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IDF hits terror cell near Gaza fence
Today's Headlines
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-Short Attention Span Theater-
Snake Cleaning Service in South Africa
A Zululand woman resorted to spin-drying a black mamba after she saw it inside her washing machine, The Citizen reported on Monday.

"I put the machine on spin-dry and waited," Margie Taylor told the publication.

"There was a lot of banging and clonking... when the machine stopped we opened the lid... [and] the snake was suspended over the detergent container, looking dazed and confused, but still alive."

She had first tried to contact her husband David and a local snake catcher, but was unsuccessful.

By the time the spin-dryer had stopped, her husband had arrived home.

He helped unplug the washing machine and take it outside.

The machine lid was opened and the snake was pulled out with a coat hanger. It was then shot by her son.
Posted by: Glenmore || 06/19/2012 20:47 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [16 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Tough snake.
Posted by: Steven || 06/19/2012 21:14 Comments || Top||

#2  My bad, FTS. (Fat Thumb Syndrome)
Posted by: Steven || 06/19/2012 21:16 Comments || Top||

#3  Fixed, Steven. It happens to all of us sooner or later.
Posted by: trailing wife || 06/19/2012 21:37 Comments || Top||

#4  a gallon of bleach in the wash should have done it.
Posted by: Water Modem || 06/19/2012 22:11 Comments || Top||


-Lurid Crime Tales-
Another leak: US made flame virus to attack Iran
This leak concerns the "Flame" virus that has collected intel in Iran in advance of any cyber attacks. The Washington Post publishes the leak that Flame came from a joint US-Israel operation. The details in the story may render the virus useless.

The United States and Israel jointly developed a sophisticated computer virus nicknamed Flame that collected critical intelligence in preparation for cyber-sabotage attacks aimed at slowing Iran's ability to develop a nuclear weapon, according to Western officials with knowledge of the effort.

The massive piece of malware was designed to secretly map Iran's computer networks and monitor the computers of Iranian officials, sending back a steady stream of intelligence used to enable an ongoing cyberwarfare campaign, according to the officials.

The effort, involving the National Security Agency, the CIA and Israel's military, has included the use of destructive software such as the so-called Stuxnet virus to cause malfunctions in Iran's nuclear enrichment equipment.

The emerging details about Flame provide new clues about what is believed to be the first sustained campaign of cyber-sabotage against an adversary of the United States.


A year ago, the Obama administration moved to classify cyber attacks against the US as acts of war.

Details:

The virus is among the most sophisticated and subversive pieces of malware exposed to date. Experts said the program was designed to replicate across even highly secure networks, then control everyday computer functions to send a flow of secrets back to its creators. The code could activate computer microphones and cameras, log keyboard strokes, take computer screen shots, extract geolocation data from images and send and receive commands and data through Bluetooth wireless technology.

Flame was designed to do all this while masquerading as a routine Microsoft software update, evading detection for several years by using a sophisticated program to crack an encryption algorithm.


The leaker(s) and the Post have just put Iran's IT security on the hunt.

The story's political angle is obvious: It depicts the Obama administration, which has been rightly accused of tilting away from Israel, secretly working with Israel to damage Iran. It adds a dimension to the effort to halt Iran, making the Obama administration look somewhat less feckless. It benefits Obama.

It's past time for a special investigator. Obama's panic should not lead to these holes in our national security.
It is long past time to start hanging the leakers.
Posted by: DarthVader || 06/19/2012 17:54 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [11 views] Top|| File under:


-Signs, Portents, and the Weather-
Dead dog receives voter registration forms
Posted by: Frozen Al || 06/19/2012 16:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [20 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Dog should not have donated that $3 for Dinner with Obama.
Posted by: swksvolFF || 06/19/2012 18:38 Comments || Top||

#2  Obviously a FOB (friend of Bo's).
Posted by: Besoeker || 06/19/2012 18:43 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
Pakistan court disqualifies Gilani as PM
Supreme court rules that current prime minister cannot hold office two months after convicting Gilani for contempt.
They got a bus in Pakistan that hasn't already been blown up?
The Pakistan People's Party (PPP), the nation's ruling party has "accepted" a Supreme Court order that has disqualified Yusuf Raza Gilani from his post as the prime minister of Pakistan.

Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's president, has held emergency talks among top leaders in the ruling PPP following Tuesday's disqualification.

The decision comes two months after Gilani, the nation's longest-running prime minister, was convicted of contempt for refusing to ask Swiss authorities to reopen corruption cases against President Asif Ali Zardari, state TV has reported.

Yusuf Raza Gilani has become disqualified from being member of the parliament," said chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, reading the order.

"He has also ceased to be the prime minister of Pakistan with effect from the same date [April 26] and office of the prime minister shall be deemed to be vacant accordingly."

The high court ordered Zardari to take steps to elect a new prime minister, state media reported.

The court has asked the president to "honour democracy and appoint a new prime minister as quickly" as he can.

Gilani, the nation's first-ever sitting prime minister to be convicted, can have the verdict reviewed but has no formal appeal process available to him, Al Jazeera's Imtiaz Tyab reported from Islamabad.

"It's going to be very difficult for [Gilani] to come back from this," our correspondent said.

"This is bad news for the president ... In many ways Yusuf Raza Gilani was the president's biggest supporter, now this case [Gilani's] goes back to a case involving the president in 2008, when the supreme court ordered Yusuf Raza Gilani to write to the Swiss authorities to begin a corruption."

Any decisions Gilani has made since that April 26 contempt of court declaration will be rendered invalid. In that time, Gilani has made several decisions, including on the national budget.

On February 13, the nation's top court summoned Gilani to charge him with contempt of court over his refusal to ask Switzerland to investigate Zardari, who is also the head of the ruling Pakistan People Party, for money laundering.

Gilani told the court he would never think of violating judicial orders, but said he could not write the letter because the head of state he enjoyed immunity under the constitution.

The court's April decision has been considered controversial.
Posted by: tipper || 06/19/2012 14:27 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [19 views] Top|| File under:


Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Al-Qaida group claims responsibility for border attack
Saudi, Egyptian citizen purportedly launched the attack that killed an Israeli worker, video shows; over 30 rockets fired from Gaza in past day, at least six Palestinians killed in IDF strikes on the Strip. An al-Qaida-linked group calling itself "The Shura Council of Mujahideen in the Holy Land" claimed responsibility Tuesday for a cross-border attack along Israel's southern border that killed one construction worker on Monday.

Reuters obtained a video showing a group of masked men who claimed responsibility for the attack. The masked men used Islamic slogans, pledging to liberate the Holy Land from what they termed Jewish control.

A second video showed two men, one of whom said they were about to embark on a mission to attack "the Zionist forces on the border of Egypt and occupied Palestine", an apparent reference to Monday's incident on the Sinai border.

The first man said he was an Egyptian named Abu Salah al-Masri. The other said he came from Saudi Arabia and gave his name as Abu Huthiyfa al-Rathali. The videos could not immediately be verified.

Meanwhile, Some 30 rockets and mortar shells pounded southern Israel on Tuesday, in one of the worst days of violence in months. Israel was expected to escalate its response and Defense Minister Ehud Barak held security consultations late Tuesday night to review various options
Posted by: tipper || 06/19/2012 14:05 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [12 views] Top|| File under:


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Syria, Iran, Russia and China plan joint war games, Iranian news agency reports
Largest joint exercise in Mideast history, reportedly involving troops, tanks, planes and even Russian nuclear subs, set to take place within a month along Syrian coast

Iran, Syria, Russia and China are planning the “biggest-ever wargames in the Middle East,” according to an unconfirmed report on the semi-official Iranian news site Fars News.

According to the article, the four countries are preparing 90,000 troops, 400 aircraft and 1,000 tanks for the massive joint maneuvers, which are to take place along the Syrian coast within a month.

The report states that Russian “atomic submarines and warships, aircraft carriers and mine-clearing destroyers as well as Iranian battleships and submarines will also arrive in Syria” and that Egypt has agreed to let 12 Chinese warships cross the Suez Canal for the exercises.

The IDF spokesman’s office called the report a “political matter” and declined to comment.

Iran is currently holding talks with six Western powers over the fate of its nuclear program. The talks, said to be held in a tense atmosphere in Moscow, seek to alleviate world concerns that the Islamic Republic is developing nuclear weapons.

Syria meanwhile faces international pressure to end a 15-month crackdown on local rebels trying to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad.

China and Russia have come to the aid of both countries in recent months at the UN Security Council, vetoing military intervention in Syria and expanded sanctions on Iran.
Posted by: Beavis || 06/19/2012 12:04 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [26 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Or maybe not.
Russia, Syria deny war games with China, Iran
Russian and Syrian officials dismissed as provocation on Tuesday Iranian media reports that Iran, Russia, China and Syria are to conduct joint military exercises in Syria next month.

Iran's semi-official Fars News outlet, which has ties to the Iranian government, cited "certain unofficial sources" had confirmed the war games but did not say where those sources were from.
Posted by: tipper || 06/19/2012 14:23 Comments || Top||

#2  Chinese fire drill.
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 || 06/19/2012 14:54 Comments || Top||

#3  "Chinese fire drill."

That's very un-PC, EU.

We say "ethnic fire drill" now. ;-p
Posted by: Barbara || 06/19/2012 20:20 Comments || Top||

#4  True or not, I'll bet a dollar to a dog turd that Obean was ready to fold.
Posted by: gorb || 06/19/2012 20:22 Comments || Top||

#5  OTOH DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > [Deputy Chair, Turkey's Labour Party] ESINOGLU: US CIA [vee Blackwater] RECRUITED 6000 ARABS, AFGHANS, + TURKS TO COMMIT TERRORIST ACTIONS IN SYRIA.

Blackwater is now in Turkey???
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 06/20/2012 0:01 Comments || Top||


-Election 2012
9 Tall Tales From Barack Obama's Memoir
1. Hussein Onyango, Barack's grandfather, wasn't really imprisoned and tortured by the British.

2. The father of his Indonesian stepfather, Soewarno Martodihardjo, wasn't killed by Dutch soldiers in the fight for independence.

3. Regina, a friend at Occidental who Obama writes about as a symbol of the authentic African-American experience turns out to be based on Carolina Boss, who is white. Regina was the name of her Swiss grandmother.

4. Obama projected a racial incident onto his New York girlfriend that he later told Maraniss had happened in Chicago.

5. Obama wrote that he broke up with his New York girlfriend in part because she was white. But his next girlfriend, an anthropologist in Chicago, was also white.

6. Obama cuts out two white college roommates entirely.

7. Obama wrote about his high school friends as an alienated, ne'er-do-well "club of disaffection." In fact, most members of the "Choom Gang" were "decent students and athletes" who went on to successful careers.

8. Obama's mother left his father, not the other way around.

9. In his memoir, Obama mentions he missed out on playing time in high school basketball because he coach preferred players who "play like white boys do." In fact, Obama had to work hard just to make the team, and race had nothing to do with it.
Posted by: Beavis || 06/19/2012 11:32 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [20 views] Top|| File under:

#1  The Tall Tales of Johnny Kaw. Johnny Kaw was invented as a way to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Manhatten, KS. Johnny Kaw was know for digging the Kansas river system, invented sunflowers, and could control the weather by wringing out clouds and lopping off the tails of tornados.

---> Did you Know?
Barack Obama also seems to be a fiction somewhat involving the state of Kansas. He continues the literary tradition of fudging reality for entertainment, and also claims to be able to control the natural environment with the ability to lower sea level.
Posted by: swksvolFF || 06/19/2012 14:03 Comments || Top||

#2  So the mirage is all a fake.

And this is news to anyone that has been paying attention? Oh, sorry MSM. I forgot you had your head so far up his ass your nose was in his adam's apple.
Posted by: DarthVader || 06/19/2012 14:42 Comments || Top||

#3  Once shot a man just for snoring...
Posted by: tu3031 || 06/19/2012 15:49 Comments || Top||

#4  But he still has the hat.

No, wait...
Posted by: Shinter Javirong9154 || 06/19/2012 16:02 Comments || Top||

#5  he should shoot Bill Ayers the author
Posted by: Frank G || 06/19/2012 20:49 Comments || Top||


Home Front: WoT
Inspector General: "Revealing number of US citizens we spied on would violate their privacy"
PDF file.
Senators Wyden & Udall of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have requested US intelligence officials to give the number of US citizens monitored under the FISA amendments act. Per the IG of the US intelligence community, the NSA has refused to answer claiming that, not only would it be too much work to figure it out, but that figuring it out would violate the privacy of Americans.
RTWT.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 06/19/2012 11:28 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [27 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Ah yes, our God-given Natural + Constitutional Right Not to Know or be Told Anything???

You know - "Representative Democracy".

The Misinformation of the Disinformation of the Malinformation of the Post-Informnation of the Pre-information of the Ante-Information of the Alt-Information of the Non-Information of the ...
.................................................
................@etc.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 06/19/2012 19:40 Comments || Top||

#2  [ROBIN "GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM" WILLIAMS + MIL ACRONYM RANT here].
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 06/19/2012 19:43 Comments || Top||


FT Hood Massacre Killer Trial Could Be Delayed Due to Beard
FORT HOOD -- A military judge will hear arguments Tuesday on whether to delay the trial of an Army psychiatrist charged in the fatal 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood in Texas.

