ISLAMABAD: India has evolved a master plan to cause severe damage to Pakistan economy under the garb of talks and assigned an important target to its intelligence agency RAW to provide over one trillion rupees to anti Pakistan Taliban through Afghan transit.
Well placed sources told Online Saturday that Indian intelligence agency RAW has started providing financial assistance to Taliban through alcohol and beetle nut (chalia) under Afghan trade to use them to serve its nefarious designs while they were earlier being assisted through drug trafficking.
Sources told RAW at present was supplying over two hundreds containers of alcohol and beetle nut illegally to anti Pakistan Taliban every month in the name of different companies through Afghan transit. This way billion of rupees are being distributed among Taliban so that on one side Pakistan economy could be undermined and on the other side Afghan Taliban could be strengthened financially in order to use them for fulfillment of its vicious designs.
Sources further told during the recent visit of foreign secretary Suleman Bashir to India and Afghan president Hamid Karzai both India and Afghanistan demanded of Pakistan to allow them transit trade through Wahga border. While the security agencies were of the opinion if transit trade was allowed through Wahga border to Afghanistan and India, this will deliver a serious blow to Pakistan economy.
On the condition of anonymity, a senior officer of Custom Intelligence confirmed to Online Bhattia traders, M.H International, Troob well traders and other companies were supplying containers of alcohol and beetle nut in large number to Afghanistan while Afghan people neither use beetle nut nor drink alcohol, therefore he was much concerned over export of beetle nut and alcohol in such huge quantity to Afghanistan by Indian companies. "I am helpless to take any action in this regard due to pressure of some influential figures", he added.
The Customs Intelligence Officer further told that top figures of customs, NLC and Saif transporters were involved in illegal supply of these containers. These containers were handed over to Taliban near Pak-Afghan borders instead of transporting them to Afghanistan, he pointed out. Online tried to contact FBR chairman on many occasions to ascertain his stance as to what extent Pakistan was suffering financial loss due to illegal trade of containers and non payment of taxes but it could not contact him.
Posted by: john frum ||
03/15/2010
18:13 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[10 views]
Top|| File under:
#2
The real money isn't in sexy new ships, but gigantic cargo carriers. This is because the big ones are needed to take up modular chunks of even bigger ships that are built in orbit.
WASHINGTON, March 14 (UPI) -- Some moderate House Democrats tell Politico they are less than anxious to have U.S. President Barack Obama campaign for them.
The newspaper said interviews with close to a dozen unnamed congressional Democrats on the ballot this year show a lack of enthusiasm for Obama's help -- something that reflects the president's 46 percent approval rating in the polls.
The Democrats give a variety of reasons, the newspaper said: The president's busy schedule and a long-term practice of not bringing in outside campaigners. Yeah...ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...that's it. Sarah Palin doesn't have that problem ...
The uncertainty over Obama was seen in Virginia last year, Politico said. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds at first rejected Obama's help, then embraced it when polls in the final weeks of the campaign showed him far behind.
Politico said uncertainty about Obama has now evolved into a feeling among centrist Democrats that they would be better off if he didn't campaign on their behalf.
#2
How are these same Dems voting on Obamacare? If they are voting 'no,' then publicizing that they are refusing Obama's 'help' might do them some good?
I'm sure these complaints are grounded in something very real, as these kinds of details are not something that someone in their right mind would just make up for fun. It would seem to me that anyone receiving these complaints should at least recognize the urgency and work to get around the problem and then install a fix.
Perhaps there ought to be some "bureaucratic secret-shoppers" to identify pinheads and have a little come-to-Jesus session with them.
#2
One of the comments in Yon's thread says the LTC who made the original allegations has something of a reputation as a glory hound who likes to be in the limelight. If so, he will shortly be receiving - if he hasn't already - a posterior mastication from that O6 or someone higher in the chain.
#3
If one has 18 years of service in, law protects you less separation by courts martial from being fired without reaching retirement eligibility. The Career Nuke Option, aka I'm taking you with me, for senior officers is -
Art. 138. Complaints of wrongs
Any member of the armed forces who believes himself wronged by his commanding officer, and who, upon due application to that commanding officer, is refused redress, may complain to any superior commissioned officer, who shall forward the complaint to the officer exercising general court-martial jurisdiction over the officer against whom it is made. The officer exercising general court-martial jurisdiction shall examine into the complaint and take proper measures for redressing the wrong complained of; and he shall, as soon as possible, send to the Secretary concerned a true statement of that complaint, with the proceedings had thereon.
Unless one is dealing with nukes or crypto such an investigation would be subject to FOIA.
#4
Yon Says: "Risking liberties to read between the lines, the letter might translate: âSituation rectified. Moving to tamp down the controversy. Letâs move on.â
Clearly itâs social grease, designed to spackle over rough spots. Spots that could have gotten our troops killed. Iâll ask some of our people in the next week or so if the situation has improved. Youâll be the first to know."
I'm not going to wait. This has sucessfully been swept under the rug, where it will stay.
#5
When I was a headstrong and rather angry young troop, I as near as dammit came to filing an Art. 138 against my (geographically removed) squadron commander. I actually did have quite good grounds for doing it and witnesses who would speak for me. Fortunately, the legal officer who was advising me had a better grasp of exactly how nuclear such a charge would be, and he pointed out how a through investigation of the circumstances of my complaint would rebound against officers and NCOs at the base where I was stationed, who had gone well over the line to assist me in ameliorating the situation. So I decided not to go ahead with it, after all. I still would have liked to see that commander's head on a platter, though - but as I got older, I figured that I would settle his hash in another way. Maybe, I'll put him into one of my books, as a craven hypocrite and villain.
The sun never sets on the wrath of Sgt. Mom...
#6
First thing, an LTC from the 82nd is not somebody to mess with, and I would take their word for it a lot faster than I would trust a Don, who is backed by a modestly anti-US socialist government.
The Dons are also likely to be very lightly provisioned, so are not thrilled with the idea of sharing much of anything.
That being said, if the LTC has a problem, he also has a chain of command. So only if he is repeatedly frustrated from them would he ever go out of house, and then, only very, very discreetly. Certainly not leaving a paper trail.
Add to that some of his problems he could solve himself. Even very tired soldiers have an acute sense of self preservation, and sandbags are readily available just about anywhere.
While you're at it, rig up some wire boxes to put the dirt through while filling the sand bags, and you'll have a substantial amount of gravel in no time.
#8
The 82d cares for its own. If an officer feels troops are being poorly treated he is obligated to report it, no matter the fallout. If the detached troops fall under a seperate command as this looks to be, then he must report it up the 82d chain. Otherwise, the 82d would run him out of Bragg. Now I'm not sure how this email got out, so I won't comment, but if there is a lick of truth here we need to pull them from that base or replace the Spanish leadership. I really could care less how the Spanish treat their own, we have standards, even in combat and if the Spanish leadership can not power through the bureaucracy then they need to step aside and let a trooper, probably a PFC, take control and get it done!
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/15/2010 20:50
Comments ||
Top||
The CIA and Justice Department are fighting over a secret investigation into a controversial program by legal supporters of Islamist terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay that involved photographing CIA interrogators and showing the pictures to prisoners, an effort CIA officials say threatens the officers' lives.
The dispute prompted a meeting Tuesday at CIA headquarters between U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald and senior CIA counterintelligence officials. It is the latest battle between the agency and the department over detainees and interrogations of terrorists.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. angered many CIA officials and Republicans in Congress by reopening an investigation last August into whether CIA interrogators acted illegally in questioning senior al Qaeda detainees. According to U.S. officials familiar with the issue, the current dispute involves Justice Department officials who support an effort led by the American Civil Liberties Union to provide legal aid to military lawyers for the Guantanamo inmates. CIA counterintelligence officials oppose the effort and say giving terrorists photographs of interrogators has exposed CIA personnel and their families to possible terrorist attacks.
As part of the disagreement, a senior Justice Department national security official removed himself from the counterintelligence probe last week after opposing CIA security worries. Donald Vieira, a former Democratic counsel on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence who in September became chief of staff at the Justice Department's National Security Division, recused himself from the counterintelligence investigation into the recent discovery of photographs of CIA interrogators in the possession of defense lawyers at the prison in Cuba.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/15/2010
13:39 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[10 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
A terrible climate for our spooks to operate in. Who's side is the Justice Department on in WOT?
#2
Spying is just so, ya know, uncool these days, um, unless it's the left doing it to their perceived enemies.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/15/2010 16:17
Comments ||
Top||
#3
Things may have change following 9/11, but priot to that I cannot recall a time when Justice or the FBI sat in the same corner as the Army or Intelligence Services. They have always had a seperate agenda.
A new Russian nuclear-powered multipurpose attack submarine will be floated out on May 7, a shipyard spokesman said on Monday.
Construction of the Severodvinsk, a Project 885 Yasen (Graney) class submarine, began in 1993 at the Sevmash shipyard in the northern Russian city of Severodvinsk but has since been dogged by financial setbacks.
"A floating out ceremony for Russia's new Severodvinsk nuclear submarine at the Sevmash shipyard has been scheduled for May 7," the official said.
Continued on Page 49
#1
Is it like normal Russian subs?
Or can it surface as well as submerge?
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/15/2010 13:23
Comments ||
Top||
#2
I'm glad I wasn't the only one wondering if this new sub would sink to the bottom as well as some other Russian subs have. I'm trying hard not to bring up French carriers. ;)
Posted by: Jefferson ||
03/15/2010 15:21
Comments ||
Top||
#3
17 years to build it? And I'm sure the future crew must be thrilled to see the phrase "dogged by financial setbacks" in there.
India's new Advanced Air Defence (AAD) interceptor missile, capable of destroying hostile missiles, on Monday encountered coordination problem and failed to take off during a planned launch from the Integrated Test Range at Wheeler Island off Orissa coast.
"Coordinated exercise between target missile Prithvi from Chandipur and the indigenously built interceptor from Wheeler Island could not take place properly during the planned trial," defence sources said.
Though Prithvi — the target missile — was test-fired at 10.02 hrs from a mobile launcher from ITR's launch complex-3 at Chandipur-on-sea, 15 km from Balasore, the interceptor missile failed to blast off, they said.
Though the exact reason behind interceptor missile's failure to take off was yet to be ascertained, preliminary analysis suggested that the target missile might have deviated from its stipulated trajectory, leading to lack of proper coordination, the sources said.
The trial, aimed at developing a multi-layer Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) system, was scheduled to be held on Sunday from the two different ITR sites, but had to be put off due to some technical snag in a sub-system at Wheeler Island, they said.
Wheeler's Island is located about 70 km across the sea from Chandipur and the AAD missile was to intercept the target at an altitude of 15 to 20 km over the sea.
Posted by: john frum ||
03/15/2010
11:50 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Balasore (Orissa), Mar 15 (PTI) A planned test for India's indigenous interceptor missile to counter enemy ballistic missiles failed today after the target deviated from its path and plunged into the sea, leading to the trial being aborted.
The new Advanced Air Defence (AAD) missile that was to be fired from the test range here to intercept the target was ready and all set.
But when the target, a Prithvi missile, deviated from its trajectory and fell into the sea, the computerised control mission noticed the unwarranted change of flight path of the incoming and called off the launch of the interceptor, a senior DRDO official said in New Delhi.
Posted by: john frum ||
03/15/2010 16:52
Comments ||
Top||
#1
"Two Americas" have existed for some time. The real concern should be the overtaking of 'paying America' by burgeoning 'recipient America.' Obamacare will hasten this unhappy process.
#2
It will cause a revolution. The middle class will bear the brunt of the Obama Health care plan. The taxes for this health care will be $500 to $600 per month on the working family. That is at the start. In other words, after the tax brackets are changed to where you are paying 30% to 40% of your income to Obama and his unions, you will then pay an additional 10% + to cover Obama's health care. That is AT LEAST 50% of your income goes to Obama.
Posted by: Bob Gleanter3083 ||
03/15/2010 13:00
Comments ||
Top||
#3
The numbers above came from a story that was on the front page of www.yahoo.com but was quickly yanked. This is going to be a colossal cost on each middle class family.
Posted by: Bob Gleanter3083 ||
03/15/2010 13:13
Comments ||
Top||
#4
That is AT LEAST 50% of your income goes to Obama.
Most of these people and their peers across the country have 'jobs' but usually are not on the 'books' except in the costs in the existing public health care system.
#7
The unemployed and underemployed will not be the giant drain on our system. We have a tidal wave of aging boomers rolling at us. They will live longer than any other generation and will demand health care that we will have to provide. All of that, screw them bravado aside, America will not sit idle and watch the largest group of aging America go without care. When they reach the age where they need managed care, nursing homes etc, it will bankrupt this once great nation. The boomers wont destroy this country through their communist ideals of the 60s or the corrupt leadership and business practices. They will destroy this country by just getting old.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/15/2010 18:48
Comments ||
Top||
#8
The GOP should be hammering the air waves this week on Bambi's campaign promises (there's plenty on youtube) wherein...
a) ALL negotiations will be on C-Span
b) If you LIKE your current plan, you can keep it
c) HCR will NOT raise taxes on the middle class
d) Excise taxes on cadillac plans are BAD, BAD, BAD
Plus, please call, call, call the fence-sitters this week. Let them know the consequences (politely, of course) should they vote yes on this bill.
#9
"They will destroy this country by just getting old."
Just wait till they all start getting Alzheimers and need round the clock care.
I'm not joking, here. This is something that few outside the health care industry are even talking about. The cost just to build the buildings to house them in basic living standards of food, lavatories, and a cot will be a giant expense.
If they want more than that, they're going to have to fork over a substantial portion of their assets. Could it be that Washington is merely positioning itself for this massive wealth transfer?
Posted by: no mo uro ||
03/15/2010 20:20
Comments ||
Top||
#10
Bob - Consider the tax burden already levied on a single childless entrepreneur. Assume for the sake of this discussion a post-expense net income of $100k & a home owned outright sans mortgage (no deductions). Taxes are roughly as follows:
Federal Income Tax: ~$20k
State Income Tax (my state): ~$7k
FICA (both halves): ~$12k
Property / Auto / Misc taxes: ~$2k
Assume that I spend every dollar of the $59k that remains. Of that I lose the following to taxes:
Embedded taxes levied on businesses who provide the goods & services I purchase: 20-30%
Embedded cost of regulatory compliance by businesses who provide the goods & services I purchase: 20-30%
Sales tax (my locality): 7%
Best case: I lose nearly 50% of my purchaing power.
