse and learning how to lasso. Not what I would call having a difficult time adjusting to their new land. I think he and his family now own their own ranch.
Fresh intel suggests that Tehran is trying to expand its influence over whatever government emerges in postelection Iraq. According to U.S. officials familiar with the latest intelligence, the Iranian government has been secretly directing its agents inside Iraq to plant themselves in influential positions throughout the Iraqi government—into agencies that handle economic affairs, like the ministries of Oil, Public Works and Finance, as well as departments like the Interior Ministry that handle national security. The Iranians also are directing their agents to infiltrate Iraqi security agencies on the "working level" by taking jobs in regional or local government offices and particularly local police forces. According to the most pessimistic U.S. analysts, the ayatollahs' ultimate goal: "Taking over the government of Iraq." A less pessimistic view is that the latest intel merely shows an ongoing campaign of "classical espionage" by Tehran against Iraq.
U.S. government sources say a significant number of intel reports have recently documented the Iranian covert-action campaign and that the reports include internal Iranian government discussions about how Tehran's agents in Iraq are being deployed. Many of the Iranian agents in question, the intel reports say, are members of the Badr Corps, a paramilitary affiliate of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a political party with longtime Iranian ties that is one of the principal partners in the coalition of Shiite parties that won the largest number of seats in the new Iraqi constitutional assembly. U.S. analysts now believe the corps is riddled with agents controlled by Iranian intelligence. U.S. officials note that most of the parties and politicians who won biggest in last month's Iraqi elections have historical ties to Tehran. Both SCIRI and the Dawa Party, the other major partner in the winning Shiite coalition, were based in Tehran for years during Saddam's rule, and maintained close relations with Iran's theocracy. So did at least one leader of the Kurdish coalition that will be kingmakers in Baghdad. Dawa chief Ibrahim Jaafari, a favorite to become Iraq's new prime minister, is known to favor an Islamic influence on any new Iraqi constitution. Some Bush administration officials are horrified that Jaafari's principal rival for the prime minister's office appears to be Ahmad Chalabi, the secular-minded but controversial Shiite who during the Saddam era maintained a Tehran office that was financed with U.S. tax money. Once the Pentagon's prime candidate to succeed Saddam, Chalabi fell out of favor in Washington last year when intel agencies alleged he gave Iran information compromising U.S. code-breaking operations. (Chalabi denied any wrongdoing.) Despite the ominous new intelligence, nongovernment experts say it's possible nationalist-minded Iraqis can thwart Tehran's effort to take control in Iraq.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/21/2005
1:12:54 AM ||
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#1
Watch it! Twilight-Zoners are denying Shiite cultural, cum political, unity among the Teheran to Jerusalem corridor savages. Only a troll would challenge the spin-monkeys.
#5
The biggest problem with itsy's assertion is that I doubt the Shia know quite what they will do yet. There are certainly some with strong agendas - but note the plural. How this plays out is yet to be determined and probably won't happen in one clearcut move, either ... it will evolve, I suspect, in a complicated way.
Posted by: too true ||
02/21/2005 7:34
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Everybody forgets that the US has re-created the Phoenix Program to deal with infiltrators, spies and saboteurs that weasel their way into the Iraqi government. If you ignore the silly-ass Hollywood take on Phoenix, it was a highly effective program that scotched dozens of very effective, and murderous, espionage networks in the government of South Vietnam. Its tactics were not polite, however, which resulted in much condemnation once the existence of the program was known; the lilly livers demanding that the military operation follow the ground rules of a police force instead of a counterterrorism operation. Their mission was straightforward: once you capture an agent, immediately use him to take down the rest of his net, in a "Night of the Long Knives" fashion. How you go about doing this is up to you. If the agent is too high placed, or too well protected to be apprehended, then sanction him. Overall, this problem "cleaned" most of the South Vietnamese government of enemy agents; however, they could not make the rest honest, honorable, or efficient.
#7
Ah, You mean this Phoenix Anonymoose? Hmm.. but if such a program actually did exist then to discuss it would mean... I don't think its a discussion to open.
#8
Anonymoose: Overall, this problem "cleaned" most of the South Vietnamese government of enemy agents; however, they could not make the rest honest, honorable, or efficient.
The South Vietnamese lost because they were invaded by a huge North Vietnamese conventional force armed with billions of dollars of newly-made Soviet hardware in 1975, even as Congress refused to provide military hardware to South Vietnam. (It took the Vietnamese government decades to pay the loans back). The problem wasn't that the South Vietnamese officials weren't honest, honorable or efficient - it was that Congress screwed the South Vietnamese people and deliberately abandoned them to the Communists - in the face of multi-billion dollar Soviet arms shipments. Note that the South Vietnamese fought hard - they lost 250,000 men in 15 years, or about 15,000 men a year.
#9
3dc: Ah, You mean this Phoenix Anonymoose? Hmm.. but if such a program actually did exist then to discuss it would mean... I don't think its a discussion to open.
If you believe the liberal media's spin on this, then you should also believe its spin on Iraq. Why bother coming to Rantburg?
On Phoenix: There came a point at which the war was won. The fighting wasnât over, but the war was won. The reason it was won was that the South Vietnamese had achieved the capacity to, with promised American support (similar to the support still being rendered to American allies in West Germany and South Korea), maintain their independence and freedom of action. This was a South Vietnamese achievement.
An extremely important part of that achievement was success in rooting out the enemyâs covert infrastructure in the hamlets and villages of rural South Vietnam. An effective campaign for neutralizing members of that infrastructure, based on better and more timely intelligence and acting on it, was developed. Critics of the war denounced the "Phoenix" program as an assassination campaign, but the reality as with so much in this complex war was otherwise.
For one thing, captives who had knowledge of the enemy infrastructure and its functioning were invaluable intelligence assets. The incentive was to capture them alive and exploit that knowledge. Congressional investigators were sent out to Vietnam to assess the program (in itself a somewhat bizarre thing to undertake in the middle of a war). They found that of some 15,000 members of the Viet Cong infrastructure neutralized during 1968, 15 percent had been killed, 13 percent rallied to the government side, and 72 percent were captured. William Colby testified later that most of those killed, in fact "the vast majority," had been killed in regular combat actions, "as shown by the units reporting who had killed them."