The judge postponed Maj. Nidal Hasan's pre-trial hearing earlier this month because the defendant had grown a beard, ...
The real reason is to hold the Court Martial when they know a President is in the Oval office who will NOT prevent Hassan from being summarily executed by a full firing squad. In favor of the delay as long as conditions become right for that day to be assured.
Posted by: Gerthudion Gromoger5444 || 06/19/2012 10:07 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [19 views] Top|| File under:

#1  And so it begins.

While he is yet confined and not tried, that worthless murdering piece of kak is still a commissioned officer in the United States Army. As such he is subject to the USMJ and the grooming strandards of the Army. So-called relaxed grooming standards do not apply to officers in pre-trial confinement.

Give the murdering bastid a direct order to immediately repair. If he refuses, he has disobeyed a direct order and can be then be punished via Article-15 and forteiture of pay and as a prisoner in pre-trail confinement, he can be forceably groomed, deloused, bathed, clothed, medicated, whatever is necessary.
Posted by: Besoeker || 06/19/2012 11:09 Comments || Top||

#2  Might I suggest shaving his head from his shoulders.
Posted by: airandee || 06/19/2012 11:19 Comments || Top||

#3  Flamethrower will take that beard right off.
Posted by: Silentbrick - Schlumberger Squishy Mud Division || 06/19/2012 11:44 Comments || Top||

#4  The firing squad is unlike not because of the President but the Military Court of Appeals which like its civilian counterpart disregards the Constitution that stipulates that with due process one may be deprived of life.

As amended -

VII - "..nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.."

XIV - "...nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.."

Because, you know, it's a living breathing document [disregarding the Article V process].
Posted by: Procopius2k || 06/19/2012 11:57 Comments || Top||

#5  Beseoker, Make it so.
Posted by: Hellfish || 06/19/2012 12:15 Comments || Top||

#6  Lead defense attorney Lt. Col. Kris Poppe says Hasan grew the beard as a “deeply sincere” expression of his Islamic faith and because he has a premonition he will die soon.

That should happen soon.
Posted by: JohnQC || 06/19/2012 17:12 Comments || Top||

#7  "and because he has a premonition he will die soon"

Not soon enough.
Posted by: Barbara || 06/19/2012 20:25 Comments || Top||


Controlled Detonation of Second Bomb in Dallas Suburb
Plano police and FBI agents spent much of the night searching a home linked to a man accused of detonating a bomb beside a neighborhood gas main.

Authorities sealed off a neighborhood around Anchor Drive, about two miles from the gas main, on Monday evening and kept searching and seizing property from the house until about 4 this morning. A handful of neighbors were asked to leave their homes as a precaution.

One neighbor told WFAA-TV (Channel 8) that the man who lives at the home is Taiwanese and in his 20s (police described the suspect as an Asian man in his 20s or 30s).

“He’s always walking through, just barefoot or sandals, carrying a backpack,” Mark Perez said.

At one point, the police bomb squad removed a suspicious device from the home and took it to rural Kaufman County near Combine. Once there, a backhoe dug a hole and the device was placed inside and detonated shortly before 3:30 a.m.

Police say the suspect was injured early Monday while tampering with an above-ground gas main in the 3600 block of West Parker Road. They believe he was carrying a bomb that went off, causing minor damage to the main and critical injuries to the suspect.

He remains hospitalized in bad shape at the Medical Center of Plano. Police are hoping to interview him once he recovers enough for questioning.
Posted by: Gerthudion Gromoger5444 || 06/19/2012 10:02 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [16 views] Top|| File under:

#1  There is a curious compulsion about releasing huge amounts of pent-up energy by applying just a little energy in just the right place.
In Guns of Navarone, it was an ammo magazine which, in the movie, went up like a volcano. In Return to Navarone, it was a huge dam which released an ocean of water in slow motion, with slabs bursting in all directions.
It's a staple of a lot of action flicks. An audience pleaser.
Stands to reason some clown would try it in real life.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey || 06/19/2012 11:58 Comments || Top||


Europe
Dithering Europe is heading for the democratic dark ages
A Greek economy run by Brussels will ignore the lessons of history, leading to more misery, writes Boris Johnson.

It is one of the tragic delusions of the human race that we believe in the inevitability of progress. We look around us, and we seem to see a glorious affirmation that our ruthless species of homo is getting ever more sapiens. We see ice cream Snickers bars and in vitro babies and beautiful electronic pads on which you can paint with your fingertip and – by heaven – suitcases with wheels! Think of it: we managed to put a man on the moon about 35 years before we came up with wheelie-suitcases; and yet here they are. They have completely displaced the old type of suitcase, the ones with a handle that you used to lug puffing down platforms.

Aren’t they grand? Life seems impossible without them, and soon they will no doubt be joined by so many other improvements – acne cures, electric cars, electric suitcases – that we will be strengthened in our superstition that history is a one-way ratchet, an endless click click click forwards to a nirvana of liberal democratic free-market brotherhood of man. Isn’t that what history teaches us, that humanity is engaged in a remorseless ascent?

On the contrary: history teaches us that the tide can suddenly and inexplicably go out, and that things can lurch backwards into darkness and squalor and appalling violence. The Romans gave us roads and aqueducts and glass and sanitation and all the other benefits famously listed by Monty Python; indeed, they were probably on the verge of discovering the wheely-suitcase when they went into decline and fall in the fifth century AD.

Whichever way you look at it, this was a catastrophe for the human race. People in Britain could no longer read or write. Life-expectancy plummeted to about 32, and the population fell. The very cattle shrunk at the withers. The secret of the hypocaust was forgotten, and chilblain-ridden swineherds built sluttish huts in the ruins of the villas, driving their post-holes through the mosaics. In the once bustling Roman city of London (for instance) we find no trace of human habitation save for a mysterious black earth that may be a relic of a fire or some primitive system of agriculture.

It took hundreds of years before the population was restored to Roman levels. If we think that no such disaster could happen again, we are not just arrogant but forgetful of the lessons of the very recent past. Never mind the empty temples of the Aztecs or the Incas or the reproachful beehive structures of the lost civilisation of Great Zimbabwe. Look at our own era: the fate of European Jewry, massacred in the lifetimes of our parents and grandparents, on the deranged orders of an elected government in what had been one of the most civilised countries on earth; or look at the skyline of modern German cities, and mourn those medieval buildings blown to smithereens in an uncontrollable cycle of revenge. Yes, when things go backwards, they can go backwards fast. Technology, liberty, democracy, comfort – they can all go out of the window. However complacent we may be, in the words of the poet Geoffrey Hill, “Tragedy has us under regard”. Nowhere is that clearer than in Greece today.

Every day we read of fresh horrors: of once proud bourgeois families queuing for bread, of people in agony because the government has run out of money to pay for cancer drugs. Pensions are being cut, living standards are falling, unemployment is rising, and the suicide rate is now the highest in the EU – having been one of the lowest.

By any standards we are seeing a whole nation undergo a protracted economic and political humiliation; and whatever the result of yesterday’s election, we seem determined to make matters worse. There is no plan for Greece to leave the euro, or none that I can discover. No European leader dares suggest that this might be possible, since that would be to profane the religion of Ever Closer Union. Instead we are all meant to be conniving in a plan to create a fiscal union which (if it were to mean anything) would mean undermining the fundamentals of Western democracy.
This forward-marching concept of history – the idea of inexorable political and economic progress – is really a modern one. In ancient times, it was common to speak of lost golden ages or forgotten republican virtues or prelapsarian idylls. It is only in the past few hundred years that people have switched to the “Whig” interpretation, and on the face of it one can forgive them for their optimism. We have seen the emancipation of women, the extension of the franchise to all adult human beings, the acceptance that there should be no taxation without representation and the general understanding that people should be democratically entitled to determine their own fates.

And now look at what is being proposed in Greece. For the sake of bubble-gumming the euro together, we are willing to slaughter democracy in the very place where it was born. What is the point of a Greek elector voting for an economic programme, if that programme is decided in Brussels or – in reality – in Germany? What is the meaning of Greek freedom, the freedom Byron fought for, if Greece is returned to a kind of Ottoman dependency, but with the Sublime Porte now based in Berlin?
It won’t work. If things go on as they are, we will see more misery, more resentment, and an ever greater chance that the whole damn kebab van will go up in flames. Greece will one day be free again – in the sense that I still think it marginally more likely than not that whoever takes charge in Athens will eventually find a way to restore competitiveness through devaluation and leaving the euro – for this simple reason: that market confidence in Greek membership is like a burst paper bag of rice – hard to restore.

Without a resolution, without clarity, I am afraid the suffering will go on. The best way forward would be an orderly bisection into an old eurozone and a New Eurozone for the periphery. With every month of dither, we delay the prospect of a global recovery; while the approved solution – fiscal and political union – will consign the continent to a democratic dark ages.
Posted by: Steve White || 06/19/2012 07:54 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [18 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Nationalism is now growing. One world government thought is the cause of this disaster. Socialism doesn't pay the bills. National pride will turn the tide. A drowning swimmer will pull anyone close down with them. A poor athlete or student will begrudge those who advance. Some will fail but others will push ahead. Things will change. Some for the good and some for the bad but change it must. "Which shall it be"(H. G. Wells) , the future is not for the weak.
Posted by: Dale || 06/19/2012 8:25 Comments || Top||

#2  Hopefully, after two obviously failed attempts to revive after previous suicide attempts, we won't waste our resources or citizenry again. Let history take its course.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 06/19/2012 9:52 Comments || Top||

#3  How long will it be before we are asked to vote for a "plan" that was hatched in Beijing?
Posted by: Abu Uluque || 06/19/2012 10:37 Comments || Top||

#4  The powers that be thought setting up OWG-NWO = PROTOSPACE GOVT-ORDER was going to be quick + painless, or at least like the EEC = Common Market.

Didn't have to explain or even ask the Voters iff they wanted it.

IMO OWG is the future, but the OWG = Space
"Baby" is so big + contentious, etc. in the womb that Baby Momma is gonna be in serious painful labor for many hours or days yet [decades?], + is gonna need lots of drugs to beget the Birth.
AFTERWARD, BABY DADDY IS GONNA GET HIS LIGHTS PUNCHED OUT BY BABY MOMMA IN RIGHTEOUS FEMME INDIGNATION.

lol.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 06/19/2012 20:06 Comments || Top||


-Election 2012
"All of this for a damn flag."
Posted by: Besoeker || 06/19/2012 06:50 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [22 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Can't remember who said these two are "Americans, but they're not American."
Posted by: Richard Aubrey || 06/19/2012 8:16 Comments || Top||

#2  And Obama 'nods'....
Posted by: CrazyFool || 06/19/2012 8:39 Comments || Top||

#3  Many good people died over the years for that "damn flag" and what it stands for so the likes of the Obamas could be free to do whatever it is they do.
Posted by: JohnQC || 06/19/2012 9:25 Comments || Top||

#4  November can't come fast enough to vote these two anti-American racialist grifters out of America's house.
Posted by: Frank G || 06/19/2012 9:51 Comments || Top||

#5  Ditto that Frank G.
Posted by: Dale || 06/19/2012 10:36 Comments || Top||

#6  Unaccepting of the colonial miracle and dreams of America. Chicago south-side, tribal xenophobia at it's finest. Unfortunately they are not alone in their contempt for all things American.
Posted by: Besoeker || 06/19/2012 10:47 Comments || Top||

#7  "All of this for a damn flag." First Lady of the United States of America 2009-2012



But Did You See the Patriot Riders of the Iron Horses
Standing in the Flag Line Yesterday 6/18/2012?

But Did You See SSgt Christopher Goski's Friends and Family
Make Their Final Walk Along That Flag Line to Say Good Bye to The Young Man?

But Did You Know The Young Man Toured Iraq and Afghanistan 6 Tours With The American Flag Patch on His Shoulder and Died the age of 31?

Did You See the 40 Patriot Riders on the Iron Horses
Some Old and Grey
But Who Came Anyway to Give Honor
To Stand Next to Old Glory That Morning
To Strap Old Glory to 40 Iron Horses
To Escort the Young Man, Family, And Friends
To The Young Man's Final Resting Place
And To Place Old Glory Upon The Young Man's Coffin?

No You Did Not.
But Never Was Honor, Love, America And Americans
ALL THAT THE FLAG STANDS FOR,
ALL THAT MEN WOULD YOUNG AND OLD DIE FOR,

So Incredible to Behold!
Posted by: Gerthudion Gromoger5444 || 06/19/2012 11:17 Comments || Top||

#8  Got to remember when you worship yourself, its hard to grasp why others may place their faith in something else.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 06/19/2012 12:00 Comments || Top||

#9  Could be a case of bad lip reading.
Posted by: crosspatch || 06/19/2012 12:19 Comments || Top||

#10  My daughter can read lips (she works with deaf students) and says that lip reading is very difficult to interpret correctly. If you are told what a person says you are most likely to "read" it the way you (then) see it.

She reads it in an unbiased way (I didn't tell her what Michelle is alleged to have said) and says she can't tell exactly what the first two words are but then she is positive that the remaining words are "if they flew that flag".

Definitely no damn she affirms.
Posted by: European Conservative || 06/19/2012 14:05 Comments || Top||

#11  badlip reading.