Worst case: I lose nearly 70% of my purchasing power.
Thus the purchasing power of my $59k is actually no more than ~$30k and perhaps as little as ~18k. Thus of my original $100k I've lost at least $70k and perhaps as much as $82k to the government.
#11
no mo uro, what Obamistas (just a kabuki ensemble) are doing is irrational and seems hodge podge. Of course one may presume spades of incompetence.
But one thing would make sense. The main thrust is to create instability. Not as much inside the border like outside. This should result in a war. Whatever form it takes, the hope is that it would chainsaw through the ranks of boomers, even war footing may be good enough. The transfer of wealth has the same purpose, to take away means, so there is no or a little fallback.
The war (not this joystick remote control stuff skirmishes) is prolly coming within 4 years. Chinese have 24 million extra young men to burn through.
Iran is the fuse, but in all likelihood, it would start with something unexpected.
#13
Lets hope the Chinese go after the Russians over the gas lines. We could all get popcorn and watch the glow.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/15/2010 21:10
Comments ||
Top||
#14
But one thing would make sense. The main thrust is to create instability.
Correct premise but flawed analysis IMHO. The instability is designed to stampede the American people over a statist cliff from which there is no return. Rahm "never let a crisis go to waste" Emanuel has already told us as much. It's a "flood the system" play straight from Saul Alinsky's playbook. Very transparent but probably too late to be stopped.
#15
AzCat, that was a given, just that in the scope of things, it would seem a small change (coin-wise).
Anyway, there would be a problem with herdin' Merkin Cats. Those with a red hue won't go quietly into the night. At all.
Hundreds of powerful US "bunker-buster" bombs are being shipped from California to the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in preparation for a possible attack on Iran. The Sunday Herald can reveal that the US government signed a contract in January to transport 10 ammunition containers to the island. According to a cargo manifest from the US navy, this included 387 "Blu" bombs used for blasting hardened or underground structures.
Experts say that they are being put in place for an assault on Iran's controversial nuclear facilities. There has long been speculation that the US military is preparing for such an attack, should diplomacy fail to persuade Iran not to make nuclear weapons.
Although Diego Garcia is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory, it is used by the US as a military base under an agreement made in 1971. The agreement led to 2,000 native islanders being forcibly evicted to the Seychelles and Mauritius.
The Sunday Herald reported in 2007 that stealth bomber hangers on the island were being equipped to take bunker-buster bombs. Although the story was not confirmed at the time, the new evidence suggests that it was accurate.
Contract details for the shipment to Diego Garcia were posted on an international tenders' website by the US navy. A shipping company based in Florida, Superior Maritime Services, will be paid $699,500 to carry many thousands of military items from Concord, California, to Diego Garcia.
Crucially, the cargo includes 195 smart, guided, Blu-110 bombs and 192 massive 2000lb Blu-117 bombs.
"They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran," said Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London, co-author of a recent study on US preparations for an attack on Iran. "US bombers are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours," he added.
The preparations were being made by the US military, but it would be up to President Obama to make the final decision. He may decide that it would be better for the US to act instead of Israel, Plesch argued.
"The US is not publicising the scale of these preparations to deter Iran, tending to make confrontation more likely," he added. "The US ... is using its forces as part of an overall strategy of shaping Iran's actions."
According to Ian Davis, director of the new independent thinktank, Nato Watch, the shipment to Diego Garcia is a major concern. "We would urge the US to clarify its intentions for these weapons, and the Foreign Office to clarify its attitude to the use of Diego Garcia for an attack on Iran," he said.
For Alan Mackinnon, chair of Scottish CND, the revelation was "extremely worrying". He stated: "It is clear that the US government continues to beat the drums of war over Iran, most recently in the statements of Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.
"It is depressingly similar to the rhetoric we heard prior to the war in Iraq in 2003."
The British Ministry of Defence has said in the past that the US government would need permission to use Diego Garcia for offensive action. It has already been used for strikes against Iraq during the 1991 and 2003 Gulf wars.
About 50 British military staff are stationed on the island, with more than 3,200 US personnel. Part of the Chagos Archipelago, it lies about 1,000 miles from the southern coasts of India and Sri Lanka, well placed for missions to Iran.
The US Department of Defence did not respond to a request for a comment.
#2
Does the Navy not have its own cargo ships? If secrecy were a concern, why wouldn't these bombs be transported via Navy ship or air transport? Why was this leaked unless U.S. wants Iran to know the next step would be taking out their nuclear facilities--say a ratcheting up of pressure?
#5
It is clear that the US government continues to beat the drums of war over Iran
Don't forget who is in control here. With one sentence, Iran could stop the whole train. Unfortunately, Iran thinks it is a superpower. Lord help us if they ever do put together a significant number of bombs.
#1
"China has succumbed to hubris. It has mistaken the soft diplomacy of Barack Obama for weakness, mistaken the US credit crisis for decline, and mistaken its own mercantilist bubble for ascendancy."
And China is right. Obama is a weakling, the US is in deep trouble because of overspending, and mercantilism is a potent tool for ascendancy.
The comments for the article in the Telegraph just tear this opinion piece to shreds. Well worth a read.
#2
While Karl Popper was undoubtably right (The Poverty of Historicism), I can't get over how everything seems a rerun of the 1930s. Although in this case China replaces Japan.
Remember Japan attacked Britain and then the USA because it feared Russia more. Japan lost WWII not because of America's military might or because of America's industrial capacity. They lost because their economy was too trade dependant.
SAN'A, Yemen The U.S. al-Qaida suspect detained in Yemen had persuaded his guard to unshackle him so the two could pray together and then snatched his unattended gun and killed him during the suspect's failed escape attempt, senior security officials said Saturday.
Sharif Mobley, a 26-year-old American of Somali descent, had traveled to Yemen two years ago, ostensibly to study Arabic, and was recently arrested there in a sweep against al-Qaida.
Posted by: lord garth ||
03/15/2010
10:16 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
It would be nice if they slice off his head. Go ahead and add to the military aid we are giving Yemen the money they saved us on trial and incarceration.
A double-blast suicide bomber targeting a military checkpoint and labourers killed eight people on Monday in the former Sunni rebel bastion of Fallujah, Iraqi police and medics said.
Twenty-eight other civilians were wounded in the blasts, which occurred within minutes of each other at around 9:00 am (0600 GMT) in the centre of Fallujah, 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad, officials said.
Captain Bashar Mohammed, a police station chief in Fallujah, said the bomber parked his explosives-packed vehicle near a military checkpoint in the centre of the city.
The assailant then walked into a group of labourers and detonated his explosives vest. The car bomb exploded shortly afterwards, again without causing any military casualties.
Posted by: ed ||
03/15/2010
09:15 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[11 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
"...in the former Sunni rebel bastion of Fallujah."
Sunni's were the sect in power under Saddam, so what field (other than left) does this come from.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
03/15/2010 9:20
Comments ||
Top||
The cases are extreme, but millions of moderate Europeans also are re-examining the meaning of the liberal values widely cherished across the continent. How, many are asking, should a liberal society respectfully deal with immigrants who often espouse illiberal values? Should the immigrants adopt the values of their adoptive land or, to the contrary, should society change to accommodate the newcomers who now form part of it?
Posted by: ed ||
03/15/2010
09:02 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[19 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
It would be grand if some Imam declared that the Louvre was obscene, and that the artwork within should be destroyed as haraam, and that French people should be forced to speak Arabic.
#2
It is not just art. Western values in general are provocative - equality under the law, women as people, freedom of religion, speech and thought, voting. The whole mess is pretty un-Islamic.
#4
Simple enough solution - get rid of muslims. Send 'em home, do nasty things to those that balk, and shoot those that try to come back. Problem at least temporarily solved.
If we cut ALL food exports to the Islamic world, there would be about 40% fewer muslims in 36 months. If we were as arrogant and insolent as muslims, we'd do it.
There is an ongoing war between us and them, our values and theirs. The sooner we understand that and get on a war footing, the more likely we are of surviving as a free people. I refuse to be a muslim, and I will NEVER be a slave.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
03/15/2010 23:16
Comments ||
Top||
#5
"How, many are asking, should a liberal society respectfully deal with immigrants who often espouse illiberal values?"
They shouldn't.
Idiots.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/15/2010 23:29
Comments ||
Top||
To those of you using Fred's really, really cool nym generator:
Please stick to one nym per day for the next little while.
Rantburg is being hit extremely hard by spam right now. Fred and badanov have been working madly under the hood to control it, including banning entire IP thingies that appear to be connected to bot thingies (you technical people already know what I mean, and the rest of you care as little as I about the actual details, so hush about the non-technical language).
Unfortunately, constant nym changing looks like spamming at first glance, and so needs to be checked out. When it's only you making use of the facilities Fred so nicely provided, that takes time away from checking out the bad guys. Someone who appeared to be Black Bart -- but wasn't, apologies to you both -- was banned yesterday because he refused to heed the message. And as Black Bart posted very nicely this morning, we have solid proof that it wasn't him, and that he wasn't the one banned. As for the nym jumper, he's going to have to email Fred to request being unbanned, and promise to be more controlled in the future (see link in the right margin of the front page).
Please don't be the next to be banned during this challenging situation.
Thank you,
trailing wife for the moderators
P.S. Check out our Terms of Use, which I just learned we had filed somewhere obvious that I didn't notice.
#4
The spam/hack/dos attacks are a backhanded compliment to Fred and the mods for providing the truth to all of us about terrorism in the world today, and other important things. It shouldn't happen, and if we could ever find out who is behind it, I'll gladly authorize the use of deadly force against them. I'm ashamed I'm not a good enough programmer to build a counter-bot that would toast someone's attack computer. I'm glad that Fred and Badanov stand between us and this sewage. Thank you, all, for all you do.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
03/15/2010 13:14
Comments ||
Top||
#5
trailing wife,
just wondering if you've looked at this free spam blocker?
I've heard good reports about it.
#6
Halliburton is still ok -- him we know and love. :-)
No, of course I didn't know about that spam blocker, tipper, I'm the one who refers to bot thingies. Is that for the little laptop my family got me, or for Fred? I'm not aware that I had a spam problem, which does not mean that I don't... What say you knowledgeable Rantburgers?
#7
In TW's defense, the TOS page was written more than a year ago, but was just never linked to in the front page.
Fred has developed his own antispam solution which is unique and is a journey, not a destination.
My theory about this last attack is that we got hit by two large spam networks consecutively judging by the server/client signatures, as well as the message signatures.
Spammers act like locusts. They attack and overwhelm and when they are done there is little to do but move on. My own limited experience is that these spammers won't give up until they are given good reason to move on, and we haven't done that yet.
Make no mistake about spam. It is online crime; a criminal act whether it supports Russian criminal activity, Barak McDreamy and his Dreamettes or terrorism, it is still a crime to steal eyes and bandwidth for advertising.
A senior Yemeni official says his nation's air force launched a second day of strikes against al-Qaida hideouts. Saleh al-Shamsi, deputy governor of the southern province Abyan, said three air strikes were launched Monday. He had no information on the targets but said an earlier strike on Sunday killed two al-Qaida members and injured others.
Posted by: ed ||
03/15/2010
08:33 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[12 views]
Top|| File under:
He just won't die. We could help with that ...
The Lockerbie bomber -- who was released from a Scottish prison last year because cancer had supposedly left him at death's door -- could be kept alive for up to five more years.
Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was said to have just months to live when Scottish authorities made the controversial decision to free him and allow him to return to Libya. But the terrorist, given a life sentence for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people, has since been taking the chemotherapy drug Taxotere, the British paper The Sun reports today.
Other reports said that al-Megrahi had not been given the drug while he was in prison -- and might not have been allowed a "compassionate" discharge if it had been prescribed.
Scottish opposition spokesman Bill Aitken demanded full disclosure from Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill.
"Was the existence of a drug which is reportedly now extending the life of the Lockerbie bomber included in any of the reports Kenny MacAskill read before making the decision to release him?" he asked.
Al-Megrahi has prostate cancer, but his condition reportedly has stabilized.
"After his treatments, he can be unwell for two or three days but then enjoys a period when he's quite well," a source close to the bomber told the paper.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/15/2010
08:30 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
In recent weeks, the Obama Administration has endorsed "healthy relations" between Iran and Syria, mildly rebuked Syrian President Bashar Assad for accusing the U.S. of "colonialism," and publicly apologized to Moammar Gadhafi for treating him with less than appropriate deference after the Libyan called for "a jihad" against Switzerland.
When it comes to Israel, however, the Administration has no trouble rising to a high pitch of public indignation. On a visit to Israel last week, Vice President Joe Biden condemned an announcement by a mid-level Israeli official that the government had approved a planning stagethe fourth out of seven requiredfor the construction of 1,600 housing units in north Jerusalem. Assuming final approval, no ground will be broken on the project for at least three years.
But neither that nor repeated apologies from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prevented Secretary of State Hillary Clintonat what White House sources ostentatiously said was the personal direction of President Obamafrom calling the announcement "an insult to the United States." White House political chief David Axelrod got in his licks on NBC's Meet the Press yesterday, lambasting Israel for what he described as "an affront."
Since nobody is defending the Israeli announcement, least of all an obviously embarrassed Israeli government, it's difficult to see why the Administration has chosen this occasion to spark a full-blown diplomatic crisis with its most reliable Middle Eastern ally. Mr. Biden's visit was intended to reassure Israelis that the Administration remained fully committed to Israeli security and legitimacy. In a speech at Tel Aviv University two days after the Israeli announcement, Mr. Biden publicly thanked Mr. Netanyahu for "putting in place a process to prevent the recurrence" of similar incidents.
The subsequent escalation by Mrs. Clinton was clearly intended as a highly public rebuke to the Israelis, but its political and strategic logic is puzzling. The U.S. needs Israel's acquiescence in the Obama Administration's increasingly drawn-out efforts to halt Iran's nuclear bid through diplomacy or sanctions. But Israel's restraint is measured in direct proportion to its sense that U.S. security guarantees are good. If Israel senses that the Administration is looking for any pretext to blow up relations, it will care much less how the U.S. might react to a military strike on Iran.
As for the West Bank settlements, it is increasingly difficult to argue that their existence is the key obstacle to a peace deal with the Palestinians. Israel withdrew all of its settlements from Gaza in 2005, only to see the Strip transform itself into a Hamas statelet and a base for continuous rocket fire against Israeli civilians.
