Yemeni Al-Qaeda leader Fahd al-Quso who was wanted in connection with the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole has been killed in an air raid in eastern Yemen on Sunday, a tribal chief told AFP.
"Fahd al-Quso, who was wanted by the United States for the attack against the USS Cole, was killed tonight (Sunday) in an American raid on the Rafadh region" in the Shabwa province, said tribal chief Abdel Magid bin Farid al-Awlaqi.
The October 2000 attack on the US Navy destroyer, the USS Cole, in Yemen's port of Aden killed 17 sailors and wounded 40 more.
Quso was killed when two missiles slammed near his home in Rafadh, east of Ataq, the provincial capital of Shabwa province, the tribal chief said, adding that two of the suspect's body guards were also killed in the raid.
And the cousins will have to provide house space to the surviving residents...
Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack on the USS Cole which was carried out when militants riding an explosives-laden skiff blew a 30-foot by 30-foot (10-meter by 10 meter) hole in the USS Cole. The USS Cole was in the port of Aden for a routine fuel stop when it was attacked.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday called for early elections in four months during his speech at the Likud convention.
"It is preferable to have a short election campaign of four months that will swiftly return stability to the political ranks," Netanyahu stated, although he did not explicitly mention the September 4 date many have speculated would be the election date.
"Coalition stability has begun to crumble, opening the door to blackmail and populism," Netanyahu stated in justification of early elections. He added that a strong, powerful Likud will bring stability to the country.
It looks like Socialist Francois Hollande has won the French presidency. His platform: raise taxes on business to fund a lower retirement age and more spending. Things dont look good for poor old France. Either Hollande will stick to his promises and ruin the economy or hell u-turn and reveal himself to be a reckless opportunist. Whether he's a fool or a knave, this election cycle has exposed just how broken the French political system is. The kind of economic reforms that are necessary to put the country back to work simply cant be enacted under the present arrangement. France needs to change. She needs another Napoleon.
Ever since the French Revolution of 1789, the French have struggled to keep a constitution going beyond two or three generations (theres a reason why la grande dame is on her fifth republic). The cause is the imbalance between government rooted in law and the free expression of mass democracy. On the one hand, the French revolutionaries wanted to create a government that limited powers and liberated the economy (one of the first things they did was abolish serfdom and end regulation of the grain market). On the other hand, to give the new government legitimacy they acknowledged the political authority of the Parisian mob. What was the point of democracy if children starved? The policies passed by elected delegates had to be rubber-stamped by the sans-culottes.
The result was that within a few years of the revolution, the constitution (by far the most admirably liberal in the world) was suspended and terror was the order of the day. Food prices were set by the government and paper money was printed to keep the mob happy. A consensus was reached that veered between moments of chaos and stultifying bureaucratic corruption. Eventually the rotten system was brought to an end by Napoleon, on 9 November 1799. Napoleon kept what was best about the republic and established an empire in its place. This is the pattern of French history: revolution, chaos, consensus, breakdown and a coup led by a strong man who embodies the nation. Charles de Gaulle did it twice: first as the leader of the Free French in the 1940s and second in 1958, when he formed the current Fifth Republic.
#2
As the mighty P.J.O'Rourke said: 6. Whenever youre unsure about what course to take in life, ask yourself, What would France do?You see, France is a treasure to mankind. French ideas, French beliefs, and French actions form a sort of loadstone for humanity. Because a moral compass needle needs a butt end. Whatever direction France is pointing intoward Nazi collaboration, Communism, existentialism, Jerry Lewis movies, or President Sarkozys personal lifeyou can go the other way with a clear conscience.
To argue in favor of a new Napoleon is to advocate a future for the French and Europeans both disenfranchised and filled with organized mass slaughter; death on an industrial scale that the Islamofascists could neither imagine nor create. All civilized people recoil from such a vision.
#7
The thesis is anything but insane. The new Napolean is already in place and gaining strength. It is called the EU it is the anti-democracy with nary a demos in sight.
IF, and that's a big if, Hollande tries to buck the EU elites with his economic policies he will be brought down quickly through whatever mechanism is at hand. If he proves a liar and elite toady than France will just become one more vassal state of the EUSSR.
He is not charismatic enough to buck the EU and survive even if he wanted to try and regain a sovereign France.
#11
Equating the EU with Bonapartist France is ignorant and dangerous.
In the EU protesters military service is essentially voluntary, and rioters protesting government policies are mollycoddled by the police.
In Bonapartist France millions of people were compelled into military service leading to vast death and destruction, and rioters protesting government policies were met with a "whiff of the grape".
The ability of the vaunted EU to do anything is based on the willingness of the people there to tolerate it. People may not like it, but they tolerate it. The ability of the French Empire to do anything was based on its willingness to kill anyone who disagreed.
For comparison, I guarantee that if Spain exited the EU tomorrow not one EU soldier would invade Spain to change its policy. Napoleon sent over 300,000.
Posted by: Barbara ||
05/06/2012 21:50
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#15
IRRC, see also FREEREPUBLIC > FRANCOIS HOLLANDE HAS TEN MONTHS TO AVOID/PREVENT FRANCE BOND CRISIS.
FYI, apparently a large number of anti-Sarkozy = pro-Hollande Supporters really wanted to do bad thingys to Sarkey, e.g....
> Force Sarkey to wear a Burqua.
> Demanded that Sarkey be put in prison.
> Shoot him just because they want to.
BOY-O-BOY, YA'D THINK SARKOZY WAS ONE OF 'CUZIN PARIS "HANG 'EM HIGH" HILTON'S CRIMINAL PENCIL ABUSERS???
Posted by: Fred ||
05/06/2012
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#1
Happy Birthday/Daily Gam Shot
Wolke Hegenbarth (German) aka Katja in "Freundinnen und andere Monster (Friends and other Monster)(1998)" aka Alexandra Degenhardt in "Mein Leben & ich (My Life & I)(TV 2001-2010)" aka Naomi Kruse in "Der Prinz von nebenan (The prince next door)(2008)" aka Lisa in "Im Brautkleid durch Afrika (The Wedding Dress by Africa)(2010)" aka Kattrin Marten in "Die Schönste aus Bitterfeld (The fairest of Bitterfeld)(2003)"(age 32)
Russia will keep backing the peaceful settlement plan in Syria, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said Lavrov and UN special envoy Kofi Annan had a telephone conversation on the latters initiative earlier on Saturday.
Annan informed Lavrov of his efforts designed to achieve peaceful settlement in Syria, the statement said. Annan thanked the Russian side for assistance.
The ceasefire agreement between the armed Syrian opposition and government troops brokered by Annan was signed on April 12 but has been repeatedly violated since.
Lavrov also said arms smuggling to Syria is inadmissible.
Arms smuggling to Syria is inadmissible as it destabilizes the situation in the country and region in general, he said.
Russia supplies Syria with a variety of weapons including anti-ship and air-defense missiles, armored vehicles and aircraft. Russia earlier said that it sold arms to Syria in accordance with existing contracts but that these deliveries were not in contravention of any international agreements.
Annans representative said in Geneva on Friday that the ceasefire agreement was producing the desired effect, slowly but surely. He urged patience and said the plan implementation would take time as the crisis in Syria has been going on for over a year now.
More than 9,000 people have been killed in Syria since the outbreak of the popular uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in March, 2011, the UN said.
Moscow has twice vetoed UN Security Council resolutions over what it called a pro-rebel bias since the start of the uprising against Assad, but has given its full backing to Annans peace plan.
Now that Erdogen has the refugees, what is he going to do with them? Assad is going nowhere and I'm sure he won't let the refugees back. In fact his strategy seem to be to send much more to Erdogens welcoming arms.
Treated to a hero's welcome, Turkey's prime minister has met Syrian refugees for the first time since his country opened its doors to tens of thousands of Syrians fleeing their government's crackdown on a popular uprising.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed on Sunday to defend the rights of the Syrian people, saying they were close to achieving success. He was greeted by joyous Syrians at the largest refugee camp near the border.
Erdogan has urged Syrian President Bashar Assad to quit and has encouraged the Syrian opposition to unify and present a credible political alternative. His visit to the border region comes before a parliamentary election in neighbouring Syria, where the government's heavy-handed reaction to civilian protests more than a year ago is threatening to spawn a full-scale militarised conflict.
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"Bashar is losing blood day by day," Erdogan said in an address to thousands of joyous Syrians at the camp near the town of Kilis. "Sooner or later, those who have oppressed our Syrian brothers will be accounted for before their nation. Your victory is close."
#4
China doesn't need this, but is fundamentally incapable of concluding alliances with other countries. There are Chinese, and then there are inferiors. When they start getting aggressive, and they will, the whole of Asia will unite against them, because they quite clearly see what life will be like as a Chinese tributary nation. Burma and North Korea being the cautionary examples.
#5
Thus the Chinese communists are playing a game of bluster and bluff.
I wouldn't want to base my policies on an assumption like that.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
05/06/2012 17:07
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#6
"Post-US" wannabe Rising China's tradition of "soft power/diplomacy" isn't getting it the overseas PLA Base Rights it so desires, espec vee the "First Island Chain"; formal LT re-unification wid Taiwan = SSSSSSSSHHHH, China's "Pearl Harbor/Hawaii" or similar is acknowledged but stalled, as is its efforts to get the ROK + espec Japan to engage + integrate wid China's econ base as per RAPID PAN-TECH INNOVATION.
"SOMETHING HAS TO GIVE", AS THE SAYING GOES, + AS FAR AS CHINA + ITS "MANIFEST DESTINY" IS CONCERNED ITS NOT GOING TO BE HER.
#9
More SINA/CINE news this AM Monday + Sunday from ...
* TOPIX > MANILA'S ONLY [realistic] OPTION ON SCARBOROUGH SHOAL IS TALKS WID CHINA.
* DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > BEIJING CALLS ON MANILA TO RETURN TO "DIPLOMACY".
* SAME > [Manila Standard = Scarborough Shoal] IT BELONGS TO CHINA.
* SAME > POLL: 80% OF CHINESE PUBLIC SUPPORT USE OF FORCE IN SOUTH CHINA SEA, espec Military iff Diplomacy fails.
* SAME > CHINA TO DEPLOY FACTORY SHIP [+ other Support Vessels] IN SOUTH CHINA SEA.
Beijing talking "soft" Mutual/Bilateral Diplomacy while continuing its unilateral "Buildup" in the SCS.
VARIOUS BLOGGERS/POSTERS = Next up for China will be deployment of the PLAN's "VARYAG/
SHILENG" CV, + [PLA-defended, manned = "dual use"] OIL-ENERGY DRILL RIGS/PLATFORMS to the SCS, i.e. "FLOATING/OFFHSORE MILBASES OR MILSTAS" OR "SEA FORTS"???
* SAME > PHILIPPINES ASKS US FOR RADARS, PATROL BOATS, + AIRCRAFT | [World News] PHILIPPINES SEEKS MILITARY WARES FROM US, SAYS ITS IN US STRATEGIC INTERESTS.
PHIL Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario.
* SAME > INDIAN WARSHIPS TO SAIL THRU [China-claimed]SOUTH CHINA SEA.
Will MAMA RUSSIA = RUSS NAVY do same???
India = Indjuh doesn't want to say its snubbing the Panda, but its snubbing the Panda.
* SAME > US TRIPLES MILITARY AID TO PHILIPPINES IN 2012.
#10
INDIAN DEFENCE FORUM > THE IMPENDING COLLAPSE OF CHINA.
However roughly or imperfectly, I don't see China collapsing - 2015-2050 internal Political + Socio-economic controversy is to be expected.
REAL THREAT TO CHINA = ditto THREAT TO THE US-WORLD = "PEAK ENERGY/RESOURCES" + GWCC, i.e. our desired future OWG-NWO = proto Space Govt-Order being caught mostly or wholly unprepared due to lack of common Govts, Perts consensus on Same + asymmetric Islamist-led Nuclear Terror.
* SAME > US [+ Euro] MISSLE DEFENSE MAY NEUTRALIZE/VOID CHINESE [strategic = nuclear]DETERRENCE SOON: DEFENCE MINISTRY.
* WORLD NEWS > THE US HAS NO IDEA IFF AL-QAEDA [+ Taliban, Haqqanis, etal.] IS DEFEATED.
* TOPIX > DNI: NEXT THREE YEARS [2-3] CRUCIAL FOR WEAK AL-QAIDA.
Yoohoo, AYMAN, dat means You + Mullah Omar, etc.
* LUCIANNE > LIGHTS COULD GO OUT ACROSS UK BY 2030, WARNS POWER SUPPLY REPORT.
* INDIAN DEFENCE FORUM > MUSLIM LEAGUE TURNING INTO TERROR GROUP [Network]: CPM [aka CPI(M)].
