Egyptian officials say a dual U.S.-Egyptian citizen has been detained on arrival at Cairo airport because he faces trial in a case of pro-democracy groups receiving foreign funds.
The officials said Sherif Mansour was detained Sunday as one of 43 defendants, including 16 Americans, on trial in the case that has shaken Cairo's ties with Washington.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak to reporters.
The trial began in February, with only 14 Egyptian defendants attending.
Mansour was returning to Egypt to attend the next session, set for Tuesday.
The defendants are facing charges over their groups' receiving foreign funds without permits. Six Americans charged in the case were allowed to leave the country in March.
The euro has essentially broken down as a viable economic and political undertaking. The latest rush of events reeks of impending denouement.
Switzerland is threatening capital controls to repel bank flight from Euroland. The Swiss two-year note has fallen to -0.32pc, not that it seems to make any difference.
Denmark’s central bank said it was battening down the hatches for a "splintering" of EMU. It has cut interest rates twice in a matter or days and pledged to do whatever it takes to stop euros flooding into the country. Contingency plans are on the lips of officials in every capital in Europe, and beyond.
On a single day, the European Commission said monetary union was in danger of "disintegration" and the European Central Bank said it was "unsustainable" as constructed. Their plaintive cries may have fallen on deaf ears in Berlin, but they were heard all too clearly by investors across the world.
Joschka Fischer, Germany’s former vice-Chancellor, said EU leaders have two weeks left to save the project.
"Europe continues to try to quench the fire with gasoline – German-enforced austerity. In a mere three years, the eurozone’s financial crisis has become an existential crisis for Europe."
Eric Holder, Barack Obama's attorney general and David Axelrod, his top political adviser had to be separated after squaring up during a furious row over attempts to impose White House operatives in the justice department.
Eric Holder, who heads Mr Obama's justice department, is said to have become "incensed" after being accused by David Axelrod of complaining publicly about political interference in his office.
"That's bull****," Mr Holder said in a confrontation after a cabinet meeting, according to author Daniel Klaidman. He writes: "The two men stood chest to chest. It was like a school yard fight".
The relatively mild-mannered Mr Axelrod is said to have told the attorney general: "Don't ever, ever accuse me of trying to interfere with the operations of the Justice Department", a taboo in US politics.
In 'Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency', Klaidman discloses the struggles within Mr Obama's White House at it mounted its controversial campaign against al-Qaeda.
He writes that Mr Holder and Mr Axelrod were separated by Valerie Jarrett, a White House adviser and confidante to Mr Obama. Ms Jarrett "pushed her way between the two men, her sense of decorum disturbed, ordering them to 'take it out of the hallway'," says Klaidman.
#4
Dana White should sign them up for a UFC event. It would be the largest PPV audience EVAH! Michele could even by the Card-girl with her fancy dresses!
Posted by: Charles ||
06/03/2012 21:21
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#5
Someone hurry, get the Wogdon & Barton's, extra powder and shot! There is only one way to settle this honorably.
#7
Gromky, not really. While there might be one dead (they are probably both lousy shots), they are both democrats, so it is unlikely they would be prosecuted.
And even if the survivor was prosecuted, O could always pardon him.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
06/03/2012 22:36
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#8
This is the 21st Century. Arms for the gentlemen's dual should be Fast and Furious AR15s with one 30 round banana clip fully automatic for each gentleman.
#9
Gromky, not really. While there might be one dead (they are probably both lousy shots), they are both democrats, so it is unlikely they would be prosecuted.
#10
I suspect that if it weren't for the objective of politically interfering in the operation in the justice dept., the attorney general would be someone else.
Israel is equipping submarines built in Germany with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, according to an in-depth report in Der Spiegel magazine.
The magazine also reported Sunday that the German government has known about Israel's nuclear weapons program for decades, despite its official denials.
Last month, Israel received its fourth Dolphin–class submarine from Germany, which is slated to become operational in 2013.
Germany has largely funded Israel's purchase of the submarines.
According to Spiegel, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told the magazine that Germans should be "proud" that they have secured the existence of the state of Israel "for many years."
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied that it has a nuclear weapons program.
The German government recently signed a contract for the delivery of the sixth vessel, with one-third of the cost being subsidized by Germany. The delivery of the sixth sub has been conditioned on Israel stopping building in the settlements and allowing the completion of a sewage treatment plant in Gaza partially financed by Germany.
What? No money in medicine? How could that be a problem? I wonder how this is affecting the second and especially third world countries that can't rely on us because we cannot even rely on ourselves.
At the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, pharmacists are using old-fashioned paper spreadsheets to track their stock of drugs in short supply - a task that takes several hours each day.
Most of the hospital's medicines - with usage estimated at $100 million a year - are tracked by automated systems that allow for quick reorders when the supply runs low. But these automated systems, designed to help the hospital avoid purchases and storage costs of unused pills and vials, do not work if it is uncertain when the next batch of drugs will come in.
A few hundred medicines make the list of drugs in short supply: anesthetics, drugs for nausea and nutrition, infection treatments and diarrhea pills. A separate list has scarce cancer drugs for leukemia or breast cancer.
"Now we have to go through the pharmacy and count those drugs on a daily basis ... to make sure we don't run out," said Ed Szandzik, director of pharmacy services at the hospital for over a decade.
The growing scarcity of sterile, injectable drugs is one of the biggest issues confronting hospitals across the country, and will be a key issue at the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago this weekend.
Health officials blame the shortages on industry consolidation that has left only a handful of generic manufacturers of these drugs, even as the number of drugs going off patent is growing. Some drugmakers have been plagued by manufacturing problems that have shut down multiple plants or production lines, while others have stopped producing a treatment when profit margins erode too far.
Some medicines have been periodically short in the past, doctors and pharmacists say, but the number of drug shortages has escalated in recent years, jumping from 56 in 2006 to 250 last year, according to U.S. Food and Drug Administration figures.
Generic drugmakers like U.S.-based Hospira Inc and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, an Israeli company, say they are building new facilities to prevent future shortages.
But in the meantime, pharmacies around the country are counting pills, begging neighboring hospitals for extra supplies and scouring the Internet for news of additional supply disruptions.
When rumors surface of an impending shortage, some pharmacies rush to buy up more than they need, likely leading to bigger shortages, analysts and other pharmacists said.
All of this requires regular attention from hospitals to manage the crisis. At Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., pharmacists and administrators meet weekly to discuss just how dire the situation is for different medicines.
"Every Wednesday before we have that (meeting), I have a bit of anxiety," said Ursula Tachie-Menson, acting chief of the hospital's pharmacy division. She spends about 30 percent of her time each week addressing shortage-related problems.
"Out of all the (21) years I have been practicing, these drug shortages have been one of the biggest challenges," she said.
EARLY WARNING SYSTEM
The FDA has been acting under an October executive order from President Barack Obama to fill in the gaps. It has had success getting an early warning from drug companies when they foresee a new shortage, allowing the agency to persuade other manufacturers to increase their production or look overseas to guarantee supply.
"I can tell you that there's not a single company I'm aware of out there that isn't talking to the FDA," said David Gaugh, head of regulatory sciences at the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, referring to the trade group's members.
The FDA said early notification has helped prevent shortages of 128 drugs in six months. It also estimates the rate of new shortages is slowing, with half the number of new scarce drugs this year compared with 2011.
There are currently about 130 drugs in short supply listed on the FDA's website.
But surveys and anecdotes keep piling up, showing doctors' efforts to find scarce drugs have not become easier. This month, a website for U.S. oncologists, MDLinx, surveyed 200 doctors and found more than 90 percent of them have experienced shortages of key cancer drugs.
CANCER, ANESTHESIA AND NUTRITION
A clinical nutrition group, the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (ASPEN), found that 70 percent of its 800 members who responded to an online survey, said they had seen shortages of adult injectable multi-vitamins, used for basic nutrition for patients with intestinal issues. ASPEN members responding to the survey included doctors, nurses and pharmacists.
More than a quarter were not giving their patients multi-vitamins because of the shortages, placing them at risk of severe vitamin deficiencies that can lead to issues like anemia, due to a lack of folate, or scurvy, which happens when people do not get vitamin C.
In extreme cases, a deficiency of a type of B vitamin called thiamine can lead to cardiac arrest or death.
"This is an act of daily living for people now," said Jay Mirtallo, president of the group. "How that can be acceptable, I don't understand."
When a drug is not available, doctors have to seek alternatives, which may not work as well or cost more money. Others have to ration limited supplies of a life-saving treatment to only those who need it most.
Dr. Steven Allen, a specialist in blood cancers at North Shore University Hospital in New York, recently treated a young woman who had suffered several relapses of a life-threatening cancer known as acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Allen found a combination that involved thiotepa, an older drug his patient had not tried and could tolerate.
"When I ordered it, I was informed that there was none available, and it couldn't be obtained," said Allen, also chair of the committee on practice at the American Society of Hematology. He substituted a similar drug, but one that the woman had already taken. "We tried to make up a dose that was equivalent to thiotepa and hoped for the best. ... But I think it may have compromised her care."
On May 14, the FDA announced it would allow temporary imports of thiotepa made by Italian company Adienne Pharma & Biotech, to relieve manufacturing delays at Bedford, Ohio-based Bedford Laboratories, a unit of the private German company Boehringer Ingelheim that is the only approved manufacturer for the United States. Bedford said in April it did not know when further shipments would be available once its supplies ran out.
Imports have not helped anesthesiologists like Dr. Jason Soch, who hears about a new shortage nearly every week during his rotations at several surgical centers in Philadelphia. These are often "workhorse" drugs such as fentanyl, midazolam and propofol, used every day during surgery.
"It seems like as soon as one drug is no longer in shortage, we get an email from the hospital pharmacist that they're on their last box of another," he said.
Every disruption forces doctors to change dosing, or give new drug combinations they may not be as familiar with.
"I didn't envision this when I went to anesthesia," Soch said. "I'd figured we'd have whatever we needed."
SCRAMBLING FOR A FIX
The problem has inspired some creative solutions, like a drug shortages mobile application called RxShortages that allows medical and pharmacy staff to track new drug shortages posted on websites, including the FDA's. Mick Schroeder, a pharmacy resident who created the app, said it has been downloaded about 25,000 times.