#11
Many people, including some Americans stationed in Vietnam, were critical of South Vietnamese armed forces during this period. But such criticisms seldom took into account a number of factors affecting the performance of those forces. American materiel assistance in these early years consisted largely of providing cast-off World War II American weapons, including the heavy and unwieldy (for a Vietnamese) M-1 rifle. Meanwhile the enemy was being provided the AK-47 assault rifle by his Russian and Chinese patrons. "In 1964 the enemy had introduced the AK47, a modern, highly effective automatic rifle," noted Brigadier General James L. Collins, Jr. in a monograph on development of South Vietnamâs armed forces. "In contrast, the South Vietnam forces were still armed with a variety of World War II weapons_." Then: "After 1965 the increasing U.S. buildup slowly pushed Vietnamese armed forces materiel needs into the background." As a consequence, South Vietnamese units continued to be outgunned by the enemy and thus at a distinct combat disadvantage. General Fred Weyand, finishing up a tour as commanding general of II Field Force, Vietnam, observed in a 1968 debriefing report that "the long delay in furnishing ARVN modern weapons and equipment, at least on a par with that furnished the enemy by Russia and China, has been a major contributing factor to ARVN ineffectiveness."
It was not until General Creighton Abrams came to Vietnam as deputy commander of U.S. forces in May 1967 that the South Vietnamese began to get more attention. Soon after taking up his post Abrams cabled Army Chief of Staff General Harold K. Johnson. "It is quite clear to me," he reported, "that the US Army military here and at home have thought largely in terms of US operations and support of US forces." As a consequence, "shortages of essential equipment or supplies in an already austere authorization has not been handled with the urgency and vigor that characterizes what we do for US needs. Yet the responsibility we bear to ARVN is clear." Abrams acknowledged that "the ground work must begin here. I am working at it."
CW Abrams PHOTOAbrams spent most of his year as the deputy working to upgrade South Vietnamese forces, including providing them the M-16 rifle. By the time of Tet 1968 he had managed to get some of these weapons into the hands of South Vietnamese airborne and other elite units, but the rank and file were still outgunned by the enemy. Thus Lieutenant General Dong Van Khuyen, South Vietnamâs senior logistician, recalled that "during the enemy Tet offensive of 1968 the crisp, rattling sounds of AK-47s echoing in Saigon and some other cities seemed to make a mockery of the weaker, single shots of Garands and carbines fired by stupefied friendly troops."
Even so, South Vietnamese armed forces performed admirably in repelling the Tet offensive. "To the surprise of many Americans and the consternation of the Communists," reported Time magazine, "ARVN bore the brunt of the early fighting with bravery and elan, performing better than almost anyone would have expected." Nobody mentioned that the ARVN had achieved these results without modern weapons that could match those of the enemy.
#12
Thank you, itsy. But I'm afraid the term "Pollyanna" doesn't mean what you think it means. Go read the book -- it's in the Juvenile section of your public library, assuming you are Stateside. If not, it isn't expensive from Amazon.com or others of its ilk. In the meantime, it is possible to make your point without being rude. It's even possible to be snarky without being rude -- that is called wit.
A LONG-running sexual harassment scandal has claimed the career of high-profile UN refugees chief Ruud Lubbers, a former Dutch prime minister and persistent critic of John Howard's hardline policies on asylum seekers. Wouldn't that make him the guy in charge of al-Ein-Hellhole?
Mr Lubbers, 65, quit as high commissioner for refugees after a confidential UN internal report exposed him as a serial sexual harasser and groper. Maybe that was him on the plane on the way home?
"You look tired, Miss. Here, let me hold those honkers for you!"
An investigation into Mr Lubbers was launched last April following a formal complaint by a 51-year-old American woman employed at the UN. The woman alleged Mr Lubbers grabbed her around the waist and thrust his groin into her buttocks as she was leaving a meeting at the Palais des Nations in Geneva the previous December. Who'd he think he was, President of the U. S.?
That stuff may work with Belgian wimmin, but the day is past in the U.S.A.
The departure of Mr Lubbers also raises more questions about the judgment of embattled UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Who thinks Kofi has judgement?
who backed the refugee chief and buried the report when it was handed to him last July. A spokesman for Mr Annan said the Secretary-General had accepted legal advice at the time that the allegations against Mr Lubbers could not substantiated. But the report, leaked to a British newspaper at the weekend, revealed that the allegations against Mr Lubbers went much further than Mr Annan had previously indicated. It cited five instances where Mr Lubbers had made unwelcome advances to female subordinates and said the conduct indicated "a pattern of sexual harassment". In one case, Mr Lubbers invited a female staffer to his home to discuss work matters but once she was there, he only wanted to discuss "personal matters". She fled when Mr Lubbers started "touching her in a sexual way".
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/21/2005
11:07:46 AM ||
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Wouldnââ¬â¢t that make him the guy in charge of al-Ein-Hellhole?
Nope. UNWRA is autonomous. After all, "Paestinians" are not refugees, they just temporary displaced (until the Zionist Entity is destroyed) wards of the UN.
#2
That stuff may work with Begian wimmin, but the day is past in the U.S.A.
Tell that to Bill Clinton.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/21/2005 11:26
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But . . . how could someone from the UN be forced to resign like that? It's so terrible! I thought they were the only world body with any "moral authority" any more!
*Sound of world view crashing to pieces*
Posted by: The Doctor ||
02/21/2005 12:23
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Saying "no power on earth will ever divide us," President Bush arrived in Belgium last night for a week of meetings with foreign leaders during which he'll try to shore up relations with allies and push for more European involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. In excerpts from a speech he's scheduled to deliver today that were released by the White House on his arrival, Bush calls for unity. "As past debates fade and great duties become clear, let us begin a new era of trans-Atlantic unity," the excerpt say.
Requesting aid for Iraq, he asks allies "to give tangible political, economic and security assistance to the world's newest democracy." The speech today will be the main address of the trip, which was set to begin with a casual meeting with the king of Belgium. Bush is to end the tour with a private dinner with President Jacques Chirac of France. The dinner will be an opportunity for Bush and Chirac to set aside some of the bitterness over the invasion of Iraq. Bush, on his first foreign trip of his second term, "will focus on his vision of a united trans-Atlantic community working together to promote freedom and democracy, particularly in the broader Middle East," said National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley Widespread demonstrations are expected; at least 2,500 police officers were deployed in Brussels.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/21/2005
11:03:48 AM ||
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groan.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/21/2005 11:08
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Hypocrisy is the grease that keeps the social machinery working.
LL
The secret meeting is taking place in the bowels of a facility in Baghdad, a cavernous, heavily guarded building in the U.S.-controlled green zone. The Iraqi negotiator, a middle-aged former member of Saddam Hussein's regime and the senior representative of the self-described nationalist insurgency, sits on one side of the table.