"Little Pakistan(s)", pro-Radicalist/Islamist enclaves seemingly forming inside India + widin India's Muslim community.
> Muslim League Leadership incapable of stopping Pro-Radicalist/Islamist, pro-Terror elements from infiltrating + managing their ranks.
> Muslim League Agenda in general seemingly validates or justifies the above.
IOW, WHICH CAME FIRST - THE CHICKEN, OR THE EGG???
versus
* BHARAT RAKSHAK > US MILITARY BASE IN BANGLADESH? The idea had been tried + failed before, but now is back again.
* TOPIX > MYANMAR DRIFTS TOWARDS THE WEST, slowly + steadily leaving China's sphere.
* SAME > [Japan Times] PLAN TO FIRST SEEK RETURN OF ONLY TWO RUSSIAN-HELD ISLANDS OFF HOKKAIDO RESURFACES. Japanese Kuriles/Northern Territories = Russia's South Kuriles.
SHIKOTAN Island + HAMBOTAI Islets.
* DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > CHINA PURCHASE [defunct Dairy Farm] SPARKS "LAND GRAB" FEARS IN NEW ZEALAND.
#11
OOOOOPPSIES, forgot the biggest Artic of all today ...
* INDIAN DEFENCE FORUM > BELIEVE IT OR NOT!BEIJING RULERS CONSIDERING/MULLING CHANGE FROM COMMUNIST RULE.
Perhaps not unlike the post-9-11 USA, the OWG Mighty USSA = OWG Weak USRoAmerica Global SSR, + America = Amerika WHERE LIBERAL OR LAISSEZ-FAIRE WESTERN "DEMOCRACY" IS DEVOL INTO ANYTHING BUT, DITTO FOR CHINESE COMMUNISM IN FUTURE BENG DESCRIBED OR LABELED AS ANYTHING BUT COMMUNISM???
Keeping the Header/Title but changing the contents. "CHANGE" is, afer all, one of the meanings of 9-11 + "Globalism" + OWG-NWO.
[STAR WARS: PREQUELS = "THE SITH CHANGED, BUT THE JEDI DID NOT" here].
Muslim issues are at a flashpoint in Australia and ordinary people's concerns about sharia law and burqas must be heard, a federal MP says.
Liberal Rowan Ramsey said about 80 per cent of submissions to a federal inquiry into multiculturalism were antagonistic to Muslims.
Australia's Liberal party is a center-right party, "liberal" in this case being traditional economic liberalism (pro free-trade).
He said, "There is a considerable level of anxiety, mistrust, expressed in that 80 per cent that are at least wary about Muslim culture. We can't just sort of whitewash it out of the findings, we have to acknowledge that and we also have to acknowledge it is a significant issue in the community."
Ramsey is a member the Australian Parliament's committee on migration, which has received more than 400 submissions to its multicultural inquiry.
The MP said there was concern about calls for limited sharia law in Australia and about issues such as burqas and the treatment of women in Islam. He said, "There is a strong body of opinion ... in the wider Australian community that we've got our laws and you can like it or lump it."
Ramsey said the committee's report must address concerns and find ways to defuse community tension.
Muhammad Sahu Khan, from the Bluestar Intercultural Centre, said that when people spoke about sharia law they thought of the worst. He said, "They think of bringing in a law here that women have to have the burqa. They think if anybody commits a theft, we will chop off their hand."
Khan said Muslims didn't want to replace Australian law with sharia, but wanted changes in cases such as dying without a will. He said, "The distribution under the Australian law would be that all children would get equal shares, whereas under sharia law there is a certain proportion which is quite different from equal."
Gee, I wonder if women get less under sharia. This sounds like a good candidate for the "like it or lump it" treatment.
No sympathy for Mr. Khan from me. Immigrants make a conscious choice to come to a new country, and thus are fairly expected to change themselves, not change the host country. One little known fact about the great immigration period in American history (roughly 1850 - 1920) is that about 5% of immigrants turned around and went back to their old countries. They decided that America wasn't for them, so they left. Australia and its citizens should remind Mr. Khan he also has that option.
#2
FDR had them hung in 9 days because the nation was at war. The jihadists are at war, but the American nation is not. Painful as it may be for the parents, this is a necessary step to war.
#4
Burlingame was furious when a defense lawyer, dressed in Arab garb, requested that women in the prosecution team dress appropriately.
Its very difficult to watch a defense counsel in full Arab dress stand up and [claim] that the uniformed female officers are inappropriately dressed, she said.
Tell me the Judge isn't seriously considering this.
#6
If they are having this much fun with a military tribunal, just think how much fun Eric Holder could have had with them in a civilian court in New York!!!!!
London's comic and outspoken mayor Boris Johnson won re-election Friday, triumphing in a closer-than-expected vote to secure a second term and his status as the unvarnished and unpredictable host of the 2012 Olympics
Johnson's victory, in election results confirmed late Friday, was a bright spot on a rough day for his colleagues in Prime Minister David Cameron ... has stated that he is certainly a big Thatcher fan, but I don't know whether that makes me a Thatcherite, which means he's not. Since he is not deeply ideological he lacks core principles and is easily led. He has been described as certainly not a Pitt, Elder or Younger, but he does wear a nice suit so maybe he's Beau Brummel ... 's governing Conservative Party, who took a drubbing in local elections.
Voters stripped both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats -- the junior partner in Britannia's coalition government -- of hundreds of local authority seats, punishing the government for biting austerity measures and Britannia's stalled economy.
But the Conservatives could take some solace when it was announced that Johnson -- known best for his shock of blond hair and sometimes shocking foul-mouthed outbursts -- had eked out a win against the opposition Labour Party's Red Ken Livingstone and earned the privilege of leading London into the global spotlight when the Summer Games begin on July 27.
In his victory speech at City Hall after hours of waiting for results, Johnson said, "I want to thank all of you for giving me a new chance and a new mandate to take us forward," pledging to continue "fighting for a good deal for Londoners."
He also somewhat sarcastically described Livingstone -- his predecessor as mayor -- as one of the "most creative and most original" left-wing politicians he'd seen -- a reference to the at-times bitter exchanges between the two candidates.
Livingstone called the defeat the one he will "most regret" in his four-decade career in electoral politics -- which appeared to be over late Friday.
"This is my last election," he told City Hall.
Many had expected Johnson, 47, to handily defeat Livingstone, a veteran leftist known for his admiration of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.
But he won by a tighter margin than expected -- 51.5 percent to 48.5 percent -- and the drama of the race was heightened by delays in counting ballots. The result was announced just minutes before midnight -- more than 24 hours after polls had closed.
Johnson's victory could be bittersweet for Cameron -- offering relief from his party's national woes, but cementing the outspoken mayor as a likely future leadership rival.
Cameron's Conservatives took a bruising in votes in the 181 local authorities in England, Wales and Scotland which held polls this year, losing more than 400 seats -- including some in the leader's own political district.
Although the results won't put Cameron's leadership in jeopardy, they prompted grassroots Conservatives to urge him to ditch some of his more liberal policies, including the planned introduction of same-sex marriage.
Johnson, who has appealed to traditionalists with messages on tax cuts and looser ties to Europe, is increasingly seen as a plausible national leader -- not least for bucking his party's national slump.
"The best thing for Cameron would be to have Boris locked into the London mayoralty for the next four years and out of the way," said Patrick Dunleavy, a political science professor at the London School of Economics.
Cameron also suffered a blow to his legislative hopes, as nine cities -- including Manchester, Birmingham and Newscastle-upon-Tyne -- voted down plans to have their own directly elected city mayors.
The leader had hoped that new city chiefs, and U.S.-style elected police commissioners, would help deliver power away from Parliament and into the hands of local communities.
Bristol, in southwestern England, was the only city to vote in favor of electing a new mayor.
Like Cameron, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats -- the junior partner in Britannia's coalition government -- suffered a collapse, losing 336 councilors. That pushed their total number of local councilors below 3,000 for the first time since the party formed in 1988.
Main opposition Labour Party leader Ed Miliband toasted his own party's revival after its ousting from national office in the 2010 national election. It won control of 32 more local authorities and claimed 823 new council seats.
"We are a party winning back people's trust," Miliband said. "People are hurting. People are suffering from this recession, people are suffering from a government that raises taxes for them and cuts taxes for millionaires."
Cameron insisted his poll battering was to be expected at the midpoint before a 2015 national election, and with his government carrying out grueling economic repairs following the global economic crisis.
"These are difficult times and there aren't easy answers," Cameron acknowledged.
Elsewhere, the United Kingdom Independence Party -- which advocates a British withdrawal from the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... -- made advances. The far-right British National Party saw its vote wiped out, losing all six council seats it held in the areas contesting elections.
In Scotland, Alex Salmond's separatist Scottish National Party made local gains before an expected 2014 referendum on independence but win control of Glasgow's council, a key target.
(Ma'an) -- President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... has demanded that the archive of late Paleostinian leader Yasser Arafat be handed over to his care, Israeli media reported Thursday.
Israel's Ynet news service reported that the documents, currently in Tunisia, contain information on planned attacks and funding sources of as well as negotiations with Israel.
According to the report, Abbas filed an official request with the Tunisian government to have the documents transferred over to him. Other reports say he wants an electronic copy.
Arafat had previously refused to transfer the documents due to security concerns, Ynet said.
Chechen leader Ramzar Kadyrov has fired top official Tamerlan Mingayev over the "improper behavior" of his wife.
Mingayevs wife was caught on video engaging in a brawl with youth activists, who criticized her over the way she had parked her car outside a shopping mall in Moscow. The video was then posted on the YouTube and went viral.
Kadyrov commented his decision saying Mingayevas conduct was simply revolting. Its not how a Chechen woman, a Chechen mother speaks, he said.
#1
Couldn't read what they were promoting but some of those "youth activists" looked to me like they needed to be punched out. I thought the lady showed spunk.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
05/06/2012 16:59
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#2
Uh-oh. Seems as though, "There's Trouble in Paradise".
Heavy fighting ... as opposed to the more usual light or sporadic fighting... between rebels and government troops erupted overnight in the capital of an oil producing province in eastern Syria, residents and activists said on Sunday, the latest escalation of violence in a tribal area bordering Iraq.
Rebels armed with rocket-propelled grenades attacked tank positions in the eastern sector of the city of Deir al-Zor on the Euphrates river, in response to an army offensive against several towns and villages in the province that have killed dozens of people in recent days, they said. (Rooters)
Thai authorities were investigating on Sunday a blast that killed 12 people and injured at least 105 at one of the world's biggest petrochemical hubs.
Explosions started a fire at a chemical factory at the sprawling Map Ta Phut complex - Thailand's biggest industrial estate - on Saturday, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people and workers from the area in Rayong province, about 110 miles east of Bangkok.
The Bangkok Synthetics plant produces butadiene and other raw materials used in the manufacturing of synthetic rubbers and plastic resins.
The blaze has been extinguished and many evacuees have returned home, said Verapong Chaiperm, governor of the Industrial Estate Authority of Thailand, confirming the number of dead and injured. He said, "The evacuation order has been cancelled while other nearby buildings and factories around the area are under security checks."
A member of the Ban Kumang mosque committee was killed in a drive-by shooting in Yala province on Saturday morning.
Supian Bensueni, 46, was returning home on his motorcycle on a local road in his village when a gunman on another motorcycle opened fire on him with an M16 assault rifle. The attackers then fled. Supian was hit several times and died at the scene.
Police yesterday raided a garage in Narathiwat province suspected of modifying vehicles used by terrorists insurgents in car bomb attacks.
A 50-manteam searched an unnamed garage at about 8 a.m. as part of an effort to prevent a possible car bomb attack at a Red Cross Fair being held in the province until May 14.
The search found 14 cars parked in the garage and another 14 in a nearby deserted rice mill, some of which had counterfeit license plates. They also discovered a number of Malaysian licence plates hidden in a 12-inch-diameter PVC pipe. Police impounded the evidence and were checking for fingerprints.
The garage's owner was identified as Soonthorn Prompakdee, 49, who was not on the premises at the time.
The raid came after authorities detained Masata Jehma, 45, for driving a car with a fake license plate after he was stopped at a police checkpoint on Friday night.
Mr Masata allegedly confessed he was hired by Mr Soonthorn to leave the car at a certain gas station and someone would pick it up later. Police are checking whether the car was to be used in the bomb plot.
Meanwhile, 25 video surveillance cameras installed on electricity poles on Highway 410 were destroyed yesterday by suspected terrorists militants.
Security camera footage showed a group of about 20 masked men riding on motorcycles using long wooden poles with hooks attached to pull down the cameras at three locations at about 2 a.m. yesterday.
Police believed terrorists militants and not ordinary vandals were involved in destroying the cameras which have played an important role in helping to detect and prevent terrorism.