Israeli anxieties about America's role as an honest broker in any diplomacy won't be assuaged by the Administration's neuralgia over this particular housing project, which falls within Jerusalem's municipal boundaries and can only be described as a "settlement" in the maximalist terms defined by the Palestinians. Any realistic peace deal will have to include a readjustment of the 1967 borders and an exchange of territory, a point formally recognized by the Bush Administration prior to Israel's withdrawal from Gaza. If the Obama Administration opts to transform itself, as the Europeans have, into another set of lawyers for the Palestinians, it will find Israeli concessions increasingly hard to come by.
That may be the preferred outcome for Israel's enemies, both in the Arab world and the West, since it allows them to paint Israel as the intransigent party standing in the way of "peace." Why an Administration that repeatedly avers its friendship with Israel would want that is another question.
Then again, this episode does fit Mr. Obama's foreign policy pattern to date: Our enemies get courted; our friends get the squeeze. It has happened to Poland, the Czech Republic, Honduras and Colombia. Now it's Israel's turn.
#1
Follow the money. The Arabs thoroughly enjoy the anti-Israeli and pro-Muslim rhetoric. Keeping them laughing, driving their MB's, and whipping their womynfolk ensures cheap Arab oil without which this fragile economy and the Obama administration would completely topple. Barry's Muslim heritage and hatred of all things western is an added low cost facilitator.
#4
I would love to see Obambi try to "return" Texas to Mexico : the resulting Texan campaign to take Mexico City would be swift and final. Take a look at the Texas National Guard and Reserve stats - Texas has a bigger and better equipped military by itself than does Mexico.
#7
I would love to see Obambi try to "return" Texas to Mexico : the resulting Texan campaign to take Mexico City would be swift and final. Take a look at the Texas National Guard and Reserve stats - Texas has a bigger and better equipped military by itself than does Mexico.
Not to mention the campaign to take D.C.!
Posted by: Secret Asian Man ||
03/15/2010 20:21
Comments ||
Top||
#1
This is the same administration that apologized to Gaddafi for a spokesman offering mild criticism of Gaddafi's call for jihad on Switzerland, thereby greenlighting Libyan sponsored terror attacks on Europeans.
It is reported that Hillary's dressing down of Israel was ordered by Obama himself. What's the chance that the apology to Gaddafi was his personal decision as well?
#3
When did any administration request the Poles and Russians to quit building in Silesia or Prussia? For that matter, request Italians quit building in the Papal States? Wars have consequences.
Seven Thai army soldiers were injured in a bombing in jihad-plagued insurgency-affected Pattani late Saturday's night, according to local police and a bomb disposal unit investigating the crime scene on Sunday.
Investigators led by Pol Lt-Col Nukul Taneerat at Khok Pho police station found that a military response team by pickup truck Saturday night rushed to an abandoned rubber factory after being informed that the factory was set ablaze by arsonists. While the military pickup passed the scene, one kilometre far from the factory, unidentified assailants presumed to be terrorists insurgents detonated a homemade bomb placed underground. The bombing caused the driver to lose control of the vehicle and to plunge off the roadside. The investigators believe that the terrorists insurgents lured the soldiers to the scene and intentionally triggered the bombs.
The attack injured seven security personnel and caused major damage to the vehicle. All were sent to hospital Saturday night. Five were treated and released, and are convalescing at home, while two others remain hospitalised in stable condition.
The Muslims of the Americas organization (MOA) (Jamaat ul-Fuqra) and their anti-Semitic leader in Pakistan, Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, are back at it with the crazy talk. Apparently, the movie Avatar is a tool of Satan, and Gilani has the keys to save the day with his study of Jinniology' and miracle-making abilities. I knew James Cameron was a jerk, but now I really don't like him.
For those who are unfamiliar with this group, the Christian Action Network (where I am the national security advisor) released a documentary last year called Homegrown Jihad about them and their isolated communities in the U.S. (i.e. Islamberg) that are sometimes dozens of acres large. As Daffy sez, "He's so craaazy."
Posted by: ed ||
03/15/2010
01:42 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[12 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Americans better wakeup.
'True Believers" as the fascist muzzies like to think of themselves, are more numerous than is reported.
Posted by: Mike Hunt ||
03/15/2010 12:10
Comments ||
Top||
Via InstaPundit.
Legal counsel to some of the detainees went far beyond vigorous representation of their clients. Doesn't the public have a right to know?
Posted by: ed ||
03/15/2010
01:24 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under:
Posted by: ed ||
03/15/2010 1:33
Comments ||
Top||
#2
I went to the website purely for a chance to see the picture of the Cartoon.
Guess what: its there. It looks like a pig in a kaffiye...very realistic pig just as they appear at Uncle John's Farm ( except for the kiffiye, of course).
Strangely reminiscent of Arafat, actually( PBUH of course.)Beady eyes, protuberant lips and LARGE nose. But then that could be a lot of Arab faces...
he probably got the "look" from his Mother.
You dont HAVE to be offended..if you dont WANT to be offended.
#1
ION DER SPEIGEL > HOW AL-QAEDA & CO. ARE RESPONDING TO DRONE WARFARE?
NUTSHELL > The MILTERRS AREN'T, at least for time being. They are afraid of US DRONES being able to see them day + nite, and intercepting thier phone cell calls, etc.
HMMMMM, HMMMMM, IIUC this Artic indir is making the argument that RADIC ISLAM = ANTI-US CHINA BLOGS-NETTERS + MUST TRY TO DEFEAT THE US IN AFPAK BY WAGING JIHAD + TERROPS, ETC. OUTSIDE OF AFPAK.
SUB-IIUC > More succintly, TERROPS AGZ = WIDIN CONUS PER SE, AKA "NEW 9-11's" + RELATED DOMESTIC US ATTACKS.
#2
The Belmont Article is excellent, as they all are. read it.
There is never going to be "peace" in the Middle East until one side Wins and the other side Loses.
There is never NEVER going to be a Compromise. There is never going to be a Consensus. There is NEVER going to be
"sharing" and "common ground".
One side or the other is going to have to kill the other. Like in blow its stinking little brains out the back of its skull and make a big stain on the far wall.
I know that isnt what you want to hear. I know its not what you find PC. But its the TRUTH. One side or the other is going to have to Lethally settle the other side...terminally and completely.
All of the Palestinians and a whole LOT of the Arab and Moslem world...maybe a few unfortunate Persians too. Nada. Zipp. Ding ding. Bye-bye.
Sure we can...and forget about them too. In a decade after its done no one will even know they were ever there. Footnotes. Turn the page. Have a do-nut.
One or the other. Whole entire cities FULL of Germans. Japs too. The entire Divisional Garrison of the island...after island after island.... until we get to Tokyo. And then they either sign on the line or we do it to Hirohito and his mother. Goering got buried in an ash can after he sucked his phony tooth too hard.
Do you miss him? No one will miss the Mullahs either. There is a stretch of road out in the Desert between Kuwait City and Basra....and every once in a while the wind uncovers things sticking their bony hands up out of the oil soaked sand. Look, Mommy.
there isnt going to be "peace", quit lying to yourself. There is going to be another war until we finally kill all the little bastids who stick their heads up. Get organized for THAT. because you ARENT going to get out of it.AND YOU EITHER WIN OR they will bugger your meat and get your kids.
Its either them or its your kids. The Mullahs arent your friends.
#3
What Black Bart said! And it applies to our internal problems as well. Right vs. Left. One side or the other is going to have to finish their business. Most of you know the Left won't be squeamish if they get the opportunity.
Off now to rotate my magazines. :) IYKWIMAITYD
Posted by: Secret Asian Man ||
03/15/2010 20:07
Comments ||
Top||
#1
Under the cover of a benign government information-gathering program, a Defense Department official set up a network of private contractors in Afghanistan and Pakistan to help track and kill suspected militants
Nice work Mr. Furlong. I hope you documented lessons learned in order that your excellent work can be institutionalized. Congratulations on your new job at Lackland.
#2
the secret use of private contractors may be seen as an attempt to get around the Pakistani governments prohibition of American military personnels operating in the country
Also cuts the ISI out of the loop. No wonder it was successful.
#5
I'm still trying to get to the main issue, which is, how the NYT thinks what the contractors are doing is wrong? Sources that produce the identification of genuine enemy combatants, regardless of status,are acceptable. Am I missing some arcane s*cialist reasoning here?
Killing the enemy is the game isn't it?
South Korea recently started constructing a test facility for a sodium-cooled fast reactor capable of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel without generating weapons-grade plutonium, an official at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute said Sunday. The move seeks to get around a clause in the Korea-U.S. Atomic Energy Agreement that bans Seoul from reprocessing its own nuclear fuel. The agreement expires in 2014.
KAERI said it started constructing the W30 billion (US$1=W1,129) experimental facility last month at a science research and development center in Daedeok, Daejeon, and plans to complete construction in 2014. The facility contains a 1:125 scale reactor enabling researchers to conduct tests under identical pressure or temperature conditions as a real reactor. KAERI plans to use the research data to build a full-scale facility by 2028.
The country's capacity to store spent nuclear fuel is reaching its limit. As of the end of last year, South Korea had over 10,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel, and the amount is increasing some 700 tons every year. "We've been storing spent nuclear fuel at Gori and Wolseong nuclear power plants, but the facilities will be completely full by 2016," a government official said. "We can't build more storage facilities since residents oppose them, so the sodium-cooled fast reactor is the best way to deal with this problem." China, France, Japan, the U.S. and other advanced countries plan to put similar reactors into operation around 2030.
It remains to be seen how the U.S. will react, since Washington is against South Korea's move to develop the technology, citing the impact it may have on efforts to scrap North Korea's nuclear weapons program. A senior South Korean official said the process will be entirely transparent "to gain the understanding and support of the international community."
No big surprise here. The ROK has been dealing with their crazy cousins to the north long enough to understand that nothing other than the brute threat of massive retaliation is going to work. They tried negotiating, bribing and feeding their cousins, but the Norks insist in continuing the threats, the flight tests of missiles and the continued construction of uranium and plutonium processing plants. The ROK also has seen several feckless American administrations in a row fail to come to terms with the problem, and they see the current administration as being even more feckless and unwilling to stand with its allies than usual.
Under those circumstances, the most logical thing to do is man up, arm up and start building a deterrent of one's own. The reprocessing plant is a key step in that. The ROK has smart engineers and plenty of money. They'll build a plutonium bomb inside a year if they judge that to be what they need.
Enjoy, China.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under:
#3
This article is confusing. I think the SKs plan on fast breeder reactors that use reprocessed plutonium for fuel (and makes a lot more plutonium in the process). I guess they plan to minimize plutonium production by not surrounding the reactor with U-238.
Posted by: ed ||
03/15/2010 8:50
Comments ||
Top||
#4
Another possiblity is to take care of the long-lived radio-isotopes that are the main source of the radioactivity of spent fuel: pure plutonium or uranium is very mildly radioactive, but the byproducts of their fission are highly so.
One of the suppressed facts of nuclear power is that the radioactivity of spent fuel is proportional, not to how long you burn it, but its power level. Its not like gasoline or fossil fuels whose waste is proportional to BOTH power level and length of time. One proposal for taking care of nuclear waste is to reprocess the fuel, concentrate the waste of 10 power plants into a few bundles, then burn those bundles, with a load of fresh fuel, in a regular reactor. You produce power, albeit initially a little inefficiently, and at the end of the fuel cycle, you end up with only the waste from 1: the 10 units from the other reactors were destroyed by the excess neutrons.
This is the suppressed secret of "nuclear incineration", and I think the SORKs may be looking at a double benefit of getting paid for incinerating other people's high level nuclear waste while producing power for their own needs.
#5
Japan has the skill, the fuel, and the industrial capability to start producing plutonium-based thermonuclear warheads in 6 weeks if they choose to. The South Koreans are about a year out from the same capability if they so choose.
Congratulations China on the unintended consequences of NOT leashing your lapdog, North Korea.
#6
Also, remember that the Japanese Space Program has been successfully delivering satellites to stable orbits for years : IRBMs are prebuilt, just need some aiming data.
As predicted, the bishops of the Church of Man-Made Climate Change have directed their flock to begin attacking The Great Satan -- newspapers that have the hardihood to report and/or editorialize on the hardy har har that is "global warming."
Whence it originated is yet to be divined. But this correspondent received four different versions of what's basically an e-mail form letter -- astroturf, as it's known in this cyber age. Three contained the very same subject line ("news judgment") while the fourth's subject line read "Climate Change is Happening, the Attacks on Scientists Should Stop."
The names and telephone numbers of all four supposed "letter writers" were in the exact same format. And all shared much the same verbiage if not the exact same sentences. And the theme was as expected.
"The science is overwhelming and clear," goes one line. "Our planet is warming and we are responsible," goes another. "(N)ewspapers across the country have been repeating the same, tired attacks against (global warming)," goes a third.
And lordy, lordy, those poor scientists, so many of whom appear to be engaged not in "science" but in something resembling a theology in pursuit of continuing government-delivered taxpayer grants, "are starting to pay the price" for all those newspaper-generated attacks, "dealing with harassment and threats, just for doing their job," goes a fourth line.
By golly, "This is wrong, and it needs to stop," goes the fifth similar line in all four e-mails.
"I urge your paper to report on the facts, use sound news judgment, and stop repeating the baseless attacks on scientists who are simply doing their best to help us understand the world," goes yet another.
Three of the "writers" did not respond to e-mails and telephone calls. But a fourth, who also did not respond to an e-mail, did pick up her telephone at the University of Pittsburgh on Thursday. She probably wishes she hadn't.
The longest of the e-mailed "letters" came from Maria Teresa Saenz-Robles, a Ph.D. scientist engaged in, according to her Pitt bio, research in "mechanisms controlling cell growth and cellular differentiation during animal development."
Long story short, she studies mice intestines "to analyze the properties of actively growing and differentiating cells" and "the mechanisms governing tumor induction."
One can only imagine the precise scientific protocols required for such an important field of study. How odd, then, that such a learned and disciplined mind would attach her name to such an attack-the-messenger, shibboleth-filled form letter.
Where did she find the form letter? I asked.
"I honestly don't remember," she said.
And she had no problem affixing her name to such spam? I inquired.
"No, because I did write the letter and I changed some of the language in the letter," she said. "(But) I thought (the original) was better written than what I could write."
Yikes.
Continued Dr. Saenz-Robles, after I again questioned the prudence of doing such a thing (especially, I add here, given that she's a scientist with, supposedly, a fealty to original discovery and discourse):
"I don't have a problem reading something and taking it as my own," she said.