He is here to talk to two members of the U.S. military. One of them, an officer, takes notes during the meeting. The other, dressed in civilian clothes, listens as the Iraqi outlines a list of demands the U.S. must satisfy before the insurgents stop fighting. The parties trade boilerplate complaints: the U.S. officer presses the Iraqi for names of other insurgent leaders; the Iraqi says the newly elected Shi'a-dominated government is being controlled by Iran. The discussion does not go beyond generalities, but both sides know what's behind the coded language.
The Iraqi's very presence conveys a message: Members of the insurgency are open to negotiating an end to their struggle with the U.S. "We are ready," he says before leaving, "to work with you."
In that guarded pledge may lie the first sign that after nearly two years of fighting, parts of the insurgency in Iraq are prepared to talk and move toward putting away their arms—and the U.S. is willing to listen. An account of the secret meeting between the senior insurgent negotiator and the U.S. military officials was provided to TIME by the insurgent negotiator. He says two such meetings have taken place. While U.S. officials would not confirm the details of any specific meetings, sources in Washington told TIME that for the first time the U.S. is in direct contact with members of the Sunni insurgency, including former members of Saddam's Baathist regime.
Pentagon officials say the secret contacts with insurgent leaders are being conducted mainly by U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers. A Western observer close to the discussions says that "there is no authorized dialogue with the insurgents" but that the U.S. has joined "back-channel" communications with rebels. Says the observer: "There's a lot bubbling under the surface today."
Over the course of the war in Iraq, as the anti-U.S. resistance has grown in size and intensity, Administration officials have been steadfast in their refusal to negotiate with enemy fighters. But in recent months, the persistence of the fighting and signs of division in the ranks of the insurgency have prompted some U.S. officials to seek a political solution. And Pentagon and intelligence officials hope the high voter turnout in last month's election will deflate the morale of the insurgents and persuade more of them to come in from the cold.
Hard-line islamist fighters like Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda group will not compromise in their campaign to create an Islamic state. But in interviews with TIME, senior Iraqi insurgent commanders said several "nationalist" rebel groups—composed predominantly of ex-military officers and what the Pentagon dubs "former regime elements"—have moved toward a strategy of "fight and negotiate." Although they have no immediate plans to halt attacks on U.S. troops, they say their aim is to establish a political identity that can represent disenfranchised Sunnis and eventually negotiate an end to the U.S. military's offensive in the Sunni triangle. Their model is Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, which ultimately earned the I.R.A. a role in the Northern Ireland peace process. "That's what we're working for, to have a political face appear from the battlefield, to unify the groups, to resist the aggressor and put our views to the people," says a battle commander in the upper tiers of the insurgency who asked to be identified by his nom de guerre, Abu Marwan. Another negotiator, called Abu Mohammed, told TIME, "Despite what has happened, the possibility for negotiation is still open."
But can such talks succeed? A senior official in the U.S. embassy in Baghdad says the nationalist insurgents "want to cut a deal, thinking we get ours and they get theirs." Any deal with the insurgents would be up to the new government, but embassy officials say they believe that reaching an accord should be the new government's top priority.
Behind the scenes, the U.S. is encouraging Sunni leaders and the insurgents to talk with the government. A tougher job may be to convince the leaders of political parties about to assume power—many of whom were brutalized by Baathists now coordinating the insurgency—that it's in their interests to reach a peaceful settlement with their former tormentors. In the U.S. command, there is increasing skepticism that the insurgency can be defeated through military might alone. Says a senior U.S. officer: "The Iraqis are the solution to the insurgency, and they are the solution to our departure."
Insurgent sources say both sides have been feeling each other out for months. Some of the earliest advances were made last year through Jordanian intelligence officers, but insurgents balked at the idea of meeting in Jordan. U.S. diplomats also initiated contact with conservative Sunnis known to have influence with the insurgents, such as Harith al-Dhari, the head of the Association of Muslim Scholars.
Insurgent sources say that last summer a loose amalgam of nationalist groups—Mohammed's Army, al-Nasser al-Saladin, the 1920 Revolution Brigades and perhaps even the Islamic Army of Iraq—met to discuss forging a common political platform.
Meanwhile, some Americans showed openness to a dialogue. In meetings with Sunni tribal leaders, Lieut. Colonel Rick Welch, the senior special-operations civil-military affairs adviser to the commanding general of the 1st Cavalry Division in Baghdad, put word out that the military was willing to talk to hard-liners about their grievances and that, as Welch says, "the door is not closed, except for some very top regime guys." Welch, a reservist and prosecutor from Morgan County, Ohio, told TIME, "I don't meet all the insurgent leaders, but I've met some of them." Although not an authorized negotiator, Welch has become a back channel in the nascent U.S. dialogue with the insurgents. Insurgent negotiators confirm to TIME that they have met with Welch.
What do the insurgents want? Top insurgent field commanders and negotiators informed TIME that the rebels have told diplomats and military officers that they support a secular democracy in Iraq but resent the prospect of a government run by exiles who fled to Iran and the West during Saddam's regime. The insurgents also seek a guaranteed timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal, a demand the U.S. refuses. But there are some hints of compromise: insurgent negotiators have told their U.S. counterparts they would accept a U.N. peacekeeping force as the U.S. troop presence recedes. Insurgent representative Abu Mohammed says the nationalists would even tolerate U.S. bases on Iraqi soil. "We don't mind if the invader becomes a guest," he says, suggesting a situation akin to the U.S. military presence in Germany and Japan.
As promising as such proffers might sound, it's far too early for optimism. The new U.S. policy of engagement is aimed at driving a wedge between nationalist insurgents and the jihadists. But al-Zarqawi and his allies have silenced nationalists by threatening to kill them if they negotiate. The Western observer close to the discussions says, "Al-Zarqawi keeps pulling the process away from 'fight and negotiate' to 'pure mayhem.'"
The engagement strategy faces another obstacle: the new Iraqi government. Leaders of the victorious political parties say they have no interest in continuing dialogue with the insurgents. "The voters gave us a mandate to attack these insurgents, not negotiate with them," says Humam Bakr Hammoudi, a political strategist for the dominant sciri party. U.S. negotiators say they believe the new government will eventually realize that only a political settlement will subdue the insurgency—which may soon direct its wrath at the new Iraqi rulers if it believes its interests are being ignored.