Brooke Bernhardt, an oncology pharmacist at Texas Children's Hospital, said she checks RxShortages at least once a day.
"Unfortunately, at any point we expect a drug to go on back order," she said.
Szandzik, the pharmacy director at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, admits he would buy a larger quantity of drugs than usual if it became available.
"If I have to get one or two months' supply, I'll buy it, because our patients need it," he said. "Hoarding is in the eye of the beholder."
Some distributors and manufacturers prevent hoarding by allocating drugs based on historical demand. Other pharmacists say it is natural to want to buy more to ensure supply.
"Why did it ever have to get to this point in the first place?" Szandzik asked. "It takes a lot of hours, a lot of labor, a lot of luck to make sure our patients are safe. ... And I don't see it getting better for a while."
#1
About 12 years ago I designed and implemented a system that created an interface for the two major supply management systems for the Einstein College of Medicine in NYC.
This was a linkage between their new SAP system for logistics (and a lot more) and their automat type vending machines/system that actually dispensed the supplies on the various floors and wards (e.g. drugs, surgical kits, etc.).
As a result I got quite familiar with the complexities of the operation and how a very little glitch in the system can cause major consequences for individual patients.
This sounds VERY scary. Shortly after we went live there was an incident that triggered a mortality review at which I was present. Due to poor training the warehouse staff did not update the SAP system properly and as the lack of supply (supply on demand) worked through the levels of dispensary there came a time when there were no sugical kits available for the scheduled operation. (OOOOOPPS!!) luckily it was not an emergency and was rescheduled but............
#2
No one has mentioned just why it might be that so many different manufacturers have developed industrial-type problems in the last 12 months, as opposed to any other 12 month period in modern history. Some thing else is going on. others have stopped producing a treatment when profit margins erode too far I think they've got it.
#6
It,s not just hospital meds -- commonly prescribed psychiatric drugs have been going short as well. For example, the ADHD drugs that I'm aware of have been in short supply: Ritalin, Adderal, and Vyvance.
#7
Question for somebody who knows about these things: How much of this problem has to do with medicines going off patent? Are companies stopping production of effective but not patented products? Or are there other goblins in the distribution system?
According to Airforce-technology.com the United States is now planning to arm Italy’s fleet of MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) with missiles and bombs, in a bid to “protect Italian armed forces from enemy threats” in Afghanistan.
Until now the United States and Britain had been using drones against “enemy elements” but almost all drone attacks carried out along Pak-Afghan borders areas had been carried out by American CIA.
The website claimed that the Obama administration was likely to announce the deal within two weeks, following which the US-built drones, operated by Italian air forces, will be equipped with weapons such as laser-guided bombs and Hellfire missiles.
Recently declassified CIA documents concerning al-Qaeda, the late Osama bin Laden ... who is no longer with us, and won't be again... and Sept. 11 are now available for your perusal.
Intelwire.com on Thursday posted online nearly 800 pages of documentation received in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request the site filed with the CIA.
#2
Doesn't sound like a wise thing to do until this struggle is over
"J.M. Berger has been a journalist for 25 years, working in every form of media from newspapers to New Media, radio and television. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, the CTC Sentinel, the New York Daily News and the Boston Globe, and on National Public Radio, Public Radio International and the National Geographic Channel."
[Ma'an] Lebanese troops deployed in the northern city of Tripoli ...a confusing city, one end of thich is located in Lebanon and the other end of which is the capital of Libya. Its chief distinction is being mentioned in the Marine Hymn... early on Sunday after fierce festivities between supporters and opponents of Syrian Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Sonny, disguised as Fredo, trying to be Mike... in which 13 people were killed, local medics and security sources said.
Residents said relative calm had returned to the city since the soldiers deployed at around 7 a.m., after gunnies exchanged heavy machinegun fire and rocket propelled grenades.
Prime Minister Najib Mikati and other Tripoli politicians instructed security forces on Saturday to use an "iron fist" to quell the worst violence to shake Tripoli since the start of an uprising against Assad in neighboring Syria.
The mainly Sunni Mohammedan protests against Assad have polarized Tripoli, where a small community of Alawites - from the same offshoot of Shiite Islam as Assad - have frequently clashed with majority Sunni Mohammedans who support the uprising.
The latest festivities began after midnight on Friday and continued throughout Saturday until the army deployment.
Gunmen from the Jebel Mohsen district, home to Tripoli's Alawite residents, have fought intermittent skirmishes over the past few weeks with Sunni Mohammedan fighters in the Bab al-Tabbaneh area.
Saturday's corpse count was the highest in a single day in Tripoli, raising fears that Syria's unrest was spilling over into its smaller neighbor.
The Lebanese National News Agency said there was "shelling across both areas heard every five minutes, and snipers targeting civilians".
Residents said those killed included civilians caught in the crossfire and that a Lebanese soldier was among the maimed.
The areas have long-standing grievances separate from the Syrian conflict but the Sunni-led uprising against Assad has caused strife among Leb's mixed population, especially in Tripoli, 70 km north of Beirut.
Syria flooded Leb with troops early in its 1975-1990 civil war and dominated its neighbor for more than a decade afterwards. It retains significant influence over Leb's intelligence apparatus and military, despite having withdrawn troops in 2005.
A car bomb attack near a church in the northern Nigerian city of Bauchi has killed at least 12 people. At least another five were wounded in the blast.
#1
boko haram is the nickname of the Islamic terrorist group but their formal name is Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati Wal-Jihad which I like better because it translates apprx to: Moslems for the way of propagation of the Prophet and of Jihad
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has denied his government's forces had any role in the Houla massacre. Assad called the killings an "ugly crime" that even "monsters" would not carry out.
Addressing parliament, he blamed "foreign meddling" for the country's divisions. And he again blamed "terrorists", supported by foreign powers, for causing discord and creating "a project of... dissent".
Assad said that the country was "facing attempts to weaken Syria, breach its sovereignty". He said the only way to resolve the crisis was through political dialogue.
But he added he wouldn't negotiate with those who did not represent the will of the Syrian people. He said, "We are not going to dialogue with forces co-operating with the outside the world, or forces who are engaged in terrorist actions."
#2
Looks like a US showdown wid China is looming SOONER THAN LATER ...
To wit,
* CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > VIETNAM FRUSTRATED AS INDIA CHICKENS OUT |[Deccan Herald = Indjuh] BEATING A RETREAT.
Failed bilateral/joint Indo-Viet energy venture that has larger strategic = MilPol implications for Vietnam as per the disputed SCS???
* WORLD MIL FORUM > YIN ZHAO: US BUILDUP OF BASES IN ASIA-PACIFIC INCREASES LIKELIHOOD THAT CHINA WILL USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN WAR.
* SAME > JAPANESE MEDIA > CHINESE SHIPS [PLAN] HAVE NEVER NETURED THIS FAR/DEEP INTO THE PACIFIC [700-kms east of Okinotori Reef-Atoll close to waters of the US CNMI].
* SAME > EXPERTS: SOUTH CHINA SEA DISPUTES CAUSING CHINA TO STEADILY ALTER PLA'S STRATEGIC WAR DOCTRINE + US-CHINA-WAR SCENARIO OER TAIWAN FROM "ACTIVE DEFENSE" TO "DEEP OFFENSIVE/
STRIKE". TAIWAN WAR SCENARIO TO CHANGE INTO FULL-SCALE AIR, SEA, SPACE BATTLE FOR CONTROL OF THE OKINAWA-TAIWAN-PHILIPPINE TRIANGLE ["Dragon Triangle"]. NEW DOCTRINE ENVISIONS OFFENSIVE CHINA BLITZ AGZ TAIWAN PHILIPPINES, + EAST-SOUTH CHINA SEA ISLANDS. PREEMPTIVE OR FIRST-STRIKE USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS TO SINK THE US NUCLEAR CARRIER + AGZ JAPAN.
HHHHMMM, HMMMMM, wehell, IIRC from the History Channel time back, the so-called "Dragon Triangle" [Asia's "Bermuda Triangle"] stemmed from Okinawa to PHIL to Guam-CNMI???
* TOPIX > [PHIL Star] > PHILIPPINE NAVY NEEDS P$5000BILYUHN TO UPGRADE War CAPABILITIES.
* CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > [Japan Times] ISHIHARA [intentionally?]RATTLES US SABRE AGZ CHINA.
ARTIC > ISHIHARA = claims that JAPAN IS WEAK IN NEARLY EVERY FIELD, INCLUDING THE ECON + DEFENSE.
* SAME > CHINA'S EXPANDING CORE ["Core/Strategic Interests"] IS WORRYING ITS ASIAN NEIGHBORS.
* DEFENCE FORUM INDIA > [Fox News]PANETTA URGES MORE US NAVAL ACCESS TO VIETNAM HARBOR.
POSTERS = remind that the US had major bases throughoutthe former South Vietnam of which Cam Ranh Bay is only one, e.g. Da Nang + around Saigon. PHIL, VIETNAM US BASES + RUSSIA, INDIA, JAPAN, ISLAMIC NATIONS' PRESENCE = CHINA WILL ALL ABSOLUTELY LOSE ITS CLAIMS IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEAS; CHINA MUST EITHER GIVE UP ITS CLAIMS, OR ELSE WAGE WAR.
* DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > PANETTA IS FIRST TOP US OFFICIAL SINCE WAR IN CAM RANH BAY.
* SAME > THE NEW GUAM DOCTRINE. Bammer/US-favored "Concert of Powers in Asia-Pacific".
ARTIC > denotes that for AUSTRALIA, EVERY AUS = OZ DEFENCE WHITE PAPER SINCE 1976, + prior 1969 NIXON/GUAM CONFERENCE, HAS BEEN A "POST-GUAM CONFERENCE" DOCUMENT.
* CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > US WIL BE BACK IN CAM RANH BAY, VIETNAM.
POSTER = opined that besides all of the US Navy's conventional force assets, e.f. Surface Warships, Aircraft Carriers, + Subs, THE OTHER MAJOR US THREAT TO THE REGION + CHINA WILL BE ALL OF THE NUCLEAR WEAPONS THE US WILL HAVE ON USN SHIPS ANDOR STORED IN ALLIED LAND BASES IN HOST COUNTRIES.