THUD! That loud sound you just read was the jaws of readers hitting their kitchen tables.
Sirens! Alarm bells! Buzzers! Somebody didn't take the security tag off that pair of slacks at Kohl's.
In a word, Whoa!
Given the damning self-indictment and pointing that out to her, I asked if she'd like to restate her answer and, recognizing the unintended implications of her first response, she did. Saenz-Robles said she accepted the sentiment of the form letter as being in agreement with hers and, thus, defensible for passing on under her name, albeit with some rewording.
"But ... ," I began to press again. She begged off, obviously not liking how the conversation was going, said she was in the middle of something, and ended the call.
That said, I'll give the mouse intestine scientist high marks for answering her own phone.
In the spirit of the subject matter, I'll close this Sunday with this line, thoroughly conscripted from the gang e-mailers but altered to fit my sentiment:
I urge those tempted to attach their names to a piece of propaganda written by someone with an obvious political and social re-engineering agenda to employ the facts, use sound judgment and stop repeating the baseless attacks against those courageous enough in the media who are simply doing their best to help us understand the world.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[16 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
What does the study of mouse intestines have to do with Global Warming? Is the good Doctor claiming that GW is causing Tumors now?
#3
Ow...ow...ow! The sound that you hear is the collapse of this "scientists" credibility. When even a journalist is so amazed at your gaffe that they ask if you might be mistaken, you are in deep kimchee.
#4
She, like a large portion of the scientific community believe in good faith, like doctors and other professionals do, that their peer perform the same scientific methods as they themselves do. Thus they fall into the fools trap. Miss Maria apears to be one of the fools.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
03/15/2010 20:30
Comments ||
Top||
[Ma'an] Senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahhar said on Sunday that "return to negotiations over captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit would be impossible unless Hamas demands are met."
Zahhar's comments came during a panel held at the Islamic University in Gaza city discussing the future of the question of Palestine in light of current political developments. He said, " the Arab countrys' attitude towards the question of Palestine is currently one of division rather than unity. Defeating the Zionist-American project in addition to Arab and Islamic consensus are prerequisites for backing the Palestinians."
"We can't keep the question of Palestine dependent on causes of Arab countries, neighboring countries, and human right groups, because these are obstacles," he added.
The Hamas leader noted that "indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority began to meet obstacles as Israeli occupation approved building 1600 new housing units in settlements." Zahhar highlighted that settlement expansion coincided with US Vice President Joe Biden's visit to the Palestinian territories.
Zahhar also pointed out that "more than 900 Jewish foundations were attacked in Britain following the Richard Goldstone's report on war crimes during the last Israeli military offensive against the Gaza Strip."
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: Hamas
No matter how bad the news, no matter how grim the headlines, you could always count on a smile from at least one corner of the daily newspaper: the comics. Newspapers are cutting back on comics because of economic troubles.
But in this day when we could use a laugh more than ever, the reality facing the comics section is anything but funny. With the newspaper business hemorrhaging readers and money, newspapers are slicing the number of strips they carry.
Artist and filmmaker Mark Tatulli said he has seen 30 newspapers drop his strip "Lio" in the last 18 months. "Newspapers are saving money wherever they can, and they are doing it by cutting the comics. It's affecting cartoonists across the board," Tatulli said. "'Lio' was growing, closing in on 300 newspapers -- and then the market just went crazy," Tatulli said, adding that "Lio" is now in 270 papers.
The roll call of newspapers shedding comic strips is growing, from the Portland Oregonian, which shed 10 strips last year, to the Washington Post. The cash-strapped Washington Times recently went a step further, eliminating its Sunday comics section entirely. Yet Doonesbury lives ...
Yet another thing in the universe that I don't understand.
The savings can be enormous. The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., told readers that reducing the comics section by one page would save $300,000 a year. "Sometimes change isn't funny, but it is necessary," the paper told readers. However, after an enormous outcry -- more than 1,200 reader complaints -- the Star-Ledger backed away from the reductions.
Some newspapers are trying to mask the cutbacks by holding "Survivor"-style contests asking readers which strips to jettison, and which to pick up. The number of strips dropped usually outnumbers the strips added, although sometimes papers will continue providing the eliminated cartoons online.
Newer strips are often the ones cut first, but even so-called legacy comics are feeling the pinch.
Mason and Mick Mastroianni draw and write "B.C." from a studio on the outskirts of this upstate New York city. The strip, filled with cavemen and slapstick humor, was handed down from their late grandfather, John Hart, who created it in the late 1950s.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[16 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Its harder to make money today because of the media assisted propaganda campaign for democrats across the land...
#6
actually over the years the comics themselves have become polluted by leftist agiprop
Candorville probably had an anti Bush message 40% of the time during his admin and frequently distorted facts and fanned conspiracy theories
Doonesbury had a leftist message at least 75% of the time.
Nonsequiter had leftist messages about 20% of the time.
There were some right leaning comics also but they were far more subtle.
Posted by: lord garth ||
03/15/2010 10:11
Comments ||
Top||
#7
I get my newspapers out of the recycle container up the road. I use them for wadding in my cannon.
#9
If you start at the beginning (or you will be totally lost), I would highly recommend these two online comics:
Schlock Mercenary. Space mercenaries, far in the future, with a healthy dollop of cynicism, some violence, treachery, and humor. Semi-military realism. Several collections in print.
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/
And Wapsi Square. About a Mexican girl in Minneapolis who works for an Anthropology museum, only to discover that what she thought was mental illness is a connection to powerful psychic forces, bizarre beings and an end of the world scenario. Magnificent artwork, especially of demons and otherworldly creatures. Most characters are female.
#12
They've been the most intelligent and truthfull aspect of print news for a long time now. Figures they'd cut the only articles I can really understand.
[Bangla Daily Star] The convener of Jessore sadar upazila unit Chhatra League was hacked dead in an attack allegedly by rival group yesterday, a day after the organisation's district council was suspended following a factional feud.
With almost all the shops and businesses shut, panic spread through the town in the evening following the death of Ripon Hossain alias Dada, also a candidate for the general secretary post of the district unit Bangladesh Chhatra League.
Selim, a fellow activist who was with Ripon during the incident, has been reported missing.
Meanwhile, police yesterday filed a case against 500 unidentified people, following Saturday night's fight between two BCL factions.
The clash left at least 20 BCL men injured. Both factions blamed one another for the incident that suspended the council.
The killing of Ripon followed stabbing and beating of BCL activists by their rival groups throughout the day, leaving at least three BCL activists wounded.
Sources said Ripon came under attack on his way to Jessore town from his home in Aranda. He was riding a motorbike along with Selim.
A gang stopped Ripon as he reached Bhekutia Bazar around 7:00pm.
They hacked him and dumped his body in the roadside pond. Whereabouts of Selim were not known as of 8:30pm.
Locals dragged Ripon from the water and took him to a local hospital where doctors declared him dead around 7:15pm.
"A group of five or six BCL activists, jointly led by Hafiz, Iqbal and Mikayeel, launched the attack," alleged Rabiul Islam, Ripon's uncle.
Sources said the attackers are the supporters of local lawmakers and Ripon was a supporter of local upazila parishad chairman.
Another group, loyal to a local ruling party lawmaker, stabbed Aziz, 50, an Awami League leader, in Rail Gate area of the town, yesterday noon.
The same group beat up Ajhar Hossain Swapon, joint secretary of district Jubo League and activist Monwar Hossain Joni in the morning.
Leaders and activists of Awami League, backed by an upazila parishad chairman, brought out a procession in the town protesting the attacks.
Sources said members of both factions were seen carrying arms.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: TTP
#1
Selim, a fellow activist who was with Ripon during the incident, has been reported missing.
He's not missing. He's right here! And there. And over there, too.
[Straits Times] WELL over 150,000 red shirt protesters converged in Bangkok yesterday and gave the government until noon today to call fresh elections or face escalating protests.
Despite rumours of negotiations and possible rifts behind closed doors, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva appeared unfazed, saying in his Sunday radio programme that he had every right to stay in power because he had been legally elected in Parliament.
Thousands of supporters of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), all dressed in trademark red, streamed into Bangkok through Saturday night and all day yesterday. Many arrived in trucks and some came down the river by boat.
Many local residents cheered them as they made their way to the rally site about 200m from the Democracy Monument on Rajadamnoen Avenue. At one point, the protesters were joined by about 200 Buddhist monks.
The mood was festive as the 'red shirts' - most of whom support ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra - rallied peacefully in the scorching heat, watched by the thousands of unarmed soldiers and policemen deployed to manage the protest.
Analysts described it as the biggest protest ever in the Thai capital by the largely poorer masses.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
Residents recovered the bullet-riddled bodies of six militants in a tribal area of northwest Pakistan, an official said on Saturday.
The bodies were recovered in the Kurram tribal region near the Afghan border.
"There was infighting among two militants groups. One group killed six of the rival group and fled.... Residents discovered these corpses today," Mumtaz Khan, a local administrative official in the area, told AFP.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[16 views]
Top|| File under: TTP
An adviser to Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has rejected accusations that Iran is involved in the secessionist unrest which is escalating in the country's southern provinces.
"Perish the thought!"
"Tehran plays no role in the clashes between police forces and separatist rebels in the southern provinces of Dhale and Lahj. To everyone's surprise, a US flag is hoisted on the roof of the building which houses a prominent leader of the Southern Movement, Tariq al-Fadhli," the IRNA news agency cited Abdel Karim al-Ariani as telling the Kuwaiti daily al-Siyassah on Saturday.
Yemen launched an offensive against southern separatists after they called for an anti-government uprising in February 2010.
Separatists have attacked police officials and razed several buildings in the unrest. A number of people from each side have been killed in the conflict.
Since shortly after the unification of the country, the people of oil-rich southern Yemen have criticized the northern-based government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh for systematic discrimination, land expropriations, meager state funding, and the steady loss of jobs to northerners.
The Southern Movement is an umbrella organization that embraces several secessionist groups demanding a separate state in what was until 1990 the Marxist republic of South Yemen.
The Southern Movement, which is supported by powerful tribal leaders, emerged in 2007, led by former military officers who say the southerners have been treated badly since the civil war.
Southern Yemen, a former British colony which covered the provinces east and south of Sana'a, was an independent state from 1967 until 1990, when it merged with the tribal-dominated north under Saleh.
The rising political unrest in southern Yemen, fueled by a tough security crackdown, threatens to erupt into a full-blown insurgency and lead to the breakup of the Arab world's poorest state.
The situation could also open the door for the expansion of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula since Yemen is the ancestral homeland of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The group has claimed responsibility for several attacks on foreign missions, tourist sites, and oil installations in southern Yemen.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
VARIOUS > AHMADINEJAD: NEW MIDDLE EAST WAR(S) WILL NOT SAVE ISRAEL, from inevitable downfall.
IOW, STRATEGIC OR OTHER MILPOL VICTORY(S) DOTH NOT MEAN NOR GUARANTEES THAT ISRAEL WILL SURVIVE, AS IT DID IN WARS PAST.
SUB-IOW, ISRAEL is now dealing wid IRAN = PERSIA/OTTOMANS now, NOT the Jordanians, Syrians, Saudis, Libyans, or even the Egyptians.
Israel says they captured the last senior official of Hamas' armed wing still at large in the Ramallah area. Maher Udda was arrested at his home in an operation conducted jointly by the Israel Defense Forces, the Shin Bet security service and the Israel Police capping a decade of efforts by security forces to apprehend him.
Udda, 47, from the village of Ein Yabrud, north of Ramallah, joined Hamas in the early 1990s and headed a Hamas cell in his village that was involved primarily in the capture and interrogation of Palestinian civilians suspected of collaboration with Israel.
The group also amassed weapons to be used against Israeli targets. Udda was arrested in 1998 by security forces belonging to the Palestinian Authority but was released after a few months.
During the second intifada, Udda assumed a leadership role in Hamas' armed wing in Ramallah. He has been wanted by Israel since 2000. During the subsequent several years, Udda worked primarily in financing and directing attacks against Israeli targets and was thought at some point to have served as a deputy to the head of the armed wing of Hamas in Ramallah, Ibrahim Hamed.
Hamed was arrested by Israeli forces four years ago and is considered one of the most prominent prisoners that Israel is refusing to free in connection with a deal for the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
The Ramallah Hamas group committed a series of terrorist attacks, in which more than 70 Israelis were killed, during the second intifada. The Shin Bet has accused Udda of direct involvement in planning and directing two major suicide bombings in 2003: an attack on Cafe Hillel in Jerusalem's German Colony, in which seven Israelis were killed, and an attack at a crowded hitchhiking station at the entrance to the Tzrifin army base near Rishon Letzion, where eight soldiers were killed.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[19 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
He will be water-boarded, and no one will complain, And no one will hear about it in the first place. He will sing like the proverbial canary.
#5
PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUM > CAPTURED TALIBAN #2 "SINGING LIKE A CANARY".
* SAME > CAUCASUS EXPERTS: MEDVEDEV WANTS TO CLEAN UP THE CAUCASUS FROM MUSLIM CHECHENS, i.e. ANNIHILATE/GENOCIDE any and all Muslim Caucasians under the PCorrect Cover Banner of fighting Bandits + Terrorists.
* TOPIX > ISRAELI UN ENVOY: US-ISRAELI ATTACK AGZ IRAN IS NOW IMMINENT.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Despite international assistance the Somali government's military forces are ineffective and corrupt, and it remains dependent on foreign troops for survival, a U.N. group concluded in a report.
"Despite infusions of foreign training and assistance, government security forces remain ineffective, disorganized and corrupt," the U.N.'s Monitoring Group on Somalia said in a report to be presented to the Security Council this week.
Somalia's internationally-backed Transitional Federal Government has been boxed into a tiny perimeter in the capital Mogadishu by an insurgency launched in May 2009 by the al-Qaeda-inspired Shabab group and its more political Hezb al-Islam allies.
The Shabab now control most of the centre and south of the Horn of Africa country, which has embroiled in a virtually non-stop civil war since 1991.
The U.N. group said "the military stalemate is less a reflection of opposition strength than of the weakness of the Transitional Federal Government."
It described government forces as "a composite of independent militias loyal to senior government officials and military officers who profit from the business of war and resist their integration under a single command."
The U.N. group said last November the government had about 2,900 operational troops, although it could also count on the support of some militias Mogadishu thought to number between 5,000 and 10,000 fighters.