While some in the Bush Administration might find the idea of backing an accord with archenemy Baathists distasteful, the Western observer says, "I think you've got a pretty flexible [U.S.] government." Now it's up to the others to follow.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/21/2005
1:08:31 AM ||
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Article: Although they have no immediate plans to halt attacks on U.S. troops, they say their aim is to establish a political identity that can represent disenfranchised Sunnis and eventually negotiate an end to the U.S. militaryâs offensive in the Sunni triangle. Their model is Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, which ultimately earned the I.R.A. a role in the Northern Ireland peace process. "Thatâs what weâre working for, to have a political face appear from the battlefield, to unify the groups, to resist the aggressor and put our views to the people," says a battle commander in the upper tiers of the insurgency who asked to be identified by his nom de guerre, Abu Marwan. Another negotiator, called Abu Mohammed, told TIME, "Despite what has happened, the possibility for negotiation is still open."
IRA-style negotiations work when you're doing IRA-style attacks. IRA-style negotiations in conjunction with mass casualty attacks? These guys are dreaming, and soon they'll be resting - in freshly-dug graves.
#4
What do the insurgents want? Top insurgent field commanders and negotiators informed TIME that the rebels have told diplomats and military officers that they support a secular democracy in Iraq but resent the prospect of a government run by exiles who fled to Iran and the West during Saddamâs regime. The insurgents also seek a guaranteed timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal, a demand the U.S. refuses. But there are some hints of compromise: insurgent negotiators have told their U.S. counterparts they would accept a U.N. peacekeeping force as the U.S. troop presence recedes. Insurgent representative Abu Mohammed says the nationalists would even tolerate U.S. bases on Iraqi soil. "We donât mind if the invader becomes a guest," he says, suggesting a situation akin to the U.S. military presence in Germany and Japan.
#5
2b...I would go further and say if Time prints it never count on it! Their record of fact and prognostication is an infinitesimally smaller percentage than random.
#6
2b: Insurgent representative Abu Mohammed says the nationalists would even tolerate U.S. bases on Iraqi soil. "We donât mind if the invader becomes a guest," he says, suggesting a situation akin to the U.S. military presence in Germany and Japan.
This isn't the Sunnis being broad-minded - it means they've accepted that they're not going to win even if American forces pull out. It's a major psychological milestone for the Sunni community.
Now that Sunnis have accepted inevitable defeat, with or without GI's, I think they are finally starting to figure out that having American troops on Iraqi soil is the Sunni community's best insurance policy against mass reprisals by the Shiites or the Kurds. Having understood the inevitability of Iraq's demographics, Sunnis are starting to come to the same conclusion that led to their forebears siding with the Brits during the 1920's. If the Sunnis work it right, I predict that they could become our new best friends in the years ahead. If the Japanese and the Germans could become reconciled to their new American friends after their cities were burned to the ground, the Sunnis can become reconciled to American forces after the comparatively soft peace they've gone through.
#7
That's a good point about the willingness to "tolerate bases" but I'm not so sure that they will become our new best friends. Germans and Japanese didn't indiscriminately kill their own citizens or cut their own services.
The Sunni's aren't "the Germans", they are the Nazis.
#8
2b: That's a good point about the willingness to "tolerate bases" but I'm not so sure that they will become our new best friends. Germans and Japanese didn't indiscriminately kill their own citizens or cut their own services.
There were a few million hard-core fascists in Germany and Japan supported passively by tens of millions of the population. At war's end, there might have been tens of thousands of them left. Note that both regimes practised the same kind of thing that Saddam did - opponents were tortured to death or assassinated. The reason they did not revolt en masse was because they were tired of war - too many of their men had been killed, and too many of their cities had been burned to the ground. Overall, the Japanese and the Germans were far more vicious than Iraq's Sunnis. There is simply no comparison.
And to talk about Iraqis Sunnis killing their own citizens is to misunderstand what Iraq is all about. You can talk about Germans killing their own citizens, or Japanese killing their own citizens - these nations had a well-developed sense of nationhood as of WWII. But Iraq is the accidental nation - the land of the three tribes - Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites. When Sunnis kill Shiites, they don't think they are killing their own people (and vice-versa). As to the Sunni habit of killing collaborators, the Nazis and the Japanese executed suspected traitors with great cruelty.
#9
But Iraq is the accidental nation - the land of the three tribes - Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites. When Sunnis kill Shiites, they don't think they are killing their own people (and vice-versa).
interesting point. And the Sunni's are educated making it possible for many of the Sunni people to work with the US. But I suspect they will be more like the French - unable to cope with the loss of their own sense of greatness and squander opportunities to achieve real but moderate gains. Like a gambler having lost big - trying to win it all back in increasingly risky bets...but ever spiralling downward believing the next roll will be the one - because it just can't be that he's lost so much.
Maybe not, but one difference I see that makes it almost impossible to predict what will happen in the "Arab" world is their lack of honor as compared to Western or Japanese civilization. Words, truces, deals are virtually meaningless. "Deals" are meant to secure something today..right now. You give me something, I'll give you something. The West doesn't seem to understand the mindset that when they secure a deal with promises - that's the deal....you got words in exchange for whatever it was that they got.
The reason I bring this up is that unlike Japan or Germany, that do have a culture of honor...or whatever word you want to use to describe the concept of honoring "deals" for the long term consequence of being able to secure additonal "deals" in the future based on trust - the Arab world seems incapable of understanding the benefits of honoring agreements as a bargaining chip for future negotiations.
Ok...I'm getting too deep into this, but my point is that I just don't think you can look at Germany or Japan and predict outcomes in the Arab world.
#10
2b: The reason I bring this up is that unlike Japan or Germany, that do have a culture of honor...or whatever word you want to use to describe the concept of honoring "deals" for the long term consequence of being able to secure additonal "deals" in the future based on trust - the Arab world seems incapable of understanding the benefits of honoring agreements as a bargaining chip for future negotiations.
The Japanese and the Germans broke deals all the time. They conquered one region after another in this way - signing non-aggression treaties that they broke one after another. They stopped breaking deals after we stopped making deals with them - accepting nothing but unconditional surrender - butchering their armies and burning their cities to cinders.
They had no choice about submitting - their alternative was for us to turn both countries over to the Russians. We killed between 5% and 10% of their populations before we got their submission. We flattened their cities. Think of Iraqi with 2 million dead, 80% of the housing wrecked and most of the population starving. An war-weary, impoverished and hungry population is a meek population - just ask some of the most ruthless and despicable opponents on the face of the planet - the Germans and the Japanese. What we're seeing in Iraq has nothing to do with honor - we simply did not kill enough Iraqis or inflict enough destruction.