They believe their actions may have been a precursor an attack in the area. Police are working on sketches of the suspects.
A grenade kaboom killed two people and maimed at least 30 others outside a crowded bar in the southern Philippines, officials said Sunday.
It remained unclear if Moslem rebels, al-Qaeda-linked hard boyz or extortion gangs were behind the blast or if it was sparked by feuding civilians, Col. Daniel Lucero said.
SANA state news agency says Assad's regime released detainees involved in popular uprising 'who do not have blood on their hands.' Move consistent with Kofi Annan ...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo... 's peace plan
Syria has freed 265 detainees involved in the popular uprising against Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Supressor of the Damascenes... , "but who do not have blood on their hands," the state news agency SANA reported on Saturday.
Releasing detainees is a requisite of the six-point peace plan brokered by UN-Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... envoy
Kofi Annan last month, as is the ceasefire agreement that came into effect on April 12.
Last month, the Syrian Ministry of the Interior called on armed Syrians who were not directly involved in the bloodshed to turn themselves in and turn over their weapons to the police. They were promised to be released and that they would face no further legal actions.
At least 4,000 prisoners have been freed since November, according to SANA. These prisoners also did not have "blood on their hands."
The Lebanese army on Friday submitted to the United Nations ...boodling on the grand scale... Interim Force in Leb (UNIFIL) an official objection to the excavation works by the Israeli army in the border area.
Leb complained that several points of a six-meter-high separation wall that Israel has been building, were 30-65cm closer to the pavement
No, you don't need new glasses, that is centimeters they are fussing about.
on the Lebanese side than originally agreed upon. The Lebanese army, deploying several senior army officers to the construction site, has been closely monitoring the situation.
The website Buzzfeed announced that the Mitt Romney campaign held a meeting between Mitt Romney and his wife Ann and several conservative bloggers in Washington DC last Wednesday.
The meeting was supposed to be private, but the leftist Huffington Post broke the story. This writer only learned of it first through the website Protein Wisdom and then Robert Stacy McCain just yesterday
What specifically transpired at the meeting is shrouded in mystery. Presumably the Romney campaign, to their credit, wanted to meet with a number of influential writers of the online right and reach out to them, so to speak. For that they should be commended
McCain mentioned in his post about the meeting which he says never happened and he was never there, that in 2008 bloggers were shut out at the Republican convention. Some of them went anyway. The Romney campaign's meeting appears to be a 180 degree change from how establishment Republicans view bloggers.
Once they were viewed as a wild bunch of individuals who could not be herded for a political message, and now they can be. What a difference four years make, I guess.
Erick Erickson, whose Redstate.com blog I read daily, mentioned the issue of bloggers in a post entitled, "Why We Can't Have Nice Things", in which he criticized many former and current co-bloggers for their childishness and insouciance with regard to a united conservative message.
The man has a point. He mentions that starting in 2004, when he joined Redstate, he has come a long way, to being on the radio and even a commentator at CNN. A number of other writers for conservative publications can make the same claim, including Dana Loesch of Breitbart. He contrasted the sudden rising stars he has noticed with any number of others who have not risen as far and as fast as he has due to maturity problems, or as he puts it, who never grew up.
Calling grown men and women childish ought to be the first hint something is terribly wrong with an argument. It is ad hominem, useful to go after your political opponent, but ultimately a betrayal of allies when used against them. Erickson doesn't need a target when he pulls the trigger on both barrels. He can hit a lot by failing to be specific. It's how innuendo works. The left is expert in that tactic and has been for years. Erickson certainly has come a long way.
So, I am pretty sure he has a specific co-blogger or two in mind. I mean they all can't comment at CNN about conservative politics, not certainly expecting to keep their jobs.
Imagine one of the worst cable news channels, suffering from literally decades of decline exacerbated by a well deserved reputation of malaise brought on by their extreme liberal viewpoints and basic disdain for the hoi poloi. And now Erickson crows he's at the top of his game at this network, calling those who have not risen to his haughty heights, immature.
What if, all of a sudden a large coterie of conservative bloggers, undisciplined and immature, start being commentators there. Oh, the humanity! I can well imagine when Andy Jackson's buds from the south walked into the White House.
"I ain't cleaning up this mess!" was probably one of the most uttered statements by the White House staff at the time. I guess CNN wanted to avoid being placed in the position of having to say those immortal words again.
Makes this old man of 58 shed tears of joy, though. Were I even on the radar. Not successful because I never grew up. Makes me want to fire up the old Playstation 3, if I owned one.
Erick Erickson reminds me of a snooty boss who compares his success with others, and declares his path superior. An impressive path it is for Erickson, indeed. Nice work to criticize an amorphous group for their lack of maturity without stating in baldly specific terms why he is so much better, other than the maturity issue.
But, Erickson is a trained lawyer. He could argue rings around me using his logic and his point of view, even though to me arguing with a lawyer with a specific agenda, is fighting a battle his way. I'll lose whatever issue is before me every time.
I think Erickson was finished so allow to to retort, and I have used this argument many times. It is simple math:
Writers are like basketball players. Anyone can write; everyone writes. Not everyone gets to go to college to play basketball, only a small subset of those do. And only an even smaller subset of those get to the elite colleges, then a smaller subset to the pros, followed by the tiny subset of those who actually make it in the NBA, and lastly by the tiniest minority of all, NBA stars.
So it is with writing. Only a tiny minority get to the top of their game, ever. In basketball is is based on drive and talent. According to Erickson it is based on maturity as well.
But I can promise you that NBA superstar Kevin Durant will never go before cameras and declare the reason he is so good is because his rivals are so immature.
Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com
The conservative viewpoint is an inherently more mature one than the leftist one. The leftist viewpoint, driven as it is by emotional needs and the desire for outcome egalitarianism vs opportunity egalitarianism, unbridled empathy without regard to consequences or cost, and the worst type of envy (that species of envy which pretends to be concern for "The Needy or "Social Justice"), is inherently an immature one. It is the outlook of the perpetual adolescent, of the person whose brain is forever stuck on the "20-year-old pimple faced college sophomore who has figured everything out and doesn't need to grow in wisdom" setting. For pretty much everyone on the center/right except for a very small fraction of individuals, this isn not the case.
So what is the real concern of the Ericksons of the world? Well, folks, even among the mature, there can be those who are motivated by power.
We are now in an age where decentralization is the only way we're going to get to a point where the promise of America can be regained. Enter the bloggers as just one example.
Erickson et al should make note of this. That is, if they have the maturity to do so.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
05/06/2012 6:35
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Erick Erickson reminds me of a snooty boss who compares his success with others, and declares his path superior.
Ericksons post started off as what appeared to be a fairly measured response to a charge of selling-out for access. However, his attempt at humble qualifiers quickly dissipated when he made the very telling statement. But there are others who are dragging those folks down and the rest of us too.
Erik youre a friggin political commentator. Get over yourself.
I gave up on Eric Erickson a while back but couldn't quite put my finger on why I didn't like his writing. You made it clear, and for that I thank you.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/06/2012 11:47
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good stuff, Bad. I was never an Erick fan
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/06/2012 12:13
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Afghanistan's air force will receive 20 warplanes from the US government after 2014 in an effort to strengthen the capabilities of the country's air defense, Rooters reported.
Twenty? We have that many Brewster Buffaloes in museums?
Maybe someone had promised to help Embraer sell some Super Tucanos?
The US Air Force will procure 20 light warplanes for the Afghan National Army and called on international plane makers to submit their offers for the tender within the month.
Afghanistan's army welcomed the decision saying that properly equipping the security forces is crucial in fighting against terrorism.
Afghanistan commander-in-chief General Zahir Azimi said that to defend the illusory sovereignty of Afghanistan, a strong and fully trained air force was necessary and the international community was supporting Afghanistan in this regard.
"We lack the air force needed to defend the national illusory sovereignty of Afghanistan," he said Saturday.
"We have reached an agreement with the international community to provide us with different types of warplanes after 2016."
Military analyst Noorul Haq Olomi said that these warplanes will be effective in clearing forces of Evil hideouts and warned that they should only be used for internal security control, given the regional players with nuclear capabilities.
"A country can defend its national illusory sovereignty when it has the ability to control its ground and air force. Giving 20 warplanes to Afghan National Army after 2014 should be used for internal control only, considering the regional nuclear powers," Olomi said.
The US recently cancelled the purchase of the warplanes for the Afghan National Army from a Brazilian-led joint venture company.
#4
...Don't sweat it. By the time we decide which Obama ally/pal is going to get the money for twenty overpriced sport planes, the Taliban will have taken back over.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
05/06/2012 11:53
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don't give them P-40s, they would turn them into scrap metal in a month or less
Posted by: chris ||
05/06/2012 13:58
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I'd suggest those Spitfires that would recently found buried, but I think that would be an insult to every Aviation fan on the planet. Maybe some out-dated MiGs would be more appropriate? Certainly it fights there style.
Posted by: Charles ||
05/06/2012 18:41
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Maybe someone had promised to help Embraer sell some Super Tucanos?
Thanks for the memory jog; I couldn't memberate the details other than these birds were bought in a no-bid contract award over American plane makers by The One.
Members of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb have desecrated a Muslim saint's tomb in the fabled city of Timbuktu, an official said on Saturday.
"Members of AQIM, supported by (the armed Islamist group) Ansar Dine, have destroyed the tomb of Saint Sidi (Mahmoud Ben) Amar. They set fire to the tomb," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity, adding that they had pledged to destroy others too.
Timbuktu, a UNESCO World Heritage site and cradle of Islamic learning, has been under the control of AQIM and Ansar Dine [Army of the Faith or Defenders of the Faith]
since the groups took advantage of a March 22 coup to take control of northern Mali.
"They promised to destroy other tombs, Timbuktu is in shock they shouldn't be the Wahabis have been destroying historical buildings for years in Arabia
Now they want to take and control other tombs and manuscripts," the official said.
Posted by: lord garth ||
05/06/2012
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Pising off the Other Muslims is the sure way to disappear from history permanently,
Go for it assholes.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
05/06/2012 12:00
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AQIM has the weapons, the backing, and the fanatics.
#3
They'll eliminate the moderate Muslims just like the Jews, Christians and Buddhists.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
05/06/2012 16:35
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This isn't actually about ideological enemies because the graves of some members of Mohammud's own family have been similarly destroyed in Medina beginning in the early 19th century.
The issue is that Wahabis believe that preserving historic sites connected with Moslems, even great Muslim saints, scholars and warriors, leads inevitably to veneration of the site which, in turn means that something other than Allah is being worshiped. This is based on a hadith in which a dying Mohammud declares that the reason (or a reason) to curse the Jews and Christians is their practice of building places to worship at the site of the graves of saints and scholars.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
05/06/2012 18:34
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KHARTOUM: Sudan's army accused South Sudan yesterday of having troops on its territory, a sign tensions between the former civil war foes were unlikely to cool despite an international ultimatum to end fighting.
Sudanese Army spokesman Al-Sawarmi Khalid said the military would abide by a UN-backed African Union call to halt hostilities, in an effort to end weeks of border fighting that has threatened to escalate into a full-blown war. But Khalid said the army had a right to defend its territory from foreign troops.
"We have committed to (the decision). And no shot has been fired from our side and no attacks or raids have been launched ... towards South Sudan," Khalid told Reuters.
"But we have to point out that we are still affected by the presence of the South Sudanese army inside our territories in some areas," he said, naming Kafen Debbi and Samaha in south and east Darfur.
South Sudan's army, the SPLA, laughed off denied the allegation.
"(Kafen Debbi) was used by ... militia to attack us. And these are inside western Bahr Al-Ghazal, which is part of our territory," SPLA spokesman Philip Aguer said.
"We affirm completely we have no airplanes nor bombardments that have attacked inside South Sudan's territories, even before a month ago. These are just accusations," Khalid said.
Sudan's foreign ministry said in a statement it had informed the African Union and the Security Council of its commitment to halt hostilities with South Sudan. But if they failed to persuade South Sudanese forces withdraw from Sudanese territory, Sudan's "armed forces will find themselves forced to use self-defense to expel the aggressor forces," the statement said.
Aguer said yesterday militiamen allied to the Sudanese Army had defected after they were ordered to attack an oilfield in the Upper Nile state.
"They changed their mind and joined the SPLA," Aguer said from the southern capital Juba. "They were part of SAF (Sudanese armed forces) and joined us with 250 of their men, 10 vehicles, seven of which were mounted with heavy machineguns."
Khalid denied the allegation.
Sudan lost three-quarters of the oil after Juba's secession under a 2005 deal that ended two decades of civil war between the north and south. Heglig, an oilfield that the South seized last month before withdrawing under international pressure, provides Sudan with about half of its 115,000 bpd output.