OTHER POSTER = opined that that is clear the US INTENDS TO CLAIM THE BASES ARE ONLY FOR RR/MWR PURPOSES BUT IN REALITY WILL BE USED TO MONITOR + "AMBUSH" PLAN SHIPS MANEUVERING/OPERAT IN THE SCS IN TIMES OF CONFRONTATION OR WAR.
* SAME >[Inquirer Global Nation = Global Filipino] "GREATER NUMBER" OF US WARSHIPS TO VISIT PHILIPPINES. PHIL Foreign Secretary Albert Del Rosario.
Also from INQUIRER GLOBAL NATION > US "PIVOT" MAY STIR ASIAN SENSITIVITIES; + ...
> SINGAPORE REVIEWS [Canada] LOGISTICS FACILTY PLAN IN SUPPORT OF US SHIFT.
The Mackenzies are coming, the Mackenzies are coming!?
> CHINA WON'T BE ALLOWED TO CONQUER SCARBOROUGH SHOAL, SAYS [Philippine]MILITARY OFFICIAL.
> "WE DON'T WANT ANOTHER COLD WAR IN ASIA".
Ex-PHIL Speaker Albert Venecia.
* CHINESE MIL FORUM > MANCHURIAN INDEPENDENCE GROUP SETS UP IN FACEBOOK.
* DAILY TIMES.PK > CHINA SAYS TO STEP VIGILANCE [but NOT Hard = Mil Retaliate] AFTER US NAVY SHIFT.
* TOPIX > [English Dong-A] SOUTH KOREA SHOULD GET NUCLEAR WEAPONS: REP. CHUNG.
* SAME > [News Kerala] IS TO IMPROVE TIES WID CHINA WHILE "REBALANCING" TOWARDS ASIA-PACIFIC.
* SAME > PANETTA: US OPEN TO DEFENCE TIES WID MYANMAR.
#1
Meanwhile we have the Queens Diamond Jubilee. A bright spot in a troubled world. Her mother as I recall lived to 100. Hope she does the same. When she is gone allot of class will be lost. Soros will just muck it up.
#3
Her mother as I recall lived to 100. Hope she does the same.
If nothing more than to keep Charles from the throne. Apparently, he at least did his primary aristocratic stud function properly. Everything else does makes us wish the Queen a long and healthy life.
#4
Soros starts a three-month countdown to doomsday in Europe? Does he have something to do with doomsday that he is so certain of the timing? He broke the Bank of England in the early 1990s and got rich doing it.
The dramatic details of how the SAS completed a “brilliant” rescue of a British aid worker and three other female hostages in Afghanistan can be revealed.
The Israeli Air Force has hit five terror hubs in the Gaza Strip overnight. Three of sites were reportedly Hamas and Islamic Jihad weapon plants and two others were tunnels. According to the IDF, the pilots reported destroying their targets.
Palestinian sources reported that IAF aircrafts fired at several locations near the town of Beit Lahiya, and at a known tunnel area in Rafah. In the early hours of the morning, a Palestinian source also reported a strike near the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. A Palestinian medical source said one person was wounded.
Coming hot and heavy now.
U.S. drone strikes targeting a militant compound in Pakistan's northwestern tribal area killed at least five insurgents Sunday, security officials said, the second attack in 24 hours.
Two U.S. drones fired four missiles at a house belonging to a militant commander in Wacha Dana town, 10 kilometres (six miles) west of Wana, the main town in the South Waziristan tribal district near the Afghan border, Pakistani security officials said.
"At least five militants have died. The house has been badly destroyed," a security official told AFP, on condition of anonymity.
Two other security officials confirmed the strikes. One intelligence officer put the toll at six dead.
Sunday's attack in South Waziristan was the second in as many days and comes amid an upsurge in drone strikes in Pakistan since a NATO conference on Afghanistan in Chicago last month.
Washington considers Pakistan's semi-autonomous northwestern tribal belt the main hub of Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants plotting attacks on the West and in Afghanistan.
Pakistani-U.S. relations went into freefall last year.
[Politico] Top national and North Carolina Democrats have taken a series of unusual steps to protect their candidates in the Tarheel State -- and President Barack Obama's I inhaled. That was the point... reelection campaign -- from additional damage after a sexual harassment scandal rocked the state Democratic Party and weakened its chairman.
North Carolina was already an uphill battle for Obama even before the revelation in April that the NCDP's then-executive director, Jay Parmleywho is a man, was accused of misconduct by a young male employee. Parmley resigned. But Chairman David Parker managed to hang on to his job despite calls for his ouster from top state Democrats and pressure from officials in Washington.
The result presents a challenge for the Obama campaign and other Democrats up and down the ballot, who must now find ways to tiptoe around state officials linked to a lurid harassment flap. Complicating matters further, Democrats will hold their presidential nominating convention in Charlotte this summer, an event that was suffering from fundraising difficulties even before the scandal broke.
Rather than backing away from the state, Democrats in North Carolina and Washington say they believe they can work around Parker. The chairman, they say, currently appears more focused on shoring up his own shaky political position and reaching out to local activists than taking operational control of campaign machinery. That leaves room for other national and other state Democrats to try and take charge of the situation -- and most importantly, control the purse strings of the 2012 campaign.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2012
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#1
1st three days of convention at Times Warner cable arena
4th day at Bank of America stadium.
and all four days will have anti big business speeches
Posted by: lord garth ||
06/03/2012 0:42
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#2
And of course, North Carolina just passed a referendum defining marriage as between one man and one woman.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
06/03/2012 1:24
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#3
...The Democrats' Plan B for NC is to figure out some way to keep anybody from seeing the name 'North Carolina' during the convention. I just spent a few days up there, and here's a serious reality check for the Trunks:
NC IS A RED, REPEAT, RED STATE.
They had a hiccup when they elected Bev Perdue, but mostly because she campaigned a lot more to the center than she was and her campaign was able to mask the fact that she's a power-hungry idiot. The Prop 1 victory - whether you agree with it or not - was a solid one, something that the media tends to overlook as hard as it can. Add to that the fact that Obama's victory there in 08 was a close one (a 1% squeaker), and it is starting to become embarrassingly clear that Charlotte was a very bad choice for the Democrats.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
06/03/2012 8:25
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#4
This is the state that the Dems got really excited about being destroyed by that hurricane, so that jobs could be created. Even Gov Purdue had to get public and say knock that noise off.
#5
NC has had a hard time trying to turn blue. It's all the a-holes that taxed themselves out of their utopias in NY and NJ. They F****D us up pretty good. Locusts.
Have some Canadians down here too. They swear by Canadian Healthcare. I kindly remarked they were free to GO BACK and enjoy it there, no need to bring it here.
We lost the State Legislature to the dumbest bunch of imbeciles I have ever seen a few years ago and thought it was totally lost. Luckily, they fixed that.
Democrats are a loathsome creature and must be taught that it's lust for power is immoral.
#6
Not to mention that Mr. Parmley's ex-girlfriend has accused him of infecting her with HIV. Oh, and the workers of NC are a trifle annoyed with the Democratic Party because NC is a right-to-work state, and the Democratic are importing out-of-state union members instead of hiring the locals. Oh, and we remember Gov. Perdue saying she thought the elections should be postponed as long as the financial crisis continues. Also, 20% of Democratic voters there prefer 'None of the Above' to Obama for President.
You know, 'None of the Above' could win in November. The Party would be wise to nominate him.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
06/03/2012 13:03
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[Tolo News] The European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... blocked the release of $37 million to a UN-run fund that financed Afghan Police, a Western Official in Kabul told Wall Street Journal.
The European Union, US and Japan are the key donors of the Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan (LOTFA), while EU has pledged to spend about $175 million for the current phase of the programme covering January 2011 to March 2013.
LOTFA personnel told the Afghan and international monitoring committee that UN officials had abused the $2.2 million fund for paying salaries to nonexistent coppers and creating high payment positions for the personnel with links to Afghan government leaders.
Officials at the UN Development Programme, which administers LOTFA, have denied allegations of mismanagement and corruption at the fund
This comes as the Afghan Ministry of Interior said that if the aid gets suspended, it will definitely have negative impacts.
"EU, US and Japan were the main donors of the training and public awareness, LOTFA should be accountable for it, because Ministry of Interior has no role in it," Deputy MOI front man, Dr Najeeb told TOLOnews today.
"If the aid is suspended, it will definitely have negative impacts."
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2012
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[Tolo News] In a recent Interview with the Time Magazine World, Afghanistan's Caped PresidentHamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai ... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtun face on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use... has said that US could have done better in Afghanistan if it respected the homes of Afghans and fought terrorism elsewhere.
"In its time here the United States could have done a lot better for Afghanistan," President Karzai has told Time Magazine.
"But then they did not regard the homes of Afghan villagers as homes that gave the United States and NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis.... a welcome."
"And in the name in the war on terror, which everybody knew was to be fought elsewhere; too many innocent Afghans bit the dust. Too many were maimed, too many homes were violated," Mr Karzai is quoted as saying.
But the Afghanistan's Caped President has also thanked the US and NATO for bringing better education, healthcare, economic growth and somehow stability in Afghanistan, while he has criticised them for not bringing security.
"It did not bring the defeat of terrorism, as we thought it would. It did not fight the war in terrorism in a manner that we felt was right." Karzai told the Time in an exclusive interview.
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Karzai could have done a much better job too. For a start his family could have got out of the heroin biz.
Posted by: Water Modem ||
06/03/2012 2:38
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Fumugate the place and start over with Indian immigrants?
Religion can be an admirable guide for personal morality but should not compete with science on matters of empirical inquiry
A cri de coeur from a man who will be completely ignored by those who need what he has to say.
Perhaps the most intractable question in Pak educational reform remains how best to reconcile religion and science within the curriculum. This is a serious matter but few are willing to engage with the issue directly, for fear of being branded religious heretics by some or apologists for fanaticism by others. The matter was accentuated for me most recently in viewing, on the web, a video of a debate between physicist and public intellectual Pervez Hoodbhoy and Islamic educator Hamza Tzortzis at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) a few months back. The "debate" ended in a huff with both speakers fuming with contempt for each other's perspective that ultimately led to an irrevocable meltdown. Professor Hoodbhoy walked out of the room accusing Mr Tzortzis of innuendo. The episode was soon thereafter put online by Mr Tzortzis's organization claiming that the debate had been won by their protagonist. Many commenters on blogs and Facebook seemed to concur that by losing his cool Mr Hoodbhoy had vindicated the Islamist perspective.