As much as I hate to miss a chance to put the boot in, this seems like pretty thin evidence. Yes, I would be completely overcome with non-surprise if either of them expressed this opinion, but without some actual audio...
Posted by: SteveS || 06/19/2012 14:11 Comments || Top||

#12  It seems very unlikely. Both must be aware that they are under constant camera observation.

Might habe happened in the first rookie months but not after 4 years.

I'd concentrate my fire on political incompetence...
Posted by: European Conservative || 06/19/2012 14:16 Comments || Top||

#13  I didn't see it, but certainly no pro. I can read what athletes say after bad calls, and don't see damn but as I said.

Besides, she said all this stuff in 2008 anyways.
Posted by: swksvolFF || 06/19/2012 15:31 Comments || Top||

#14  Five Minute Rage.
Posted by: Pappy || 06/19/2012 16:20 Comments || Top||

#15  My brother-in-law died a year ago. Taps were played for him. A Marine honor guard presented my sister with a flag. Even if he had not been a relative who I loved dearly, one cannot help tearing up when hearing taps and seeing the flag presented and knowing what it stands for.
Posted by: JohnQC || 06/19/2012 17:18 Comments || Top||

#16  Yup, Pappy - and it works just as well on the Right as on the Left, just different content.
Posted by: lotp || 06/19/2012 21:20 Comments || Top||

#17  I saw a liberal website that had that translated as "Look how pretty they fold that flag" or something like that. Whatever it was, it comported better with the video than "All this for a damn flag".
Posted by: gorb || 06/19/2012 23:54 Comments || Top||


Southeast Asia
Death sentences for 2 Muslims in Myanmar murder
Posted by: ryuge || 06/19/2012 05:36 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [15 views] Top|| File under:


Africa North
Stratfor: Egyptian Elections and Tensions with Israel
Posted by: tipper || 06/19/2012 03:11 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [15 views] Top|| File under:

#1 
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 06/19/2012 17:15 Comments || Top||

#2  TOPIX > EGYPT ANALYSTS WARN OF NEW POLITICAL CRISIS BREWING.

ARTIC > VARI PERTS = denote that ...
> Victory of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is a real + symbolic victory for both Egyptian + Regional Radical Islamism.
> Egypt's military remains highly pro-Status Quo + anti-Reform, preferring to turn back the clock to how it was under the establishment of the [pre-reform] Mubarak Govt-Regime.Egypt's military turned on Mubarak when it began to introduce reforms due to popular pressure = "Arab/islamic Spring" Protests.

EGYPT'S WESTERNIZED MODERN ARMY? CIVIL NUCPROGS?
SUEZ CANAL INT'L TRADE?
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 06/19/2012 23:45 Comments || Top||


China-Japan-Koreas
Ohi (Japan) Nuke Plants OK for Restart. Full Power by End of July
Japanese government and local officials have given the OK for the restart of two units at Ohi. Units 3 and 4 are expected to be at full power by the end of July.

These units have passed a series of enhanced stress tests that were mandated after the cascade failure at Fukushima Dai-Ichi when unit 1 experienced a hydrogen explosion that damaged emergency cooling operations at units 2 and 3.
Posted by: crosspatch || 06/19/2012 02:22 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [22 views] Top|| File under:

#1  "Full power" is not accurate. It may apply to units 3 and 4, but doesn't deserve to be part of the headline -- this is only a fraction of the former nuclear power capacity of Japan, and only a small part of Japan's total power needs.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 06/19/2012 10:16 Comments || Top||

#2  Ohi plants 3 and 4 are going to restart and will be producing full power by end of July.

Posted by: crosspatch || 06/19/2012 11:28 Comments || Top||

#3  The news behind the news is that Japan shut off all its nuclear reactors in a panic after the tsunami and then discovered how much damage the shut-off is doing to their economy. Now their government is backtracking. Would not be surprised if 90% of their previous capacity is eventually turned on again.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 06/19/2012 11:39 Comments || Top||

#4  Well, I expect any remaining plants of the same generation as Fukushima Unit 1 to be shut down permanently. Unit 1 was to be shut down at the end of the month the quake hit for dismantling anyway and it was the unit that started a cascade failure of the other two units when it exploded and cut emergency cooling and power lines to Units 2 and 3.

But all told, nobody killed, nobody injured, nobody sickened makes for a hard sell to keep them shut down. More people died on the Deepwater Horizon explosion than at Fukushima.
Posted by: crosspatch || 06/19/2012 12:23 Comments || Top||

#5  Don't remember who snarked it, but more people have died from eating organic sprouts than were killed by the Fukishima nuke plants.
Posted by: SteveS || 06/19/2012 14:24 Comments || Top||

#6  Fukushima and Three Mile Island combined!
Posted by: crosspatch || 06/19/2012 16:08 Comments || Top||

#7  #4 is spot on - new Nippon PM Noda himself was quoted as saying that AT LEAST two NucRex at Ohi must be turned on as Japanese Society CANNOT SURVIVE A FULL/TOTAL NUCLEAR PLANT SHUTDOWN.

D *** NG IT, I THOUGHT THE SIX-MILLION DOLLAR MAN'S = STEVE AUSTIN'S HOMETOWN OF OHI = OHIGH? WAS IN CALIFORNIA, NOT JAPAN???
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 06/19/2012 19:50 Comments || Top||

#8  That would be Ojai which is North of the Ventura / Oxnard area.
Posted by: crosspatch || 06/19/2012 22:10 Comments || Top||


Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Facebook buys Israeli start-up for estimated $100m
Facebook Inc. announced Monday that it has acquired Tel-Aviv-based facial-recognition technology company Face.com. No financial details were disclosed but sources believe that the acquisition has been made for about $100 million.
Another theft from the Palestinian People
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 06/19/2012 01:13 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [12 views] Top|| File under:


Home Front: WoT
Massive Bombing Exercises at Fort Knox?
H/T The Holy Blogfaddah
Massive Bombing Exercises Reported at Fort Knox - Have Been Ongoing For The Past Several Weeks

Infidel Bloggers Alliance Contributor Christine, who lives in Kentucky near Fort Knox, reports that massive bombing exercises have been ongoing for several weeks.

Locals who have lived in the area for a long time say these kinds of exercises are unprecedented.

Here is the dialogue from the IBA comments section:

Fort Knox has been SERIOUSLY rocking today. The bombing has been going on since early this morning. Been like a day long earthquake.

Somethings up.
Doesn't make sense to me. I'm just an old ex-enlisted squid, but this story would make more sense as a precursor of Something Really Really Big if it was happening at, say, Fort Hood or Fort Irwin. I'll gladly accept correction from any current or former Army types, but IIRC, Knox is mostly a venue for junior EM's and 2nd Lt's getting their initial training as Armor crew and officers - not a place where large combined-arms units are doing live fire workups preparatory to going somewhere hot.
Posted by: RIcky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) || 06/19/2012 01:02 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [18 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Doesn't make sense to me, either. I checked the post website, nothing unusual noted. Looks like this summer's first class of cadets just arrived on June 14. Terrain at Ft. Knox doesn't match anything in Syria or Iran so I would also expect something like Ft. Irwin or even Ft. Carson.

My guess is it's a lot of nothing. Maybe they are using a range they haven't used in a while or something that is closer to where this person lives.

Person reporting this has only lived there six months. Person reporting says locals "don't remember this much activity in a long time" but that is qualified with "we don't really notice it much anymore" so it might be one of those things that gets noticed when attention is called to it.

NOTE: I grew up near a military base and we were told by our parents not to pay much mind to "military business". I am surprised this person is reporting this in this manner. Personal opinion: she should (trying to find a nice way to put it) STFU
Posted by: crosspatch || 06/19/2012 2:12 Comments || Top||

#2  Might be giving the RotC boys some firepower demonstrations.
Posted by: crosspatch || 06/19/2012 2:16 Comments || Top||

#3  Destroying evidence the gold is no longer there?
Posted by: OmuluqueHapsburg5085 || 06/19/2012 10:29 Comments || Top||

#4  Some years ago an anal-retentive professor I know was testing an experimental sensor system at the Fort Knox shooting range. This guy loved very large digital video databases - there was no other excuse for his range behavior. He had Russian and US high velocity sniper rifles and over time blew the berms up so bad that the range needed to be rebuilt. In addition, he totally wore out two Dragunovs and an unlucky shooter's ear drums. All he got out of it was huge stacks of hard drives full of mostly useless crap.

So what I am trying to say is "Don't assume that there is any strategic intent by what you are hearing!"

Posted by: Water Modem || 06/19/2012 10:56 Comments || Top||

#5  As an alumus of the Armor School (AOBC,AOAC)
and a veteran of nights at the Fiddler's Green, (O-Cubb and the Brick Mess), its not a combined arms site, but if there are several simultanous enlisted and officer classes sharing the range for main gun tables, it does get loud and for a prolonged period, day and night tank gunnery tables. A new neighbor might get that impression
Posted by: NoMoreBS || 06/19/2012 13:36 Comments || Top||

#6  Armor school is at Benning now. Not much left at Knox.
Posted by: crosspatch || 06/19/2012 15:06 Comments || Top||

#7  I suggested on her blog that she call the post community relations number if she is concerned about her proximity to the shelling. They're probably closed now but they're probably more eager to talk to someone on the phone than to have to deal with idle speculation on the Internet.
Posted by: crosspatch || 06/19/2012 18:24 Comments || Top||


Israel-Palestine-Jordan
IDF: Egypt forces scouring Sinai for 3rd terrorist
[Jerusalem Post] Barak on border attack from Sinai which killed Israeli workman, 2 terrorists: "New Egyptian president must clear Sinai of terror."

The army will bolster its presence along the border with Egypt and troops will remain on high alert after bully boyz killed an Israeli construction worker there on Monday.

The attack was perpetrated by a cell consisting of about four terrorists. Two men crossed into Israel, planted a roadside kaboom and detonated it next to jeeps carrying staff on their way to work on the fence that Israel is building along the Sinai border.

Said Phashpashe, an Israeli Arab from Haifa and the father of four children, was killed. After detonating the bomb, the bully boyz shot up the jeeps, using weapons that included a rocket-propelled grenade.

A force from the Golani Brigade immediately arrived, a shootout ensued and a bomb carried by one of the bully boyz went kaboom!. Two bad boyz were potted in the shootout.

Col. Tal Hermoni, commander of the Southern Gazoo Brigade, said the soldiers' quick response prevented a larger attack from taking place. Sources said it was possible that the bully boyz had planned to either kidnap an Israeli or infiltrate a nearby Israeli community with the aim of killing as many people as possible.

Fearing additional attacks and that some of the bully boyz were still in Israel, the IDF moved a number of Merkava tanks up to the border to help protect against additional infiltrations. The tanks were removed immediately after the IDF confirmed that all of the bully boyz had been accounted for.

The decision to move the tanks up along the border was made while considering the peace treaty with Egypt, which forbids the deployment of Israeli tanks in the area. IDF sources said they were deployed as the attack was unfolding and that it was part of a defensive posture.

By the afternoon, the IDF had ruled out the possibility that bully boyz remained in Israel and shifted its focus to determining the identities of the attackers. The army confirmed that it did not have intelligence about the attack.

IDF sources said that one possibility was that the bully boyz were Paleostinians from Gazoo who had crossed into Sinai and then into Israel for the attack. Another possibility was that the attackers were Beduin from Sinai who were operating on behalf of a Paleostinian terrorist group.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that Israel expected the new president in Egypt -- whoever they may be -- to retake control of the Sinai Peninsula and to clear it of terrorist infrastructure.

"We expect the president to take responsibility for all of Egypt's international commitments, including the peace treaty with Israel, and to ensure security arrangements are in place in Sinai to stop these kind of attacks," Barak said.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said the attack on the border with Egypt would not deter Israel from building the security barrier.

"This barrier is meant both to prevent terrorism and also to prevent the entrance of infiltrators. Its construction is of supreme national interest," Netanyahu said.

Monday morning's attack was the most sophisticated infiltration from Sinai since the attacks last August 18 that killed eight Israelis. Israel said that last year's attacks were orchestrated by the Popular Resistance Committees -- a Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, offshoot based in Gazoo -- but were carried out by Beduin from Sinai.
Posted by: trailing wife || 06/19/2012 00:29 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [15 views] Top|| File under:


IDF hits terror cell near Gaza fence
Tensions rising in south: Air Force fires at Paleostinians as they attempt to plant bomb near Gazoo fence early Tuesday; army killed four beturbanned goons in two separate Arclight airstrikes earlier

Gazoo escalation in cards? Air Force aircraft fired at a Paleostinian terror cell early Tuesday as its members were attempting to plant an bomb near the central Gazoo Strip border fence.
 
The army said the attack target was hit. Paleostinian sources later confirmed that the strike left casualties on the Paleostinian side; no further details were provided.  
 
The latest attack marked the third Israeli airstrike in the Strip in the past 24 hours.
"The IDF will not tolerate any bid to harm the State of Israel's citizens and IDF soldiers and will continue to operate against any element that utilizes terror against the State of Israel," the military said following the strike. "The Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, terror group is the address and it bears the responsibility."
 
The latest attack marked the third Israeli Arclight airstrike in the Strip in the past 24 hours.
 
Rocket cell hit
Earlier, the Air Force struck a terror cell as it prepared to fire rockets at Israel; two bad boyz were potted in that strike, including a member of Hamas' military wing, Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. The strike was carried out after a rocket went kaboom! in southern Israel, causing no injuries.
 