#11
There is a difference between the tryrants that create wars of aggression and ordinary people who, sans the tyrant would happily operate within an honest society. A tyrant is a tyrant - evil by nature.
In most western societies and in Japan, business and governments can and do run on trust. Just like e-bay. The majority of the people are honest.
But it seems to me that it simply isn't so with the people we are dealing with in these countries. A hudna? Completely meaningless. While it's true that in other wars, agreements were broken, a cease-fire generally meant something.
The the orginal point was that you said that the Sunni's might become our best friends. I seem them about as useful of friends as the Turks. Don't turn your back or take your hand off your wallet. Maybe we are just arguing over the meaning of the word, "friends". Can they possibly useful to us in the future..perhaps. Friends - never.
#13
And one last point - I don't mean to demean all Turks, Sunni's etc. etc. There are many, many, good honest people there.
But there is a distinct cultural difference in terms of the binding nature of a "deal". Lying is much more accepted and lacks the shame or embarrassment it brings in western societies. Their culture is based on a buyer beware mentality. All agreements are are subject to change, if possible. It's to be expected.
#14
2b: The the orginal point was that you said that the Sunni's might become our best friends.
I was using the phrase "our new best friends" as an ironic turn of phrase - in the sense that they are going to come groveling to us as if we had been good friends all along and that all the bad blood from them having sent over a thousand of our boys home in body bags is ancient history. Not because they like us - but because they know they're beaten and fear what comes afterwards - if Uncle Sam leaves.
#16
2b: But it seems to me that it simply isn't so with the people we are dealing with in these countries. A hudna? Completely meaningless. While it's true that in other wars, agreements were broken, a cease-fire generally meant something.
Hudnas only work with Westerners. The Shiites or Kurds aren't going to fall for a hudna - Middle Easterners play for keeps - they have the mass graves to show for it. Uncle Sam is the prison guard - the Sunnis are the fresh-faced skinny new kid on the prison block - fresh meat for the Shiites and the Kurds. Once the Sunnis figure out that they have lost, I think they're are going to be acting real clingy with Uncle Sam.
#17
I agree. You make a good point about that list of demands. Lots of bluster to save face, but the last one, "tolerating bases" may be their idea of a kiss blown our way.
#23
The thing the Arabs need to remember is that we're always nastier the second time around - just look at Germany. It's not a good idea to treat us in a way that would make us WANT to come back a second time. Unfortunately, I don't think there are enough Arabs intelligent enough to understand that.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/21/2005 18:08
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Only 16 of about 100 North Korean ships that dock in Japan have applied to the central government for a certificate of insurance to cover any damage caused by oil spills in line with the new law banning uninsured foreign ships from March 1, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Saturday. If uninsured, the remaining ships will not be allowed to dock here. Sources say the measure will be a de facto economic sanction on North Korea, which has failed to cooperate in resolving the abduction of Japanese citizens.
According to the Construction and Transport Ministry, which processes applications for insurance under the soon-to-be-enforced Marine Oil Pollution Compensation Guarantee Law, only 2.5 percent of North Korean ships held insurance as of 2003. Because the certification process takes more than two weeks, there is expected to be a significant decrease in the arrival of North Korean ships in early March. The central government and local governments have recently had to meet the cost of removing uninsured foreign ships that have run aground in Japan. As a result, the law guaranteeing oil pollution compensation related to tankers was revised to ban foreign vessels 100 gross registered tons or larger unless they carry sufficient insurance.
In response to applications by ship owners, each district transport bureau examines the insurers' capacity to pay claims and ship owners' capacity to pay insurance premiums. Since Dec. 1 last year, applications have been made for 600-plus ships. North Korean ships account for nearly 20 percent of those making port in Japan. The Man Gyong Bon-92 cargo-passenger ship has not applied for a certificate. The number of applications increased over February, so there could now be an increase in North Korean ships applying. But according to shipping sources many of North Korean ships are old and their insurance premiums are expensive, making it unlikely there will be a rapid increase in applications. The result is likely to be a downturn in North Korean exports to Japan.
Posted by: tipper ||
02/21/2005
10:49:51 AM ||
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#1
The result is likely to be a downturn in North Korean exports to Japan.
only the legal ones....
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/21/2005 10:59
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#2
Trading with North Korea...crazy thought but I suppose someone has to do it.
Too bad I didn't know that when I was in Japan...I would have made a point to get some "Made in DPRK" merchandise.
#4
North Korean ships account for nearly 20 percent of those making port in Japan. Even if most of them are fishing vessels selling their catch thats a lot of trade with NK, far more than I realized.
DAMASCUS, Feb. 21 (Xinhuanet) -- Syria is willing to withdraw from neighboring Lebanon, Arab League chief Amr Moussa said here on Monday.
"President Bashar al-Assad stressed more than once in (our)talks he's talked to Muammar and he likes the deal he got, so he's going to try to get the same one. his firm intention to press ahead with the implementation of the al-Taif agreement and to withdraw from Lebanon in line with this agreement," Moussa told reporters after meeting with the Syrian president and Foreign Minister Farouk al-Shara." The withdrawal is part of the Syrian policy. We will see steps soon," he added.
Moussa said Assad underlined the importance to continue the "active and special relations" between Syria and Lebanon. The Taif agreement, inked in 1989, ended Lebanon's 1975-1990civil war and asked Syria to shift its troops in Lebanon to the eastern Bekaa Valley. As a main power-broker in Lebanon, Syria maintains about 14,000 troops there. Moussa said Assad also welcomed a UN role in the investigation of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri. Guess he must not want the assassin found. Wonder why..
"It is in the interests of all that this investigation be carried out in the fastest and most active way," Moussa quoted Assad as saying. The investigation would help "end hearsay and assure the Lebanese people and all of us about the legal process and that matters are proceeding on the right track," Assad was quoted assaying.
Hariri, an opponent to Syria's influence in Lebanon, was killed in an explosion in central Beirut last week. He resigned as prime minister last October over disputes with incumbent Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, a Damascus favorite. Hariri's assassination came amid high political tension in Lebanon and international pressure over Syria's dominance in its political affairs, just a few months before legislative elections are due to be held. Lebanese oppositions blamed Syrian and Lebanese authorities for the death of Hariri and called on Syrian forces to pull out before elections in May. The United States also called for Syria to end its occupation of Lebanon.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/21/2005
10:46:37 AM ||
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#1
Yes, and our cat Padishah plans to become vegetarian.