There is a tendency for many Mohammedans to atavistically celebrate the accomplishments of tenth-century Islamic mathematicians, while investing little in developing contemporary educational capacity
Such a meltdown between religion and scientific epistemologies is inevitable because the underlying assumptions that exist. There is a tendency for many Mohammedans to atavistically celebrate the accomplishments of tenth-century Islamic mathematicians, while investing little in developing contemporary educational capacity. Where investment is being done, it is focused on instrumental fields such as engineering in the Gulf States, and much less in critical inquiry that could actually lead to discoveries that advance the scientific enterprise.
Far too often, the imams are talking about the etymology of "algebra" coming from Arabic and Avicenna's pharmaceutical accomplishments but do we ask why more of such great scholars have not been seen for a thousand years in Islamic countries? Furthermore, it is important to remember that the golden age of Islam was also its most pluralistic (willing to embrace different interpretations of scripture), and even then there were fundamentalist forces who constantly threatened these scientists. Let us not forget that Madinat-al-Zahra, once a showpiece of Islamic art and learning just outside Cordoba, was destroyed not by any "kuffar" but instead by radical and retrogressive Mohammedan factions.
Students should not be taught science simply to validate theology
Out of more than five hundred Nobel laureates in the sciences, only two have been of Mohammedan lineage. Pakistain can claim one of them: Abdus Salam, who shared the prize in physics in 1979, and memorably wore a shervani and turban to the award ceremony in Sweden. However, the hip bone's connected to the leg bone... as an Ahmedi, he was spurned at home as a non-Mohammedan and died in 1996 without fully being able to contribute to science education in Pakistain, despite his noblest intentions. His dedication to improve the plight of Mohammedan scientists cannot be questioned.
Dr Ahmed Zewail, an Egyptian-American chemist based at the Caliphornia Institute of Technology, received the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1999 and is the Mohammedan world's sole Nobel science star. He is clearly in high demand for this singular status and has also been appointed by President B.O. as one of his "science envoys" to the Mohammedan world. I had an opportunity to meet him recently at the World Economic Forum in Davos (in January 2012) and he noted the difficulty of getting science to be embraced by Mohammedans because of entrenched and misguided prejudice towards themes like evolution.
Unfortunately, Mohammedan theologians dismiss evolution as established science with canard theories like "intelligent design," ironically taken from fundamentalist Christian traditions in the Southern United States. Ample scholarship by Mohammedan scientists has been provided to show that evolution and Islamic theology are compatible but a vast majority of Mohammedans continue to disavow this because of ignorance on the part of our major holy mans (a recent book by Nidhal Guessoum titled Islam's Quantum Question: Reconciling Mohammedan Tradition and Modern Science, provides an excellent response to these controversies). Without having a basic predication in scientific understanding of the natural world, we cannot develop our intellectual base.
Those Mohammedans who are educated and proceed to develop successful professional trajectories are often career-centered but would rather not invest in cutting-edge creativity. An interesting example is medicine, in which many Mohammedans have excelled considerably, particularly within the US. However, the hip bone's connected to the leg bone... most of these brilliant doctors are focused on making money in clinical practice rather than in creative research which would lead to laurels such as the Nobel Prize. Two rare exceptions are Dr Hina Chaudhry a cardiac researcher at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York and Dr Zeeshan Ozair, a researcher at Rockefeller University, who may well bring such a laurel home.
Some Mohammedans are quick to indulge in recriminations about Jews being "in control of academia." The reality is they have reached that point because of hard work and a cultural love of learning which has been lost to Mohammedans in recent years. Most Jews who came to America were just as penniless as Mohammedan immigrants but their commitment to learning AND differentiating religion from science helped them triumph. Having spent my career in academia, I can say with confidence that they have truly earned that respect and stature and none should resent it but rather learn from them with humility. Mohammedans must aim for a similar culture of the "scholar-practitioner" that will help to naturalize their behavior.
Such efforts must start at the earliest stage in elementary schooling. Students should not be taught science simply to validate theology (such as what is often done by many teachers to show how particular Koranic verses are ratified by science with somewhat dated and superficial texts like Maurice Bucaille's The Bible, the Koran and Science). Rather, science should be taught as a critical enterprise to better understand the beauty and complexity of Creation. Through such an approach we will begin to see a natural appreciation for planetary processes in congruence with our Faith.
Organizations such as the Khwarizmi Society (which has a strong base at LUMS, and of which I am also a member) have the potential to build bridges between Islam and science but they must approach the matter with care. Scientific empiricism cannot be subservient to preconceived notions or mainstream misrepresentation of theology as we have on the issue of evolution. Most important for this reconciliation between science and religion to take place will be a nonliteral approach to scriptural interpretation in Islam.
Also, those who equate religious evangelism with scientific evangelism in the classroom are making a fundamentally flawed comparison. Scientific methods are meant to be inherently adaptive and self-critical whereas religious evangelism is not. Only with clear proof can scientific theories graduate to become laws whereas such burdens of evidence are not requisite for religious doctrines. It is essential that Pakistain's education not conflate religion and science but rather study both in parallel in what the great scientist Stephen Jay Gould called "non-overlapping magisteria."
Religion can be an admirable guide for personal morality but should not compete with science on matters of empirical inquiry. Let us keep these distinctions clearly in our minds and in our curricula to prevent epistemic conflicts and confusion for generations to come.
Dr Saleem H Ali is professor of environmental planning at the University of Vermont (USA). His books include "Islam and Education: Conflict and Conformity in Pakistain's Madrassas" (Oxford Univ Press, 2009). He can be followed on twitter @saleem_ali Continued on Page 49
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Al-Shabaab ... the Islamic version of the old Somali warlord... never learn. The moment the kaboom in downtown Nairobi went off and the finger of suspicion pointed to the Somali bully boy group, security analysts predicted the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) would imminently step up their military operations in Somalia.
There are many reasons why the Kenyans have been cautious in their advance since they crossed the border last October.
One of those is domestic doubts about the wisdom of the whole enterprise. Read (Kenya reveals move to capture Kismayu)
In the days leading up to the incursion and following a spate of attacks at the Coast, which were blamed on elements sympathetic to the Shabaab, there was solid public support for Operation Linda Nchi. A poll found eight in 10 Kenyans supported military action.
But this did not disguise the fact that there were many who were cautious about the armed forces' first external operation in defence of the country's territory in decades.
President Kibaki, the commander-in-chief and then Defence minister Njenga Karume, were recorded by American diplomats, in a dispatch dated July 9, 2009, as being unenthusiastic about the initiative, according to cables released by WikiLeaks.
If Al-Shabaab had been wise enough to understand these dynamics, they would have been cautious about attacking Kenya.
Because nothing triggers domestic support for foreign intervention than a major attack on the homeland.
An Al-Shabaab bombing in Nairobi was always likely to trigger an escalation of military efforts by the KDF and that's exactly what has happened in the last few days.
We have seen this movie before. From the time the Ugandan People's Defence Forces (UPDF) landed in Mogadishu in mid-2007 to the end of June 2010, the UPDF and Al-Shabaab were engaged in a sterile stalemate in Mogadishu.
In line with their mandate of propping up the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), the Ugandans were content to guard key installations: the airport, seaport, presidential palace and the strategic Kilometre 4 junction. They barely launched frontal attacks on Shabaab positions.
The direction of the war changed for good when, on July 10, 2010, the Shabaab sent several jacket wallahs to attack Ugandans watching the World Cup final killing 76 fans in their wake.
Changed everything
Those killings triggered revulsion in Uganda and beyond. This is how Amisom front man Col Paddy Ankunda summed it up: "(The Kampala attacks) changed everything. In their aftermath, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development resolved to send a further 2,000 troops, and the AU Summit reinterpreted Amisom's rules of engagement to allow for pre-emptive defence, meaning Amisom could finally take the fight to the bully boys. Soon after, Amisom began a methodical advance across the city.
By mid-August, half of the Igad-backed troops had been inserted into Mogadishu and, Amisom, now with more than 7,000 soldiers, had established seven new positions in the south-western and southern part of Mogadishu."
The decision of the Ugandans to go on the offensive spelt trouble for Al-Shabaab, who did not anticipate a conventional force would take them on in an urban war in territory which the Shabaab were intimately familiar with.
But the Shabaab, whose popularity had been eroded by the dominance of imported muscle within the group and the tactics this cadre brought -- such as massive suicide kabooms and a harsh interpretation of Islam -- could no longer count on the support of locals.
Within weeks of the offensive, the Amisom troops had taken key positions such as the former Immigration ministry and the old Parliament.
Their control of the city was enhanced by the capture of the Makka Al-Mukarama road, which links the Presidential Palace to Kilometre 4 and Mogadishu airport and the subsequent fall of Mogadishu University and the old stadium.
Burundian troops simultaneously made significant gains including the capture of Gashandigga, the former Defence ministry which had been a key Al-Shabaab hub.
The success in Gashandigga came at a terrible cost -- the loss of 72 soldiers in Amisom's bloodiest single day in Somalia -- after the Shabaab showed their military nous by tricking the Burundians into advancing into a trap in the streets near the Defence headquarters.
The story of how Mogadishu fell to Amisom means few will be surprised Kenyan and allied forces are making an advance so soon after the Assanand's blast.
Somalia analyst Mohammed Ali Hassan told the BBC that the capture of the former Shabaab stronghold of Afmadhow on Thursday was a major development.
"This is a strategic area," he said. "Afmadhow is the second main town in the South after Kismayu. It has a network of roads leading to various parts of the country including Mogadishu and the sea port."
Mr Hassan said if the Kenyan, TFG and Ras Kamboni brigades proceed to capture Kismayu, as Chief of General Staff Gen Julius Karangi has said they will by mid August, that will prove a telling if not decisive blow to the Shabaab.
"They will not have been comprehensively defeated but it will be a very significant setback. It was their main strategic area. They will be choked off. They will be in a desperate situation both politically and financially. They won't know where to hide."
In response to the latest Kenyan advance, the Shabaab have issued yet another threat to bring down the "skyscrapers" of Nairobi.
Beyond Somalia
It is not a threat that should be taken lightly given the fact the group has shown itself capable of carrying out acts of terror beyond the borders of Somalia.