Another rocket was fired from Gazoo following the strike and went kaboom! in an open area in the town of Sderot; no injuries were reported.
 
Also Monday, the Air Force killed two beturbanned goons belonging to the Islamic Jihad
...created after many members of the Egyptian Mohammedan Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the liquidation of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah...
's military wing in a midday strike.
 
Army officials said that Gazoo strikes were not connected to the terror attack on the Egypt border Monday morning that left one Israeli laborer working on the border fence construction project dead.
Posted by: trailing wife || 06/19/2012 00:29 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [18 views] Top|| File under:


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Two Palestinians killed by Lebanese army at refugee camp
The non-natives are getting restless.
[Jerusalem Post] Two Paleostinians were killed in festivities with the Lebanese Armed Forces in the north Leb refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared on Monday, The Daily Star reported.

According to the report, Lebanese soldiers opened fire and killed the men after they attacked military posts within the camp. Three soldiers and ten Paleostinians were maimed in the incident.

The Paleostinians who threw stones and Molotov cocktails at the LAF military posts were part of a funeral procession for a 15-year-old boy, killed during a standoff between local residents and soldiers last week.
Posted by: trailing wife || 06/19/2012 00:29 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [17 views] Top|| File under:

#1  This shapes as a bad week for Palestinians.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 06/19/2012 1:17 Comments || Top||


Home Front: WoT
New York man pleads guilty to aiding al-Qaida
[Jerusalem Post] A New York man pleaded guilty on Monday to US terrorism charges for helping the jihad boy group al-Qaeda.

Brooklyn, New York-born Wesam El-Hanafi, 37, pleaded guilty to one count of providing material support to a terrorist group and one count of conspiracy.

Manhattan federal prosecutors, in a plea agreement with the defense, recommended a 20-year prison sentence.

"In July 2009 I participated in a conversation with others in which we discussed seeking out additional contacts within al-Qaeda," El-Hanafi told US District Judge Kimba Wood.

El-Hanafi was tossed in the calaboose
Please don't kill me!
in April 2010, along with Sabirhan Hasanoff, 36, a dual US and Australian citizen who pleaded guilty on June 4 to similar crimes. The men, who were tossed in the calaboose
Please don't kill me!
abroad and brought to the United States to face charges, had been under law enforcement surveillance.
Posted by: trailing wife || 06/19/2012 00:29 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [16 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda


Good morning
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [16 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Hey, that dog is a good-looking pup. Laraine is O.K. too.
Posted by: JohnQC || 06/19/2012 9:23 Comments || Top||

#2  Happy Birthday/Daily Gam Shot

Kathleen Turner aka Joan Wilder in "Romancing the Stone (1984)" aka Peggy Sue in "Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)" aka Jessica Rabbit (voice) in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)" aka Mrs. Lisbon in "The Virgin Suicides (1999)" aka Jane Blue in "Undercover Blues (1993)" aka Sarah Leary in "The Accidental Tourist (1988)" (age 58)


Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 06/19/2012 10:36 Comments || Top||

#3  Birthday/Daily Gam Shot 06/18

Marie Gillain [Belgian] aka Adrienne Chanel in "Coco Before Chanel (2009)" aka Nathalie in "L'appat (Fresh Bait)(1995)" aka Safiye in "Harem suare (1999)" aka Aurore in "Le bossu (1997)" aka Melanie Lavergne in "La tres tres grande entreprise (The Very Very Big Company)(2008)" aka Allieva in "La cena (The Dinner)(1998)" (age 37)


Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 06/19/2012 10:37 Comments || Top||

#4  Happy Birthday/Daily Gam Shot 06/17

Kumiko Aso [Japan] aka Seiko Takeda in "Garu (Girl) (2012) " aka Irene Graham in "Uchu kyodai (Space Brothers)(2012)" aka Sonoko in "Kanzo sensei (Dr. Akagi)(1998)" aka Rumiko in "Moteki (Love Strikes!)(2011)" aka Candi in "Shisaido moteru (Seaside Motel)(2010) " aka Naomi Ohara in "Uchoten hoteru (Suite Dreams)(2006)" (age 34)


Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 06/19/2012 10:38 Comments || Top||

#5  Happy Birthday/Daily Gam Shot 06/16

Nehir Erdogan [Turkey] aka Ebru in "Broken Angel (2008)" aka Guldem in "Okul (2004)" (age 32)


Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 06/19/2012 10:39 Comments || Top||

#6  Happy Birthday/Daily Gam Shot 06/15

Lee Purcell aka Peggy Gordon in "Big Wednesday (1978)" aka Wiley in "Mr. Majestyk (1974)" aka Beth Brent in "Valley Girl (1983)" aka Jilly Buck in "Eddie Macon's Run (1983)" aka Lilah in "Movies Money Murder (1996)" (age 65)



A "fix" for Gorb
Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 06/19/2012 10:40 Comments || Top||

#7  Pier Angeli? Looks a lot like Kathleen Turner
Posted by: Frank G || 06/19/2012 10:46 Comments || Top||

#8  Sorry about that, I came up one paste short of my cuts.
Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 06/19/2012 10:51 Comments || Top||

#9  At the rate Turkey is going, I wonder how Nehir Erdogan is going to like wearing a burkha?

Al
Posted by: Frozen Al || 06/19/2012 15:23 Comments || Top||


Africa Horn
Security forces detain 10 suspected Al Shabab members in Mogadishu
(Sh.M.Network)- Somali security forces have placed in long-term storage
Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out!
alleged Al shabab Death Eaters in connection with the insecurity situation Mogadishu after search operations in the past few days, an official said on Sunday.

Omar Abdulle Ja'fan, the district commissioner of Huriwa for Somali government, told news hounds inMogadishuthat more than 10 people charged to have links with Al shabab were placed in long-term storage
Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out!
during crackdowns during cordon and search operations undertaken by a joint security team made up of police and military forces of TFG in Huriwa district.

"We placed in long-term storage
He came out and they shot anyway...
these criminals as they dressed in military uniform and committing acts against local people living in Huriwa district after successful operations," said Ja'fan, adding denied that there are any illegal roadblocks set up in Huriwa district.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [14 views] Top|| File under: al-Shabaab


Africa North
Mali Islamists Agree to Talks
[An Nahar] Mali's beturbanned fascisti agreed Monday to start talks on the fate of the desert north they seized this year but mediators Burkina Faso
...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president is currently Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and may be in the process of being chased out now...
said the group should sever all ties with its Al-Qaeda backers.
Sure. Let's talk about it while we quietly rearm.
Ansar Dine joined forces with a Tuareg rebel group to conquer the entire northern half of Mali in early April, effectively partitioning the landlocked west African country and raising fears of regional destabilization.

Regional bloc ECOWAS has a 3,300-strong force on standby to help reunite Mali, which was also rocked by a short-lived coup in the south in March, but the U.N. Security Council has twice refused to back military intervention.

The breakthrough in efforts to look for a negotiated solution to the Malian crisis came during a meeting in Ouagadougou between ECOWAS-appointed mediator Burkinabe President Blaise Compaore and an Ansar Dine delegation.

"We accept Burkina Faso's mediation. We are following the path of this negotiation," said Cheick Ag Wissa, a front man for an Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith) delegation that met Compaore in his palace.

He was speaking in Tamasheq, a language spoken by Tuareg in northern Mali, where rebels energized by the return from Libya last year of heavily armed mercenaries revived their decades-old independence struggle.

Djibrill Bassole, Compaore's foreign minister and a seasoned diplomat who has acted as a mediator in Sudan's troubled Darfur, confirmed Ansar Dine's willingness to engage in a negotiation process.

"The Ansar Dine delegation expressed its readiness to commit to the quest for a peaceful and negotiated solution to this crisis" under Burkina Faso's mediation, he said after the meeting.

Iyad Ag Ghaly, Ansar Dine's top leader and an influential former Tuareg rebel leader believed to have developed close ties with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), was not in Ouagadougou.

Bassole made it clear that the negotiation process would hinge on Ansar Dine's willingness to break away from AQIM, which has used bases in northern Mali to launch several attacks and kidnap foreigners for ransom.

Ansar Dine's "action should be contained within Tuareg claims ... and any operational links with terrorist groups should be ruled out," he said.

Ansar Dine and the main Tuareg separatist group, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), control the northern half of the bow tie-shaped nation, a territory larger than La Belle France or Texas.

They conquered Gao, the fabled city of Timbuktu and the rest of the north almost without a fight after the March 22 coup in Bamako -- which some observers have described as "accidental" -- created a power vacuum.

The two rebel groups proclaimed an independent Islamic state in May but soon fell out, with the Tuareg defending a secular state while Ansar Dine supported the implementation of strict sharia, the Islamic legal code.

The violence in Mali has annihilated a fledgling tourism industry and displaced 300,000 people, some internally and the rest scattered in neighboring Niger, Burkina Faso and Mauritania.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [13 views] Top|| File under: Ansar Dine


Arabia
Al-Qaeda claims responsibility for killing senior commander in Aden
[Yemen Post] Al-Qaeda has grabbed credit for the suicide kaboom that left a senior commander in the southern port city of Aden killed on Monday morning.

Earlier the day, only a few hours after withdrawing from Azan, al-Qaeda stronghold in the southeastern province of Shabwa, a Somali national went kaboom!" and killed Salem Qatan, the commander of the Southern Military Region, as well as two of his guards.

Qatan has a major role in dislodging the forces of Evil from their strongholds in Abyan
...a governorate of Yemen. The region was a base to the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army terrorist group until it dropped the name and joined al-Qaeda. Its capital is Zinjibar. In March 2011, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula declared the governate an Islamic Emirate after seizing control of the region. The New York Times fastidiously reported that those in control, while Islamic hard boyz, are not in fact al-Qaeda, but something else that looks, tastes, smells, and acts the same. Yemeni government forces launched an effort to re-establish control of the region when President-for-Life Saleh was tossed and the carnage continues...
as the military troops under his command have been very active since he assumed his position two months ago.

In a statement of which BBC obtained a copy, al-Qaeda said that the attack is retaliation to the military campaign waged against its forces of Evil in Abyan's towns, vowing to target more officials in the days to come.

After it pulled out from the three key strongholds in Abyan province, al-Qaeda threatened to move the war to the capital and that it would chase the" crusaders --the leaders of the war against the terror network-- to their cities and palaces.

Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [11 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Arabia


After Victory on Militants, Landmine Explosion Kills First Three in South Yemen
[Yemen Post] Three non-combatants were killed in a landmine kaboom in Abyan
...a governorate of Yemen. The region was a base to the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army terrorist group until it dropped the name and joined al-Qaeda. Its capital is Zinjibar. In March 2011, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula declared the governate an Islamic Emirate after seizing control of the region. The New York Times fastidiously reported that those in control, while Islamic hard boyz, are not in fact al-Qaeda, but something else that looks, tastes, smells, and acts the same. Yemeni government forces launched an effort to re-establish control of the region when President-for-Life Saleh was tossed and the carnage continues...
, a province in south Yemen where the army drove out Al-Qaeda forces of Evil in the past few days, the interior ministry reported.

The landmine went kaboom! while the victims were passing on the highroad during a tour to inspect their house in Zinjibar, the capital, after the battles between the army and the forces of Evil since mid-2011, it said.

After defeating Al-Qaeda forces of Evil and driving them from the key towns sized last year, the authorities started removing landmines planted by the krazed killers.

Today's casualties were the first amid warnings by the authorities the people should not rush back to their homes for now.

In the meantime, the defense ministry said technical teams are continuing removing thousands of landmines, which were planted by the forces of Evil at roads, entrances of towns, farms and where they were stationed.

"The technical teams have been urged to work around the clock to prevent similar incidents amid preparations by the authorities to help many families to return to their homes in Abyan," the ministry said.

In recent years, many civilians including children have been killed in landmine kabooms in south and north Yemen.

Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [10 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Arabia


India-Pakistan
PTI activists baton-charged, arrested in Karachi
[Dawn] Police used water cannons and batons to disperse the participants of Pakistain Tehrik-e-Insaf
...a political party in Pakistan. PTI was founded by former Pakistani cricket captain and philanthropist Imran Khan. The party's slogan is Justice, Humanity and Self Esteem, each of which is open to widely divergent interpretations....
(PTI) pro-judiciary rally in Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It may be the largest city in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
. Several PTI activists were also jugged
Drop the rosco and step away witcher hands up!
after that, DawnNews reported on Monday.

The rally participants lodged their protest at press club; as the rally moved towards the red zone, police used batons and water cannons to stop them.

PTI Sindh front man Faisal Wadoo said that his party condemns the arrest of General Secretary Arif Alvi, prominent leaders Ashraf Qureshi, Asad Umar and other leaders of the party. He said that party also condemns the brutal violence of the police against the party leaders.

After the incident, the PTI activists staged a sit-in at Shahra-e-Faisal, one of the busiest roads of the city, to register their protest causing traffic jam on the road in the busy hours of the day.

Pakistain Tehrik-e-Insaf held a rallies in different cities of Pakistain to show solidarity with the judiciary after the recent allegation against Chief Justice's son, Arsalan Iftikhar, for taking money from Malik Riaz to influence courts in his favour.