#2
Actually, the Syrians are in a bad way. 13,000 troops can't do much in Lebanon. They can't be reinforced from Syria, because the US could then conquer Damascus with two privates and a butter knife. So what the Syrians are probably planning to do is withdraw, while heavily arming the pro-government forces, and the Hizbullah, and their own 1.4 million citizens, with instructions to return Lebanon to civil war chaos. This would accomplish the following, they hope: Chaotic Lebanon would still be a conduit for trouble to Israel from Syria and Iran; the Hizbullah could continue to operate in the chaos; Lebanon would remain a failed state that would be no threat to Syria, and no foreign power would station in Lebanon; the unpopular de jure government would still have more "legitimacy" than the opposition, internationally; there would be no real democracy as a "bad" influence to them and the Palestinians; and there wouldn't be any pressure by the Lebanese for the Palestinians living in Lebanon to go home to the Gaza Strip or West Bank.
It took Russian law-enforcement agencies some time to realize, whom they killed during the operation.
Pravda's take on today's report on the death of Abu Dzeit.
The leader of the so-called Ingushetian Jamaat, international terrorist Abu Dzeit, was killed in the republic of Ingushetia, the Northern Caucasus. The terrorist was involved in the incursion in Ingushetia in July and in the horrible hostage crisis in Beslan in September of the current year, Federal Security Bureau (FSB) said.
The headline suggested he was more than just involved.
The special operation to destroy Abu Dzeit was conducted on February 16th, although the information about it was exposed only today. Abu Dzeit, a national of Kuwait, was al-Qaida's high-ranking representative in Ingushetia. The terrorist, also known as Little Omar and Abu Omar of Kuwait, directly subordinated to Abu Khavs, who coordinated the entire terrorist activity on the territory of Russia. According to Russian special services, Abu Dzeit was trained in al-Qaeda terrorist camps in Afghanistan. The terrorist was later sent to Bosnia, where he committed several terrorist acts.
So his career was that he was trained in Afghanistan, and then went to Bosnia and later the Caucasus? There's something bugging me about this reporting... I searched on his name in the article database, and all that showed up were the two previous death notices Dan posted. I thought Basayev was supposed to be the alleged ringleader behind the terrorism in the region, but now it's this guy whose name hasn't shown up here?
And in case you're wondering, a quick search of english.pravda.ru didn't turn up any previous articles about him there either.
In the Northern Caucasus, Abu Dzeit was in charge of terrorist activities in the Russian internal republic of Ingushetia. The terrorist personally participated in the funding and planning of the armed attack on Russian police officers in the republic's capital, Nazran. Dzeit also took part in the organization of the monstrous terrorist act in Beslan, southern Russia, when hundreds of innocent children were taken hostage. Abu Dzeit was training suicide bombers and propagandizing the terrorist ideology in armed groups, spokespeople for the Russian FSB said.
Abu Dzeit was killed during a special operation conducted by FSB and Interior Ministry's special troops in Ingushetia. The terrorist and two other guerrillas were killed during the storming of the house, in which they were hiding. Abu Dzeit was staying in the basement of the house that was outfitted as an underground shelter. "When FSB soldiers found the entrance to the shelter, the Arab terrorist killed himself," a spokesman for the service said....
I think I saw that scene in Blazing Saddles.
...It was reported during the hostage crisis in Beslan that Arab terrorist Abu Dzeit could be one of the gunmen in the school. Spokespeople for law-enforcement authorities rejected the information, though. They said that the terrorist with such a name had been killed several months before.
This article starring:
ABU DZEIT
Ingushetian Jamaat
ABU KHAVS
Ingushetian Jamaat
ABU OMAR OF KUWAIT
Ingushetian Jamaat
LITTLE OMAR
Ingushetian Jamaat
Ingushetian Jamaat
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
02/21/2005
10:46:32 PM ||
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Why triple-talented Dean spells trouble for Republicans
NOW that Howard Dean has ascended to the chairmanship of the Democrat National Committee, Republicans are high-fiving one another with such mad glee that you'd think Democrats had just nominated Dennis Kucinich to run in 2008. The GOP needs to sit back down, recork the champagne and get back to work. Whether they know it or not, Republicans need to understand that Dean spells trouble for the Republican Party. Big trouble... ...and they won't like him when he's angry. He turns big and green and YAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!
Posted by: Anonymoose ||
02/21/2005
10:22:12 AM ||
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#1
Check's in the mail, Reed.
Thanks a lot.
Posted by: Karl Rove ||
02/21/2005 10:27
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#2
Lol! None of the points has to do with character, integrity, vision, values, problem-solving, or leading the country. Just political operative / talking head crappola for election season. He's become quite the celebrity, all right. I even think he ranks up there with people like Tara Reid and Paris Hilton.
The Dems didn't have a problem with raising money, even JFrickin' Kerry raised plenty of money. The problem was how they spent it.
Second, and more important, Dean knows not only how to raise money but what to do with it once he gets it.
Dean pissed away virtually every centavo he raised on stupid ads in non-competitive states, on paying campaign workers who were ineffective knuckleheads, and on a campaign manager who got a cut of every TV ad placement. Great idea, make this guy head of the DNC.
Third, he is charismatic. ... Dean's appeal doesn't lie primarily in the fact that he's a great speaker (although he is) but in the fact that he's a great listener.
Dean has the combined ego of a politican and a doctor (and I know the latter very well). There were PLENTY of people who tried to tell him his campaign was in serious trouble, and he listened to none of them.
Reed Davis is a big reason why the Repubs aren't competitive in Seattle and Washington. Next time we want political advice, Reed, we'll ask someone who actually has won an election.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/21/2005 14:35
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#4
Don't worry, we'll put up a really big bat!
Posted by: Little Joe T ||
02/21/2005 15:57
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#5
Anybody with two brain cells functioning at the same time can tell the Democrats that Howlin-Howie is a problem for the Dummycritters, not the Repuglycons. The most important problem the Dummys have is their lack of coherent thought processes - I.E., honest, workable, intelligent ideas to present to the electorate. They're somehow stuck on a '60's (8-track)tape, set on "repeat". It worked for awhile, then got a bit scratchy and tinny. Until they can a) find a real message, and b) present it coherently, they're in a left-hand spiral with the elevators up and locked.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/21/2005 17:37
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The Kremlin signaled a fundamental foreign policy shift Sunday, acknowledging that two former Soviet republics, Ukraine and Georgia, are no longer part of the Russian orbit.