However, the U.N. group concluded that the Somali government "owes its survival to the small African Union peace support operation AMISOM, rather than to its own troops."
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[15 views]
Top|| File under:
#4
Until someone mans up and pulls a hardcore sweep of that "country", these problems will continue. I personally think that the West should arm the Ethiopians to the teeth and send them in using the AU as political cover : the Ethiopians and Kenyans need to calm Somalia down before it sucks the rest of the area into a multi-sided ethnic war.
Must be sweeps month...
TBILISI, Georgia Georgians have been panicked by a hoax television news program announcing the Russian army had invaded and killed President Mikhail Saakashvili. Yvgeny, get those Imedi bastards on the phone, RIGHT NOW!
Working on it as we speak, Mr. President...
Honey, are you dead?
No, dammit!!
Russia and Georgia fought a brief but bloody war in 2008, a conflict still fresh in the minds of Georgians who have since seen two de facto independent provinces erect firm borders.
The private television station Imedi Georgia's No. 3 channel showed the faux report Saturday night. Igor, we're number three in the ratings. What are we gonna do?
I've got a great idea, sir...
A few media outlets picked up on the story, and the channel ran a ticker during a subsequent entertainment show stating the report "did not correspond with reality." There was no explanation. Here's one for ya. Pha pha phooey...
Tbilisi resident Gocha Khachiuri, 43, said he had to take heart pills after hearing the news. Maybe the heart pill people sponsored it...
[Iran Press TV Latest] Early results from Iraq's general election show former premier Iyad Allawi's Iraqiya Alliance is leading in the northern province of Kirkuk.
Iraqiya garnered 123,862 votes, while the Kurdistania Alliance, which had been expected to secure most of the votes, was second with 120,664 votes, followed by Goran with 20,152 votes.
About 61 of the ballots have been counted with complete results expected on March 18 and the final ones at the end of the month.
Kirkuk accounts for 13 parliamentary seats in the 325-member Council of Representatives.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Rule of Law coalition is leading the polls in major Iraqi provinces, including Baghdad, Basra, Najaf, Babil, Karbala and Muthanna.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
Fourteen people, including two soldiers and two policemen, were killed and 53 others sustained injuries in a suicide attack targeting a security checkpoint near the Circuit House in Saidu Sharif on Saturday.
The suicide blast was the second in 2010 in Swat, a district regained from the Maulana Fazlullah-led militants in a military operation launched in May 2009. The blast occurred at a time when the militants have stepped up their attacks in the country, particularly in Lahore.
Spokesman for the Army-run Swat Media Centre (SMC) Maj Mushtaq said the bomber came in a tri-wheeler to a checkpost near the Circuit House. The bomber, he added, started walking towards the checkpost. The soldiers and police officials manning the barrier challenged the young boy but he did not stop. "As the soldiers opened fire at him, he detonated his explosives," Maj Mushtaq said.
He said the blast killed 14 people, including two soldiers and as many cops. An Edhi Ambulance driver, Khurshid, who evacuated the injured to the nearby Saidu Sharif Hospital, put the death toll at 16. He said four Edhi ambulances and hospital vehicles shifted the injured to the hospital.
General Officer Commanding in Swat Maj-Gen Ashfaq Nadeem confirmed Maj Mushtaq's statement. "The bomber came in a rickshaw from Saidu Sharif side and disembarked near the checkpost. He blew himself up when fired upon," he said.
The checkpost, where the bomber blew himself up, provides access to important places such as the district courts, district coordination officer's office, district police officer's office and the Circuit House.
The blast, in which 14 kilograms of explosives were used, damaged several cars besides smashing windowpanes of the nearby buildings, including a recently-inaugurated library.
Eyewitnesses said the cars caught fire after the blast and thick smoke enveloped the area. Five cars were destroyed in the incident.
"I was working in my cafe when the bomb went off. I found myself wounded and saw human bodies lying around me," said Muhammad Anwar. He said all of his employees had been injured in the blast.
Another eyewitness, who was going to appear in a court for his case, was also injured. "I heard a bang and then fell unconscious," he said.
Security forces cordoned off the area after the blast and imposed curfew for several hours on the Mingora-Saidu Sharif Road. However, no search operation was carried out till the filing of this report.
Those killed on the spot included two cops identified as Hazratullah and Jehanzeb, student of a private public school Safdar, 16-year-old Qari Yusuf, Wahid Gul, Bakht Jamal and Nadir Shah.
The deceased also included three workers of a local NGO identified as Aimal Khan, Akbar Khan and their driver, Umar Zarin.
Two sub-inspectors -- Sher Muhammad Khan and Beldar Khan -- and three policemen also sustained serious injuries in the blast.
NWFP Chief Minister Ameer Haider Hoti condemned the suicide bombing and announced compensation of Rs 300,000 each for those killed and Rs 100,000 for the injured.
Agencies add: The local Taliban quickly claimed responsibility for the attack.
A spokesman for the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed his organisation was responsible for the attack, saying that more would follow as long as Army operations continued in Pakistan's tribal belt.
"These people are fighting against us to please America. As long as they do not stop the military operation, we will carry out more such attacks," spokesman Azam Tariq told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location.
Meanwhile, President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani and Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar have strongly condemned the suicide attack in Saidu Sharif.
In their separate statements, they expressed their deep shock and grief over the sad incident in which the security personnel and civilians lost their lives.
They said such acts of cowardice would not deter the resolve of the government to eliminate the menace of terrorism from the country.
They prayed to Almighty Allah to rest the departed souls in eternal peace and grant courage to the bereaved families to bear the loss with equanimity.
The US embassy also condemned the suicide attack.
"We extend our condolences to the families and friends of those who lost their lives, and to the people of Mingora," said a statement of the US embassy.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[14 views]
Top|| File under: TTP
#1
In order to kill two U.S. soldiers, the Taliban had to blow up 51 Afghans, including 49 civilians.
Yet when we drop smart bombs and kill about 18 Taliban, and one or two civilians are also killed, we're the evil, wicked, Great Satan.
Posted by: American Delight ||
03/15/2010 6:59
Comments ||
Top||
#2
Other than "two soldiers" (Pakistanis) are we reading the same article?
Posted by: ed ||
03/15/2010 8:30
Comments ||
Top||
Fighter planes bombed Taliban positions in the northwest on Sunday, killing 18 militants and destroying three hideouts, a government official said.
Militants have gone on the offensive again after a recent lull in violence, challenging government assertions that an assault in the militant stronghold of South Waziristan had dealt a major blow to Pakistan's al Qaeda-backed Taliban.
The airstrikes came after a week of bombings which killed 81 people, including soldiers, policemen and aid workers in the northwest and eastern regions of Pakistan.
Khaista Akbar, a government official, told Reuters the fighter jets carried out the strikes in the Ghund Mela village of Orakzai, an ethnic Pashtun tribal region.
"They carried out intense bombings and precisely targeted militant hideouts," he said.
The bombing killed 18 militants and completely destroyed three hideouts, he said.
The Pakistani Taliban have attacked many targets, including a volleyball match and army headquarters in the town of Rawalpindi, close to the capital, Islamabad.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[10 views]
Top|| File under: TTP
The message that echoed across the State Capitol grounds Saturday couldn't have been simpler: "Kill the bill!"
A day after congressional Democratic leaders announced their final legislative push to enact a bill to overhaul the nation's health care system, opponents rallied to send a noisy contrary message. Rally organizers said 4,000 people attended, but Capitol police estimated the crowd at 2,000 or fewer.
Dozens of times, the crowd members, a combination of Republicans, social conservatives and Tea Partiers, chanted, "Kill the bill! Kill the bill!" urged on by a half-dozen speakers.
The headliner and clear crowd favorite was Republican Sixth District Rep. Michele Bachmann, who said Democrats "are spending us into bondage we can never dig ourselves out of."
Gazing out over the flag-waving, sign-wielding crowd, she said: "This is awesome. This is our country. We own it!"
Bachmann and other speakers urged listeners to vent their outrage to Democratic members of the state's congressional delegation in the days leading up to the final vote on the bill, potentially within a week.
Among the signs being waved was one that listed Marx, Lenin and Stalin, followed by Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Obama, Pelosi and Reid were repeatedly invoked as political villains.
"For some reason," said Second District Republican Rep. John Kline, "President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Harry Reid can't hear you. I can't understand that."
Saying, "We need to start over," Kline was greeted with a roar of approval, causing him to rhetorically invoke Obama, Pelosi and Reid again: "Can you hear this?"
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under:
[Al Arabiya Latest] A list led by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had a wide lead in early results from the southern oil hub of Basra and a coalition led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi leads in the northern city of Kirkuk, the country's electoral commission said on Sunday.
Maliki's State of Law coalition had 219,657 votes compared to 121,497 for a fellow Shiite list, the Iraqi National Alliance, which has close ties to Iran.
Iraqiya, a secular, cross-sectarian alliance led by former Prime Minister Allawi, had 36,093 votes. The totals represented 63 percent of the vote in Basra province.
Iraq's electoral commission said Allawi was leading in the northern city of Kirkuk, without giving more details.
So far, results have been released for 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces. The remaining four were set to be announced later on Sunday.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
by Fred Pruitt
Before returning to the Health Care Program® with a literal vengeance the Obama administration paused briefly to tout its Jobs Program® before reaching for a nuclear option. Not particularly surprisingly, this looked a lot like the Stimulus® looked. It involved taking large amounts of money and giving it to lots of people: donors, potential donors, or people who are powers behind the throne, which is to say those same donors and potential donors.
All government programs translate into either bureaucracies -- government employees, many of them unionized, answering to political appointees who administer budgets that include at the very least seven signicant digits -- or contracts, which are similar, except that the employees don't get their checks from the government and the people in charge are castigated as "fat cats" when not being solicited for donations or awarded contracts or given cabinet positions within the administration. We have reached a point in our decline where that process constitutes the measure of government activity. The Democrats can't conceive of any other way of doing things; it's the extension of Chicago or New York or Massachussetts politics, to whit, government by ward heeler, the Big Dig on a national scale. The Republicans aren't much better than the Dems at coming up with ideas that don't involve controlling the flow of cash. Every time they achieve significant power they're admonished to "govern from the center," which means letting the Dems control that flood of cash and increasingly credit. They're dumb enough to do it, too.
#2
Even though nobody wants to pay much, everybody's leveraged to the hilt so lessors can't cut their own prices.
While we are continually told by the real estate industry and all the other special interests that costs determine prices, they don't, except to the extent costs influence supply, which is mostly over the medium to long term.
Otherwise goverments can't create jobs. What they can do is drag future jobs into the present by borrowing and printing money. This is Keynsian counter-cyclical 'stimulus' spending, which is blowing up in our collective faces in the form of the sovereign debt crisis.
#3
People in government, who have never been truly productive in the private sector, who do not understand that a good and decent society has a public sector which serves rather than rules, telling the truly productive how to do their thing.
OKA insanity.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
03/15/2010 6:27
Comments ||
Top||
#4
Excellent Fred!
While we're re-inventing, could we illiminate "consolitated school districts" sell some of the busses, and go back to small neighborhood schools?
Could we give Walmart, Lowes, and Home Depot some tax incentives for stocking and selling AMERICAN MADE merchandize?
Could we encourage with tax incentives, Exxon, Shell, Marathon, or BP to build a couple of new oil refineries and begin drilling off our own shores?
Could we work with the Mexican government and smart contractors to establish prisons in Mexico for illegals sentenced for crimes in this country?
Could we encourage more companies like Toyota to come here and set up manufacturing facilities by making ALL states RIGHT TO WORK states?
Since we are supposed to be a capitalistic system, could we insist that politicians be US Citizens who have participated in the free market system by working or owning US businesses or medical practices, as opposed to law firms?
Could we bill governments for medical services performed on folks from foreign countries who wander on over the border for a hospital visit?
Could we actually go BACK to "government cheese" and peanut butter, and put a 26 week cap on unemployment benefits and food stamps?
Could we pull out of foreign adventures in the Middle East and Africa and destroy Tripoli and Tehran with fire bombing the next time one of them so much as utters a threat against the United States.
#5
Fred, it's very mean of you to propose putting all those nice government regulators out of work. Plus all of the 'tail' which supports the regulatory 'tooth.'
#6
Excellent analysis Fred of what's wrong with business today--too much government meddling and lack of incentives. It can still be done however the model has to be changed somewhat. My father-in-law came to this country at the end of WWII. He started a small watch repair business in the corner of a dry cleaners. As he worked hard (very hard), he was able to move out and start his own business. He did quite well eventually. He had the equivalent of a 6th grade education and didn't know about management by objectives and all the other terms MBAs love to throw around.
I started a consulting business. I started modestly in my home. The business grew, income-wise every year but never left the status of a home office. I never hired anyone--just the wife and me and an occasional contract worker (but not often). Man it took a lot of hard work--sometimes day and night. My wife and I did everything, advertising (modest), billing and follow-up, the technical work, and taxes.
Using the furniture manufacturing model. One could start at the hobby or cottage industry level with power tools you have or buy at Home Depot. Sell the stuff at craft fairs. Try to put enough away to of the proceeds away to expand the business and move out of the house. At that point I think the business would then start to follow the more complex model you outline and all the attendant problems.
#7
Another example of the model is a woman who started making botique soap in her home. She started modestly at the hobby level. She gave the soap as gifts to her friends. They really liked the product and asked for more. She then started showing up at craft fairs and selling her stuff. Her business started growing and then really took off. She had to work very hard to make it work. A lot of young college graduates headed to Wall Street as financial planners because they thought they could start at the top and make a lot of easy money. Look where we are today.
Norfolk and Western did not go out of business. It merged with Southern and the combined corp has done reasonably well lately.
Similarly the b&o merged with the Chessie system to become CSX. It also has done reasonably well.
The Pennsylvania RR has a more complex history but parts of it are no owned by CSX and parts by NWSouthern
Posted by: lord garth ||
03/15/2010 13:06
Comments ||
Top||
#9
Small scale businesses are, as Fred notes, likely to provide a family living and not much else.
Mid-scale businesses are hard to grow from small scale businesses today in part due to government regulations but also due to changes in manufacturing technology. For many industries, the cost per unit of manufacturing has dropped dramatically, but only after one acquires the necessary capital equipment as well as the site etc. Those mid-sized companies that have prospered in such industries have a special niche - Pompanoosec Mills makes outstanding hardwood furniture, for but charges a lot more for it than the stuff you can buy in boxes for self assembly.