PTI rallies were held in Bloody Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore, Beautiful Downtown Peshawar, Sukkur and Ghotki.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [16 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan


Africa Horn
Ethiopian Court Convicts U.N. Security Officer of 'Terrorism'
An Æthiopian security officer with the United Nations
...aka the Oyster Bay Chowder and Marching Society...
faced up to 10 years in jail after a court in Addis Ababa found him guilty Monday of "participating in a terrorist organization."

"The defendant has not convinced us that he did not commit a crime... he's guilty," judge Mulugeta Kidane said.

Abdurahman Sheikh Hassan, who was based in Æthiopia's troubled southeastern Ogaden region, was charged last July with having links to the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), a secessionist rebel group.

He is charged along with Sherif Baido, whom the charge sheet lists as a senior member of the ONLF and was convicted on the same charge in absentia, according to Mulugeta.

The two men face five to ten years in prison. The court is expected to deliver a sentence on Friday.

Hassan was incarcerated
Drop the rosco and step away witcher hands up!
after negotiating the release of two U.N. World Food Program (WFP) officers kidnapped in the Ogaden.

Judge Mulugeta said defense witnesses failed to prove Hassan did not have links to ONLF members.

The key evidence used by the prosecution was recordings of phone conversations between Hassan and his co-defendant.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [14 views] Top|| File under:


India-Pakistan
Pak police told to lose weight
[Bangla Daily Star] Pudgy Pakistani police officers have been given until the end of the month to shrink their waistlines below 38 inches -- or get off the streets.

Punjab police spokeswoman Nabila Ghazanfar said the province's police chief was determined to "turn the force into a fit one."

She declined to comment on a local media report that said 77 percent of the police in Rawalpindi had girths bigger than 38 inches around, but she acknowledged that many are overweight.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [21 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan

#1  Meanwhile, not to be outdone by Pakistan ...

* TOPIX > IFF ENTIRE WORLD WAS AS HEAVY AS AMERICANS, THAT WOULD EQUAL AN EXTRA BILYUHN PEOPLE: STUDY.

versus

* CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > EARLY DEATH ASSURED IN INDIA WHERE 900.0MILYUHN DON'T EAT ENOUGH - BLOOMBERG. 3/4 of India's 1.2Bilyuhn population eat at below minimum standards. Rural Migration to urban cities in search of work + better life proved to be no salvation for many, espec Kiddies.

Artic's "Republic of Hunger" connotation really sticks wid me. IT SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING IN A COUNTRY MANY OF WHOSE CITIZENS ATTEND MODERN SCHOOLS IN THE US-WEST + ELSEWHERE.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 06/19/2012 23:35 Comments || Top||


Polio vaccination ban
[Dawn] AS we get tired of the intense drama being played out on the national stage and look away in the hope of some relief, what do we see? Hafiz Gul Bahadur issuing a decree banning polio
...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set...
vaccination in the North Wazoo Agency. The Death Eater is considered one of the 'good' Pak Taliban, a pro-army commander with whom the authorities have cut many deals. By banning polio vaccination and linking its resumption to the cessation of US drone strikes, he now imperils some 140,000 children in the area he controls. What is left to be said when children are used as pawns in a game they are unlikely to understand? This is not only evident in the case of the ban but also in the CIA-sponsored fake vaccination campaign that was carried out by Dr Shakil Afridi in Abbottabad
... A pleasant city located only 30 convenient miles from Islamabad. The city is noted for its nice weather and good schools. It is the site of Pakistain's military academy, which was within comfortable walking distance of the residence of the late Osama bin Laden....
to verify the late Osama bin Laden
... who has made the transition back to dust...
's presence there. While a direct link has yet to be established between that operation and the reluctance of people in the tribal areas to have their children vaccinated in its wake, the number of cases in which parents have refused polio drops for their offspring has been on the rise. Such unwillingness on the part of the parents will only serve to enhance the effectiveness of the propaganda tool in the hands of the Death Eaters, especially with Hafiz Gul Bahadur's declaration that the CIA is known to use polio vaccinators as spies.

In an area where polio is endemic, vaccination has now stopped and there are reports that kits have been snatched and destroyed, and many villages have decided against vaccinating their children. Where is the state in all this? Has it abdicated all responsibility? Will its obsession to remain onside with forces it feels are vital to its national security objectives weigh heavier in its decisions than its duty towards its children? We wish we knew.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [14 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Pakistan

#1  Polio, once a dreaded disease, has essentially been eradicated in the civilized world. Sadly and pointlessly, it is still endemic in parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Northern Nigeria. It is left as an exercise for the Reader to determine why.
Posted by: SteveS || 06/19/2012 1:07 Comments || Top||

#2  Yes! Similar to the organised fake vaccination drive to get Osama bin Laden's family DNA, and Bush-hitler's anti-HIV campaign in Africa, polio vaccines are CIA sponsored and should be avoided by the devout.
Posted by: Besoeker || 06/19/2012 6:37 Comments || Top||

#3  Besoeker, is it just the polio vaccines that are haram or should all vaccines be considered in-Islamic? And if vaccines are forbidden, shouldn't antibiotics also be banned?
Posted by: Glenmore || 06/19/2012 7:20 Comments || Top||

#4  I can remember the pre-polio vaccine world and what it was like. Just about everyone knew someone who lived close by or was in your family who had polio. It seemed like it hit the young more than adults for some reason. Parents were afraid for their children because they did not know how to protect them. There was a generation of kids running around with leg braces because of paralysis. One of our presidents, FDR had polio. I remember a very promising, bright kid down the street who got polio. He was confined to an "Iron Lung" because he could not breathe on his own. It is difficult to imagine parents who would reject vaccinations when it is so readily available and preventive of a terrible scourge.
Posted by: JohnQC || 06/19/2012 9:50 Comments || Top||

#5  It is difficult to imagine parents who would reject vaccinations when it is so readily available and preventive of a terrible scourge. It's not one bit difficult for me to imagine people like that, not after reading about modern Islam & Pakistain.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 06/19/2012 10:18 Comments || Top||

#6  JQC, I'm also of an age to remember leg braces and the March of Dimes.

In middle school one of the kids had a brace and he was the baddest ass kid in the school. My leg brace wearing 8th grade science teacher? He was the baddest ass in the whole damn school!

I was brought up to believe that this was compensation for the disability. Didn't matter why but they both had "DO NOT MESS WITH" signs in blinking neon.
Posted by: AlanC || 06/19/2012 11:15 Comments || Top||


Africa North
Mursi supporters celebrate election victory in Tahrir Square
[Al Ahram] With unofficial results showing Egypt's new president will be Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood, dozens of supporters celebrate in Cairo's Tahrir Square
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [13 views] Top|| File under: Arab Spring


Africa Horn
District commissioner: We thwarted Al shabab suicide car attack in Afgoye
(Sh. M. Network)-The administration of Afgoye district for Somali government, declared that Al shabab forces of Evil failed yesterday to carry out a suicide kaboom at army base in Afgoye, 30 Km north-west Mogadishu,Somalia capital.

Abdullah Ibi, the district commissioner of Afgoye for TFG told Shabelle Media that security forces managed on Saturday to intercept and prevent a car-laden with explosives that Al shabab intended to detonate an army base at Bar Ismail area in Afgoye district.

"Al shabab used to carry out such attacks when they lose main positions in the battle with Somali and Africa Union peacekeeping soldiers," said Mr.Ibi, adding that only the jacket wallah had lost his life in the failed attack.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [14 views] Top|| File under: al-Shabaab


Arabia
Massive Combing Operation to Clear Remaining Militants from South Yemen
[Yemen Post] A massive combing operation has been launched to clear the remaining Al-Qaeda Death Eaters from all areas in Yemen's Shabwa province, a day after Al-Qaeda retreated from its main stronghold in the Azzan area.

Forces and popular committees are participating in the operation, which was commenced in the capital Ataq and headed toward the southern parts.

The operation coincided with a failed attempt
Curses! Foiled again!
to assassin Shabwa governor Ali Al-Ahmedi and the suicide kaboom which killed commander of the southern military region in Aden this morning, Salim Qatan

Over the past few months, the Yemeni army in association with tribal fighters has fought Al-Qaeda Death Eaters and driven them out of their strongholds in Abyan
...a governorate of Yemen. The region was a base to the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army terrorist group until it dropped the name and joined al-Qaeda. Its capital is Zinjibar. In March 2011, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula declared the governate an Islamic Emirate after seizing control of the region. The New York Times fastidiously reported that those in control, while Islamic hard boyz, are not in fact al-Qaeda, but something else that looks, tastes, smells, and acts the same. Yemeni government forces launched an effort to re-establish control of the region when President-for-Life Saleh was tossed and the carnage continues...
province. The Death Eaters received severe blows, with hundreds of them including big shots killed, injured and nabbed
Drop the rosco and step away witcher hands up!
After the army retook control of Abyan, it pursued the fleeing Death Eaters targeting their positions in Shabwa and other nearby provinces. Tens of Death Eaters have been killed in Arclight airstrikes and battles so far.

The US is providing direct support on the offensive against Al-Qaeda, which exploited the unrest last year to occupy key towns and declare them Islamic emirates in south Yemen.

Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [12 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Arabia


Iraq
Shiite Official Targeted as Iraq Attacks Kill Two
[An Nahar] Bombings in Iraq, including one targeting the deputy head of a Shiite religious foundation, killed two people and maimed five on Monday, officials said.

Sami al-Massudi, the deputy head of the Shiite endowment which oversees Shiite religious sites in Iraq, said a roadside kaboom hit his convoy at about 12:15 pm (0915 GMT) in the Saidiyah area of south Storied Baghdad
...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate...

Massudi said the bomb, which maimed three of his bodyguards, hit the middle vehicle in his convoy.

The attack came on the same day that employees found a threatening letter in the central Storied Baghdad headquarters of the endowment, which was destroyed in a suicide car booming on June 4 that killed 25 people.

"We say to the Safavid rejecters (Shiites) that this is a first letter that you received with the color and smell of blood, and the sound that will make you deaf, and what is coming, with God's permission, will be much stronger," the letter said, according to Massudi, who added it was "signed by Al-Qaeda."

On Wednesday, 72 people were killed in a wave of attacks across Iraq that were claimed by Al-Qaeda, some of which targeted Shiites, a majority in the country.

And on Saturday, 32 people were killed in two car boomings against Shiite pilgrims in Storied Baghdad.

Also on Monday, a roadside kaboom targeted a police patrol in Baquba, north of Storied Baghdad, killing one policeman and wounding two others, and a shepherd was killed by a roadside kaboom east of the city, a police lieutenant colonel said.

Dr Ahmed Ibrahim of Baquba General Hospital said the facility had received two bodies and two other people who were maimed.

Violence in Iraq has declined dramatically since its peak in 2006-2007, but attacks remain common, especially in the capital. A total of 132 Iraqis were killed in violence in May, according to official figures.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [16 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Iraq


Economy
Report: Gas to fuel Wyo. jobs boost
Unconventional natural gas plays will fuel a boost in Wyoming jobs during the next decade, according to an industry-funded report from analysis firm IHS Global Insight. Such plays include coal-bed methane, shale and "tight sands" formations.

Wyoming will add nearly 11,000 jobs from 2010 to 2015 due to the gas development and gain an additional 33,000 jobs by 2035, according to the report, which was sponsored by the industry trade group America's Natural Gas Alliance.

The study examined job boosts in terms of total jobs created by development, which can include nongas support and supply positions, among others, and economic activity, which is essentially a way of describing spending on products or services due to an activity.

The study authors examined 58 unconventional gas plays across the U.S., focusing in Wyoming primarily on the productive formations in the Upper Green River Basin.

The study's authors didn't consider a number of "tight sand" formations seeing increased interest by producers in Wyoming, particularly in Converse County and southern Campbell County. That means the study's estimates for Wyoming could be low.

"There's a lot of upside as those are investigated and developed and brought to bear," said John Larson, public sector vice president for IHS Consulting and a co-author of the report.

The Wyoming job and tax boost is mirrored by IHS's numbers for the U.S. as a whole. Unconventional gas activity will zoom from 53 percent of total U.S. gas production in 2010 to 79 percent in 2035, the firm estimated. At present U.S. consumption rates of 56 billion cubic feet a day, Larson said the unconventional gas plays are proving their worth to consumers.

"We have easily a 100-year supply of affordable, stable natural gas," he said. "And that is eye-opening."

Larson said the report illustrated an interesting conclusion: Unconventional gas plays are now in more places in the U.S. and those who supply those in the plays are spread in many nonproducing states.

"The traditional energy states are still there, but it's the rise of these other states" that is particularly noteworthy, he said.

"It's an industry with very broad supplier networks," he said. "Those supplier networks are overwhelmingly supplied domestically. So a dollar spent here stays here."

In an earlier report, IHS noted a continuing low price for natural gas -- the bane of Wyoming producers and the state's coffers -- could have a beneficial side.