Yet events in Somalia show that the group's best days are behind it.
In the space of a week, the bully boyz lost their grip not just on Afmadhow but on Afgoye, the main town in the bread basket of Somalia in the River Shabelle region.
These losses represent not just the surrender of territory but that of significant lines of income.
Kismayu will be the next big battle. Yet as many Somalia watchers recognise, Al-Shabaab's ultimate defeat will hinge on the success or failure of the grinding of the peace processor which aims to give the country a credible government to take over when the transitional period ends on August 20.
In that respect, events in Istanbul, Turkey, where a major conference on Somalia is taking place, will be as important as battleground gains or losses closer home.
Continued on Page 49
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[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Some 100 people defied a government ban Saturday to rally in the centre of the Tunisian capital against Salafist extremism, accusing the authorities of double standards.
Security forces surrounded the demonstrators in Tunis as they shouted slogans calling for the government to resign.
Activists using the Internet had called the protest on the city's main thoroughfare, avenue Habib Bourguiba.
But the interior ministry, in a statement on its Facebook page, said the protest would be illegal because no one had asked for authorisation.
The ministry "reserved the right to react," the statement added.
But Fatma Ghorbal Lassoued, a leader of the Women and Dignity association behind the call, said the request for authorisation had been made according to the regulations on Tuesday.
"There are double standards. The supporters of the government and the Salafists ...Salafists are ostentatiously devout Moslems who figure the ostentation of their piety gives them the right to tell others how to do it and to kill those who don't listen to them... can do as they please, but we have obstacles put in our way," she told journalists shortly before the rally.
Participants cited a Salafist gathering on May 20 at Kairouan in the west of the country and a pro-government demonstration outside the Tunis courthouse on Friday, which were allowed to take place.
Saturday's demonstration was called in response to violence last weekend in the northeast of the country, when radical Salafist groups attacked several cop shoppes.
The ultra-conservative Salafists, some armed with clubs and swords, also burned down the shops of alcohol vendors who refused to close. They have been intensifying their attacks over the last 11 days.
On Thursday, responding to the attacks on the cop shoppes, Interior Minister Ali Larayedh warned that police were authorised to use live rounds.
"The state of emergency is still in force and we will take all necessary steps to restore security in the country," he added.
On April 9, a demonstration on the same avenue went ahead despite having been banned but was violently broken up by the security forces, provoking widespread anger.
At least 15 civilians and eight police were hurt in the unrest.
Larayedh was summoned before parliament, and President Moncef Marzouki denounced the "unacceptable violence".
With the fall of president Zine el Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011, secular liberals and radical Islamists have been in constant conflict over whose values should prevail in the country.
Moderate Tunisians have also expressed deep concern over the rising power of Salafists since the revolution that toppled Ben Ali's regime and brought a moderate Islamist party to power.
The Salafist movement comprises several branches. Some adherents focus strictly on religion, some are politicians and some are jihadists who see violence as a legitimate means to impose their faith.
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[Boston Herald] Elizabeth Warren, who has railed against predatory banks and heartless foreclosures, took part in about a dozen Oklahoma real estate deals that netted her and her family hefty profits through maneuvers such as "flipping" properties, records show.
I have to ask: did they merely buy and sell, unimproved, or did they fix up the places, making them actually worth more than their original purchase price? Both are called flipping by the people in the real estate biz.
A Herald review has found that the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate rapidly bought and sold homes herself, loaned money at high interest rates to relatives and purchased foreclosed properties at bargain prices.
Land records from Warren's native Oklahoma City show the Harvard professor was active in the often topsy-turvy real estate market in the 1990s, including:
Purchasing a foreclosed home at 2725 West Wilshire Boulevard from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for $61,000 in June 1993, then selling it in December 1994 for $95,000 -- a 56 percent mark-up in just 18 months.
Buying a house at 200 NW 16th St. for $30,000 in August 1993, then flipping it for $145,000 -- a 383 percent gain after just five months.
Lending one of her brothers money at 9.5 percent interest to buy a home at 1425 Classen Drive for $35,000 in August 2000. He sold the place three months later for $38,500 -- a 10 percent gain in 75 days.
Providing her brother with financing to buy a $25,000 house at 4301 NW 16th St. in 1994. He sold the property four years later for $42,000, a 68 percent increase.
Giving her sister-in-law a mortgage in 1996 to buy a $31,000 home at 2621 NW 13th St. Three years later, the sister-in-law sold the place for $45,000 -- a 45 percent boost in three years.
Providing her brother with a loan in 1997 to buy 901 NW 22nd St. for $90,000. He sold it some two years later for $106,000 -- an 18 percent increase.
Giving her brother a mortgage to buy 3836 NW 12th St. in 1997 for $26,000. Nine years later, he unloaded the home for $45,000 -- a 73 percent jump.
Herald columnist Howie Carr reported yesterday that Warren and her relatives also profited from two additional Oklahoma City foreclosures -- in both cases showing triple-digit percentage gains.
Warren's campaign issued a statement last night: "Elizabeth and (her husband) Bruce are fortunate to be in a position where they can help their family. They have been able to help relatives buy their homes and her nephew -- a contractor -- fix up houses."
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Clearly illustrating the worth of a Harvard education. She'd still be selling blankets and beads without it!
it gets to the point of outright fraud when fabricating an identity offers both career advantages to the employee and diversity quota points for the employer. . . . this weird con is a window into her soul — and the logical and ultimate expression of what the entire diversity/affirmative-action industry has become.
#7
And it gets to the point of outright fraud when fabricating an identity offers both career advantages to the employee and diversity quota points for the employer. At some point, Warren’s statement is simply untenable and will have to be withdrawn, because if it is not, then we are essentially saying facts are what we choose to say facts are, and we can write or say anything we want and claim it as truth by reason of rumor, or serial insistence, or good intentions. Warren says all this is a distraction from her otherwise sterling academic record, but an academic career is nothing without allegiance to facts and honest scholarship; in fact this weird con is a window into her soul — and the logical and ultimate expression of what the entire diversity/affirmative-action industry has become.
We so enthusiastically accept such behavior from our Worshipful Master POTUS, what grounds can we challenge such behavior from a little ole wanna-be.... American Injun squaw?
[Dawn] Four al Qaeda gunnies and a soldier were killed in overnight fighting outside Zinjibar, capital of the southern Yemeni province 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... , a military official said on Saturday.
The bully boyz had fired three rockets at the headquarters of the 25th Mechanised Brigade, killing the soldier and wounding six others.
Separately, three al Qaeda beturbanned goons were killed and five maimed on Friday when a bomb they were making accidentally went kaboom! in Al-Mahfad, a town in northern Abyan, a local official said.
Yemeni forces launched an all-out offensive on May 12 aimed at reclaiming Zinjibar and other localities in Abyan lost to al Qaeda during the past year.
Since the offensive began, at least 376 people have been killed, according to an AFP tally compiled from official statements. They comprised 275 al Qaeda gunnies, 65 military personnel, 18 local cut-throats and 18 civilians.
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[Al Ahram] The National Elections Monitoring Commission in Algeria says the country's May elections are marred by breaches from the beginning of the operation to the end
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(CBS) -- Illinois politicians may have gotten stymied on the issue of pension reform, a multi-billion-dollar mess affecting every taxpayer in the state.
But at least they managed to pass a bill involving miniature horses.
You heard that right. Under a measure the House sent to Gov. Quinn Thursday night -- the evening members were supposed to consider a cost-saving pension bill -- people with disabilities could use miniature horses as service animals in public places, much like guide dogs are used.
"I have no concerns that we're gonna see any stampede in grocery stores or anything like that," Chicago's WBEZ quoted sponsoring Sen. Dave Koehler, D-Peoria, as saying. "This is an issue that pertains really to the disabled community, and it's something that puts us in compliance to the federal law."
An overhaul of future state pension benefits for retired public employees was the centerpiece of the spring legislative session, but it collapsed late Thursday just before the deadline to adjourn. Illinois government has underfunded pensions by tens of billions of dollars.
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#1
Miniature horses are intelligent, usually gentle; and can be very helpful service animals.
Illinois legislators, however, are not known for horse sense. Or for good service.They are known for horsesh*t.
[Al Ahram] Iran's former Revolutionary Guards commander says Turkey, Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in their national face... and Qatar are delegated to achieve the US and Israeli interest of toppling Bashir al-Assad's regime in Syria
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[Tolo News] As many as 20 Afghan schoolgirls were poisoned in northern Takhar province on Saturday morning, local officials said.
The students from Bashir Abad school were poisoned in Taloqan the capital of Takhar and sent to local hospitals, provincial governor's front man Mustafa Rasuli said.
The girls are aged between 7 and 18. Police have started investigation about the incident, he said.
In the past seven weeks; there have been six suspected cases of poisonings in Takhar schools.
It comes as recently Afghan politicians blamed poor security for not preventing such incidents.
MPs warned that if more was not done by Afghan cops to address such problems, the cut-throats - linked to Pakistain - will succeed in their goals to worsen the situation in Afghanistan.
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[Dawn] A Pak anti-terrorism court freed on Saturday four men accused of involvement in the 2010 Times Square bomb plot, said a lawyer and family members of the men.
The men were placed in durance vile Please don't kill me! in the wake of the May 2010 incident during which Pak-American Faisal Shahzad drove an SUV packed with a bomb into Times Square. The bomb produced smoke but no kaboom.
Lawyer Malik Imran Safdar said Saturday that the prosecution failed to prove its case against his clients. The men were released on Saturday evening after the court in Rawalpindi, next to the capital of Islamabad, acquitted them.
The father of one of the men, Humbal Akhtar, said he was ecstatic at his son's release.
"I have suffered a lot during these two tough years," said Muhammed Akhtar. "Finally I got justice."
In addition to Akhtar, the court released Muhammad Shoaib Mughal, Muhammad Shahid Husain, and Faisal Abbasi. The men were picked up by Pak security officials in the wake of the 2010 incident, and few details of their case have emerged over the two years of their detention.
They were tried by a Pak anti-terrorism court, which are generally off limits to the press or other outsiders.
Terrorism cases in Pakistain rarely result in convictions or prison sentences. Police often lack basic investigative skills, prosecutors lack training in terror cases and judges and witnesses are often subject to intimidation.