Or they are services companies, and guess who the main clients of IT services are? Yup, governments.
For some industries there are no substitutes for a fully-capitalized startup. A new semiconductor fab now costs between $10 and $15 billion to create. When an industry's entry costs are that high, you need the skills of an MBA because what's at stake isn't the product or the craftsmanship, it's the ability to attract financing, manage cash flow and return on investment, negotiate strategic partnerships etc. At that point the product is a secondary concern.
Which is indeed a problem because it leads to unacknowledged tradeoffs, like emptying out this country's manufacturing capability in order to compete when the profit per chip is less than 1-3% of price.
Under Reagan we understood that some advanced industrial capability should be protected because it was tied to national security. Bush the elder never got it - he went to Japan and talked about cars rather than electronics and software. Clinton outsourced the whole damned thing, and got campaign contributions in return because in essence he was transferring all of the leading technologies we'd built over 20 years in a short time to a rising competitor. And Bush was too busy fighting two wars to even begin to figure out how to roll the Dems on this without locking in the old school, deadhand unions.
What we need - in addition to Fred's excellent suggestions - is an equivalent of the old space and defense programs that jumpstarted risky, high-investment, bleeding edge science and technology. For the last 30 years we've been living off those investments in the 60s and 70s, but we're down to the last bits of seed corn husks in the last sack. And while Americans have been insisting on our right to party till we puke and Europeans have been spending their 6 week vacations at health spas China and India and others have been turning out engineers and scientists who in some critical areas now objectively are more advanced than we are in key research areas.
The above opinions are shaped by nearly 3 decades in startups and small-mid sized companies (including one I started and others I held leadership roles in), a number of years in higher education as faculty where I got to see firsthand how our students stacked up against the grad students coming in from overseas, and now in defense R&D.
#11
We can contrast this with the COMMUNISTS China model: Step 1: Open for business, there is no step two except make or break on your business model. Yes I know they have some Quality Control issues but so did America at one time. We are regulating ourselves out of business.
"And while Americans have been insisting on our right to party till we puke and Europeans have been spending their 6 week vacations at health spas. . . "
Everything that comes after that in the sentence is less important than this part. Absent the entitlement mentality the threat from China and India and anywhere else, really, would be nonexistent.
When the boomers and x-ers and whichever letter you want to apply-ers grew up imbued with the notion that certain material standards of living and income-stream security were the birthright of all Americians regardless of whether or not they were productive or hard-working or how the rest of the world was productivity wise, the die was cast. The distance from "Everyone my age should have a house and a car and bulletproof job security no matter what" to where we are now is a tenth of a hundredth of a baby step.
We can and should decry the blunders of MBA's and CEO's and politicians, but none of this would have been possible wihout a public who thinks that the postwar level of job security and labor compensation vs the rest of the world are a forever birthright.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
03/15/2010 16:11
Comments ||
Top||
#13
A thorough and sad analysis, Fred. But your truck drivers just went out on strike and your newly unionized employees are doing a sympathy walkout.
Perhaps you would be interested in my new arson-for-hire business? We can get some of your insurance money back. We also provide quick relief for underwater mortgages. Have match. Will travel.
A powerful blast has left a Pakistani construction worker killed and six of his compatriots wounded in Afghanistan's southern city of Kandahar.
The bomb hit a vehicle carrying CITA group, a Pakistani construction firm, on a road close to Pakistan's consulate in a district in the eastern part of the city early Sunday, a Press TV correspondent reported.
Last week, five other employees of the same firm were killed by militants in Kandahar.
The news comes a few hours after seven coordinated explosions, four bomber attacks and three improvised bomb blasts, in Kandahar left 35 people killed and 100 others injured in the largest city of the southern Taliban heartland.
The governor of Kandahar province, Tooryalai Wesa, told reporters at a press conference that seven Afghan policemen were killed and eight others injured in the attacks.
Ahmed Wali Karzai, Afghan President Hamid Karzai's half-brother and a member of the Kandahar provincial council, said the prison was the main target of the Saturday blast, but no prisoners escaped.
Taliban's spokesman, known as Yousof Ahmadi, said in a phone call the attacks were a response to the commanders of foreign forces who said Kandahar would be the next target in US-led operations.
"We are absolutely going to secure Kandahar," McChrystal, the head of US and international forces in Afghanistan said earlier. The US commander noted "we are already doing a lot of operations in Kandahar but it is our intent under (Afghan) President (Hamid) Karzai's direction to make an even greater effort there."
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[11 views]
Top|| File under: Taliban
#1
PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUM/OTHER > TALIBAN MEANT KANDAHAR BOMBINGS AS A WARNING TO NATO, + TALIBAN: WE ARE READY FOR ANY NEW OFFENSIVE.
* TOPIX > TALIBAN, LeT EYEING INDIA FOR TERROR STRIKES.
* Also, NEWS KERALA > LeT, INDIAN MUJAHIDEEN MAY ATTACK KOCHI.
[Bangla Daily Star] Jamaat leader Gias Uddin gave a confessional statement before a Rajshahi court Saturday that all tiers of Jamaat-e Islami helped Islami Chhatra Shibir in the February 9 violence at Rajshahi University following an organisational decision.
Gias, also former Rajshahi City Corporation ward councillor, was taken on five days' police remand in three terms after his arrest on February 26. Police took him to the court of Metropolitan Magistrate Ziaur Rahman at 2:00pm on Saturday.
Police officials in Rajshahi, however, remained tight-lipped about the judicial statement of Gias.
Sources told The Daily Star that Gias, also a military trainer of Shibir cadres, confessed that he participated in the second meeting jointly held by Jamaat, Shibir men and outsiders in Islamia College of Binodpur on February 8 night that agreed to help Shibir.
As per the decision of the second meeting, Jamaat and Shibir leaders, activists in and around the campus including former Shibir leaders of different RU hall units, participated in and assisted Shibir men during the violence.
Earlier in the afternoon, Shibir leaders held their first meeting at the same venue and it decided to drive out activists of Bangladesh Chhatra League from different RU halls for restoring their stronghold on the campus.
After the violence, the attackers talked to Rajshahi city Jamaat Ameer Ataur Rahman, general secretary Abul Kalam Azad and assistant general secretary Siddik Hossain and went into hiding.
Meanwhile, the same court yesterday rejected the bail petition of Jamaat Ameer Ataur Rahman and 36 other Shibir men who were earlier arrested in connection with the RU violence.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under: Jamaat-e-Islami
[Al Arabiya Latest] Two French aid workers were freed in Darfur on Sunday after being held hostage for nearly four months, France's government said.
Ransom, temporary conversion, or both?
The two were working for a French charity, Triangle Generation Humanitaire, when they were kidnapped in November 2009 in the Central African Republic, across the border from Sudan's war-torn Darfur region.
Two French aid workers were freed in Darfur on Sunday after being held hostage for nearly four months, France's government said.
The two were working for a French charity, Triangle Generation Humanitaire, when they were kidnapped in November 2009 in the Central African Republic, across the border from Sudan's war-torn Darfur region.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: al-Shabaab
[Dawn] Ahl-i-Sunnat leader Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Nadeem, who was attacked by unidentified gunmen on Thursday, succumbed to his injuries in a local hospital Sunday.
Maulana Ghafoor was on his way along with his two sons to the city courts Thursday morning, when four unknown assailants opened fire on his vehicle in Karachi's Nazimabad area.
Following the attack, Maulana Ghafoor's son, Muawaiya, was killed on the spot while the Ahl-i-Sunnat leader and his other son, Rashid Nadeem, were admitted to hospitals in critical conditions.
Police claimed that at least five suspects were taken into custody for interrogation and a case had been registered against unidentified men.
Maulana Ghafoor has been affiliated with the banned sectarian organisation Sipah-i-Sahaba and was also nominated as Secretary Information for Ahl-i-Sunnat.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[17 views]
Top|| File under: Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan
The new U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights issues has reaffirmed that the U.S. will not normalize relations with the North unless it improves the treatment of its people. Robert King was speaking at the State Department on Friday in his first meeting with reporters since he started the job.
King said the U.S. enactment of the North Korean Human Rights Act reflects these concerns, while the six-party nuclear talks are a step into the future of U.S.-North Korea relations.
"The six-party talks are not just one little narrow box" but can discuss other agendas, he added.
Unlike his predecessor Jay Lefkowitz, a political appointee who was seen as largely ineffectual and ill-informed, King occupies the post full-time, playing a part in policy-making and implementation. King said he discusses policy with Sung Kim, the special envoy on North Korean affairs, several times a day and meets Stephen Bosworth, the part-time special representative for North Korea policy, whenever he is available.
King also called for attention to increasing corruption in North Korea as the State Department's annual report on human rights released on March 11 found, which he believes make the life of North Koreans even harder.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
[Iran Press TV Latest] As Iran prepares for the Persian New Year, the Judiciary chief said Sunday the events of the past year, which ends March 21st, have made the Islamic Republic stronger than before.
Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani said although the year was "bittersweet," its events had paved the ground for the foundation of the revolution, the Iranian Labor News Agency reported.
"Although the harsh post-vote events lacerated the public's emotion, the active and conscious presence of the people foiled the [anti-Iran] plots," he said in an allusion to the unrest that followed the presidential election in June.
Iran says Western powers, particularly the UK, were responsible for the unrest. The West, however, denies any involvement in the events that claimed the lives of a dozen civilians.
Ayatollah Larijani also expressed hope that the next year would be filled with success and public satisfaction.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
[Al Arabiya Latest] The health of Egypt's president is improving following gallbladder surgery last week, a spokeswoman for the German hospital where he is receiving treatment said on Sunday.
President Hosni Mubarak, 81, who has ruled Egypt for almost three decades, had surgery on March 6, treatment that has sparked rumors about the seriousness of his condition and weighed on Egyptian share prices.
Egypt's benchmark index dipped 2.4 percent on Sunday, partly sliding because of concerns about the health of the president, who has no designated successor.
"The president is ...well and recovering," the hospital spokeswoman, who declined to be named, told Reuters. "The improvement in his health has continued." The spokeswoman said her comment was based on a conversation with the doctor who visited the president on Sunday.
Dr. Markus Buechler, who heads the medical team treating the president, said on Thursday tissue removed during the operation was benign. He did not say when Mubarak would be discharged.
Mubarak has not said whether he will run again for a sixth six-year term in the 2011 presidential election. Many Egyptians believe that if he does not, he will try to hand power to his politician son, Gamal, 46. Both Mubarak's deny any such plan.
Zakaria Azmi, Egypt's chief of presidential staff, said Mubarak was expected to hold a live telephone conversation on Egyptian television in the next few days, Egyptian television reported on Saturday.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
A new poll shows Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) trailing former Gov. Tommy Thompson (R) by 12 points, 51-39.
As Thompson wieghs whether to enter the race against Feingold, the polling has largely been encouraging. The latest poll, from the conservative Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, is his biggest lead yet.
Rasmussen had Thompson ahead 47-43.
Whether the polls are accurate or not, it seems pretty apparent Thompson would make this race something along the lines of a toss-up. He appears to be getting closer to running, and a significant challenge to Feingold would be a big coup for the NRSC.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
The dhims will face more of this if they push through the health care bill without voting on it.
#2
If Tommy doesn't fish or cut bait soon about running, he may lose this edge. Either throw your hat into the ring, or step away from the ring; if you're not going to run, for heaven's sake give somebody else a chance at it.
[Iran Press TV Latest] Israeli authorities ordered the demolition of an under-construction mosque in the northern West Bank village of Burin on Sunday, head of the Palestinian Authority's settlement portfolio said.
Ghassan Daghlas explained that the Israeli Civil Administration ordered a stop on construction work at the Salman Al-Farisi Mosque, demanding the demolition of the three-story mosque's already built structures.
The order was issued under the pretext that the mosque's renovations were done without the proper licensing, Daghlas said.
The PA official believes that given the current circumstances, Israel's decision was a "dangerous procedure."
Tawfiq Jabarin, a Palestinian lawyer, who has taken over the case, said that the Israeli Construction and Structure department in Beit El had issued the demolition order.
The order gave the Palestinians seven days to dismantle the mosque building, Jabarin said.
The mosque -- surrounded by Palestinian homes built since 1967-- was being funded by local residents and is the second-largest mosque in the village.
Burin's mayor, Ali Eid said Israeli authorities claimed the mosque was in area C, thereby falling under Israel's full purview.
Jabarin said Israeli courts dismiss "verbal agreements," adding that a stop-order must be officially issued by the Civil Administration detailing the demolition's suspension.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[23 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Well, if some Jihadi Imams are inside when it is razed, it could be a win-win situation.
#9
We HAVE the capability to remove about 48 million Moslems from existence in about 24 hours if we want to do it and have the Will.
Its in the Will. When the Threat matches the Will we...will. The whole Nation can go homicidal in a day IF we get another 911.
Its always out there. Even small amounts of force can pull a trigger ...you just have to point and aim..and pull. the. trigger.
Its the Will. We can Choose to kill all of them.
We Do have the capability. They dont have the capability, they do have the Will. Essentially that is the difference between us...Will...not capability.
Posted by: ed ||
03/15/2010 8:52
Comments ||
Top||
#13
I thought that it had an odd point of view.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
03/15/2010 9:22
Comments ||
Top||
#14
Oooh, BUT Egyptians doing the same to Copts who build unauthorized churches is peaaaaachy keen!
The hypocrisy embedded in Islam's treatment of non-muslims, along with their outrage when they receive measure for measure, is proof positive that Islam is NOT the logical descentant and ultimate development of either Judaism or Christianity, who imposed a much higher and more demanding standard for judging and treating others.
#15
The order was issued under the pretext that the mosque's renovations were done without the proper licensing,
Interesting that Iran PressTV felt the need to mention that the mosque builders were breaking the law, and that the PA believes that enforcing the law is a dangerous procedure. And that the village already has an approved mosque, a bigger one.
#20
Mods, I have to disagree with you on sink-trapping Black Bart's comment - it didn't seem he was calling for genocide but stating the fact that it could (i.e. we have the means to make it) happen if actions transpired to generate the WILL to do it. More a warning than a threat.
The Egyptian twittersphere has been on fire over rumors that President Hosni Mubarak has passed away in Germany. The frantic re-tweeting and attempts to get further information were in full swing Saturday afternoon after reports that Russian television ran a story saying the Egyptian president was dead.
"I wonder if Mubarak really has died, maybe they want to delay [the] announcement till we're over Tantawy's death? Lest Tantawy takes spotlight?" wrote one Twitterer concerning the possible death of the president.