Low gas prices will keep electricity rates low, boosting the competitiveness of domestic manufacturers by 2.9 percent by 2017 and 4.7 percent by 2035, compared to a scenario without the booming production of unconventional gas.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [13 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Low gas prices will keep electricity rates low Only by comparison to projected spikes in electric rates had not the new NG sources come online. I'm paying 10 cents per kilowatt-hour.
There is still a possibility of greatly increased use of NG as a vehicle fuel. The main block to that is the lack of NG filling stations.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 06/19/2012 10:21 Comments || Top||

#2  "There is still a possibility of greatly increased use of NG as a vehicle fuel. The main block to that is the lack of NG filling stations". Same problem for hydrogen AH. I believe hydrogen has a brighter future. Toyota has plans now for cars using hydrogen(big bucks). You can get a $500. dollar conversion kit from Australia now. Works best with carburetor systems. Battery for power, baking soda, and clean water.
Posted by: Dale || 06/19/2012 11:15 Comments || Top||


Africa Subsaharan
Boko Haram Islamists Claim Deadly Nigeria Church Blasts
[An Nahar] Boko Haram
... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...
Islamists on Monday claimed suicide kabooms on three churches in northern Nigeria's Kaduna state that killed at least 16 and sparked riots that killed dozens more.

"Allah has given us victory in the attacks we launched against churches in (the cities of) Kaduna and Zaria which resulted in the deaths of many Christians and security personnel," said the email statement sent by Abul Qaqa, the purported Boko Haram front man who has similarly claimed previous attacks.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [13 views] Top|| File under: Boko Haram


Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Two Gazans killed in second Israeli air strike: medics
[Al Ahram] Two Paleostinians were killed Monday in a second Israeli air strike on the northern Gazoo town of Beit Hanun, raising the overall toll to four dead, Paleostinian medics said.
"Two people were killed in a Zionist air strike on a street in Beit Hanun," an official at Kamal Edwan hospital told AFP after the second such strike on the town in seven hours.

At least three other people were maimed in the attack, he said, without saying how badly.

Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamist Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, rulers of Gazoo, identified one of the dead men as one of its activists, 23-year-old Jihad Abu Shbab, a statement said.

A medical source named the other dead man as Mohammed al-Zaanin, 25, and said he was not affiliated with any armed faction.

The earlier strike targeted a cycle of violence just east of Beit Hanun, killing two Islamic Jihad
...created after many members of the Egyptian Mohammedan Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the liquidation of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah...
activists, medics and witnesses said.

The Israeli military confirmed the strike, saying it had targeted "a terrorist squad attempting to fire a rocket at Israel." Troops identified "a direct hit," the statement said.

The two air strikes came just hours after after gunnies mounted a bushwhack along Israel's southern border with Egypt, killing an Israeli civilian construction worker.

But an Israeli military source earlier insisted the initial air strike was "in no way related to today's incident along the Israel-Egypt border."
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [15 views] Top|| File under: Islamic Jihad


Home Front: Politix
You, too, can prevent voter fraud
By trailing wife

With all the reports lately about this or that state working to clean up the voter rolls of Deceased Americans, Imaginary Americans, non-citizen Americans and possibly, in an excess of enthusiasm, legitimate Americans, I thought I ought to do my share by checking to see if I was still registered at any of my previous American addresses.

It turns out this is amazingly easy, so long as one has an internet device, web access, and a few minutes of free time.

As a first step I googled "__county voter registration" with the name of each of the various counties I've lived in since reaching majority. Each site had a page for checking registration, which I did most dutifully, and demonstrated to my satisfaction that I have left no ghosts behind for fraudsters to use. I am happy to report ditto for Mr. Wife, and that my father -- who died two years ago -- is no longer registered. Well done, voter registrars of Erie County, NY and Hamilton and Butler Counties, Ohio!

I'm not sure what one has to do to clean up multiple registrations, but no doubt the nice people at the telephone number listed on each web page will know.
Posted by: trailing wife || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [12 views] Top|| File under:

#1  This would be a great idea for someone to run with. Get 1000 people together and do this, and find out how prevalent fraudulent registrations are. It would be all over the blogosphere if someone got up the gumption to do this sort of campaign.
Posted by: gromky || 06/19/2012 5:17 Comments || Top||

#2  It's pretty easy to find bad registrations. Not so easy to remove them.

There are several good projects out there. True the Vote is perhaps the best known. Another project has been comparing the names of those excused from jury duty because they are not citizens with voter registration lists.

Another give away is large numbers of voters at a single address. I'll bet if you could run a database query of all addresses with more than 3 registrants, you could turn up thousands if not tens of thousand of suspect registrations.

The left is conducting fraud on a wholesale basis. The scale is staggering. In some areas they can bring in a quarter million fraudulent votes or more. They do not believe in democracy. They believe in power.
Posted by: Iblis || 06/19/2012 10:51 Comments || Top||


Africa Horn
Somali pirates kill each other in the coast town of Hobyo
(Sh. M. Network)-At least one person was reportedly killed and many others were maimed as two heavily armed Somali pirate groups fired at each other in the coastal district Hobyo, Mudug region on Monday morning, reports said.
Heavily armed boys will be boys...
Witnesses in Hobyo town, north-central Mudug region of Somalia, said the fighting erupted when a bunch of pirates tried to apprehend forcibly another pirate gang in the group, and then started firing guns at each other.

"We woke up this morning hearing the barrage of bullets and sounds of artillery fire exchanging between two groups of Somali pirates in Hobyo town. The fighting continued for hours and one pirate has been slain in that combat, a resident told Shabelle Media via phone from Hobyo.
Hours of fighting all for one deader? Someone needs time at the range...
According to the latest reports indicated that the situation returned to calm and the skirmish subsided. The fighting halted for moment the movement of people and vehicles, frustrating locals.

The town of Honyo in Mudug region of --North-central Somalia is believed to be one of pirates hide outs in the country where they can operate without much interference.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [15 views] Top|| File under: Pirates

#1  Good. Let them all kill each other.
Posted by: American Delight || 06/19/2012 6:53 Comments || Top||

#2  What's the problem?
Posted by: JohnQC || 06/19/2012 9:53 Comments || Top||


Caribbean-Latin America
Mexican security forces kill 7 in Veracruz state

For a map, click here

By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com

A total of seven armed suspects were killed in a firefight with a joint Mexican security road patrol late Sunday night in central Veracruz state, according to Mexican news accounts.

According to a news item posted on the website of Proceso news weekly, the confrontation took place in near the village of La Gloria in Ursulo Galvan municipality, where the security patrol signalled the drivers of two vehicles to stop, but instead were met with preparations to fire weapons by the armed suspects.

La Raza news daily reported the patrol was a joint patrol comprising Veracruz state police agents as well as Mexican Army units.

After the confrontation, patrol elements seized four rifles, ten weapons magazines, communications gear and the two vehicles.

Ursulo Galvan is a coastal municipality, about 20 kilometers north of the port city of Veracruz and 40 kilometers southeast of Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz state.

Veracruz state has been the scene of a major security operation for the last 18 months dubbed Seguro Veracruz, a security program operated jointly by state and federal security forces including Mexican Army and Mexican Naval Infantry forces.

The security operation, similar to one in the La Laguna region and in places such as Tamaulipas state, seeks to concentrate security forces in choke points used by the drug cartels to ship product, shooters and munitions north to the US border crossings.

Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com
© Copyright 2012 by Chris Covert
You just obtain permission to reprint this article
Posted by: badanov || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [14 views] Top|| File under:


Arabia
Al-Qaeda-linked militants pull out of key stronghold in Shabwa
[Yemen Post] Al-Qaeda-linked Death Eaters on Sunday pulled out peacefully from Azan, al-Qaeda stronghold in the southeastern Yemeni province of Shabwa after a tribal committee, comprised of tribal chiefs and dignitaries from the province, managed to persuade them to withdraw in order to spare Azan war and bloodshed, local source told al-Masdar news website.

Yaslam Bajnoub, a member in the tribal committee, said the tribal committees have taken over the checkpoints in and at the entrances of the town after the Death Eaters withdrew completely from the town, which had been under the myrmidons' control for months.

Realizing that the government is resolved this time to eliminate the beturbanned goons and push them out from Azan, a tribal committee was formed on Saturday with the aim of sparing their town from carnage and destruction which were absolutely going to take place as the government was planning to storm Azan and recapture it from the terror network.

The committee was formed a day after the armed forces regained control of Abyan
...a governorate of Yemen. The region was a base to the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army terrorist group until it dropped the name and joined al-Qaeda. Its capital is Zinjibar. In March 2011, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula declared the governate an Islamic Emirate after seizing control of the region. The New York Times fastidiously reported that those in control, while Islamic hard boyz, are not in fact al-Qaeda, but something else that looks, tastes, smells, and acts the same. Yemeni government forces launched an effort to re-establish control of the region when President-for-Life Saleh was tossed and the carnage continues...
completely after the myrmidon group held it for over a year.

Locals from Azan confirmed to the website that al-Qaeda Death Eaters withdrew completely from the town and that they saw trucks carrying them leaving the town.

They said that the Death Eaters started last night surrendering the town to tribal committees which will take up the role of preserving security.

On Sunday, soldiers were seen manning the main intersections in the capital of Sana'a and searching every car in a bid to foil any retaliatory al-Qaeda attack. Female soldiers were available to search women as al-Qaeda Death Eaters have reportedly used women's clothes before to infiltrate military checkpoints in Abyan.

The terror network had threatened that it would move the war to the capital and that it would chase crusaders to their cities and palaces after its elements were defeated and dislodged from Abyan.

Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [13 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Arabia

#1  Little 12 year old girls Al-Qaeda run away like cowards again?
Posted by: Water Modem || 06/19/2012 2:33 Comments || Top||


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Obama, Putin Unite in Warning to Syria
[An Nahar] U.S. President Barack Obama
This is a teachable moment...
and Russian President Vladimir Putin
...Second President of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Because of constitutionally mandated term limits he is the current Prime Minister of Russia. His sock puppet, Dmitry Medvedev, was installed in the 2008 presidential elections. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law. During his eight years in office Russia's economy bounced back from crisis, seeing GDP increase, poverty decrease and average monthly salaries increase. During his presidency Putin passed into law a series of fundamental reforms, including a flat income tax of 13%, a reduced profits tax, and new land and legal codes. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile...
Monday called for an end to violence in Syria and said its people should be allowed to democratically decide their future.

"In order to stop the bloodshed in Syria, we call for an immediate cessation of all violence," the leaders said in a joint statement, after meeting in Mexico following days of antagonism between Moscow and Washington on the issue.

"We are united in the belief that the Syrian people should have the opportunity to independently and democratically choose their own future."

Putin told news hounds after meeting Obama for the first time since he returned to the presidency that the two leaders had found "many common points" on Syria, where violence is spiraling into an all-out civil war.

Washington has become increasingly frustrated over Moscow's refusal to allow the U.N. Security Council to take firmer action against Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad
Lord of the Baath...
over his brutal crackdown on civilians.

Obama said after the two hours of talks that both he and Putin agreed on the need for a "political process" to prevent civil war in Syria and pledged to work with U.N. envoy 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...
to try to end the crisis.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [19 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Syria

#1  In other news Gary Kasparov and 'Larry the Cable Guy' sit down to a game of chess.
Posted by: Besoeker || 06/19/2012 6:14 Comments || Top||

#2  Washington has become increasingly frustrated over Moscow's refusal to allow the U.N. Security Council to take firmer action...

Rim-Shot please.
Posted by: DepotGuy || 06/19/2012 20:50 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
Police arrested in Kashmir for alleged rebel links
[Dawn] Four Indian coppers have been tossed in the calaboose
Youse'll never take me alive coppers!... [BANG!]... Ow!... I quit!
in Kashmire for alleged links with rebels fighting against Indian rule, the police chief of the disputed Himalayan region said Monday.

The case has rattled Indian authorities who administer the tense region, where cut-throats have waged a violent campaign for decades demanding independence or a merger with neighboring Pakistain.

The alleged rebel ties were discovered last week during a routine investigation into a recent shooting attack on a former krazed killer, police chief Rajendra Kumar said.

Authorities have tossed in the calaboose
Youse'll never take me alive coppers!... [BANG!]... Ow!... I quit!
two intelligence officials and two low-ranking coppers, and two more suspected officers are still on the lam, he said.

Kumar said the six are believed to have links to Kashmire's largest krazed killer group, Hizbul Mujahideen. Officials are investigating whether they might have helped rebels stage attacks, procure arms, avoid arrest or move undetected through the region.

One of the suspects, a constable who has worked undercover infiltrating rebel groups in the past, was tossed in the calaboose
Youse'll never take me alive coppers!... [BANG!]... Ow!... I quit!
briefly in 2008 for allegedly buying cell phone cards used by gunnies in deadly attacks that year in Mumbai. However,
a person who gets all wrapped up in himself makes a mighty small package...
the constable, Mukhtar Ahmed, was released after authorities said he had made the purchase as part of his undercover work.

Ahmed's re-arrest follows new evidence that suggests he may have operated outside of his official mandate on behalf of the rebels, Kumar said.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [19 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan


-Short Attention Span Theater-
Rielle Hunter Reveals John Edwards' Multiple Mistresses
[ABC News] Rielle Hunter was John Edwards'
...Former senator from North Carolina, former vice presidential candidate, former Democratic presidential contender. Edwards was noted for his Two Americas stump speech and for his pretty hair. People started to notice which of the two Americas he belonged to when he got a $400 haircut in his private plane. While his wife, Elizabeth, was dying of cancer Breck Boy was porking a hussy named Riehl Hunter, with whom he fathered a child, then paid one of his aides to claim that the baby was his...
most recent last mistress, but not his first or only one, she claims in a revealing tell-all memoir obtained by ABC News.