Which is why the SPLA seized it, to twist the Sudanese arms good and hard.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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Which is why the SPLA seized it
And if the sat-photos are to be believed, did a number on Heglig and part of its transport system.
Posted by: Charles ||
05/06/2012 18:44
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Reportedly, the SPLA did a significant amount of damage. Estimates were that it will take time to bring the field up to full production, perhaps up to six months. Sudan itself may not have the technical expertise or the material, which means outside assistance will be required.
Palestinian Authority security forces arrested Zakaria Zubeidi, former commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, in Jenin on Saturday. The reason for the arrest is unknown.
Likely a threat to the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas?
Zubeidi is considered to be one of the most powerful people in the city's refugee camp, and lately there have been signs of tension between him and the Palestinian Authority. Fatah's secretary general in Jenin, Ita Abu Ramila, extradited Zubeidi into Palestinian Authority security forces custody.
Last week, Jenin District Governor Kadura Musa died of acute cirrhosis a heart attack after unknown assailants fired shots at his home. At first, a theory arose attributing the attacks to gunmen loyal to a clan that suffered the loss of a member at the hands of Palestinian police two weeks prior to the shooting. It is not known if there is a connection between Zubeidi, Abu Ramila, and the shots fired at the governor's home.
Zubeidi, who was granted amnesty by Israel nearly two and a half years ago, had has status changed to "wanted" once again in late 2011. Then, Palestinian security forces informed Zubeidi that due to Israeli requests, he was required to remain held at a security forces compound or else Israel would find and arrest him. Nearly a week later, his "wanted" status was removed.
In the summer of 2007, an agreement was reached between the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and Israel, in which 178 Brigade activists desisted from all terrorist activities and turned their weapons into the Palestinian Authority in exchange for amnesty. As part of the agreement, Zubeidi received amnesty as well. Then, Zubeidi claimed that Brigade members committed to cease attacking Israel and joined the Palestinian Authority security forces before he received any guarantees that Israel would not act against them.
Palestinian security forces made numerous arrests in the Jenin area on Saturday night in what officials described as the largest operation mounted by PA forces. Palestinian sources said that 60 people had been arrested and that some of the arrests of top officials required the personal approval of President Mahmoud Abbas.
Among the detainees is former al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades commander Zakaria Zubeidi. According to reports, Zubeidi and other Fatah members were placed in custody in the Jericho Prison and removed from Jenin over fears of riots in the operation's aftermath.
On Wednesday, Jenin Governor Kadura Musa died of a heart attack shortly after gunmen fired at his house. The Jenin police chief said that Palestinian forces had also arrested suspects in the incident and had seized weapons.
He said that it was still unclear who fired at Musa's house. Palestinian sources estimated that Zubeidi's arrest is somehow linked to the firing incident but that there is no proof as of yet.
Palestinian forces arrested Zubeidi last December claiming that Israel had told them it had revoked the Fatah commander's pardon. Zubeidi was told that the arrest was meant for his own protection.
Israeli authorities refused to comment on the report. However, rumors surfaced suggesting that the pardon's revocation was an excuse to arrest Zubeidi who had been wanted by the Palestinians for using his private weapon against national security forces.
Ex-Fatah Fighter Zubeidi Denies Being Arrested In Jenin Crackdown
(Ma'an) -- Former Fatah fighter Zakaria Zubeidi said Sunday that he was not jugged Drop the gat, Rocky, or you're a dead 'un! by PA forces in Jenin, as mothers in the city protested against a security crackdown by Paleostinian Authority forces.
Zubeidi led the Fatah-affiliated brigades during some of the fiercest fighting of the intifada, or uprising, and was wanted by Israel for many years before authorities granted pardons to hundreds of Fatah beturbanned goons in 2007.
Jenin Security Commander Radi Asida said Sunday that security services were looking for suspects in a gun attack on the home of late Jenin governor Qaddura Musa, who died from a heart attack on Wednesday after the incident.
Suspects in murder cases, extortion and assaults were also being pursued, Asida said.
Dozens of mothers demonstrated near Jenin's security compound on Sunday in protest against the crackdown by PA forces, witnesses told Ma'an.
Protesters held signs calling for the release of their sons and rolled their eyes, jumped up and down, and hollered poorly rhymed slogans real loud criticizing the PA.
The northern West Bank city of Jenin became known as a center for Paleostinian fighters during the second intifada, with many orc groups launching attacks on Israeli targets from the Jenin refugee camp.
In April 2011, Juliano Mer-Khamis, the General-Director of the Freedom Theater, was killed in Jenin. Unknown gunnies inside the city's refugee camp opened fire on his car, Jenin police chief Mohammed Tayim said at the time. Zubeidi and Mer-Khamis co-founded the Freedom Theater.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/06/2012
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Hmmm, that picture resembles Obama?
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
05/06/2012 23:05
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DAMASCUS: An explosion killed at least five people in Aleppo and two blasts hit a Damascus highway on Saturday in further signs that rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad are shifting tactics toward homemade explosives.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Humans Rights said the Aleppo blast wrecked a car wash in Tal Al-Zarazeer, one of the poorest suburbs of the mostly middle-class northern trading city. A member of the rebel Free Syrian Army claimed responsibility for the bombing, telling Reuters in Beirut that the car wash was used by members of a pro-Assad militia.
We placed a bomb inside a car, Ali Al-Halabi said, naming the car wash owner and accusing him of raping a woman in front of her husband. I went to the area afterwards and saw seven bodies and many wounded.
The Observatory put the death toll at five.
Aleppo has been spared the worst of a conflict that has turned some cities into battle zones, but on Thursday security forces and students wielding knives attacked anti-Assad protesters at the university, killing four and detaining 200.
In Damascus, two bombs exploded on central Al-Thawra Street, destroying nine cars. There was no word on casualties. Reuters journalists saw mangled mini buses and a smashed yellow taxi being dragged away from the area later.
Activists said at least 37 people were killed on Friday when security forces fired on protesters around the country.
Deadly blasts have shaken major cities as insurgents seek to even the odds between their outgunned forces and the tanks, artillery and helicopters in Assads military arsenal.
On April 30, explosions blew the fronts off buildings in the northern town of Idlib, where state TV reported nine people killed and 100 wounded, including security personnel. Three days earlier, a suicide bomber killed nine, including security men, at a Damascus mosque, the Interior Ministry said.
An Islamist group calling itself the Support Front for the People of the Levant claimed responsibility for that bombing and for an April 24 attack on the Iranian cultural consulate in Damascus. Iran is one of Syrias closest allies.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/06/2012
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further signs that rebels terrorists fighting to topple President Bashar Assad are shifting tactics toward homemade explosives showing their true colors.
#2
Well, Syrian rulers always spoke about "Palestine" being a part of Greater Syria---so now they getting a Palestinian response. The mills of the Gods etc...
A woman who says she was the prostitute who triggered the US secret service scandal in Colombia said that the agents involved were "idiots" for letting it happen, and declared that if she were a spy and sensitive information was available, she could have easily obtained it.
If my Aunt Minnie had...
The woman said she spent five hours in a Cartagena, Colombia, hotel room with an agent, and while she barely got cab fare out of him, she could have gotten information that would have compromised the security of US president Barack Obama if the agent had any. "Totally," she replied when asked.
"The man slept all night," said the woman, who was identified by her lawyer as Dania Londono Suarez. "If I had wanted to, I could have gone through all his documents, his wallet, his suitcase."
She said in the 90-minute interview with Colombia's W Radio that no US investigator had been in touch with her, although reporters descended on her home a week after the incident when a taxi driver led them to it.
"They could track me anywhere in the world that I go but they haven't done so," she said, speaking in Spanish. "If the secret service agents were idiots, imagine the investigators."
That alarmed a US congressman who is monitoring the case. Representative Peter King, chairman of the House homeland security committee,
...and almost as big a fan of television cameras as Charles Schumer...
issued a statement on Friday expressing concern that investigators "have been unable to locate and interview two of the female foreign nationals involved," including Londono. "I have asked the secret service for an explanation of how they have failed to find this woman when the news media seems to have no trouble doing so."
In the interview, Londono called the secret service agents caught up in the scandal "fools for being from Obama's security and letting all this happen".
"When I said, 'I'm going to call the police so they pay me my money,' and it didn't bother them, didn't they see the magnitude of the problem?" she said.
Londono said the man never identified himself as a member of Obama's advance security detail for an inter-governmental summit, and said she saw nothing in his room that would have indicated the man's job other than a brown uniform.
Londono said the man had agreed to pay her $800, but that she never would have made a public fuss about his failure to pay had she known he was part of Obama's security detail and realised the repercussions it would have for her.
"My life is practically destroyed," she said. "My name is in the gutter."
Her photo has been splashed all over the internet since a newspaper took it off Facebook a week after the incident, when she said she fled Colombia fearing for her life.
"I was afraid they might retaliate," she said, saying she feared for herself and her family after looking up secret service on the internet and seeing that some agents were sharpshooters.
The mother of a 9-year-old boy she said she had when she was 17, Londono said she would happily sell her story now and pose nude. She said she had contracted one of Colombia's top lawyers, Abelardo De la Espriella. He confirmed her identity for the AP and said she called him for the first time earlier Friday, recommended by the radio host who interviewed Londono.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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"My life is practically destroyed," she said. "My name is in the gutter."
#2
Why "boggle"? She had a nice career going as a high-class prostitute. I'm sure her family thought she was a secretary or something. Now, everyone knows who she is and what she does. Her life will be defined by this from here on out. I'm not getting the "boggle" thing at all.
#3
Dont worry Dania the photographer is an artistic genius. We all want the layout to be tasteful. Work with the camera just have fun. Now bend over like your snooping through the briefcase .there ya go now thats some real classy stuff.
SANAA: A nephew of former Yemeni leader Ali Abdullah Saleh has resigned from his post as commander of an elite military unit, officials said yesterday, part of a drive by the country's new US-allied government to unite its army in order to fight Al-Qaeda.
UN envoy Jamal Benomar told Reuters that Tariq Saleh, who earlier headed the Presidential Guard, had relinquished his new post as head of the 3rd Republican Guard brigade. The unit is one of the strongest and best-equipped brigades in the military and overlooks the capital Sanaa.
"Gen. Abdulrahman Al-Halili has taken over from Tariq and is now fully in charge of the 3rd Brigade," a senior Yemeni official said, confirming the resignation.
Defense Ministry officials said Tariq Saleh had retired and would not be taking other military posts.
His departure is a success for President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi who has been trying to draw a line under more than a year of political turmoil in Yemen by distancing his predecessor's relatives from power and restructuring the army.
He replaced nearly 20 officers last month, including Air force Chief Mohammed Saleh Al-Ahmar, the former president's half-brother. Ahmar had initially refused to step down, besieging the capital's airport and grounding all flights in protest at the decision to demote him. He later accepted his new post as assistant to the defense minister.
Benomar, who helped push through the plan under which Saleh left office after more than a year of popular unrest, persuaded the former president to secure his half-brother's compliance with Hadi's directive, a government official has said.
Saleh's son Ahmed and nephew Yahya remain in place as heads of other important military units.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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A reminder that other countries also are in deep trouble, not just the U.S....
Greeks head to the polls Sunday in their most critical and uncertain election in decades, with voters set to punish the two main parties that are being held responsible for the countrys dire economic straits. Such is the disillusionment with the socialist PASOK party and conservative New Democracy, which have been alternating in power for the last 38 years, that neither is expected to garner enough votes to form a government. Days of wrangling over forming a coalition will likely ensue, with the prospect alarming to Greeces lenders and much of the countrys population of another round of elections if they fail.
Public anger has been so high that politicians have been forced to maintain low-profile campaigns for fear of physical attacks on the streets in a country battered by business closures and hundreds of thousands of job losses.
The last opinion polls published before a two-week blackout ahead of the election showed PASOK and New Democracy hemorrhaging support since the last election in 2009. Their support has reached historic lows, plunging to percentages last seen in the mid-1970s after the 1974 fall of the seven-year military dictatorship.
The stakes couldnt be higher. Entirely dependent on billions of euros worth of international rescue loans from other European countries and the International Monetary Fund, Greece must impose yet more austerity measures next month, if it is to keep the money flowing and prevent a default and a potentially disastrous exit from the euro.
New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras is expected to come in first, thereby benefiting from a bonus 50 seats in the 300-member parliament. But even with that he would fall far short of the 151 seats needed to form a government. Opinion polls projected him winning not more than 25.5 percent.
PASOK, which stormed to victory in the last parliamentary election in 2009 with more than 43 percent and George Papandreou at its helm, has seen its support collapse over the past two years. Now headed by former finance minister Evangelos Venizelos, it is fighting off a challenge by anti-bailout left-wing parties, with opinion polls projecting PASOK to win between 14.5 and 19 percent. If that happens, it would be the lowest since November 1974, when the party won 13.5 percent just two months after being founded.