Pak security officials have also been accused by human rights ...which often include carefully measured allowances of freedom at the convenience of the state... groups of holding suspects for months, even years without filing charges or divulging any information about their cases.
Two other men placed in durance vile Please don't kill me! by Pakistain in the wake of the Times Square incident were previously released.
The US has long pressed Pakistain to crack down on cut-throats within its borders, both militarily and through the courts.
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[Dawn] Five snuffies were reportedly killed on Saturday in an assault by fighter jets in the northwestern Khyber tribal region, DawnNews reported.
Two krazed killer hideouts were also destroyed in the assault in the tribal region's Sarawela area, DawnNews quoted government sources as saying.
The casualty figures from the reported action could not be independently verified.
Sources further said that the operation in the region had picked up pace since Friday's clash with snuffies from the Kokikhel tribe.
In another incident in the tribal region's Zakhakhel region in Tirah, volunteers from the local Tauhidul Islam organization tossed in the slammer I ain't sayin' nuttin' widdout me mout'piece! a would-be jacket wallah.
The locked away You have the right to remain silent... would-be bomber was planning to target a camp of the FC in Khyber.
Pakistain's seven tribal districts near the Afghan border are rife with homegrown gunnies and are alleged to be strongholds of Taliban and al Qaeda operatives.
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#1
Paki fighters? Why won't they share their patented "no bunnies or duckies" targeting technology with us, their good, deep-pocketed allies?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
06/03/2012 0:14
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[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Senegal ... a nation of about 14 million on the west coast of Africa bordering Mauretania to the north, Mali to the east, and a pair of Guineas to the south, one of them Bissau. It is 90 percent Mohammedan and has more than 80 political parties. Its primary purpose seems to be absorbing refugees... has begun preparations to try Chad's former dictator Hissene Habre for war crimes, crimes against humanity and torture after being accused of dragging its feet for years.
The justice ministry said a working group had met Friday to debate the practical aspects of staging the trial in line with Senegal's international commitments and with the support of the African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... The group comprises representatives of the judiciary, the prison system, the foreign ministry and human rights ...which often include carefully measured allowances of freedom at the convenience of the state... groups, the justice ministry said Saturday in a statement.
"The government intends to do everything necessary to enable the working group to carry out its mission, given the great expectations that this matter arouses in Africa and the world," it said.
The statement stressed Dakar's "strong determination to combat all forms of impunity, whoever the accused may be, with a fair and equitable trial."
Chad's former president, now aged 69, fled to Senegal after he was tossed in 1990. A 1992 truth commission report in Chad said he had presided over up to 40,000 political and ethnic-related killings.
Senegal agreed in 2006 to African Union demands that he be put on trial but failed to do anything, arguing that it lacked the resources.
Meanwhile it blocked demands for his extradition from Belgium, which wanted to try him under its "universal jurisdiction" law after a complaint was lodged by a Belgian of Chadian origin.
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Zardari's wrong decision
Writing in Jang columnist Irfan Siddiqi stated that it was a wrong decision on the part of President Zardari to be party chief and president at the same time. As party chief he should have stayed away from presidency because president is a mere decoration (araaishi) while Zardari was powerful party leader. Hence the Presidency became a mere party headquarters. He put party interest on top and ignored the interest of the nation as a whole which a president must represent. Even a Lahore High Court decision in this regard did not convince him to give up his office as president.
 America caused Indo-Pak wars
America, the all-powerful -- an interesting meme.
Columnist Nazeer Naji wrote in Jang that the speaker of Haryana Assembly from India was right in saying that America always gave weapons to Pakistain to fight India
...starting back in the day when Socialist India was firmly in the Soviet orbit...
and it was in fact America who was behind the hostility between Pakistain and India.
Right. As if Pakistan needed help from outside.
Pak leaders kept on receiving weapons from America and fighting India even after 1990 when after being used by the US against the Soviet Union America had no need to arm Pakistain.
 Didn't we cut them off for a while because of the nuclear thingy?
Haqqani shouldn't come to Pakistain
Writing in Express Abdul Qadir Hasan stated that when Husain Haqqani came to Pakistain to face the trial of treason against him he met him and told him that he had made a mistake. Pakistain was too much in trouble to think right. Haqqani was treated differently from Mansoor Ijaz, something about which everyone had become aware even the prime minister who was now complaining. The lawyers were making hay while the sun shone and were becoming famous by siding with someone who was clearly no friend of Pakistain against an angina patient who wanted to be treated equally.
 America wants civil war in Pakistain
Famous ex-ISI boss Hameed Gul
...still busily pulling strings behind the scenes...
told Jinnah that America was busy conspiring to cause a civil war in Pakistain while making Pakistain and India sign secret deals to the detriment of Pakistain. He said it was no use under these circumstances to hold elections in Pakistain. What was needed was a revolution to save Pakistain from destruction.
Does anyone else think he might have a few candidates lined up, just for funsies?
Hafiz Muhammad Saeed commander of Mujahideen!
Chief if Jamaat Islami Munawwar Hasan said in Jinnah that Hafiz Muhammad Saeed ...who would be wearing a canvas jacket with very long sleeves anyplace but Pakistain... of Jamaat-ud-Dawa ...the front organization of Lashkar-e-Taiba... was a commander of all mujahideen. He was an extremely important person but America erred by not estimating his real value when it put a prize on his head. His real value was hundred times more. Had the government looked at Kaaba as their destiny Pakistain would not have come to this pass.
 How Mohammad Asad was treated
Writing in Express Oria Maqbool Jan stated that Pak bureaucracy inherited its nature from the British Raj and after the demise of Jinnah acted against the interest of the Islamic state. They set fire to the office of Muhammad Asad the great convert to Islam and translator of the Koran who was working on Islamic sources of the law to assist the country in making its first constitution. The various nationalities of Pakistain were united by one factor - the Kalima Taiba - but the bureaucracy did not want to see the state becoming Islamic.
 Prayer at Ajmer Sharif useless!
Indian demagogue Bal Thackeray was quoted in Mashriq as saying that Pak president Zardari was making a futile effort to go to Ajmer Sharif to pray at the tomb of Moinuddin Chishti because anyone who had evil designs on India will not be looked at with favour by Ajmer Sharif's saint. He said Zardari's visit to India will neither lead to improvement of Indo-Pak relations nor to any lessening in terrorism.
 Imran Khan versus Uncle Sam!
Famous columnist Haroon Rasheed wrote in Jang that civil and military views on the US were different. Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who who convinced himself that playing cricket qualified him to lead a nuclear-armed nation with severe personality problems... and the religious parties are ready to face up to the US (datt jana) but the PPP and PMLN's billionaire politicians were impressed with imperialism and were reluctant to oppose the US although they indulged in anti-US slogans. Fazlur Rehman and Asif Ali President Ten Percent Zardari ... sticky-fingered husband of the late Benazir Bhutto ... were all naked inside the bath (hamam main nangay) but outside they were all wearing long robes. Ch Nisar Ali Khan was fearless but his party was retreating. The same was true of PMLQ's Mushahid Hussain.
 'My father's funeral was in Kaaba'
Issuing rebuttal in Nawa-e-Waqt Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... said that Zardari was guilty of indecent language when he said that Nawaz's father Mian Sharif had a desolate funeral in Lahore and no one came to bless him forcing the family to take the hearse to Data Darbar. He said his father's funeral prayer took place in Kaaba in Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in their national face... , the most sacred place in the world. Mariam Nawaz said that it was attended by hundreds of thousands of people.
 Siachen belongs to Pakistain
Columnist Hamid Mir stated in Jang that since Siachen was included in Gilgit-Baltistan it was not mentioned in the Simla Agreement of 1972. In 1984 India grabbed Siachen when General Zia was in power after which the Pak Army had to go and set up posts against the India army on Siachen. Since 2003 the two armies are not firing at each other but casualties are many due to frostbite. Both India and Pakistain contain people who hurt their countries' own interest and that includes people like Ajmal Kasab who confess after four slaps (char thappar).
 Rafiq Tarar reveals facts
Ex-President Rafiq Tarar told Nawa-e-Waqt when Nawaz Sharif was tossed by Musharraf he was pushed around by General Mehmood and thrown in a black car and taken to jail (kaal kothry). Earlier president Tarar was told by Nawaz Sharif over the phone that 'they were coming'. Tarar stated that he accepted to remain president under Musharraf because he feared that Nawaz Sharif too would be killed like Bhutto. He said Nawaz told him to remain president. Musharraf too asked him to stay on because otherwise Pakistain would have been declared rogue state (badmaash).
 CIA is 'Porus ka hathi'
Writing in Jang Hamid Mir stated that CIA was once called Porus ka hathi because it harmed its owner, the US. Raja Porus fought Alexander with elephants that turned around and crushed the army of Porus underfoot.
It was the Greek mice, as everyone knows.
Now when Pak parliament was about to deliver its verdict on an independent foreign policy trouble in Gilgit-Baltistan has been started. He stated that parliamentary committee debating recommendations revealed that no party had asked to bring Pakistain's secret services under any kind of control.
 My 'chamak' is my own!
Quoted in Nawa-e-Waqt Chief Minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif stated that 'chamak' (shine) of PMLN was not given by Zardari but was original and could not be robbed by Zardari. He said he could swear on God that Zardari had made money through fraud and stashed it away in Switzerland ...home of the Helvetians, famous for cheese, watches, yodeling, and William Tell... . He said he will not receive the president on his visit to Lahore. Federal Interior minister Rehman Malik Pak politician, current Interior Minister under the Gilani administration. Malik is a former Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) intelligence officer who rose to head the FIA during Benazir Bhutto's second tenure. He later joined the Pak Peoples Party and was chief security officer to Bhutto. Malik was tossed from his FIA job in 1998 after documenting the breath-taking corruption of the Sharif family. By unhappy coincidence Nawaz Sharif became PM at just that moment and Malik moved to London one step ahead of the button men. warned Shahbaz Sharif that he should hear the warning that the PPP was pitching its tents in Lahore. He added that he wanted to register a case against Sharif brothers but Zardari stopped him.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Steven ||
06/03/2012 15:14
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#2
Dear TW, it was supposed to be TW
Posted by: Steven ||
06/03/2012 15:17
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#3
*sigh*. I seem to betting 1.000 on this stuff today, Steven, and I've no idea what I did wrong -- but there seems to be no question whatsoever that I did something, dammit. And I can't even see it on the iPad, whatever it is.