It is the question that will surely continue until either confirmation comes from the government or the president is seen in good health.
Rumors have been ongoing for the past three days after local state-run media reported that the aging president had tissue removed in surgery, but that he did not have cancer. They said he had been taken out of the intensive care unit in a German hospital and was in stable condition. It is unclear at this point what the exact situation is in Germany.
"What's interesting, though, is that we've been hearing the same bit of news over Mubarak for 3 days now. Weird, isn't it?" asked another Twitter user.
Despite the online chatter, Egyptian officials have denied that Mubarak has died. This comes only days after Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar Mohamed Sayyid Tantawi died of a heart attack in Saudi Arabia at the age of 82.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
My goodness. Is there no place the long arm of the Mossad can't reach? /sarc
[Al Arabiya Latest] Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Sunday that Iranians should shun next week's Persian fire festival as it is un-Islamic and creates "a lot of harm."
Chaharshanbe Soori, an ancient Pagan festival, is held on the eve of the last Wednesday of the Persian calendar year. This year the ritual falls on the night of March 16.
Khamenei, Iran's all-powerful cleric, said on his website that Chaharshanbe Soori has "no basis in sharia (Islamic law) and creates a lot of harm and corruption (which is why) it is appropriate to avoid it."
The festival is a prelude to Nowrouz, the Persian New Year which starts on March 21 and marks the arrival of spring.
In the past few years, local municipalities have helped Iranians organize the festival but it is unclear whether they will do so this year in the wake of Khamenei's remarks.
Iranians celebrate the fire festival by lighting bonfires in public places on the night before the last Wednesday and leaping over the flames shouting "Sorkhiye to az man, Zardiye man az to (Give me your redness and I will give you my paleness)."
Leaping over the flames symbolizes the wish for happiness in the new year and an end to the sufferings of the past year. Several casualties are reported from the event every year and many participants suffer burn wounds, including from accidents with firecrackers linked to the event.
Some clerics see the ritual as heretical fire worshipping, although it has been marked in Iran for centuries and, like the Persian New Year itself and some other ancient rituals, has survived the advent of Islam.
Perceptions are that supporters of Iranian opposition leaders could use the ritual this year to stage anti-government protests.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
Do you get the impression from the Iranian News that the Mullahs there are running scared?
They see threats everywhere. And the "help" in the kitchen preparing their meals arent being paid all that lavishly either.
Does the water taste funny? And that smell, what IS that smell?
Its the rich aroma of Allah coming home to spend the Holidays with those He loves.
#2
The fire festival is Zoroastrian, pure and simple, and is a major threat to the Mullahs, and they know it. The "old money" Iranian upper classes are Zoroastrian, and utterly despise Muslims. So the Mullahs have been trying very hard to wipe out all Zoroastrian holy sites, and oppress them wherever they can.
So far, the revolt has been from the "Muslims on the street". But if the Zoroastrians can turn this fire festival into an anti-government demonstration, it will fortify the revolt, because they know that the traditional upper classes back them. And that could be very, very bad news for the Mullahs.
Mumbai: Cautioning against environmental propaganda' Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh told journalists here on Saturday that the West was using the science of climate change for political gains.
Mr. Ramesh was on a visit to the Indian Institute of Technology (Bombay), where he met heads and faculty of all the seven IITs to discuss the formation of a pan-IIT network to research environment issues.
In response to a question on the climate change talks to be held in Mexico later this year, Mr. Ramesh said, It's too early to say, but I am not very optimistic simply because the United States will not be in a position to deliver climate change legislation because of their domestic political compulsions. A lot of western politicians like to use the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] reports for political purposes. We believe in the IPCC as a scientific body and not a political body. We must distinguish climate evangelism from climate science. We support climate science. There is no doubt in my mind that many western countries have distorted and misused IPCC reports to suit political purposes. This, India will never accept. The issue of glaciers is one example.'
In terms of a judicial reform in the area of environment, Mr. Ramesh said, the National Green Tribunal Bill would come before Parliament next week. The Bill would empower citizens to go to courts and claim civil damages resulting from flouting of environmental norms by industries and any other body. The Union Cabinet cleared the bill in December 2009, after the Standing Committee examined it and submitted its recommendations in November last.
In his address to the faculty and students of IIT, he stressed the need for indigenous research on the impact of climate change on India, because you will always have motivated reports,' he said. He went back to an instance where a U.S. report in the 90s stated that methane emissions from Indian wet paddy cultivation was 38 million tonnes per year, resulting in tremendous international pressure on India. However, with the intervention and research of the late Dr. A.P. Mitra it was proved that the emissions were between two to six million tonnes, Mr. Ramesh said.
He said because of the dependence on the monsoons for agriculture and demographics, the nation's vulnerability to climate change was the highest in the world.
By May this year his Ministry would be releasing an emissions inventory for 2007, to be updated every two years.
The last data on emissions dates back to 1994,' he said. In November this year the Ministry is set to come up with a 4/4 assessment report on the impact of climate change. The report would look at four sectors, agriculture, health, water and forests and four regions, the Himalayan ecosystems, the Western Ghats, the North East and the coastal areas.
The Ministry also proposed to set up the National Environment Protection Authority (NEPA), on the lines of the Environmental Protection Authority of the U.S. with a view to strengthening the regulatory framework and improving the environmental governance. A study has been awarded to the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, to work out the scope and configuration of the proposed NEPA.
Institutional collaboration
Mr. Ramesh identified four areas for institutional collaboration, namely, water, cleaner coal, solar energy and Co2 capture and sequestration. The Minister announced the institution of post-doctoral fellowships by September this year to further research in environment sciences. He invited proposals from the IITs on the subject of cleaning the heavily polluted Ganges.
In the light of the controversy over Bt brinjal, the Minister called for an interface of science and society.' He said, while a scientific approach to environment was needed, issues had political and social ramifications. It is impossible to look at scientific issues in isolation. In climate change, science has come into dispute. The distinction between advocacy and science has got blurred.'
Mr. Ramesh advocated a middle path taking into account the nation's aims of achieving high levels of growth and well as the health of our environment. Growth fundamentalism is as bad as ecological fundamentalism. Environment is not a luxury, it's a day-to-day concern,' he said.
Posted by: john frum ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under:
Army reinforcements rushed into Bangkok
Tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators marched on military HQ
Demanding that the government dissolve Parliament
Peaceful so far
Blame PM for winning last election
Thaksin addressed crowd by video link
Thaksin pro'ly behind it all
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under:
Business writer Carly Harrington, Knoxville News Sentinel
Hospitals would have to reassess the services they offer patients. Small rural hospitals would be at risk of closing. Some physicians likely would just walk away from seeing TennCare recipients.
The governor's proposal to reduce overall spending to the state's expanded Medicaid program in fiscal 2011 by $860 million has presented hospitals with one of the toughest situations they have ever faced, health care officials say.
Continued on Page 49
"He learned, almost too late, that man is a feeling creature and, because of it, the greatest in the universe. He learned, too late for himself, that men have to make their own way, to make their own mistakes. There can't be any gift of perfection from outside ourselves. And, when men seek such perfection, they find there's only death, fire, loss, disillusionment, the end of everything that's gone forward. Men have always sought an end to toil and misery. It can't be given; it has to be achieved. There is hope, but it has to come from inside, from man himself. Dr. Paul Nelson, It Conquered the World
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
03/15/2010 0:56
Comments ||
Top||
#5
Good actor. Better than some of the ones out now.
This is, of course, rather grave news...
(Sorry, just couldn't resist. Hoping the best for his family.)
One of the very best (worst) of the cheesy '50s sci-fi flicks, and justly hammered on MST3K.
My favorite scene: the grasshoppers are attacking Chicago and decide to climb the Wrigley Building where Peter and his fellow scientists (including the chaste babe) are. Now production values for this flick are modest. Really modest.
How modest are they?
So-o-o-o-o modest that they film the attack scene by placing a grasshopper on what looks like a postcard of the Wrigley building and swinging the camera so that it looks like the grasshopper is climbing the building.
Later after Peter works his magic to drive the grasshoppers off (he IS Peter Graves after all) they just turn the grasshopper around, swing the camera to the other side and now the grasshopper is going down the Wrigley Building.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/15/2010 9:46
Comments ||
Top||
#10
They know it was Peter Graves, and not someone in a latex mask?
"He's a Nazi, Price is. For all I know his name is Preissinger or Preishoffer. Oh, sure, he lived in Cleveland. But when the war broke out, he came back to the Fatherland like a good little Bundist. He spoke our lingo, so they sent him to spy school and fixed him up with phony dog tags."
#14
Spot: I'd believe it. Villains had to be awful careful back then. Everybody thought Martin Landau was brilliant in North By Northwest, before pausing and saying, "He's not like that in real life, is he? He was just acting, right?"
And when Bruce Dern killed John Wayne in The Cowboys, he practically had to go into hiding.
Even today, the guy who played the angel of death on the TV show Touched By An Angel, had to fly incognito, because other passengers refused to be on the same plane. Once or twice, even a flight crew refused.
[Straits Times] THOUSANDS of anti-government protesters in Bangkok plan to march to a military base on Monday to step up pressure on Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to dissolve parliament and call fresh elections.
The red-shirted supporters of former premier Thaksin Shinawatra have given the government an ultimatum: call elections by midday on Monday or face crippling mass demonstrations.
The protests which began on Friday and involved more than 150,000 people by Sunday have been peaceful, and the 'red shirts' say they will remain that way. But Monday's march could stoke anger by paralysing already-congested streets in Bangkok.
'We will march over there, brothers and sisters. We will go to the infantry to get an answer from Abhisit himself,' said Mr Nattawut Saikua, a leader of the protest group, the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD).
'With this many people on the streets, I don't see how he still thinks he has any legitimacy,' he added.
Protest leaders hope a powerful display of popular support will force Mr Abhisit to dissolve parliament and call an election that Thaksin allies would be well-placed to win. They also want to convince wavering partners in his coalition to break away.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
The red-shirted supporters of former premier Thaksin Shinawatra ...
I see "Star Trek" has never been popular in Thailand.
#2
GolfBravoUSMC, I've had a few quiet comments in my email -- it seems some of your recent pictures have been not safe for youngsters looking over parental shoulders. If you would be kind enough to make them links instead? My in-box would thank you.
#5
Programmer to programmer heads up, fred. I only punched the "submit" button once, and got two duplicate posts. Response time was excellent, with no delays. Can't imagine how that happened.
#11
Highlander, it's the ones that are images rather than click-through links that I was talking about. A person who chooses to take offense at something they have made an effort to see deserves to be offended. As it happens, dear GolfBravo has put up nothing that I've found offensive -- it's just male silliness as far as I'm concerned, differing from female silliness only in that it's not the kind in which I partake. But others have written to me, and I passed on their concerns.
[Bangla Daily Star] Rapid Action Battalion yesterday arrested three suspected Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (Huji) members in connection with the bomb blasts that killed five people during a Communist Party of Bangladesh rally in 2001.
Those arrested are Moulana Idris Ali, Moulana Abdul Latif and Sakhawat Hossain alias Dulal.
Inspector Mrinal Kanti of the Criminal Investigation Department confirmed that Idris and Latif are suspects in the case.
He said that Sakhawat will be questioned further to determine whether he is also an accused.
Sakhawat and 11 other accused were previously cleared of involvement in the blasts when the former investigation officer submitted his final report.
However Rab claims that the three men are Huji operatives and that they were accused in the case filed for the blasts went off on January 20, 2001 at Paltan Maidan in Dhaka that also wounded around 50 others.
Sarwar Hossain, Sakhawat's brother-in-law, however claimed that Shakhawat was never involved with Huji. He also said his relative is the general secretary of Dhaka City CNG-Auto-rickshaw and Mishuk Sramik Union as well as publicity secretary of Bhashantek Punarbashan Prokalpa Sangram Parishad (BPPSP).
Sakhawat was also the former secretary of Dhaka city's central committee of Jatiya Party (Manju's) labour front, the Jatiya Sramajibi Party.
Mishuk Sramik Union President FA Khan Firoz, also adviser of Dhaka City CNG-Auto-rickshaw Union, said that a Rab team picked Sakhawat up on February 16 from Bhashantek.
Firoz alleges that a developer of 'Bhashantek Rehabilitation Project' might influence Rab to arrest Shakhawat as he, under the banner of BPPSP, organised slum dwellers protesting their eviction from the project area by the developer.
BPPSP leaders also brought the same allegation against the developer at a press conference in the city on March 3.
The government awarded a work to the developer to construct flats for middle and lower income people after its decision in September 2003.
A team from the Rab intelligence wing captured the three men during a five-hour raid from 12:30 am yesterday at Krishimarket, Town Hall and Dhaka Uddyan in Mohammadpur.
Sources in Huji said that Idris was a member of Huji and Latif was a trainer of explosives of the banned militant organisation.
The two men were previously arrested for their involvement in various deadly attacks.
When they were released on bail they both absconded.
Commander Sohail, legal and media wing director of Rab, told a press conference at its headquarters in Uttara that the three arrestees are number 2, 20 and 22 accused in the case, which has 24 suspects.
Asked about Shakhawat, the Rab director said in primary interrogation Shakhawat admitted that he is a member of Huji.
He also that now only Moulana Monir remains at large.
Law enforcers started a fresh move to arrest all suspects accused of politically-motivated violence following instructions to do so from the home ministry.
Detained Idris is a relative of detained Huji Dhaka City unit president Moulana Abu Taher and Moulana Tajuddin, who supplied grenades that were used in the attack on an Awami League rally on 21 August 2004.
Idris is the brother-in-law of Arif Hasan Sumon, who is also an accused in the CPB blasts case.
Following the bomb attack, CPB President Manjurul Ahsan Khan filed a case with Motijheel police station.
A top Huji leader, Mufti Abdul Hannan, as well as several other members have been arrested for their involvement in the bomb blasts.
Two Indian nationals and Lasker-e-Taiba members have also been arrested and are currently on remand for interrogation.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[14 views]
Top|| File under: HUJI
Space Exploration Technologies successfully test fired its Falcon 9 rocket this weekend, clearing a milestone toward the inaugural flight of a privately developed spaceship to fly cargo, and possibly astronauts, into orbit, the company said.
Saturday's 3.5-second 'static' firing of the Falcon's nine kerosene and liquid oxygen-burning motors took place on a refurbished oceanside launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. It followed an earlier firing test aborted last week due to an improperly configured valve.