Venizelos warned that Greece faces default and mass poverty if voters back anti-bailout parties.
Sunday will decide whether we remain in Europe and the euro, and we stay on a course that is difficult but safe, after having covered most of the distance, to finally emerge from the crisis and (austerity), he said during his final campaign rally in central Athens on Friday night. Or it will (determine) whether we embark on an adventure, sliding back many decades and taking the country to default, to leave Greeks facing mass poverty.
Repeated rounds of tax increases and reductions of salaries and pensions over the past two years have seen the country mired in a fifth year of recession and unemployment spiral to above 21 percent. The backlash has seen voters turn to smaller groups and mostly anti-bailout offshoots created by disgruntled deputies who rebelled rather than vote in favor of the measures.
Up to an unprecedented 10 parties have been projected to win more than the 3 percent minimum threshold for a parliamentary seat. That includes the extreme right Golden Dawn, which has been riding high on the emotive issue of illegal immigration, promising to clean up crime-ridden, ghetto-like city neighborhoods and mine the countrys borders to stop more migrants getting in.
People are not choosing smaller parties because they believe in their agendas, political communications expert Spiros Rizopoulos said. I doubt if anyone has ever read an agenda of a smaller party. Its because they want to protest a decision that has been made that led Greece into the bailouts and the ensuing austerity.
For the past six months, New Democracy and PASOK have been uneasy bedfellows in a coalition government cobbled together under technocrat Prime Minister Lucas Papademos. The former European Central Bank head was appointed after Papandreou was forced to resign following a sudden decision to put the countrys second bailout to a referendum.
The coalition, which initially also included a small right-wing party, was formed with the sole mandate of securing the countrys second bailout and a massive bond swap deal with private creditors that wiped more than (euro) 100 billion ($130 billion) off the countrys national debt.
With both secured in early April, elections were called.
Samaras has insisted he will not enter into a coalition with his Socialist rivals.
It is not in the interest of the Greek people to have a power-sharing government of this kind to exist, he told supporters at his main campaign rally in Athens on Thursday night.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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Now the Greeks have got the $130B, they can renege on the terms.
Disastrous for whom? I understand the arguments, but, at root it really does seem to be all about the elites and their cronies.
If you want to have a country, then you have to have control over you currency. The Greeks (and most of Europe) do not have the latter so they also don't really have the former regardless of how it's spun.
#8
This is an interesting stage in the EURO play. It looks like either Greece will be kicked out of the Euro or Germany will leave, as they have no intention of indefinitely carrying Greek freeloaders. On Friday, the German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schauble, issued a blunt warning to Greek voters in yesterday's parliamentary elections, in which many are expected to turn to minority parties opposed to the strict austerity terms of the country's bailout.
''If Greek voters were to vote for a majority that does not honour those agreements, then Greece will have to bear the consequences,'' Mr Schauble said.
Politicians fear Greece could renege on promises to foreign lenders, leading to bankruptcy and an exit from the euro, risking contagion to other countries.
KARACHI: Nine people, including a PPP activists son, lost their lives in a recent spate of target killings and across the city on Saturday.
The armed assailants opened fire on a roadside chicken shop near Kati Pahari, killing 29-year-old shop owner Muzamil Khan on the spot and injuring his 23-year-old nephew Imran Khan. A passerby, identified as 30-year-old Ghayas Rasheed, was also injured.
Both the injured were shifted to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, where they died during treatment, said Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Tariq Malik. Rasheed, an employee of a printing press, was passing through the area when a bullet pierced his head.
Panic gripped the already restive area. Shopkeepers pulled down the shutters of their shops and public transport vehicles were taken off the road. Muzamil was the eldest son of Miskeen Khan, the known area leader of PPP, said the DSP. He said the police were gathering evidence before reaching any conclusion.
Charged people took to streets when the deaths of another two injured were confirmed. The protesters burnt two motorcycles and another passerby, identified as Farman, was injured due to indiscriminate firing near Aligarh Colony. Police shifted him to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries. The DSP said the victim was a resident of the same area.
Strong contingents of police and rangers took positions in different parts of the area. The PPP leaders condemned the killing and said the assassination of its workers was part of a conspiracy against the city peace.
Within less than a week, our three workers have been killed for no reason, said PPP leader Sohail Abidi. At a time, when the PPP leadership, both in the province and national level, is making efforts for reviving peace, mainly in Karachi, the miscreants are targeting the PPP workers just to provoke the ruling party and exploit the vulnerable situation.
Separately, unidentified men shot dead Saleem, son of Ghulam Nabi, near Metro Cinema in Orangi Town No 1. Police said the victim was a resident of Manghopir area. The body was handed over to his family after an autopsy.
Meanwhile, a private airlines supervisor was shot dead near Bahria graveyard in Dalmia in Sharah-e-Faisal police precincts. Javed Akhtar, 58, was going home after work when the unidentified men open fire on him. Akhtar died on the spot. The body was shifted to the Jinnah Hospital. Police said victim was a resident of Liaquatabad.
Separately, an owner of a general store was shot dead in Railway Colony in the Jackson police precincts. Abdullah Khan (40), son of Ameer Khan, was sitting in his general store when unidentified men opened fire on him. He died on the spot. Jackson Police Station House Officer Zulfiqar Samo said old enmity was behind the murder. The police registered a case against unidentified men on the complaint of the victims brother and started investigation.
Separately, police found a body of a man near Jama Cloth in the Aram Bagh police precincts. The identity of the victim is yet to be ascertained. Police said the deceased had a bullet mark on his abdomen and seemed a Baloch. The body was shifted to the Edhi Morgue for identification.
A teenage boy was shot dead outside his house on the Super Highway in the Sohrab Goth police precincts. Jawed Khan, 19, was a resident of the Maymar Complex. DSP Iftikhar Lodhi said the victim was a mechanic and hailed from Peshawar. In Lines Area, armed clash between two parties left four people injured. A party office was also set on fire. The police claimed to have controlled the situation.
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A Japanese power firm on Saturday began switching off the countrys last working reactor, a spokesman said, leaving it without nuclear power just over a year after the worlds worst atomic accident in a quarter of a century.
As technicians took the initial step to close down the No. 3 unit at Tomari in Hokkaido, the debate over whether Japan needs nuclear power has been reignited, amid increasingly shrill warnings of summer power blackouts.
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IMO these NucRex will be turned off for too long - even Japanese analysts doubt Tokyo's seriousness in switching over to "Green Techs".
They also asked the tiger to exchange his stripes for spots...
ISLAMABAD: Coalition partners of the PPP said the PML-Ns announcement of holding a long march was an irresponsible decision in the present political situation.
Speaking to the media, PML-Q leader Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain said on Saturday PML-N President Nawaz Sharif should get rid of his confusion about the politics of long march and avoid destabilising the democratic process. He said Nawaz Sharif should wait for the detailed judgement of the Supreme Court in the contempt of court case against Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.
MQM leader Haidar Abbas also said the prime minister still had the right to appeal in the case. Rizvi told a private news channel that democracy gave every political party the right to protest to highlight its stance, but responsibilities should be taken into consideration and assembly sessions should not be halted. Slamming the PML-Ns decision of holding a long march, the ANPs Afrasiab Khattak told a news channel that if any party was considering a change in the country, it should be brought through a democratic and constitutional way.
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Ten suspected gun-hung tough guys were killed in a US drone strike in a house close to the Afghan border on Saturday, Pak officials told media.
The incident happened in the Dra Nishtar area of North Wazoo early today, when the US drone fired several missiles at a house, Pak intelligence said.
This was the second US drone strike since parliament in March approved new guidelines on relations with the United States, which included a call for an end to drone attacks on Pak territory.
That's nice. Someone will look into it soon.
"Marvin!"
"Yes Mr. Panetta?"
"We need to look into these drone-zaps in Pak-land!"
"Yes sir. I have a brand-new intern available."
"That'll do. See to it. Make sure he takes his time."
"Yes Mr. Secretary."
The Pak officials did not give their names because they were not authorized to be named in the media.
North Waziristan is considered a haven for bad turbans. It is also believed to be a key command and control center for gun-hung tough guys fighting American troops in neighboring Afghanistan.
Pakistain raised the issue with Marc Grossman, the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistain, when he visited Islamabad last month amid efforts to mend fractured relations.
At least 93 people have reportedly been killed in such strikes in 2012, officials said.
LAHORE: The US will continue to launch drone strikes against militant sanctuaries in Pakistan even if Islamabad keeps opposing them, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said.
While Panetta declined to be more specific when asked about the unmanned vehicles because they remain covert operations, he said in an interview on Bloomberg Televisions Conversations with Judy Woodruff airing this weekend, The United States was attacked on 9/11, and we know who attacked us.
We know that al Qaeda was behind it, Panetta said, adding, And we are going to do everything we can, use whatever operations we have to, in order to make sure that we protect this country and make sure that that kind of attack never happens again.
Told that sounded as if he meant drone attacks would continue, Panetta said, The United States is going to defend itself under any circumstances.
Panetta said in the interview that Afghanistan was on the path toward stability so that US and coalition forces could withdraw.
Stability? He said that with a straight face? Boy howdy, he's good...
The countrys military and police forces last year were operational, they were involved in the battle and theyve continued to do a great job in providing security, Panetta said.
The Taliban is resilient, Panetta said. Theyre going to be there. Theyre going to continue to attack. We do have problems obviously with Afghanistan corruption. So I dont think we ought to take anything for granted.
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Given the Drone Strikes inherent unpopularity wid the Pak mainstream + many Politicos, Al-Qaeda + the Taliban, etal. = Radical Islam must be happy as larks on this news.
MORE NEW RECRUITS + SEEMING "PROOF" OF PAK GOVT. WEAKNESS OR CORRUPTIONISM COURTESY OF THE US-NATO???
Gotta wonder iff Ayman is going to send Leon + POTUS Bammer a "thank you" card.
For a map, click here. For a map of Zacatecas state, click here
By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com
A total of eight armed suspects died in an armed encounter in Jerez municipality in Zacatecas state early Saturday morning, according to Mexican news sources.
The pursuit and gunfire began at around 0130 hrs, according to a news item posted on the website of the El Sol de Mexico news daily, in Fovissste and Niños Heroes colonies with stray rounds hitting in Francisco García Salinas colony.
Additionally, individuals aboard an SUV fired weapons, and a grenade was detonated which resulted in a burned vehicle. NTR Zacatecas news daily in a report posted on its website said the vehicle was a Nissan Tiida. A separate report posted by Zacatecas en Linea news daily said that two of the dead were immolated when the vehicle was struck by a grenade.
In the aftermath, undisclosed numbers of weapons and one grenade were found at the scene by Mexican Army road patrols dispatched to the area. Spent shell casings numbering into the hundreds were reportedly found in the area where the gunfight ended.
The Zacatecas en Linea report also said that the confrontation was probably between Los Zetas and Gulf cartel shooters.
According to a news item posted on its website on El Sol de Zacatecas news daily, an earlier attack in Jerez took place on the afternoon of April 30th when a group of armed suspects fired their weapons in a residence in Las Huertas colony near Zona Centro of the municipality.
In that incident, the homeowner returned fire. No reports were received about injuries from the gunfire, and the homeowner reportedly fled the city with his family, abandoning the two story building.
A separate report from the website of Zacatecas en Linea said that an earlier exchange of gunfire took place nearby where the residence was attacked. Reports were of gunfire that had spread to other parts of the colony. That report also said that rival criminal gangs had exchanged gunfire in the area.
Gunfire was also heard in Jerez last April 28th in Alameda colony, which is east of Federal Highway 23.
Jerez, whose official name is Jerez de Garcia Salina, sits astride Mexico Federal Highway 23, roughly 40 kilometers south of Fresnillo and 25 kilometers southwest of Zacatecas, the capital of Zacatecas state.
Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com
#1
"Badanov". My apologies to Besoeker for not being on this "forum" yesterday to respond to the usual cretin admonitions put forth towards Besoeker, a common event towards the most conservative contributers of comments at bloodyburg. "Approbation" rode out of Dodge City a while back? Tan pequeño! :) Adios, Gabacho!
#2
Thank you, wr dear. This is not a "Conservative" blog but a war blog, and so our priorities are other than yours. As you have repeatedly pointed out, this makes you unhappy, for which we are not the least bit sorry, I'm afraid, because there are plenty of Conservative blogs around to fill that need. Even so, it must be pointed out that it costs absolutely nothing but a bit of time and effort to do your own blog on Blogger or one of the other such services, and if you would only comment consistently over your own nym with the website URL written in the box Fred so nicely provided, perhaps some people would follow you home to see what it is you consider important.