[Yemen Post] Yemen's President Abdrabu Mansour Hadi Saturday called on the international community to back and oversee a five-year strategic development plan which must focus on improving various economic sectors in the country, Saba reported. Ahah. A Five Year Plan. Good idea. What could possibly go wrong?
The statement was made at a meeting with a multiple international mission, which has arrived to evaluate the humanitarian situation in Yemen.
The mission is led by the Islamic Organization for Cooperation and has called on the international community to provide urgent support to Yemen, where reports have warned about ten million people are facing famine.
Hadi said the economic crisis has been behind about 75% of Yemen's complicated problems, renewing the call to help the country overcome all challenges before a crisis affects it, region and the world, Saba said.
The 2011 unrest has largely aggravated Yemen's problems.
He also said the security situation remains one of the hardest test at the moment, and with such issues being unsolved, the political mess will persist, according to the agency.
Hadi, however, assured the political transition is going ahead positively, pointing to the strides within the preparations for a national dialogue, it said.
Other issues were discussed at the meeting including the unemployment of about six million youths and graduates as well as the IDPS and African refugees, the agency said.
The Yemeni parties reached in November a power-transfer deal, brokered by the GCC and backed by the UN. The transition is on the right track, despite security concerns and attempts to obstruct it.
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06/03/2012
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[Business Day Online] The Nigerian Police must be eager to show some "performance" in the fight against terror that it took the whole country on a ride last week. The official line, as reported by the media, was: "3 ministers, journalists escape death as security operatives arrest man with grenades." The police account was that "eagle-eyed" security operatives placed in long-term storage Book 'im, Mahmoud! a 39-year old man, one John Akpanum Anaku, with a bag containing 37 rounds of ammunition and three hand grenades on Monday, May 21, 2012 at the Radio House, Abuja, venue of a ministerial press briefing by ministers of Aviation, Stella Oduah-Ogiemwonyi; (then) Youth Development and Sports, Bolaji Abdullahi; and Information, Labaran Maku. The gentleman, whom the media naively rushed to proclaim a "jacket wallah" or "terrorist", was cooled for a few years You have the right to remain silent... by security officers from the Nigerian Legion, according to one John Akindele, a police officer (as reported by the media) and chief security officer at the venue "when it was noticed that he was carrying explosives".
The report by ThisDay was just as alarmist: "Panic in Abuja as Police Arrest 2 Terror Suspects," the newspaper loudly proclaimed on its front page the morning after the arrest. According to the newspaper, "The police in Abuja yesterday set to sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, in a pestilential prison with a life-long lock Youse'll never take me alive coppers!... [BANG!]... Ow!... I quit! two terror suspects at different locations in the city, thus averting what might have resulted in another kaboom in the nation's capital." In what would have amounted to an amazing display of police dexterity and proactivity, were the reports not essentially a hoax, our newspapers unquestioningly reported apparent propaganda without any attempt at subjecting official storylines to deep rational analysis. The reference to the second "terrorist", one Abdullahi Salihu, who it was reported "had laced his body with some explosives and hand grenades which he wanted to use to wreak the havoc, but was detected by the security gadgets mounted in FCT" was to another individual set to sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, in a pestilential prison with a life-long lock Drop the gat, Rocky, or you're a dead 'un! same day as the purported Radio House "terrorist" somewhere in the vicinity of Force Headquarters.
However, by candlelight every wench is handsome... reading between the lines, the truth would soon be obvious to any discerning reader. The fellow tossed in the slammer You have the right to remain silent... at Radio House was a frustrated and depressed individual who had brought ammunition found amongst his late brother's luggage (the late brother was a former mobile police officer) and SMOKE grenades to the venue of the media briefing in an attempt to meet the minister of Information who was his kinsman from Nasarawa State. His objective appeared to be obtaining some sympathy and assistance towards collecting his late brother's benefits. The poor gentleman in fact explained to journalists that he had been abandoned and frustrated in life and "so he came to Radio House to make his grievance known to government". Confused, frustrated and incoherent John Anaku may have been, but he was certainly no terrorist. Even a police front man admitted the fact that the purported "grenades" were old, smoke grenades.
And what about Salihu who was reported to have laced his body with explosives? Well, as police front man, Frank Mba, later admitted, "When we searched him, no explosive was found on him, but there were pieces of broken bottle, bottled water, five Automated Teller Machine cards and a vehicle number plate in the bag he was carrying." Pray, how do you carry out a suicide kaboom with these items? Mba, reluctantly, I imagine, agreed that "so far, there is nothing to suggest that he is a suicide bomber". Again, poor Salihu may have been slightly out of his mind, a vagrant, an unemployed wanderer, or even a confused or frustrated myrmidon or tout, maybe even a medicine man, but terrorist or suicide bomber he certainly was not. The surprising aspect for me, as I mentioned earlier, was the eagerness of the media and police spokesmen to report these two incidences as the busting of terror attempts when it was fairly clear that was not the case. How could the Nasarawa fellow carry out terror with any quantity of ammunition without a gun? Is there a means by which a "terrorist" could wreak terror with ammunition if he didn't have a gun? Wasn't it clear the State Security Services (SSS) account of the incidents was more believable? (Indeed, on the whole "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... " issue, I think the SSS and military have been more credible than the police!) Marilyn Ogar, SSS spokesperson, had cautioned against hasty commentaries and conclusions, explaining that what John Anaku had on him were tear gas canisters and not grenades, and that the fellow was simply trying to meet the Information minister who was his primitive.
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[Daily Nation (Kenya)] A series of intertwined political crises that began with accusations that Iraq's prime minister was consolidating power have escalated into calls to unseat him, and paralysed the country's government.
The protracted drama has seen Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's deputy revert to decrying him as a "dictator" and the leader of the autonomous Kurdish region call for him to go on one side, while the premier insists he has sufficient backing to stay on the other.
"The political crisis has reached its highest level since its beginning, but it is still running within the framework of the democratic game," Iraqi political analyst Ihsan al-Shammari said.
"The country is paralysed on all levels; there is a clear political paralysis paralleled by governmental negligence and a failure of the legislative authority, while the people are disappointed and afraid of the security consequences," Shammari said.
The trouble began in earnest in mid-December, when the secular Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc began a boycott of parliament and the cabinet over what it said was Maliki's centralisation of power.
For his part, Maliki sought to sack Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlak, an Iraqiya member who had labelled the premier "worse than Saddam Hussein."
That month, an arrest warrant was issued for Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, also of Iraqiya, for allegedly running a death squad.
Hashemi fled to the autonomous Kurdistan region in north Iraq, which declined to hand him over to Storied Baghdad ...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate... and then permitted him to leave on a regional tour that took him to Qatar, Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in their national face... and Turkey.
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[Bangla Daily Star] Suranjit Sengupta, minister without portfolio, yesterday asked BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia Three-term PM of Bangla, widow of deceased dictator Ziaur Rahman, head of the Bangla Nationalist Party, an apparent magnet for corruption ... to relinquish her post as leader of the opposition owing to her absence at parliament sessions.
"Moudud Ahmed, you along with your party chief (Khaleda Zia) should set an example by stepping down from the posts you hold in parliament," he said at a discussion at the Central Public Library in the capital.
His remark came in response to BNP leader Moudud's statement on Friday that Home Minister Shahara Khatun should resign for failing to discharge her duties properly.
"Police committed excesses. The home minister has regretted recent incidents of police assault on journalists and still they [members of the opposition] want her to step down," he said.
Like the government, the opposition party is also accountable for its action. So Khaleda should take the responsibility for not performing her duties as leader of the opposition in parliament, he added.
Suranjit, a big shot of the ruling party, was speaking as chief guest at a discussion, "Educationist Prof Razia Matin's contributions to materialising ideals of Bangabandhu", organised by Bangamata Gay Pareehad.
Prof Razia Matin along with her husband Prof Abdul Matin Chowdhury were the very first people who had demanded the trial of the killers of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family members immediately after their brutal murders in 1975.
"The couple were among those who dared to face danger in their efforts to uphold the truth," said AAMS Arefin Siddique, vice-chancellor of Dhaka University.
"Prof Razia Matin and her husband late Prof Matin were respectable members of the Dhaka University family," the VC, also a presidium member of Bangamata Gay Pareehad, added.
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[Al Ahram] International peace 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... warned on Saturday that Syria was slipping into "all-out" war, and a Syrian opposition figure said Russia had become part of the problem and should urge Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor... to quit power.
"The spectre of an all-out war, with an alarming sectarian dimension, grows by the day," Annan told a meeting of members of the Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... , co-sponsor with the United Nations ...boodling on the grand scale... of a peace plan aimed at ending the bloodshed in Syria.
Burhan Ghalioun of the Syrian National Council, the divided body claiming to speak for political opposition to Assad, said: "With its support of the regime and for Assad remaining, Russia has become part of the problem rather than part of the solution. If it cooperates to find a formula that makes Assad leave, it will become part of the solution."
Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani of Qatar - which has backed arming Sunni Moslemforces of Evil fighting to topple Assad, a member of Syria's minority Alawite sect - said Annan should set a time limit for his mission.
He also called on the U.N. Security Council to put Annan's plan - based on a ceasefire that has yet to take hold, and that is meant to lead to a negotiated end to the Syrian crisis - under Chapter 7 of the U.N. charter, a measure that could authorise the use of force.
"We want the Security Council to refer the six-point (Annan) plan to a Chapter 7 resolution. We, the international community, cannot accept the situation to continue as it is," he said.
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#1
Somehow, a sectarian war in Syria seems like red-on-red. It is hard to know whom to root for (or against).
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
06/03/2012 1:20
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#2
The work of mother nature and the Almighty. Stay out of it!
Natural Selection is the process by which biological organisms with favorable traits survive and reproduce more successfully than organisms that do not possess such traits, and, conversely, organisms with deleterious traits survive and reproduce less successfully than organisms lacking such deleterious traits. This selection process is in response to forces in the natural world, as opposed to artificial selection, whereby selection is made by a human being, such as a farmer selecting his breeding stock or variety of plant. Traditionally, natural selection has been applied to biological individuals; however, the process has also been applied to levels both below the individual (the gene) and above the individual (species, higher taxa) (Dawkins 1988; Gould 2002).