Days before a potentially tense summit meeting between Kremlin chief Vladimr Putin and President Bush (news - web sites), the Russian foreign minister said in an interview broadcast Sunday that Moscow views the two former republics "as absolutely sovereign, absolutely equal states in the new geopolitical architecture."
The policy change was sure to be welcomed by the Bush White House given that Russia had angrily accused the United States of involvement in recent political turmoil in both countries that produced new, Western-leaning governments.
In a clear step away from confrontation, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov now said that the Kremlin only required openness from the former republics and other countries as they formulate policy and develop relations.
"The main thing is that this process should be transparent, should strengthen existing good relations and should not be aimed against any other country," Lavrov said on state-run RTR television.
Since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow has struggled to maintain influence with the former republics — now independent countries — that ringed the one-time communist superpower.
In the intervening years, the Kremlin has relied on a tortured foreign policy concept under which the former republics were known as the "near abroad," which signaled that Russia did not view them as absolutely sovereign.
The policy began unraveling as the three Baltic nations — Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — quickly aligned themselves with the West, but the other former republics largely were treated by Moscow as if the Kremlin still had a say.
There was a further crack in 2003 when the so-called "Rose Revolution" in Georgia propelled the reformist President Mikhail Saakashvili to power and brought down his predecessor, Eduard Shevardnadze, who was Soviet foreign minister before the collapse.
Tensions continued in the Caucasus mountain country, however, because of Moscow's perceived backing of ethnic separatist movements that threatened to split the already tiny country into smaller pieces. And a recent visit to Tblisi by Lavrov did little to smooth over differences, including the status of two Russian bases in Georgia and the two countries' shared border.
After the visit, Georgian Foreign Minister Salome Zurabishvili said the two countries' relations were "at a very low point." Lavrov agreed: "The visit was not an easy one," he said.
Sunday's policy declaration could improve Georgian ties, and the remarks were certain to be welcomed in Ukraine, where Lavrov was to arrive for fence-mending meetings Monday. Moscow was closely aligned with and publicly favored the candidacy of Viktor Yanukovych in tumultuous elections last year that put reformist and Western-leaning Viktor Yuschenko in power.
In a statement released Friday, Alexander Yakovenko, a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said Moscow saw "great significance" in Lavrov's visit to Kiev, which is intended to "continue the active political dialogue aimed at strengthening strategic partnership between us."
Among the issues to be discussed during Lavrov's meetings with his Ukrainian counterpart, Borys Tarasiuk, will be a free-trade zone between the two countries, final resolution of a dispute involving the Kerch Strait connecting the Azov and Black seas and the status of Russia's Black Sea naval fleet, which is based in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol.
Yakovenko also said Russia and Ukraine "together make a significant contribution to reinforcing the energy security of Europe." Russia is Europe's largest single supplier of natural gas, most of which is transported via Ukrainian pipelines.
In a clear reference to the United States, Lavrov also said countries looking to involve themselves more deeply in policies of former Soviet countries should make their interests clear to the Kremlin.
"Russia wants to respect the interests of different countries — those neighboring us as well as those that would like to be more active in this region," he said. "But ... their interests here and their purposes should be understood and should not contradict the norms of relations between civilized countries."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/21/2005
1:02:00 AM ||
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#1
Russia sez Ukraine, Georgia sovereign
To emphasize his point, director Vlad said we were to ignore the strings and visually perceive them as dancing and singing on thier own...
#2
Sounds more like the death knell of McCain's White House aspirations to me. The media will continue to fawn but methinks that comment alone sealed his political fate once and for all (if there was any doubt left).
#3
Lol, AzCat! Well, no one ever suggested he wouldn't go out a vicious, arrogant, self-centered, bitter old fool. I guess this seals the silly notion that he ever gave a rat's ass for the men and women in the US Military. Wotta Prick.
Although sometimes I wonder whether we're too hard on people who do genuinely try to reach out to the other side of the aisle - are we any different than the Democrats who censure those who reach out to the Republicans?
And then I read some of McCain's lunatic quotes, here and other places, and I wonder why I ever wondered in the first place. It's not the reaching-out that's the problem, it's their judgement and common sense - or lack thereof.
Posted by: The Doctor ||
02/21/2005 12:11
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#5
Senatorial courtesy. They all fawn all over each other because they know that once a century one of them actually does get elected president. But otherwise what they say is irrelevant.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/21/2005 12:14
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#6
The problem is that we can't make it with just a 'good' president. Events demand we have, from a historical perspective, a great president. A good care taker who does no harm is insufficient and dangerous in the long run in the contemporary environment.
#9
The only reason McCain got elected in the first place, and keeps getting elected, is that the AZ Republican party won't give a *dime* to any candidate--they have to pay their own way. And McCain's wife is loaded, much like you know who. As to him being a Republican: he would be a Leninist-Trotskyite if it would get him elected.
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.
An al Qaeda member known as Abu Dzeit has been killed in the Russian internal republic of Ingushetia. "A joint operation with the Interior Ministry was conducted in a private house in a village in Ingushetia on February 16," spokesman for the Federal Security Service Sergei Ignatchenko told reporters on Monday. "The operation first resulted in the death of two of his accomplices. Abu Dzeit hid in a special bunker built under the house. When the entrance was discovered, he blew himself up," Ignatchenko said. He said investigators identified the body as Abu Dzeit's.
HAMBURG - ...In recent days 24-year-old Sibel Kekilli, currently on a world tour to promote the award-winning film "Head-On", received the best actress award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival for her work in German director Fatih Akin's raw portrait of two Turkish-born residents of Hamburg. 
An al Qaeda member known as 
Haitian police on Sunday were hunting for nearly 500 prisoners who escaped after an armed attack on the national penitentiary that sparked a riot and left one guard dead. Two prominent allies of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been rushed to a secure location during the attack Saturday night, were returned to the prison, authorities said. Guards had rushed former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune and former Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert to a secret location when the attack occurred and inmates began rioting, and the two were later turned over to U.N. soldiers, Damian Onses-Cardona, a spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping mission, told The Associated Press. "They were taken back to prison in U.N. vehicles," Onses-Cardona said Sunday. "They insisted on returning to make clear they didn't try to escape."
Can you hear me now? Unsuspecting cellphone users may find themselves saying that more often now that cellphone jammers illegal gizmos that interfere with signals and cut off reception are selling like hotcakes on the streets of New York. "I bought one online, and I love it," said one jammer owner fed up with the din of dumb conversations and rock-and-roll ringtones. "I use it on the bus all the time. I always zap the idiots who discuss what they want from the Chinese restaurant so that everyone can hear them. Why is that necessary?" 