The successful test by California-based SpaceX clears the way for Falcon 9's debut mission -- a demonstration flight which could take place as early as April 12 from the same launch site, just south of the space shuttle launch pads at the Kennedy Space Center.
President Barack Obama has proposed adding $6 billion to space agency NASA's budget over the next five years to help private firms like SpaceX develop spaceships that can ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, which he wants to continue until at least 2020.
With the NASA shuttle fleet retiring due to safety and cost concerns, the U.S. agency has turned over space station crew transport to the Russian government at a cost of about $15 million per seat.
Obama plans to hold a summit in Florida next month to discuss the U.S. space plans and industry.
SpaceX, owned and operated by Internet entrepreneur Elon Musk, already holds NASA contracts worth nearly $1.9 billion to develop and fly Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon capsules for space station cargo resupply missions.
Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp has NASA contracts of similar value for its Taurus II-Cygnus system, which is scheduled to debut next year.
SpaceX says it needs about three years to develop a launch escape system for Dragon and other upgrades to have Falcon 9 ready for passenger service.
"What we are going through right now is the equivalent of 'beta testing'," Musk, SpaceX's founder and chief executive, wrote in an email after last week's aborted test. "The beta phase only ends when a rocket has done at least one, but arguably two or three consecutive flights to orbit," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
ION WMF > GLOBAL STRIKE OPERATIONS [GSO]: US/USAF PREPARES TO LAUNCH GLOBAL DETERRENT FORCE TO BECOME WORLD STRATEGIC BOMBING'S
"UNCONTESTED TOP DOG".
Global Strike Command = "Prompt Strike".
* WAFF > [Strategypage]AVOIDING ANOTHER PEARL HARBOR. KIMMIE = NORTH KOREA will prob need another TEN YEARS [2010 thru 2020] TO BE ABLE TO DEV, MANUFACTURE INDIGENOUS LR MISSLES WID NUCLEAR, OTHER ADVANC STRATEGIC WARHEADS.
To where? The station. Mighty singular function that has returned what in practical application other than to consume resources. Disney already is having a challenging time with their existing resort system to make the station a unique destination get away.
About the only cargo that would seem to have a profit potential would be for South American drug runners. If you can afford submarines, you probably could look at an alternative means of transportation. Stripping out redundant backup systems and getting a kamikaze pilot to make a one way run. At least you can strip out the costs of bribes, small armies, and ground transportation across the border they currently carry in the expense column.
#5
I look at this from an entirely different angle.
Private spacecraft is the way to go.
No government crap, just clear flights similar to the FAA system to avoid collisions, and inform the Military so you don't get tracked as Hostile, then lift.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/15/2010 13:13
Comments ||
Top||
#6
Let's hope it gets away and all goes as planned on April 12, 49th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight, so we can raise our glasses to Yuri and the SpaceX crew that night.
Posted by: Aussie Mike ||
03/15/2010 19:32
Comments ||
Top||
[Al Arabiya Latest] Egypt cancelled the formal opening on Sunday of a renovated 19th-century synagogue in Cairo in protest at what antiquities chief Zahi Hawass called "provocative" Jewish and Israeli actions.
Both Hawass and Culture Minister Faruq Hosni had been due to attend the event a week to the day after 150 people, including rabbis and the US and Israeli ambassadors, attended the rededication of the Maimonides synagogue.
Citing press reports, Hawass said in a statement that the cancellation comes after "provocative" acts during the March 7 ceremony in Cairo's ancient Jewish quarter. He referred to "dancing and drinking alcohol in the synagogue, as reported by several newspapers," and said such acts "were seen to provoke the feelings of millions of Muslims in Egypt and across the world."
These are normal Jewish behaviours at celebrations large and small, and therefore offensive to Allah, who is so clearly displeased it when Jews are happy. We can tell because he has so often caused the Jews to lose wars fought against Arabs in the last six decades or so, removing causes for Jewish celebration.
The feelings of Muslims do seem to be provoked rather easily ...
The decision was also taken at "a time when Muslim holy sites in occupied Palestine face assaults from Israeli occupation forces and settlers," Hawass said. He was referring to clashes at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound and plans to include two contested West Bank holy shrines on a list of Israeli heritage sites.
This of course has nothing to do with reopening a Jewish place of worship, and therefore it is perfectly logical that Dr. Hawass connect them.
However, the antiquities supremo also said Egypt took an interest in "all Islamic, Coptic and Jewish antiquities on its territory," because all were part of the country's heritage. "These projects are overseen by the Supreme Council of Antiquities without funds from abroad or from foreigners or Jews," Hawass said of work to restore Jewish sites.
"In other words, this synagogue is part of the heritage of Muslim Egyptians, the others being mere sojourners so long as they have permission, even should their family trace back to the First Dynasty itself. Capeesh?"
The Maimonides synagogue, known in Egypt by its Arabic name of Musa bin Maymun, is named after the 12th century Jewish scholar, philosopher and physician.
Egypt began restoration work on Jewish sites several years ago.
The country restored diplomatic ties with Israel in 1979, but many in the predominantly Muslim nation are against better cultural ties with the Jewish state. The authorities are generally discreet about restoration work on Jewish sites, fearing an adverse reaction from groups that oppose normalisation of ties with Israel.
Egypt's Jewish population, which numbered in the tens of thousands and enjoyed complete religious freedom, began a mass exodus after Egypt and several other Arab countries fought a war in 1948 with the new state of Israel.
Shortly after 1948 Egypt made it illegal for male Jews aged eighteen or older to be within the country's borders. The second exodus was not quite so precipitous as the first, but did not involve forty years of wandering through the desert.
Only a few dozen Jews still remain in Egypt.
If there are only a few dozen, they'd only rattle around in that beautifully refurbished synagogue anyway, and they'd never be able to afford the upkeep. Just as well Supremo Hawass is playing keep away with it. Soon enough Egypt will be Judenfrei anyway, and this way there won't be any tracked in mud or fingerprints to clean up.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
North Korea has reportedly increased the deployment of counter-intelligence officials to China in light of the reclusive country's mounting social tensions over its recent currency reform.
Radio Free Asia says the number of North Korean counter-intelligence officials stationed at China's Yanji city in Jilin Province rose from six to more than 10 in February. The men are said to be in charge of exposing contacts leaking inside information outside the border and also collecting data on North Korean human rights groups based in Seoul.
Quoting an unnamed Chinese official, RFA also said the counter-intelligence officials were working to find the names of those who help sources within the North contact people in South Korea.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[10 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
WMF > "FORBES" AMERICAN MEDIA: US WILL NO LONGER BE ABLE TO USE WAR [ + Economy/Economics] TO DEFEAT CHINA???
#2
BHARAT RALSHAK > [Mil, Econ stronger] CHINA HAS NO PLAN FOR OVERSEAS BASES.
versus
WMF > [2010-2030/2050]EUROPE, NOT THE US, IS CHINA'S MAIN ECONOMIC, GEOPOL OPPONENT.
* TOPIX > EUROZONE FACES BIG DANGER OF DECOUPLING. Curr GREECE + related EMF, IMF Crises shows PAN-EUROPEAN CONVERGENCE is still largely incomplete, wid potent fears of individual or groups of EU States following divergent paths.
Looky looks like the Euros are re-learning the OLD ADAGE > ALL POLITICS/ECONOMICS IS LOCAL???
#3
This would be an excellent opportunity to smudge the Norks by using a disinformation program to make it look like they were spying on the Chinese military, with an eye to doing something incredibly stupid.
Obama adviser asks if Beck is "man enough" to "dialogue" about "social justice"
I don't think Mr. Beck is interested in social justice, at least not as President Obama defines the term. I'm actually not, either, although I'm interested in the kind of social justice that teaches a person to fish so that he (all shes are included in the nominative pronoun by English's grammar default) can support himself and his family if he is willing to work hard and grow in the job.
#1
Forget Mr. Beck. Let's ask the EXPERTS! How about a "dialogue" about "social justice" with Fidel Castro? He's been at it down there for a little over 50 years. Let's see how he's doing.
#2
Look at it this way. We are faced with a malignant enemy who is inferior to us in major ways. They are "Rage boys" from monkeyland and wear turbans and copy us but dont innovate or create anything except what they buy from us.
They burn down schools and squat. They are Moslems.
And they hate us, really really sincerely HATE us.
And they hate Jews too...for much the same reasons as they hate us. We have flush toilets and can zap your ass with a missile launched from a drone and then go back to the tent for a Beer.
It will go on for as long as the Irish bomb Belfast until we get tired enough of dragging ..it..all.. out...for ..some ...PC...piss...and decidetojustkill a whole lot of them at once and smellitcooking and glowinginthedark.
I mean, you CAN wake up one morning and decide they are all EXPENDABLE and not worth the effort of treating them as anything but BBQ. Say lets do it Wednesday as soon as we find the button box.
It IS as easy as the distance between your thumb and your finger. You just dont care if they have names anymore or if their mother loves them. Get her too.
or do you WANT this war to go on...and on....and on...until they put something really DIRTY in your kids lap?
Quit lying to yourself about "Peace". Let the EUroweenies tell you about bending over and inviting the Moslems to be your neighbors. And get some of that Hopenchange while you are at it.
And be sure to join the Happy Holidays bunch at the Mall, Chuck. Listen to Moslems tell you Jesus never died, that's all BS, he got some Jew to do it. And that flag you have, the Red, White, and Blue one. That's an oppressors flag, an Imperialist flag, lets apologise for it.
You either fight , Dwayne, or they will drop the soap on the shower floor and get you to pick it up.
#3
Black Bart, the glowing glass option remains, or rubble so fine it's dust. But we need to give the other a fair try so we can look our grandchildren in the eye if in the end we have proved it won't work. What I'm hearing from the people on the ground is, "Give us more time, we can do this." When they stop saying that, then we can load up the bomb bays and the missile launchers with the heavy duty stuff.
Until then? There are senior Muslim religious leaders claiming six million conversions to Christianity each year; others who say there are secretly significantly more -- both outright conversions and quiet falling away from belief. Most of the residents of the Gaza Strip would leave if they were able, and the same sentiment holds throughout the Muslim world. Yes, too many would bring their pathologies with them, but they do realize things aren't right at home. Even more realize the Caliphate will not be established any time soon, and that in fact the jihadis have lost this round. They may hate us, but their god seems to have chosen us to punish them -- after all, when they venture away from home they mostly seem to get caught before they can accomplish anything useful, whereas at home they can blow up one another as long as they can find someone to make the vests and IEDs.
As for dropping the soap? We have private showers in our homes. All their soap dropping is only going to lead to pulled hamstrings as they bend over to pick it up again because there won't be anyone else there.
#5
Using the Irish as an example... The conflict with militant Islam will continue until people stop making excuses for murder. When that stops the money stops and the terrorists will start to blow up stuff that costs a lot of money and causes terrible inconvenience rather than killing people. Than terrorism loses its romance (to losers that is) but at the same time a Democracy can make a deal with them (again I'm not sure Islam can do this because the deal they want requires total surrender and submission).
#6
Anyway what is "Social Justice"? One group believes in equality of opportunity the other of equality of outcomes. I think one is possible and in fact very healthy for a society to strive for and the other is not possible and will tank an economy and has tended to create millions of dead.
#7
They Bible is one thing and the Constitution is quite another. Ever hear of the concept of separation of Church and State?
Charity, when it's voluntary and motivated by genuine good will, is a noble thing. Taxes for some "community organizer's" idea of "social justice" and taken at the point of a gun are quite another...especially when the people who vote for the community organizer pay no taxes.
Can we get some clarity on that point? Is it too much to ask?
#8
Wow Black Bart - fabulous summary of what I've been thinking since DS/DS. Let's follow the advice of the Abbot of Citeaux " . . . God will know his own"
Posted by: Bob Gleanter3083 ||
03/15/2010 13:37
Comments ||
Top||
#10
TW, I actually suspect that BB may be correct about conversions away from Islam. I have thought for quite some time that Islam is a hollow shell, and only the threat of death for apostasy keeps an appearance of strength and order. I did a two-part essay about all this (here and here) ages ago, and everything that I see happening in the world still convinces me that I am right. Islam is a hollow shell, and the upper echelons of their leadership know it - and that is why they react to violently.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was discharged from a Seoul hospital on Sunday after being treated for a stomach virus.
Kissinger suddenly came down with stomach pains on Saturday and was rushed to Yonsei Severance Hospital where he received a thorough check-up including an MRI and X-rays. Doctors concluded that there was nothing serious and after receiving simple treatment he was discharged at around 11 am.
The 86-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate arrived in Seoul on Wednesday for a security forum. During his five-day stay he also met with President Lee Myung-bak. Kissinger was originally scheduled to depart for Beijing on Saturday but due to his health condition he left on Sunday.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/15/2010
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Live long and Prosper, elder statesman.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/15/2010 13:15
Comments ||
Top||
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.
WASHINGTON, March 14 (UPI) -- Some moderate House Democrats tell Politico they are less than anxious to have U.S. President Barack Obama campaign for them.
He just won't die.
As predicted, the bishops of the Church of Man-Made Climate Change have directed their flock to begin attacking The Great Satan -- newspapers that have the hardihood to report and/or editorialize on the hardy har har that is "global warming."
No matter how bad the news, no matter how grim the headlines, you could always count on a smile from at least one corner of the daily newspaper: the comics. Newspapers are cutting back on comics because of economic troubles.
Israel says they captured the last senior official of Hamas' armed wing still at large in the Ramallah area. 
[Al Arabiya Latest] Despite international assistance the Somali government's military forces are ineffective and corrupt, and it remains dependent on foreign troops for survival, a U.N. group concluded in a report.
[Dawn] Ahl-i-Sunnat leader Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Nadeem, who was attacked by unidentified gunmen on Thursday, succumbed to his injuries in a local hospital Sunday.
The new U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights issues has reaffirmed that the U.S. will not normalize relations with the North unless it improves the treatment of its people. Robert King was speaking at the State Department on Friday in his first meeting with reporters since he started the job. 
[Al Arabiya Latest] The health of Egypt's president is improving following gallbladder surgery last week, a spokeswoman for the German hospital where he is receiving treatment said on Sunday.
The Egyptian twittersphere has been on fire over rumors that President Hosni Mubarak has passed away in Germany. The frantic re-tweeting and attempts to get further information were in full swing Saturday afternoon after reports that Russian television ran a story saying the Egyptian president was dead.