In the bombshell book, "What Really Happened" set to hit stores on June 26, Hunter reveals that Edwards, a two-time presidential candidate, had affairs with at least two other women dating back 20 years, and did not reveal the truth about his former relationships until 2011, two years after Hunter appeared before a grand jury.

The release of the book, which she wrote in an effort to explain her relationship with Edwards to their daughter, coincides with an exclusive interview with ABC's Chris Cuomo, which will air this Friday, June 22.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [21 views] Top|| File under:

#1 
Posted by: Water Modem || 06/19/2012 2:41 Comments || Top||

#2  Don Corleone on John Edwards and Rielle Hunter
Posted by: Besoeker || 06/19/2012 6:40 Comments || Top||

#3  Repaired link.
Posted by: Besoeker || 06/19/2012 7:01 Comments || Top||

#4  The Don Corleone vid is very funny. I don't understand Italian but there was something about keeping your pepperoni on ice and not planting seeds in strange tomato patches.
Posted by: JohnQC || 06/19/2012 9:55 Comments || Top||

#5  Is there anyone, anywhere that cares what this bimbo thinks about anything?
Posted by: tu3031 || 06/19/2012 15:46 Comments || Top||

#6  Remembering the Sandman
Posted by: manversgwtw || 06/19/2012 17:28 Comments || Top||

#7  Cannot understand why anyone cares and who would waste time reading her book.
Posted by: Gloria || 06/19/2012 21:56 Comments || Top||

#8  beyond the excerpts.... me, either.

He was always a narcissistic vainglorious ambulance-chasing two-Americas fake-populist asshole. Beyond that sentence, what more is to be learned?
Posted by: Frank G || 06/19/2012 22:35 Comments || Top||


Europe
French Socialists eye tax rises
Water is wet, and so on...
PARIS - France's Socialists vowed on Monday to use a resounding victory in weekend parliamentary elections to pursue President Francois Hollande's drive for growth in Europe while sticking to promises to cut the budget deficit, mostly through taxation increases.

Hollande will use a special session of parliament next month to whittle down France's numerous tax exemptions and pass tax rises for large corporations, especially banks and energy firms, in a bid to cut the deficit to within the European Union's 3 percent limit by next year despite a stagnant economy.
All this will make the economy more stagnant, which will require more government programs, which will require more government workers, which will require higher taxes. Europeans call it 'socialism', Americans call it 'Obanomics'...
Economists expect the Socialist leader - who has also pledged a 75 percent tax rate on those earning over 1 million euros - to use an audit of the state's finances due early next month to water down his campaign pledges to increase spending on welfare and education and justify tax rises.

Final results from Sunday's election showed the Socialists won a comfortable majority of 314 seats in the 577-member National Assembly, freeing them from reliance on euroskeptic far-leftists opposed to more austerity measures.

Ahead of the vote, Hollande's government had insisted it could meet its deficit targets with only minor cuts to administrative spending, without resorting to the kinds of austerity programs seen in recession-stricken Greece or Spain.

Appearing to brace French voters for tough measures, however, Interior Minister Manuel Valls said on Monday that meeting France's EU commitments would involve sacrifices.
Except by the sacred cows and the Friends of Hollande...
"We need to sort out this country. Every Frenchman will need to make an effort but fairly, via tax reforms. It will be difficult but that is the task facing us," Valls told RTL radio.

France has one of the highest levels of government expenditure in Europe and posted a budget deficit of 5.2 percent of GDP last year.

Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault is due to outline the government's policy agenda to parliament on July 3, shortly after receiving the state auditor's report.

Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici recently said the government was heading for a 5 percent deficit this year -- requiring some 10 billion euros in additional measures over the to hit its 2012 target of 4.5 percent.

Economists said the Socialists' parliamentary majority on Sunday - its best ever parliamentary score - would allow the party the room to impose tougher austerity measures and structural reforms if needed.
Translation: higher taxes...
"These policies, which were not in the political program, would not be accepted by Communists members of parliament and by all Greens, but the support of the Socialists, who are much more faithful to the president, will now be enough," wrote Dominique Barbet, economist at BNP Paribas in Paris.

A spokeswoman for the audit office said its report had been postponed until July 2-4 from an initial release date on June 28. That allows Hollande to postpone the domestically sensitive discussion of how to plug France's deficit until after the June 28-29 EU summit at which he will press European leaders to back 120 billion euros of stimulus measures for euro zone economies.

Hollande was expected to press the case for the growth measures - which include joint bond issue to fund infrastructure projects and better use of EU structural funds - at a summit of G20 leaders in Mexico on Monday.
Because what the world needs is more publicly funded infrastructure projects...
He travels to Rome on Friday to meet Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and discuss closer political union and unified bank regulation in Europe, also on the EU summit agenda.
Translation: how do they best stick Germany with the tab...
Amid rising tensions between Paris and Berlin, Merkel has rebuffed Hollande's calls for joint euro zone bonds to resolve the crisis. She bluntly warned on Friday that France needed to urgently look to its own flagging competitiveness.

"The question everyone is asking is what will France do in terms of structural reforms and policies to stimulate growth, since there is a broad agreement that France has a serious competitiveness deficit," said Jean Pisani-Ferry, director of the Bruegel think-tank in Brussels.

Many economists point to a sharp rise in wage costs over the last decade and the high level of welfare charges on salaries as the prime reason for France's rising trade deficit, which hit a record 70 billion euros last year. They note that salaries in Germany, France's main trade partner, have remained flat.

The Socialists, however, disagree. They say France's economy needs more investment in research and education, and they have also pledged to set up a new investment bank to lend to small- and medium-sized companies, which create most jobs.
So that French workers can retire at 60 instead of 62, while Germans retire at 67. That's not going to fly in Dusseldorf...
Posted by: Steve White || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [15 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Somebody's gotta do it...

Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) || 06/19/2012 0:04 Comments || Top||

#2  The Timothy Geithner global solution; tax exeryone at the highest rates possible to sustain the beast of big government.
Posted by: Besoeker || 06/19/2012 6:07 Comments || Top||

#3  Then create debt to try and hide the damage to wealth creation from the transfer-tax.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 06/19/2012 6:39 Comments || Top||

#4  The Welfaristan sector put the Socialists into power, so this makes perfect sense.
Posted by: Grunter || 06/19/2012 11:39 Comments || Top||

#5  Just another way to kick the can down the road. This won't stop until the kicking stops, or the can falls off a cliff.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 06/19/2012 11:40 Comments || Top||

#6  Economists expect the Socialist leader - who has also pledged a 75 percent tax rate on those earning over 1 million euros

Cash flow and change of residencies across the Channel unexpectedly increasing as well...
Posted by: Pappy || 06/19/2012 12:43 Comments || Top||

#7  I think it's time for Germany to withdraw from the Euro.
Posted by: Mikey Hunt || 06/19/2012 13:22 Comments || Top||

#8  So when the 99 govt workers are surrounding the 1 farmer with guns demanding food and he refuses and gets shot, can I laugh when they all starve?
Posted by: Silentbrick - Schlumberger Squishy Mud Division || 06/19/2012 16:47 Comments || Top||

#9  Bienvenue a la Courbe de Laffer

Prendre plaisir!
Posted by: manversgwtw || 06/19/2012 17:47 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
Quetta echoes with second explosion; four injured
After an early morning kaboom targeted at a university bus that killed four students, another bomb went kaboom! at Quetta's Sariab road. Four men received injuries in that, DawnNews reported on Monday.

The kaboom was placed at the side of the road. Four pedestrians, including a child, were maimed by the blast, police sources said.

Injured have been taken to the civil hospital of the city.

Police have cordoned off the area and started investigations of the incident.

Two people were rubbed out in the same area after the blast which created a panic--like situation in the area.

Earlier today, a car boom tore into a university bus in Pakistain's insurgency-torn southwest, killing four people and wounding more than 40 others, mostly Shia students, police said.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [15 views] Top|| File under:


Afghanistan
Remote-Controlled Bomb Blast Kills 6 in Kapisa
[Tolo News] As many as six people including four local police and two non-combatants were killed in remote controlled kaboom in southern Kapisa province on Monday morning, local officials said.

The incident happened at around 11:00 am local time when a suicide kaboomer detonated his explosives at Tagab district of Kapisa province wounding 17 others, 202 Shamshad Zone Media Center said in a statement.

This comes as, Hussain Khan Sanjani, head of provincial council in Kapisa told Washington Post that a local police commander along with his son and two bodyguards were also among the deaths.

No groups including have claimed the responsibility of the attack.

This comes as four French soldiers were killed in a suicide attack in Nejrab district of Kapisa province earlier this month, Isaf confirmed the incident.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [13 views] Top|| File under: Taliban


Africa North
US 'deeply concerned' over moves by Egypt's military
[Al Ahram] Pentagon spokesperson expresses concern over amendments to constitutional declaration announced by the SCAF late Sunday providing military with sweeping powers
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [11 views] Top|| File under: Arab Spring

#1  Notice that its a Pentagon spokesperson not State. Cause political hacks don't want people to get ideas. Feeling a little paranoid?
Posted by: Procopius2k || 06/19/2012 0:11 Comments || Top||

#2  "We're deeply concerned about new amendments to the constitution declaration, including the timing of their announcements as polls were closing for the presidential election," spokesman George Little told reporters.

No concern at all over the Annointed One's recent "moves" just prior to our own national election however. No concern at all regarding MB and AQ "moves" in conjunction with the glorious "Arab Spring" throughout the Middle East. Washington betrayed Hosni Mubarak. I suppose complete betrayal will not be culminated until the military is destroyed as well.
Posted by: Besoeker || 06/19/2012 5:58 Comments || Top||

#3  First thing Mitt better do is bomb the hell out of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, arm the only Christian group that has a spine to fight back in the Middle East, the Copts.
Posted by: Gerthudion Gromoger5444 || 06/19/2012 9:44 Comments || Top||

#4  re:Mubarak - Remember another Donk president who 'looked the other way' with a sponsored foreign ruler? Maybe it was karma that caught up a couple of weeks later.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 06/19/2012 9:49 Comments || Top||


Africa Horn
Roadside Bomb in Mogadishu kills One,wounds Three
(Sh. M. Network)- At least One person dead and Two others sustained somber wounds after a roadside kaboom struck on car belonging to a well-known Somali Elder in Mogadishu, witnesses said on Sunday.

Elder Mohammed Hassan Haad, the chairman of Huwiya clan elders, confirmed to Shabelle Media that a vehicle carrying his two youngsters accompanying a girl detonated a bomb on Sunday night at Hamar-Bile village in Mogadishu's Wardhigley district.

"My two sons and a girl suffered variety of wounds in the kaboom as they were driving a Surf car on Sunday night inside Hamar-Bile neighborhood. They were admitted to a hospital for treatment," said the Elder, adding that a nearby civilian was killed.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [12 views] Top|| File under: al-Shabaab


India-Pakistan
JI to resist Nato supplies even after US apology
[Dawn] The Jamaat-e-Islami
...The Islamic Society, founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka The Great Apostosizer. The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an independent branch there since 1975. It maintains close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores...
(JI) would not allow resumption of NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis....
supplies through Pakistain even if the USA tendered an apology over attack on Salala checkpost, said Prof Ibrahim, the provincial chief of the party.

Addressing a rally at Chakdara Bazaar on Sunday, he criticised the rulers for seeking money from the US and other western countries.

More than 300 JI activists attended the rally, which was also addressed by Maulana Asadullah, Sahibzada Yaqub Khan, Sultanat Yar, Advocate Rahimullah, Dr Bashir Ahmad, Noorul Haq and others.

"The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central...
government is promoting vulgarity and obscenity in the name of so-called cultural shows and musical concerts," alleged Prof Ibrahim.

He said that government wanted to get money from the US in return of reopening NATO supply route. He termed it a shameful act. He said that NATO supply route should not be reopened even if the US tendered apology over killing of Pak soldiers at Salala last year.

The JI leader said that the Supreme Court of Pakistain and its judges were being targeted under a conspiracy. He said that rulers, both at centre and provinces, were involved in corruption cases.

"That is why they (rulers) want to defame and pressurise the judiciary," Prof Ibrahim said, adding that JI workers would support judiciary.

Other speakers accused the government of devising anti-people policies. They said that uncontrolled corruption was destroying foundations of the state.

The participants of the rally marched on Chakdara-Timergara Road and gathered outside Chakdara Press Club. They rolled their eyes, jumped up and down, and hollered poorly rhymed slogans real loud against the government and demanded end to unscheduled power outage, conspiracies against judiciary and
corruption.

Meanwhile,
...back at the pound, Zebulon finally found just the friend he'd been looking for...
a local jirga of Adenzai on Sunday settled an old blood feud between two families of Kiteyari village.

The jirga, consisting of Dr Bashir Ahmad, Sultanat Yar, Rahimullah and Madad Khan of Jamaat-e-Islami and Hussain Shah Yousafzai of ANP, initiated efforts to resolve dispute between the families of Hayat Khan and Haji Fazal Mabood.

The members of the two families on Sunday embraced each other during a ceremony held at the hujra of Hayat Khan.

JI provincial chief Prof Ibrahim was chief guest while hundreds of local elders and notables were present on the occasion.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [19 views] Top|| File under: Jamaat-e-Islami

#1  See TOPIX > PAKISTAN WANTS "APPROPRIATE" APOLOGY FROM US, SAYS ENVOY [Rehman].