An Iranian national was arrested in Iraq on charges of smuggling foreign fighters and weapons into Iraq, the interim government said Sunday. 
Maoist rebels attacked a convoy on a key highway west of Nepal's capital and killed a truck driver, an army officer said on Monday. The driver was killed on Sunday when the rebels hurled crude bombs and fired at the convoy at Charaundi, 80 km west of Kathmandu, to enforce a blockade roads linking the hill-ringed city with the rest of the country. "They fired at the convoy from the jungle along the highway," the army officer said. At least seven other people were injured in the first deadly attack on a convoy since the Maoists called the blockade nine days ago.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said he believes the US government is planning to assassinate him. "If they kill me, the name of the person responsible is [President] George Bush," Mr Chavez said. Mr Chavez - who offered no evidence to back his claim - said any attempt on his life would backfire and threatened to cut off oil supplies to America. He was apparently reacting to growing criticism by top US officials of his left-wing government. 
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez said Sunday that he would stop oil exports to the United States if the U.S. government tries to assassinate him. ``If anything happens to me, forget about Venezuelan oil Mr. (George W.) Bush,'' said Chavez during his weekly radio and television show.
The European constitution cleared its first major hurdle last night when Spanish voters overwhelmingly endorsed the historic document in the first of 10 referendums that will be held across Europe over the next 18 months. With all the votes counted, 77% of voters approved the constitution, which is meant to simplify the work of the EU. Only 17% of Spaniards voted no and 6% of ballot papers were recorded as blank, said the interior ministry. European leaders, who had hoped that voters in one of the most pro-EU countries would turn out in large numbers, will be disappointed that nearly 60% of the population failed to vote. Turnout was 42%, the lowest in any Spanish vote since the death of Franco in 1975, and below the 45.9% in last year's European parliamentary elections in Spain.
SITTING beneath a Dallas Cowboys T-shirt pinned to the wall of his office in Tikrit, Lieutenant-Colonel 
Britain has been preparing to extradite Arab insurgents to their native countries. Officials said the Home Office was preparing to launch talks with several Arab countries for the deportation of suspected insurgents who entered Britain as political refugees. They said many of the Arab immigrants have used Britain as a launching pad for attacks in the Middle East as well as for financing Al Qaida and related groups. "I think we should be prosecuting much more energetically our ability to deport the individuals concerned to the countries from which they come," Home Secretary Charles Clarke said.
U.S. President George W. Bush warned Russia not to stray from the path to democracy and said Europe and the U.S. need to remind President Vladimir Putin of the importance of a strong opposition, a free press and power-sharing. ``The Russian government must renew a commitment to democracy and the rule of law,'' Bush said in a speech in Brussels today during the first trip to Europe of his second term. ``The United States and all European countries should place democratic reform at the heart of their dialogue with Russia.''
Al Qaida might be shifting its strategy and preparing to attack so-called soft targets in Kuwait. Western diplomatic sources said the Al Qaida network has been foiled in several attempts to attack Western military personnel in Kuwait. The sources cited the arrest of nearly 200 suspected insurgents and raids against four strongholds in the sheikdom during January. "Kuwait has responded very well to warnings of Al Qaida attacks," a diplomat said. "Security forces have been acting on information and intelligence has been collecting new leads." On Saturday, Kuwait captured two Al Qaida suspects said to have planned strikes on U.S. interests in the sheikdom. The suspected operatives were identified as Kuwaiti nationals.
Saudi security forces shot a man dead early on Sunday after he failed to stop at a checkpoint in the city of Jeddah, a security source said.
The modus operandi in last week's Valentine's Day bombings were similar to the 2000 Rizal Day bombings and the attack on the SuperFerry 14 in February last year, police said. Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Director General Edgar Aglipay said the bombings were all triggered by cellular phones also the method employed in the bombing of a bus in Balintawak, Quezon City in October 2002 that left two passengers dead and several others wounded. "The bombs used were similar to other bombings (such) as the Rizal Day attacks, the bus bombing in Balintawak, the WG&A SuperFerry 14 attacks and the recent bomb incidents in Mindanao," Aglipay told The STAR yesterday.
Hunter S. Thompson, the acerbic counterculture writer who popularized a new form of fictional journalism in books like "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," fatally shot himself Sunday night at his Aspen-area home, his son said. He was 67.
Al Qaeda's deputy leader said in a videotape broadcast that governments could not stop its attacks and that the security of the West depended on respect for Islam and an end to aggression against Muslims. The leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, also said that the "new crusader campaign" would end in defeat. The tape was broadcast by the Arab television network Al Jazeera on Sunday, but it was not clear when it was made. Mr. Zawahiri said he was speaking three years after the first prisoners were taken from Afghanistan to the United States Naval base at Guantänamo Bay, Cuba. "If you Western nations believe that these cartoon governments will protect you from our responses then you are deluded," he said. "Your real security lies in cooperating with the Muslim nation on the basis of respect and ending aggression."
JERUSALEM - Israel will free 500 Palestinians on Monday in its largest prison release in nearly a decade as a goodwill gesture to bolster peace efforts with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Further strengthening Abbas's hand, legislators from the dominant Fatah movement approved a keenly awaited new Palestinian cabinet that puts his loyalists in key positions.
Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri warned the West it faced defeat in what he termed its "new crusade" against the Islamic world, as well as thousands of dead and economic collapse, in a videotape aired by Al-Jazeera television. "Your new crusade will end, God willing, with the same defeat as its predecessors, but only after you have suffered tens of thousands of dead and the destruction of your economy," Zawahiri said in his message to "the peoples of the West" broadcast by the Qatar-based satellite channel.
In many Vietnamese-American communities, touring pop singers and artists from Vietnam often face protests because of their country's communist regime. But a University of Washington professor thought Seattle would be an exception when he brought three artists from Hanoi last week to showcase their work. Instead, some Vietnamese community leaders yesterday announced they would protest the "Viet Nam Now" exhibit at the Billy King Showroom, 95 Union St., near Pike Place Market. It opened last Saturday and is scheduled to run through March 14.
A LONG-running sexual harassment scandal has claimed the career of high-profile UN refugees chief Ruud Lubbers, a former Dutch prime minister and persistent critic of John Howard's hardline policies on asylum seekers.
Why triple-talented Dean spells trouble for Republicans