Besoeker, on the other hand, seems generally agreeable to the moderators' choice of which of his many submissions we publish, and in fact is one of our more energetic submitters. He was not arguing the rejection so much as seeking guidance for future efforts, if one reads the exchange carefully. It's just that he and badanov communicate more directly and forcefully than my own gentler tones, which I suppose can be a bit startling to those more accustomed to the drawing room...
Rantburg is a group project, which means there will occasionally be disagreements on detail, though agreement on principle, we being members ofHomo sap. instead of ants or mole rats.
No apology necessary. I'm admittedly a fairly opinionated old snik and as such, raspy treatment sort of comes with the territory. No blood lost, no worries. The position of Moderator deserves respect. As in my former duties, a respect I endeavor to uphold. Interesting to note, yesterday's deleted post and dialogue drew some 430 curious viewers. Hopefully some of them found the tip jar.
Interesting sites, Thosing the Slender1294, and each very different from the others. Thank you! wr, if those are indeed yours, you are losing an opportunity by not attaching those links to your nym.
Eleven employees of Afghanistan's Ministry of Finance were incarcerated Drop the rosco and step away witcher hands up! Saturday after being accused of embezzling 25 million Afghanis (US$520,000).
The embezzled money was related to district development projects, the Afghan Anti-Corruption Prosecution Office chief Abu Baker Rafiee said.
"11 people were set to sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, in a pestilential prison with a life-long lock Please don't kill me! in connection with the embezzlement of 25 million Afghanis - four others are still under investigation," Rafiee said.
"Some high ranking government personnel and a woman were among those set to sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, in a pestilential prison with a life-long lock Please don't kill me! ."He declined to name the personnel.
The money was being embezzled through district-level development projects in 11 districts. The provinces were not named.
This comes as Head of the High Office of Oversight and Anti Corruption Azizullah Lodin accused Afghan Minister of Energy and Water of land grabbing.
Iran on Saturday announced the results of the parliamentary run-off vote, saying 65 seats have been decided in the stage, Mehr news agency reported. According to Mehr, out of the 65 seats, 22 went to the rivals of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, referred to as United Front of Principalists, and 11 to his supporters, called Resistance Front.
Also, 11 candidates who seized the Majlis (parliament) seats were included in both the camps' lists. Independents, reformists and other political factions won the rest of the legislature seats in the run-off contest.
In the first round of the elections held in early March, 225 out of the total 290 seats had been filled, of which 75 percent went to loyalists to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and powerful clerics.
Looks like Short Round's days are numbered...
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A Taliban leader and six others were killed in a NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... Arclight airstrike on Friday in Maidan Wardak province, the provincial governor's media office said Saturday.
The incident happened in Sayed Abad district of Madan Wardak province as faceless myrmidons who attempted to attack a NATO convoy were fired upon from air, according to the statement.
Taliban leader Belal Mache and six other men were killed in the Arclight airstrike. There were no civilians or Afghan cops casualties, it said.
Sayed Abad district has seen an active insurgency, with the main cut-thoat activity targeting Afghan security troops.
It comes as five Taliban faceless myrmidons were captured in Afghan police operation in eastern Nangarhar The unfortunate Afghan province located adjacent to Mohmand, Kurram, and Khyber Agencies. The capital is Jalalabad. The province was the fief of Younus Khalis after the Soviets departed and one of his sons is the current provincial Taliban commander. Nangarhar is Haqqani country.. province on Friday, local officials said.
The arrest by Afghan police in the Khoghyani district of Nangarhar happened when they stopped a suspected cut-thoat's vehicle and those inside started to fight with troops, provincials front man Ahmad Zia Abdulzai told TOLOnews.
All those involved in the incident were captured by Afghan police, while one of the cut-thoat's was maimed during the clash, he said.
There were no Afghan police and civilians casualties, he added.
The coppers also seized some weapons as a result, Ahadzai said.
Four policemen sustained burns following a bomb blast in a village early on Saturday morning. The Chief of Public Security, Major-General Tariq Al Hassan, confirmed the explosion and said the attack targeted on-duty policemen in Bani Jamra.
An officer, who was seriously wounded in the arm and the abdomen, was hospitalised and has been operated on... and three policemen suffered burns, he said.
Al Hassan said investigators rushed to the scene of the blast. The bomb, which exploded at 12.33am, was found to be a homemade devise with a remote detonator. The flames and shrapnel from the explosion covered a wide area. The officers were dealing with saboteurs who were terrorising citizens .. and damaging public and private property, Al Hassan said.
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Ch Nisar Ali Khan ISI agent
Chief Editor Khushnood Ali Khan wrote in Jinnah that in a recent TV discussion Tehrik Insaf leader Javed Hashmi had stated that PMLN leader Ch Nisar Ali Khan was an ISI agent. The writer asked as to why Hashmi had to disclose this crucial fact after the retirement of the ISI chief General Pasha, and not before?
Yasin Malik has 'stuff' on Mansoor Ijaz
Indian administered Kashmire leader Yasin Malik ...chairman of one of the two factions of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front. JKLF is a Kashmiri nationalist organization founded in Birmingham, UK in 1977. Branches weren't actually established in Kashmir for another ten years. It has the usual demands for separation of J&K from secular India so it can become an independent Islamic rathole. It seems to have no interest in Pak Kashmir breaking away to join it. In 1994 Malik renounced violence after he was released from jail and from that point he and his organization pursued peaceful means to impose their will on the region... was quoted in Jinnah as saying that if the Court in Pakistain allowed him to speak before it about Mansoor Ijaz in the Memo case then on the basis of his information the case would be soon resolved. Yasin Malik had been earlier put in contact by Mansoor Ijaz with the RAW chief in India. Daily Express added that Yasin Malik claimed that he knew so much about the memorandum of Mansoor Ijaz that in no time he will be proved liar (jhoota) if Yasin Malik was allowed to depose before the Court.
Our wrong thinking about America
Columnist Nazeer Naji wrote in Jang that Pakistain parliamentary committee on foreign policy was created with the thinking that America was mysteriously dying to retain relations with us by the committee had no idea of what America thought about Pakistain. In the US Pakistain was the most distrusted country with whom future relations would be tied to guarantees. Those who have no experience of governance in Pakistain were shouting against America but others know that a break with the US will damage Pakistain and neither China nor Iran will help Pakistain survive this break.
Indeed.
Bangladesh is not secular!
Famous columnist Abdul Qadir Hasan wrote in Express Bangladesh had been reverted to secularism by the Supreme Court but in reality the country was still Islamic. This was proved when a Pak batsman, after scoring a century, prostrated himself on the ground and said his thanks to Allah. On seeing this, the Bangladeshi spectators cried Allahu Akbar in one voice.
Mangal Bagh killed in Khyber
According to Nawa-e-Waqt warlord of Khyber Agency and Amir of Lashkar Islam gang of warriors was killed fighting Pak troops, as claimed by IG Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... . Earlier Mangal Bagh ...a former bus driver, now head of the Deobandi bandido group Lashkar-e-Islam and the Terror of Khyber Agency... was involved in fighting other terrorist elements in the agency including Taliban. Lashkar Islam announced that Mangal Bagh was not killed but was alive and still fighting.
'Took money but didn't touch it!'
Pak cricketer tossed in the clink You have the right to remain silent... in the UK for match-fixing Muhammad Amir told Express that he had been tricked by his captain Salman Butt into agreeing to take money for delivering no-balls; but the money he took he did not touch. He did not clarify what he would finally do with money he had decided not to touch or whether he would allow anyone else to touch it.
Rich politicians of Pakistain
Daily Express reported that chief minister Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... Raisani had assets worth Rs 23 crore, Waseem Sajjad had assets valued at Rs 17 crore, SM Zafar and Babur Ghori Rs 15 crore while Ch Shujaat had assets worth Rs 17 crore. Babar Awan of PPP owned Rs 10 crore, Arbab Raheem Rs 6 crore, Bashir Bilour Rs 11.75 crore, and PPP's Nayyar Bukhari had Rs 18 lakh.
Imran Khan and disorder in Bahawalpur
Daily Jang reported that Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who ain't the sharpest bulb on the national tree... 's Tehrik Insaf held a meeting in Bahawalpur but after the meeting was over the supporters of the party went berserk and caused the chairs to be thrown around and sent their cushions flying in the air. It was not known what angered the crowd into inflicting costs on the party they loved.
Barbie says, "Temper tantrums are fun!"
Eunuchs to get jobs in Pakhtunkhwa
Daily Jang reported that the ANP government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa had decided to open a variety of jobs for the eunuchs of the province. The various sectors of the government establishment will carry reserved seats for the eunuchs and see to it that normal civil servants got used to seeing the third sex in their midst without getting upset.
How will anyone know, if they wear business clothes like everyone else?
Al Zawahiri asks Paks to rise against rulers
Quoted in Nawa-e-Waqt Al Zawahiri ... Formerly second in command of al-Qaeda, now the head cheese, occasionally described as the real brains of the outfit. Formerly the Mister Big of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Bumped off Abdullah Azzam with a car boom in the course of one of their little disputes. Is thought to have composed bin Laden's fatwa entitled World Islamic Front Against Jews and Crusaders. Currently residing in the North Wazoo area. That is not a horn growing from the middle of his forehead, but a prayer bump, attesting to how devout he is... leader of Al Qaeda stated that Pak rulers were renegades because Islamabad was enslaved to America on the resumption of NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... supply route. Jang reported that the Taliban had threatened to kill the parliamentarians who had recommended that Pakistain should reopen the supply route. In Lahore Hafiz Muhammad Saeed ...who would be wearing a canvas jacket with very long sleeves anyplace but Pakistain... of Jamaat-ud-Dawa ...the front organization of Lashkar-e-Taiba... condemned the planned resumption of the supply route while Munawwar Hasan of Jamaat Islami vowed to stop the route resumption.
Punjab education gets off computerisation
Daily Jang reported that Lahore High Court had asked the educational boards of the Punjab to give up trying to computerise the exam system because the computers were unreliable in an environment where electricity connections were not to be trusted.
A trenchant point. Have they talked to their BFF China about donating some solar panels to the cause?
The recent past showed the boards helpless in the face of lack of computer literacy among its bureaucracy, failing a lot of students who had actually passed with high marks and giving distinctions to those who had failed.
Perhaps it should be determined how many of its bureaucracy actually know their alphabet...
General Kayani and Imran Khan
Famous columnist Haroon Rasheed wrote in Jang that he could foretell that when Imran Khan wins a completely fair elections in the days to come he would be face to face with the Army Chief General Kayani ... four star general, current Chief of Army Staff of the Mighty Pak Army. Kayani is the former Director General of ISI... but neither will the general ask him for favours of concession on authority nor will Imran Khan yield to him. There will no conflict between the two and the other two institutions - the administration and the judiciary - will undergo a complete reform.
American ambassador bribed 35 Learned Elders of Islam
A front-page item in Jinnah said that after the American attack on Salala checkpost the American ambassador Mr Munter invited a group of Learned Elders of Islam from the same school of thought and gave them presents on the pledge that they would keep their mouths shut on the event. This happed in December 2011 at Islamabad G/6/1 sector. The meeting and the gifts received are being investigated.
CR Aslam and Iraq war
Published in magazine Naya Zamana a writer recalled that after the start of invasion of Iraq by America, a meeting was held in Lahore where communist leader CR Aslam told the audience that Saddam Hussein was a greater threat to the region and that his invasion of Kuwait was far more dangerous than the US invasion. After some of those present disagreed with him, he became angry.
Waitaminute -- was the Communist Leader actually correct? Truly we live in an age of miracles!
ISI, Haqqani network and Dawood Ibrahim
Monthly Naya Zamana quoted Indian minister Chidambram as saying that America's revelation about the ISI having contacts with the Haqqani Network was nothing new for India which always knew that ISI was working with the Haqqanis and underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.
Yes. So did America. It was only the ISI that was surprised to discover that they haven't been fooling anyone.
Don't mess with Afghanistan!
Reported in Naya Zamana Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party leader Mehmud Khan Achakzai stated that the Afghan problem would be ended in short order if the ISI chose to stop interfering there. He said peace in Pakistain and Afghanistan could be re-established in one month if Pakistain stopped interfering.
Afghanistan's Caped PresidentHamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai ... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtun face on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use... has warned the Taliban against forcing schools to close in Afghanistan saying it only harmed the country's people, not the "foreigners".
Karzai in a radio address Friday said that the education of children was the way ahead for progress and prosperity in the country.
"Preventing Afghan children from having an education does not harm foreigners - it is affecting the people of Afghanistan," he said.
After news last week that more than 100 schools in Ghazni have closed after receiving threats or after students left out of fear, Karzai called for the closures to stop.