The Maha-Rushian questionne' of the day is whether Econ-troubled POTUS Bammer is willing to make a "soft" apology, + how "soft" will it be.

and

* SAME > [NewsKerala] PAKISTAN WILL RESTORE NATO SUPPLIES THIS MONTH, IFF US APOLOGIZES.

versus

* DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > KABUL ACCUSES PAKISTAN OF SHIITE ATTACK. Mass-casualty Ashura incident back in 12/2011 | AFGHANISTAN SAYS PAKISTAN INVOLVED IN SECTARIAN ATTACK.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 06/19/2012 23:56 Comments || Top||


Bangladesh
Ghulam Azam's petition rejected
[Bangla Daily Star] Former Jamaat-e-Islami
...The Islamic Society, founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka The Great Apostosizer. The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an independent branch there since 1975. It maintains close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores...
chief Ghulam Azam is facing trial for his role during the Liberation War, not for his political affiliation, observed the International Crimes Tribunal-1 while rejecting a petition on review of charges.

Ghulam Azam, considered by many as the symbol of war crimes during the Liberation War in 1971, was indicted on five charges based on 60 incidents of crimes against humanity on May 13.

"He is not being tried just only for his political affiliation; he is rather being tried for his role during the Liberation War and for killing innocent people," said Chairman of the Tribunal Justice Md Nizamul Huq before rejecting the petition.

Defence counsel Abdur Razzaq gave a submission for the review of charges on June 6.

Justice Nizamul Huq said the charges were duly framed against Ghulam Azam following rules and were clear enough. There is time to prove them wrong during the trial proceedings, so the petition is rejected, he added.

With this order there remains no bar to beginning the trial proceedings against the former Jamaat chief, said Prosecutor Zead Al Malum.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [11 views] Top|| File under: Jamaat-e-Islami


Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Hamas leader congratulates Egypt on democracy
[Al Ahram] Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, leader Ismail Haniyah congratulated Egypt on Monday after the Moslem Brüderbund candidate Mohamed Mursi's campaign announced that he had won the election.
Paleostinians in the Gazoo Strip celebrated Mursi's self-declared victory on Monday, with fireworks and parades of cars and cycle of violences.

Haniyah said that he prayed for Egypt's stability and security, and he called on Egypt to rein in Israeli aggression.

He also refuted Israeli accusations that Hamas had fired rockets from Egypt's Sinai peninsula into Israel, saying that these charges allow Israel to attack Paleostinians in the Gazoo Strip, as in the recent case of two Paleostinians killed by an Israeli air raid on Beit Hanun in northern Gazoo.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [12 views] Top|| File under: Hamas


Africa Horn
Fighting renews in Gedo region, south west Somalia
(Sh. M. Network)-Heavy fighting
... as opposed to the more usual name-calling or slapsy...
broke out between Somali government troops allied with Ahlu Sunna Waljama'a (ASWJ) fighters and Al shabab cut-throats at townships in Gedo region of southwestern Somalia, reports.

Witnesses said, the battle started after Somali government soldiers and ASWJ fighters attacked a convoy of vehicles carrying Al shabab cut-throats at Tulo-Barwaqo area in Gedo region controlled by the Islamist.

Sheik Mohammed Hussein (Al Qadi), the front man of ASWJ, confirmed to Shabelle media that the coalition forces have killed at least two Al shabab combatants while many others injured during their attack.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [14 views] Top|| File under: al-Shabaab


India-Pakistan
Karachi Korpse Kount
[Dawn] At least six people were rubbed out and six others injured in different incidents of firing in various areas of Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It may be the largest city in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
on Monday, police and ambulance sources said.

They said that two men were bumped off by unknown gunnies in Sherpao Colony. The dear departed were identified as Akhtar Khan, 50 and Zubair 35.

Their bodies were shifted to Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) for medico legal formalities.

Separately, in a clash between two rival groups at Pehlwan Goth, Gulistan-e-Johar at least nine people were maimed. They were rushed to nearby hospitals, where a seriously injured man and a woman breathed their last.

The dear departed were identified as Imdad, 22 and Gulshan Bibi, 40. Shops and markets in the area went closed after the incident. Police and rangers started a search operation in the area and 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!
at least 10 suspects.

Meanwhile,
...back at the pool hall, Peoria Slim had found another sucker...
two people were killed by unidentified armed assailants in New Bloody Karachi. The bodies were shifted to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital where one of the victims was identified as Amir.

Moreover, 30-year old Sher Khan was injured by unknown gunnies in Frontier Colony, Metroville. He was shifted to the JPMC.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [20 views] Top|| File under:


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
One Dead, Many Hurt as Residents Clash Anew with Army in Nahr al-Bared

[An Nahar] At least one Paleostinian was killed and several people, including three Lebanese soldiers, were maimed on Monday in festivities that erupted between the Lebanese army and residents of the Paleostinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared during the funeral of Ahmed Qassem, who was killed during unrest at the camp on Friday.

An official speaking on condition of anonymity
... for fear of being murdered...
told Agence La Belle France Presse that "one Paleostinian refugee was killed and seven others were maimed" by gunfire.

The Lebanese Army Command said in a statement that the three soldiers were maimed in the festivities.

The army used "tear gas and rubber bullets, and then fired live rounds at people who insisted on attacking (a military post), leading to several of the attackers being injured," said the statement.

It added that youths threw Molotov cocktails at the soldiers and torched an army vehicle as well as part of the military post.

A camp resident said soldiers had opened fire on the youths without provocation.

"The situation in the camp has been tense for days," another camp resident told AFP. "Both the army and the youths were provoking each other. We fear something bigger is being prepared, because the army is deploying in large numbers around the camp now."

Al-Manar television said that the residents surrounded an army vehicle before setting it on fire.

Conflicting reports have emerged over the number of injuries, with LBC television saying that four people were maimed and al-Manar television saying around 10 were maimed.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [16 views] Top|| File under:


India-Pakistan
Pakistan Based Insurgent Groups Trying to Insecure Tajikistan: NDS
[Tolo News] Terrorist groups based in Pakistain's tribal regions of northern Wazoo and Miranshah
... headquarters of al-Qaeda in Pakistain and likely location of Ayman al-Zawahiri. The Haqqani network has established a ministate in centered on the town with courts, tax offices and lots of madrassas...
are trying to infiltrate Tajikistan and conduct terrorist operations, NDS official said today.

Speaking at presser in Kabul, Shafiqullah Taheri, Deputy front man for Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS) added that a group of beturbanned goons who were trying to disrupt Kabul Conference were also jugged
Please don't kill me!

"Terrorist groups based in Pakistain's northern Waziristan and Miranshah region including Al-Qaeda and Haqqani networks are trying insecure Tajikistan using Tajik and Uzbek bully boys." Taheri told news hounds in Kabul adding that the Orcs and similar vermin are receiving trainings in Pakistain by Pak instructors.

Mr Taheri warned that insurgency and insecurity in Afghanistan harms stability in the region particularly in south and central Asia.

"Instability in Afghanistan could bring instability in the south and central Asia and the rest of the world." He added.

Pakistain has been continuously criticized over providing safe havens to the bully boy groups.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [19 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Pakistan


Home Front: Politix
Obama pick for Iraq ambassador withdraws after racy emails
President Barack Obama
I've now been in 57 states -- I think one left to go...
's choice to be ambassador to Iraq has withdrawn from consideration for the post after a series of emails came to light detailing what critics called an improper relationship with a journalist during a previous tour in Storied Baghdad
...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate...
Brett McGurk, who advised President George W. Bush on Iraq and helped negotiate the accord that paved the way for American troops to leave the war-torn country, pulled out just one day after senior Obama adviser David Plouffe pledged the White House's full support.

"No," Plouffe told CNN's "State of the Union" when asked whether the president would withdraw McGurk. "We've made this nomination, and we think he will ably serve as ambassador."

"We greatly appreciate Brett's years of service on behalf of the United States, to include tireless and effective leadership in Iraq from the height of the war to the moment our last troops left Iraq in December and through the challenging transition earlier this year," National Security Council front man Tommy Vietor said in a statement emailed to news hounds.

[Related: WSJ news hound resigns over nominee affair]

"He served in two administrations, and his commitment to the national interest and to the mission was always clear. He has proven himself to be a skilled diplomat willing to take on some of the toughest challenges at the toughest times in a difficult region," Vietor said. "While we regret to see Brett withdraw his candidacy there is no doubt that he will be called on again to serve the country."McGurk's nomination had faced serious opposition in the Senate, where Republican John Maverick McCain
... the Senator-for-Life from Arizona, former presidential candidate and even more former foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution...
charged he lacked the necessary experience to lead the huge American embassy in Storied Baghdad and six of the party's nine members on the Foreign Relations Committee wrote Obama urging him to drop the nomination.

The politicians said McGurk lacked the experience to run the country's largest embassy and cited "the public release of information detailing unprofessional conduct" that they said "demonstrates poor judgment and will affect the nominee's credibility in the country where he has been nominated to serve."

McGurk and Wall Street Journal news hound Gina Chon carried on an extramarital affair while both were in Storied Baghdad, according to media reports citing emails posted on the website www.cryptome.org. The two are now married. Chon resigned from the Wall Street Journal last week. The newspaper said she broke internal rules by showing McGurk "certain unpublished articles."

Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [10 views] Top|| File under:


India-Pakistan
All Kohistan girls alive, safe, says KP
[Dawn] Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central...
Minister for Information Mian Iftikhar Hussain has said that the provincial government is satisfied that all the five girls, suspected of being killed in an honour-related murder case in Kohistan
...a backwoods district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa distinguished by being even more rustic than is the norm among the local Pashtuns....
, are alive.

"Ample evidence, collected by a fact finding mission of the provincial government, is available on the basis of which it has been established that all the five girls are alive and safe," he told a news conference at Chief Minister House here on Sunday.

The minister said that evidence collected during the course of visits to Kohistan established that neither any jirga had taken place nor a religious decree was issued by any holy man to instruct the alleged killing of the five girls at the centre of a controversy.

The controversy emerged after a video surfaced showing five girls clapping with two young men dancing at a private gathering in Kohistan's Beech Bela village.

Mr Hussain said that the fact finding mission visited Beech Bela again on Saturday to find out the whereabouts of the girls.

The team was consisted of Additional Sessions Judge Muneera, who was appointed by the Supreme Court to visit the area,
MNA Bushra Gohar and social worker Farzana Bari.

He said that the team met with four of the five girls, including Sareen Jan, Begum Jan, Aamna and Shaheen, and interviewed them in detail. The fifth girl, Bazgha, said the minister, was not available and could not be reached for her being on the family way. However,
ars longa, vita brevis...
her parents were present on the occasion, he said.

"All those present on the occasion gave evidence, in front of the official team, that all the five girls were alive and safe," Mr Hussain said, adding that the misleading information about the killing of the girls had defamed the province, Pakhtun culture and the traditional institution of jirga.

He said that provincial government would take legal action against Afzal Khan, the brother of the two young men, for spreading false information about the girls' murder in an honour-related case at the behest of a local jirga.

The provincial government, said the minister, felt happy on the Supreme Court's initiative to find out the reality about the girls' fate.

He said that government had decided to establish a primary school at Beech Bela in addition to reconstructing its basic health unit to improve social services in the under-developed area.

"After two visits to the village, it has also been decided to construct a linking bridge to connect Beech Bela with the nearby villages," Mr Hussain said.
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [21 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan

#1  All Kohistan girls alive, safe, says KP

And unraped?
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 06/19/2012 7:06 Comments || Top||

#2  Where's the Pic(s)???
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 06/19/2012 23:19 Comments || Top||


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Syrian opposition to meet in Brussels
[Al Ahram] EU chief Catherine Asthon reveals European financial and political backing to an expected meeting for the Syrian opposition in Brussels aimed at uniting the anti-regime front
Posted by: Fred || 06/19/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [18 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Syria



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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.
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Two weeks of WOT
Tue 2012-06-19
  IDF hits terror cell near Gaza fence
Mon 2012-06-18
  Nigeria: 21 killed, 100 wounded in church blasts
Sun 2012-06-17
  Baghdad bombs target Shiite pilgrims, 32 killed
Sat 2012-06-16
  Yemen army seizes Shuqra after Qaeda pullout
Fri 2012-06-15
  Syria Violence Kills More Than 60
Thu 2012-06-14
  Army takes over in Egypt
Wed 2012-06-13
  At Least 73 Dead in Shelling and Clashes across Syria
Tue 2012-06-12
  Helicopter Gunships Deployed as More Than 100 Dead in Syria
Mon 2012-06-11
  Church Bombing Kills 15 in Nigeria
Sun 2012-06-10
  Syria Army Kills 70 Civilians in Protest Cities
Sat 2012-06-09
  Tuareg Rebels, Islamists, Clash in Northern Mali
Fri 2012-06-08
  UN monitors shot at trying to get to Syria massacre
Thu 2012-06-07
  47 Die in Hama Countryside 'Massacre' as Clashes Rock Damascus
Wed 2012-06-06
  Armed groups kill 15 Syrian soldiers in Latakia
Tue 2012-06-05
  U.S. Official: Al-Qaeda's No. 2 Killed In Drone Strike

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