"In reality, you are depriving your children of an education and the enemies benefit from this. You should put an end to the closure of schools," he said.
Afghanistan's Ghanzi province parliamentary representatives recently claimed that more than 100 schools in the province have closed in the face of escalating unrest and are concerned more will follow.
However, the difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits... an official from the Ministry of Education refuted the claim, saying the schools did not close, but rather students have quit.
The Ghanzi parliamentarians said they have called on security forces to try to re-open the schools, but it was proving difficult.
According to provincial officials, there are 633 schools in Ghazi, 40 percent of which are girls schools.
Hard-line Islamists in Afghanistan have previously issued violent threats against girls' schools and school teachers because they believe that Sharia law does not allow females to be given a school education.
#1
Hard-line Islamists in Afghanistan have previously issued violent threats against girls' schools and school teachers because they believe that Sharia law does not allow females to be given a school education
Even in Saudi females get educated and Mohammed first wife was a business women.
Socialist voters face a nervous wait for the results of today's presidential election runoff between Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande after final opinion polls following Wednesday's fiery television debate revealed a late surge in favour of the outgoing president, who has trailed his leftwing rival throughout the race.
The polls indicated that Hollande was still on track to win the second round runoff vote, but revealed that the gap between the presidential rivals had narrowed from 10 percentage points a week ago to between four and six. An Ifop poll for Paris-Match showed Hollande at 52% and Sarkozy at 48%.
On Friday, before the official midnight deadline for campaigning to end, Hollande warned his supporters not to consider the election as being in the bag. At his last campaign meeting in Périgueux in south-west France, he said the battle was not yet won.
"It's true that you are confident and you want to win. I feel it," he told the crowd and sounding a note of caution. "I don't want to be a killjoy, but don't make what could be the fatal mistake of thinking that the game is already over that you needn't turn out. I have to tell you that I am sure of nothing. This victory is still not certain."
At his final campaign meeting at the Sables-d'Olonne on France's Atlantic coast, Sarkozy, who needs to pick up votes from Marine Le Pen's far-right Front National, which scored nearly 18% in the first round of polling, was still confident that he could snatch victory and promised that Sunday's result would be a "surprise".
"Each of you has the future of the country in your hands," he said. "Nobody's vote counts more than another. You have no idea how many things are at play on this knife edge."
If the Socialist candidate is elected the 24th president of the French republic, Hollande and his supporters are expected to hold a party at the Bastille on his return to Paris .
His campaign team has refused to give details of any planned celebrations, for fear of appearing too confident and spooking the electorate. However, the square, former site of the notorious prison overrun and later destroyed during the French Revolution, is seen as the most likely venue for a mass gathering because of its powerful association with the left.
As Sarkozy has discovered to his cost, celebrations matter in politics. His decision to savour his 2007 victory at one of the most expensive restaurants, Fouquet's, on the Champs Elysées followed by a holiday on the yacht of a billionaire businessman friend must have seemed like a good idea at the time. But the image came back to haunt him as the global economic crisis struck, and ultimately served to reinforce the impression of a showy lifestyle and a sense that he was acting as a "president of the rich".
During the election race, it was a marked contrast to Hollande's approach, as the Socialist artfully positioned himself as Sarkozy's polar opposite: Monsieur Normal, more Swatch than Rolex and "a man of the people". It was telling that, like Ms Bruni-Sarkozy, Hollande's partner, the former journalist Valérie Trierweiler, was often on the campaign trail, but usually some way behind, out of the camera shot.
Hollande has been circumspect about his choice of prime minister and cabinet posts if he wins, insisting that he has not drawn up a shortlist. Speculation has centred on his long-time friend and supporter Jean-Marc Ayrault, 62, deputy mayor of Nantes and head of the Socialist party group in the National Assembly, and Martine Aubry, 61, Hollande's rival for the party's presidential nomination and head of the party. He has promised to have an equal number of women in his government and to reintroduce a ministry of women's rights.
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It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall in the White House tonight. If Hollande gets in, which looks increasingly likely, Obummer re-election will be sunk.
The name of the poison pill left by Sarkozy is FOAT.
As the Telegraph says: Rather, the market has persuaded itself that Hollande is more moderate than he tried to sound on the stump, and that his "growth agenda" of tax grabs and public-sector job schemes will rapidly be neutralised by force of fiscal circumstance
If not FOAT comes into play The Euro starts unraveling, Wall Street takes a big hit and along with it the dollar and the US economy will be in turmoil during the election.
So bye, bye Obama.
...about speculation against France on the new French debt futures (FOAT) market, speculation broadened on the French Left over the last 36 hours in relation to the FOAT founder Deutsche Borse and whether a geopolitical move by Berlin might also be part of the mystery.
To recap: despite an obvious danger that the new FOAT will allow market-maker Morgan Stanley to hedge its Greco-French exposure to Frances disadvantage, Nicolas Sarkozy allowed the markets April 16th debut to go ahead. This has created some speculation as to whether Sarkozy plus others may be creating a poison pill for Francois Hollande should he win the election.
Now the French Left is beginning to accuse Germany of complicity. Deutsche Börses new futures contract, they added, may promote a self-fulfilling prophecy and shows that Eurex anticipates speculation against the French debt at a time when the pressure on the sovereign markets continue to escalate.
KABUL: Five border policemen were killed when a roadside bomb ripped through their patrolling vehicle in eastern Afghanistan, an official said on Saturday. The bomb struck their pick-up truck in the Dur Baba District of Nangarhar province, near the Pakistan border, late on Friday, the provincial governors spokesman told AFP.
Yesterday evening, a border police vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb, that unfortunately left all five border policemen dead, said spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulzai.
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The writer's point, that all Pashtuns who resist the Taliban, whether overtly, covertly, or by insisting on their daily lives, are Pashtun nationalists is trite and a bit silly, but the information she presents to buttress her point is useful for the Rantburg reader, it seems to me.
Let us put faces on the Pashtun nationalists and Taliban in Pakistain and Afghanistan to clearly pin down who is who. Pashtun nationalists both in Pakistain and Afghanistan are those who have suffered atrocities and gross human rights One man's rights are another man's existential threat. violations at the hands of the Taliban who they strongly believe are proxies of the Pak military establishment.
In Pak context, they first and foremost include two political parties - ANP and PMAP. Both parties, especially the ANP, have lost hundreds of workers and middle level leaders in assassinations by the Taliban. The two parties have to function under constant death threats. Pashtun nationalists also include more than 1,000 popular and well respected tribal leaders, many of them linked with the ANP and PMAP, all over FATA who were assassinated due to their stiff resistance, including armed struggle, against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the tribal areas.
The entire Salarzai tribe in Bajaur is Pashtun nationalist, because it has successfully resisted, without any state support, the Taliban infiltration in its area. The tribe has tremendously suffered in terms of human and military losses in their armed anti-Taliban resistance - a resistance that they say is constantly burdened by the direct state backing for the Taliban.
The entire mixed Sunni-Shia Ali Khel tribe in Orakzai is Pashtun nationalist. They evicted the Taliban from their area by force and in response the tribe was punished by a suicide kaboom that eliminated its entire leadership - over 100 tribal leaders who were leading the anti-Taliban lashkar of the tribe. This tribe also accuses the state of backing the Taliban.
The Shia tribes in Kurram are Pashtun nationalists. They have refused to allow safe passages to the Haqqani network, the establishment's favorite Taliban, for attacks inside Afghanistan. Everyone knows how much the Shias have been punished for this defiance of the establishment. There are countless examples that demonstrate how stiffly the local people in FATA and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... resisted the Taliban and how much the state betrayed them by extending support to the Taliban.
Generally, the term 'Pashtun nationalist' can also be loosely applied to include all people who disagree with Taliban's action, conduct, attitude and policy, although they may not have directly suffered any Taliban atrocities for their anti-Taliban views. In other words, these are the people who concur with the anti-Taliban stance adopted by the ANP and PMAP even though many of them may not be directly linked with the parties. By this yardstick, all the people of Malakand who are not shedding tears after the end of Taliban rule in their area are Pashtun nationalists.
Countless people of FATA who have preferred to suffer in internal displacement rather than joining the Taliban despite the good salaries are Pashtun nationalists. Also, all tribal Sikhs who directly or indirectly suffered Taliban atrocities are Pashtun nationalists. The Shia tribes in Orakzai who gave refuge to some of the internally displaced tribal Sikhs from Khyber and Orakzai are Pashtun nationalists.
Pashtun writers, intellectuals and socio-political activists, such as the people linked with the Amn Tehrik, are Pashtun nationalists. Amn Tehrik passed the Beautiful Downtown Peshawar Declaration in a grand tribal jirga that identifies the Taliban in Pakistain and Afghanistan as the proxies of the Pak generals and underscores that the Pashtun on both sides of the Durand Line are victims of the notion of strategic depth as well as Al Qaeda's pan-Islamism. The Amn Tehrik is the first civil society group in Pakistain that held a public demonstration against the establishment's backed Dafa-e-Pakistain Council. All students and teachers in FATA and Khyber-Pakhtun who have defied the Taliban threats to schools by continuing educational activities one way or the other are Pashtun nationalists. All musicians who have not given up their love of music despite the Taliban threats or have been killed by the Taliban for singing are Pashtun nationalists. Last but not the least, Pashtun nationalists are the countless local human rights activists who continued their activities despite serious Taliban threats to their lives. Many of them were target killed by the Taliban. One such activist is Zarteef Khan Afridi of Khyber Agency, who was killed some months ago.
In Afghanistan, Pashtun nationalists are people linked with the Afghan Millat Party, a Pashtun nationalist party that is more or less like the ANP in Pakistain. Afghan Pashtun nationalists are also the people who subscribe to the ideologies of the former Khalaq and Parcham political parties of Afghanistan. Generally, Pashtun tribal leaders in Afghanistan can be also regarded as Pashtun nationalists. It should be noted that many, if not all, of the tribal leaders could also be seen as the pro-Afghan establishment. This implies that they are likely to back the government of Afghanistan regardless of who is leading the government. This does not automatically imply that they would support any future Taliban power setup in Kabul. One must not forget that one of the first Taliban assaults have always come against the tribal leaders. In addition to that, just like the popular tribal leaders in Pakistain, many leading Afghan Pashtun tribal leaders have also been target killed by the Taliban due to their public anti-Taliban stance. Such leaders include Zahid Zadran and Malik Mudar Khan in Khost, Abdul Rasheed and Meran Gul in Paktia, Zareef Khan, Shaista Khan and Juma Khan in Paktika ...which coincidentally borders South Wazoo... , and Haji Qalander Khan and Ali Ahmad Khan in Qandahar.
The Pashtun people in post 9/11 Afghanistan have organized themselves in many small or large civil society organizations. Almost all of these are anti-Taliban, as can be seen in their public statements and activities. Pashtun MPs in the Afghan parliament have been making anti-Taliban as well as anti-ISI speeches in the parliament. Generally, just like the Pashtun in Pakistain, all Afghan Pashtun who carry on with their routine lives despite constant Taliban threats are Pashtun nationalists.
Two things must be noted here. One, no Pashtun nationalists from Afghanistan or Pakistain are fighting the US, NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... and Afghan forces in Afghanistan or Pakistain army and also the nationalists are not involved in any attacks on civilians in both countries. Two, the Pashtun nationalists do not see the presence of the US and NATO forces as a foreign occupation of Afghanistan. Instead they see Pakistain and Iran as foreign aggressors and invaders. They believe that both countries, especially Pakistain, have devastated Afghanistan, its people, culture and the Afghan state. Thus the Afghan soil, in their view, needs to be protected from Pakistain and Iran at all costs, including a military cooperation with non-Mohammedan powers, such US, NATO or Indian forces. This view is thoroughly in line with the Pashtun history. In the past, the Pashtun had confronted foreign Mohammedan aggressions. In response they entered into interactive cooperation with foreign non-Mohammedan powers to deal with the Mohammedan invaders.
The case of a tortured Afghan child bride whose treatment shocked the world has led to three members of her husband's family being jailed for 10 years, an official said Saturday.
Sahar Gul, 15, who was burned and beaten and had her fingernails pulled out was found in the basement of her husband's house last December in northeastern Baghlan province, where she had been locked in a toilet for six months.
'The court sentenced her father-in-law, mother-in-law and sister-in-law each to 10 years in prison on Tuesday,' Afghanistan's supreme court spokesman Abdul Wakil Omari told AFP.
A rights group, Women for Afghan Women which helped Gul in the court case, said it was not satisfied with the sentence.
'We are not happy with the sentence, we are going to help her appeal,' programme manager Huma Safi told AFP. 'How can someone get only 10 years in prison for torturing a girl to almost death.'
Because it's a backwards, Muslim country...
They are actually being punished after a proper trial. The entire community must be in shock that it actually went to trial in the first place, so swallow hard and accept this first step, Mr. or Ms Safi.
Gul, whose case attracted widespread attention in Afghanistan and abroad, attended the court session in Kabul.
'When she first entered the court and saw her in-laws, she was afraid and shaking, but later she calmed down and asked for death penalty for her in-laws,' Safi said.
Gul's husband and her brother in-law, also allegedly involved in torturing her, are still at large.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/06/2012
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To be released on their own recognizance when certain authorities feel nobody is looking and the proper "fees" have been paid.
CAIRO: The army deployed around Cairos Defense Ministry yesterday to deter protesters after a soldier died and 373 people were wounded in clashes during protests against the ruling generals, less than three weeks before a presidential vote.
Cleaners swept up debris after Fridays violence in the Abbasiya where streets were calm but strewn with rocks and other projectiles hurled by protesters at troops, who fired teargas and charged the crowd to drive them from the ministry.
It was the second time in a week that clashes had erupted near the ministry where protesters had gathered to vent their anger over the armys handling of Egypts troubled transition from army rule to civilian government. Eleven people were killed on Wednesday.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said 18 journalists had been assaulted, injured or arrested while covering the clashes.
We call on the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to identify the attackers and bring them to justice immediately, as well as to release journalists in custody, Mohamed Abdel Dayem, CPJs Middle East and North Africa program coordinator, said in a statement issued late Friday. A
presidential election, which starts on May 23-24, will choose a replacement for Hosni Mubarak, who was toppled in February last year. Generals have governed since then but their rule has been punctuated by violence and political bickering.
Many protesters who gathered near the ministry were Salafists furious that a candidate they backed for president was disqualified from the race. Liberals and others were also there, accusing the army of seeking to manipulate or delay the vote.
The military has dismissed those allegations, insisting it will stick to its timetable of handing over power to a new president by July 1, or even earlier in the unlikely event of an outright winner in the first round of voting this month.Our mission ends with a successful handover of power, and we will not let anyone change the declared schedule, an army source told the website of the state-owned Al-Ahram daily.
The authorities detained more than 170 people in connection with Fridays violence after the army warned protesters a day earlier it would not tolerate threats to any of its installations. The funeral for the soldier killed was scheduled for later yesterday, state media reported.
Troop carriers and soldiers formed cordons protecting the area around the ministry and deployed at nearby installations belonging to the army, which for the first time in six decades faces the prospect of a president who has not been plucked from its senior ranks.
Many of the protesters have called for the army to step aside sooner than planned. Scenes of troops beating protesters with sticks in anti-army demonstrations in recent months have angered many Egyptians, who expect the generals to wield their influence from behind the scenes even after a formal handover.
But many other Egyptians are equally frustrated at the protesters, accusing them of stirring up trouble on the streets and helping drive the economy to the brink of a balance of payments crisis. The nations foreign reserves have plunged.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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Looks like EGYPT may not the only one that wants to end their Peace Treaty wid Israel ...
* DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > JORDANIANS WANT TO END THEIR PEACE TREATY WID ISRAEL | [Haaretz] THOUSANDS IN JORDAN CALL FOR END TO PEACE TREATY WID ISRAEL.
Milyuhns + Dilyuhns and ....
* SAME > [PressTV = Tel Aviv University Reports] SAUDI ARABIA IS ISRAEL'S LAST HOPE FOR PEACE: REPORT, i.e. Israeli hopes for mutual peace vee Middle East = Arab-Muslim World + Iran.
* SAME > [YouTube = Senior Hezbollah Leader] HEZBOLLAH MAY NEED ALLIANCE WID ISRAEL IFF ASSAD FALLS, just to survive.
FYI, vee new Tehran-Kabul Accord, Iran will repor allow Afghanistan to use its CHABAHAR PORT for Shipping + Trade after the US-NATO pullout in 2014, ostensibly to help maintain + expand Iranian, Indian influence in Afghanistan after 2014 while also bypassing the Chinese at Pakistan's GWADAR PORT???
OOOOOOOO, YOU CAN JUST FEEL THE BFF BETWEEN IRAN + PAKISTAN, CAN'T YE!?
BAGHDAD: Four of the most senior political leaders in Iraq's fragile coalition have threatened to bring a vote of no confidence in the government unless "autocratic decision-making" stops, a letter published in a state newspaper yesterday said.
Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurd coalition began to creak in December, after US troops left, when the government tried to remove Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Saleh Al-Mutlaq and issued an arrest warrant for Sunni Vice President Tareq Al-Hashemi. Those incidents intensified long-running tensions between the Sunni and Shiite blocs that have hampered the government's ability to pass key legislation.
The Baghdad government and the autonomous Kurdish region are also engaged in a simmering row over oil exports.
The four senior lawmakers Osama Al-Nujaifi, Masoud Barzani, Iyad Allawi and Moqtada Al-Sadr sent the letter to Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki's bloc on Thursday, political sources told Reuters. Some of Maliki's opponents, including Barzani and Sadr, have accused him of becoming a dictator and several of his critics say he deliberately sidelines Sunnis and Kurds.
The letter outlines eight demands to be met by May 13 to ensure the four leaders' support for Maliki's administration.
"In case of a refusal to comply with the principles and frameworks of this agreement, practical steps will be taken, within a period of time not exceeding 15 days, to act upon a vote of no confidence against the government," the letter says.
The letter is dated April 28, the last day of a three-day mini-summit held by the leaders during which they said they tried to find a solution to the political impasse.
Maliki did not attend the meeting, which was held in the Kurdish capital Arbil.
The letter called on the government to stop interfering with the security forces and with the work of Parliament and contained a paragraph criticizing autocratic decision-making.
"Putting an end to any kind of one-man decision-making in the government pyramid and a tendency towards autocracy," the sixth demand reads.
The letter also demanded that a two-term limit for the post of prime minister be retroactively introduced. Maliki is serving his second four-year term as prime minister.
"(This is necessary) in order to ensure a peaceful transfer of power and to establish the foundations and principles of democracy and in order not to allow a climate of dictatorship," it said.
The sole Shiite signatory of the letter, Sadr, has a history of acrimonious relations with Maliki.
Maliki's bloc met on Thursday and pledged to hold a meeting of all of the coalition's political blocs within a week to hammer out a solution to the crisis, Ibrahim Al-Jaafari, chairman of the coalition, said in a statement on his website.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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I thought he meant Obama's Gov't. I would've concurred
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/06/2012 12:15
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DHAKA: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she was "betting on Bangladesh" on Saturday as she began a visit to the impoverished South Asian country, gripped by growing tensions over the disappearance of an opposition leader.
While US officials hope to highlight Washington's growing security and economic partnership with Bangladesh during Clinton's 24-hour visit, human rights are also sharply in focus as the government faces its worst period of political tension in years.
"That's why it's very important to us to continue to urge the hard decisions that are necessary for the rule of law, for transparency," Clinton said. "We don't want to see any faltering or flagging. We want to see democracy flourish in Bangladesh."
She didn't say a bad word about the RAB, however...
Clinton is first senior US official to visit Bangladesh since 2004, and US officials depict the trip as part of a broad US "pivot" to greater engagement across the Asia-Pacific region.
Clinton stressed her personal connections to Bangladesh, which she visited in 1995 and which her husband, former President Bill Clinton, visited in 2000 on a landmark first trip by a US president.
I went to a meeting in Italy once. Does that give me a personal connection to the Italian government?
It depends. Did you wander off with any of their pens?
And she called on both Khaleda's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Hasina's ruling Awami League to ratchet down tensions that have surged as each party have accused the other of abducting former BNP lawmaker Ilyas Ali.
"Everybody (should) take seriously any disappearance, any violence against activists, any oppression against civil society, any intimidation of the press. That is just what is required in the 21st century if democracy is sustainable," she said.
She still didn't call out the RAB...
Pressure group Human Rights Watch said Ali's case was part of an alarming rise in the abduction of political activists and opposition members, and it called on Hasina's government to mount a credible investigation.
The opposition said it would hold off on protests so as not to disrupt Clinton's visit. A group of about 100 students from progressive student organizations protested against Clinton's visit at Dhaka University on Saturday.
Analysts fear that more unrest could threaten Bangladesh's ambition to become a middle-income country by 2021, a drive which could benefit from more US help for its economy, additional investment and quota-free access for goods to US markets.
Yup, the US has to produce for Bangladesh to become a 'middle class country'. No word of what they'll do for us in turn (other than export cheap men's shirts), nor what they'll do for themselves to get ahead...
In January, the United States said it would provide close to $1 billion in aid for Bangladesh over the next five years and Washington wants Dhaka to sign a Trade and Investment Cooperation Forum Agreement and a strategic partnership.
Partnership, fine. $1 billion? We're borrowing like mad right now. Let the Deshis find their own damned billion.
Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dipu Moni said Dhaka was stressing hopes for broader economic cooperation, including duty and quota free access to US markets and extension of its generalized system of preferences facilities.
Do we get duty free access to Deshi markets?
On Sunday, Clinton is due to meet Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, the economics professor who set up microlending pioneer Grameen Bank decades ago and gained world fame as a banker to the poor.
Clinton has been a staunch defender of Yunus, who was forced to step down in 2011 because he was beyond the legally mandated retirement age in what his supporters described as a political vendetta by the government against a potential future challenger to Hasina. Clinton pledged her full backing for Grameen -- now regarded somewhat warily by the Bangladesh government -- and called for an expeditious and transparent process to select Yunus' successor.
"I look forward to Grameen bank carrying on its good work for a long time to come," Clinton said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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No outsider has ever done a true audit of the Grameen Bank. There is suspicion that the bank has gotten grants from foreign govt and NGOs and used that to disguise problems with the overhead structure of the bank.
Posted by: lord garth ||
05/06/2012 0:15
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Because when you think of rule of law, safe investments, work ethic, respect for workers... you think of Bangladesh?
Two British soldiers have been killed in a mortar attack on an army base in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence said. The two men were members of the Royal Logistics Corps and were attached to the 1st Battalion The Royal Welsh Battlegroup. Their families have been informed.
The soldiers were in forward operating base Ouellette, in the northern part of Nahr-e Saraj district, in Helmand province, when it came under "indirect" mortar fire from Taliban fighters on Friday.
A spokesman for Task Force Helmand, Major Ian Lawrence, said: "Sadly, I must report that today two soldiers from the Royal Logistic Corps, attached to 1st Battalion The Royal Welsh Battlegroup, were killed in an indirect fire attack on their base. "The thoughts and condolences of everyone serving in the Combined Force are with their families and friends."
A total of 412 members of UK forces have died since operations in Afghanistan began in October 2001.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Yemeni Al-Qaeda leader 
David Cameron
(Ma'an) -- President 
...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo...
Palestinian Authority security forces arrested Zakaria Zubeidi, former commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, in Jenin on Saturday. The reason for the arrest is unknown.
DAMASCUS: An explosion killed at least five people in Aleppo and two blasts hit a Damascus highway on Saturday in further signs that rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad are shifting tactics toward homemade explosives.
A woman who says she was the prostitute who triggered the US secret service scandal in Colombia said that the agents involved were "idiots" for letting it happen, and declared that if she were a spy and sensitive information was available, she could have easily obtained it.
SANAA: A nephew of former Yemeni leader Ali Abdullah Saleh has resigned from his post as commander of an elite military unit, officials said yesterday, part of a drive by the country's new US-allied government to unite its army in order to fight Al-Qaeda.
Wazoo
LAHORE: The US will continue to launch drone strikes against militant sanctuaries in Pakistan even if Islamabad keeps opposing them, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said.
A Taliban leader and six others were killed in a 
Four policemen sustained burns following a bomb blast in a village early on Saturday morning. The Chief of Public Security, Major-General Tariq Al Hassan, confirmed the explosion and said the attack targeted on-duty policemen in Bani Jamra.
Ch Nisar Ali Khan ISI agent
chairman of one of the two factions of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front. JKLF is a Kashmiri nationalist organization founded in Birmingham, UK in 1977. Branches weren't actually established in Kashmir for another ten years. It has the usual demands for separation of J&K from secular India so it can become an independent Islamic rathole. It seems to have no interest in Pak Kashmir breaking away to join it. In 1994 Malik renounced violence after he was released from jail and from that point he and his organization pursued peaceful means to impose their will on the region...
Mangal Bagh killed in Khyber
Zawahiri
The case of a tortured Afghan child bride whose treatment shocked the world has led to three members of her husband's family being jailed for 10 years, an official said Saturday.
Two British soldiers have been killed in a mortar attack on an army base in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence said. The two men were members of the Royal Logistics Corps and were attached to the 1st Battalion The Royal Welsh Battlegroup. Their families have been informed.