[Yemen Post] Several persons were killed and maimed after the outbreak of fighting between Houthis and Salifis in Kitaf of Saada governorate on Saturday, security sources in said on Saturday.
Security chief of Kitaf district, Faisal Al-Tam, affirmed that two vehicles were destroyed, pointing out that the local authorities are exerting efforts to end the confrontations.
He further called the two sides to end fighting and reach reconciliation, reiterating that various weapons were used in the festivities.
Clashes between the Houthi ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of having ties to the Iranian government, which wouldn't suprise most of us. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is "God is Great, Death to America™", Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews" ... militias and Salafis intermittently break out from time to time in the remote governorate.
The governorate witnessed fierce fighting fiver years ago in various areas of the governorate and dozens including foreigners from both sides were killed and maimed.
The Houthis are accused of attempting to expand and take control on Saada, Hajja, Amran and other northern governorates with support of Iran. They engaged in fierce battles with tribes of Hajja early of the current year.
Their festivities with Salafis in Saada first erupted in November 2011 and they were ceased in line with truce agreement brokered by Sheikh Hussein Al-Ahmar, an influential tribal leader in Amran, south Sa'ada.
While the Houthi group controls on most areas of Saada, Salafis are centered in Dammaj in which the well-known Dar Al-Hadeeth Koran school in Dammaj was established in the 1980s by the late religious leader Sheikh Moqbel Al-Wadie and is considered the biggest Salafi school in Yemen.
The Houthi group has engaged in six wars with the central government, the last one ending in 2010. The founder of the Houthi group, Hussein Al-Houthi was killed in 2004 during the first round of the war.
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[Dawn] Half a dozen people were rubbed out in different parts of the city on Friday when another victim of the Thursday night attack died during treatment in a hospital, police said.
Of the six people, three were killed in Surjani Town in a gun attack that also left a few others maimed while two associated with the Muttahida Qaumi Movement ...English: United National Movement, generally known as MQM, is the 3rd largest political party and the largest secular political party in Pakistain with particular strength in Sindh. From 1992 to 1999, the MQM was the target of the Pak Army's Operation Cleanup leaving thousands of urdu speaking civilians dead... were bumped off in Federal B Area and Kharadar.
Five men riding two cycle of violences were on their way to Sakran, Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... , when they came under a gun attack near Khuda Ki Basti, said an official at the Surjani cop shoppe.
He added that three of them were killed and the other two maimed, while an 11-year-old passer-by also sustained a gunshot wound in the attack.
Two of the dead were later identified as Ghulam Qadir, 43, son of Akbar Baloch, and Mehboob, 38, son of Auliya, said Surjani SHO Shabbir Hussain. The passer-by was identified as Tayyab Khan, son of Aryan Khan.
The officer said the attackers used 9mm- and 30-bore pistols, and a sub-machine gun.
The dead and the injured were rushed to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, the police said. They quoted doctors as saying that the condition of the victims was critical.
It seemed that the Baloch were the actual target, the police Sherlocks said, adding that the incident could also be linked to a gang warfare in Lyari. However, there's more than one way to stuff a chicken... sources in the police said, there was a possibility that the incident was linked to the
Nazimabad incident where three men from Hasan Auliya Village were killed on their way home late Thursday night.
No case was lodged at the Surjani cop shoppe till Friday night.
Only a few hours earlier, another victim of the Thursday night attack had died in a hospital, officials said.
They added that Abdul Shakoor, son of Abdul Ghani, died during treatment in a private hospital, where he had been shifted from the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital.
The victim and his three friends had come under a gun attack near Annu Bhai Park late Thursday night. Two of them, Haji Javed and Mohammad Rafiq, had was struck down in his prime, while Shakoor and Azam had sustained gunshot wounds.
DSP Shahid Abbas said that all the four victims were residents of Hassan Aulia Village.
Two MQM activists killed
A department store owner, Waqas Akbar, 27, was changing engine oil of his car in front of his house near Anarkali Market in Block 16 of Federal B Area when gunnies riding cycle of violence pulled up there, fired two shots at him and sped away, said an official at the Yousuf Plaza cop shoppe.
He said the victim sustained two bullet wounds to his head and was struck down in his prime. Hearing the gunfire, people rushed to the crime-scene only to find Waqas lying in a pool of blood.
The body was later shifted to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital for medico-legal formalities. The police then handed over the body to the victim's family.
He was a worker of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement's FB Area Sector Unit-147, the police Sherlocks said, adding that Waqas ran a pick-and-drop service besides his shop.
Yousuf Plaza SHO Ali Hassan said he had married four months ago and was the only breadwinner in his family.
Following the killing, tension gripped Yousuf Plaza, Water Pump and surrounding areas as traders closed all shops in major markets.
The victim was buried in a Korangi graveyard after his funeral at Ghufran mosque in FB Area.
No case was lodged at the Yousuf Plaza cop shoppe till Friday evening.
The other MQM activist was killed near Paper Market in Kharadar, police said.
Shahnawaz, 23, a resident of Abal Chowk, was having launch at a roadside food stall in the area when gunnies riding a motorbike opened a volley of bullets on him before speeding away, said an official at the Kharadar cop shoppe.
He added that the young man sustained five gunshot wounds and was struck down in his prime. The body was moved to the Civil Hospital 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... for medico-legal formalities.
A police investigator, Sub-Inspector Mohammad Akbar, said that the victim was an MQM worker and his mother, Rukhsana, was a senior party worker.
The police said they believed the victim was targeted on political grounds. They said the victim used to run a catering service in the area and also deliver lunch boxes to offices.
As the news of the killing spread, all shops in Kharadar, Boultan Market and its surrounding area were closed.
Rickshaw driver found rubbed out
A rickshaw driver, who had been missing for the past couple of days, was found rubbed out on the outskirts of the city, police said.
They added that Faisal, 26, with his rickshaw had gone missing a couple of days ago. His body was spotted in the Rehri Goth area within the remit of the Sukkan cop shoppe, the officials said, adding that the rickshaw was later found 800 metres
from the body.
Sukkan SHO Sarfaraz Kakazai said the victim had been shot twice. The body was shifted to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre for medico-legal formalities and later handed over to the victim's family.
According to doctors, the victim had sustained two gunshot wounds to his head.
The police said the victim was a resident of Korangi Crossing. They quoted the victim's family as saying that Faisal was not associated with any political party.
No case was lodged at the Sukkan cop shoppe till Friday evening.
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[An Nahar] Syrian troops conducted raids in search of anti-regime gun-hung tough guys and clashed with rebels on Saturday in several regions of the country, with at least 39 people killed including 22 soldiers, a policeman, 15 civilians and one deserter, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
In central Homs province, one civilian was killed during raids of the town of Karatin, and a man and his daughter were fatally shot on a bus on the road to Talbisseh.
Homs city was bombarded by shelling by regime forces for several hours overnight, leaving one rebel dead, according to the Britannia-based watchdog.
In central Hama city, the army launched raids "in search of bully boys," activist Mariam al-Hamwiyahe told Agence La Belle France Presse.
Further north, in the coastal region of Latakia, the army attacked Kurdish communities, bombing from helicopters an area known as Kurdish Mountains. Injuries were reported but no deaths.
In southern Daraa province, the sounds of kabooms and gunfire were heard in the town of Hit, which was stormed by regime forces. Houses were reportedly set on fire and heavy military vehicles were parked on the periphery of the village.
Raids in search of gun-hung tough guys were reported in elsewhere in Daraa, known as Syria's cradle of dissent. In the town of al-Gharia al-Gharbiya, six soldiers were killed in fighting with rebels.
In Damascus ...The place where Pencilneck hangs his brass hat... province, one civilian was killed and five others were maimed in Kafar Batna, the target of gunfire and kabooms. And in the town of Douma outside Damascus, heavy gunfire was reported.
"Many cities and towns are on strike to protest against the massacre of Houla", which left 108 dead last week, including 49 children," the Observatory said.
Shelling was also reported in the Houla region on Saturday.
Near the capital, at least eight soldiers were killed at dawn during fighting with rebels of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in the area of al-Ghouta al-Sharqiyah.
And in the northwestern province of Idlib, the town of Ariha was bombarded by heavy machinegun fire, causing injuries.
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[An Nahar] Twelve people were killed and more than 40 people were maimed in renewed festivities between the Jabal Mohsen and Bab al-Tabbaneh neighborhoods of the northern city of Tripoli ...a confusing city, one end of thich is located in Lebanon and the other end of which is the capital of Libya. Its chief distinction is being mentioned in the Marine Hymn... , Beirut media reported on Saturday.
Among the dead were a woman and her son, killed by a rocket in the Bab al-Tebanneh district, a mostly Sunni Mohammedan community which supports Syria's anti-regime opposition.
At least five were maimed in Jabal Mohsen, an area mainly populated by pro-Damascus ...Capital of the last overtly fascist regime in the world... Alawites.
A meeting chaired by Prime Minister Najib Miqati agreed on lifting the political cover off the gunnies and demanded the army and security forces to control the situation.
The meeting was held at Miqati's residence in Tripoli and attended by the northern city's ministers and MPs and Interior Minister Marwan Charbel.
Smoke was seen billowing from several apartments near the city's Syria street, the split between Bab Tabbaneh neighborhood and the adjacent, Jabal Mohsen, on a hill overlooking its rival. The area around Syria Street was mostly empty and gunnies were seen roaming the streets.
A security meeting at the Serail of Tripoli, chaired by head of the Tripoli's gendarmerie, Brig. Gen. Bassam Ayoubi, agreed on the deployment of the internal security forces in the two neighborhoods.
However, some people cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go... they failed to maintain a ceasefire in the area.
The overnight battles with Rocket Propelled Grenades and machineguns calmed by 5:00 am but intermittent sniper fire continued throughout the day, leaving Khaled al-Rifai dead.
Eight people were maimed overnight, two of them seriously, in the fighting between the rival neighborhoods, the National News Agency said earlier.
The news agency also said a house owned by Abdul Rahman Hamad was engulfed in flames in the area of Starco in Bab al-Tabbaneh when it was hit with an RPG.
Earlier, Miqati held phone conversations with the chiefs of security agencies, urging them not to be tolerant with those who tamper with security in Tripoli.
He also called on them to intensify measures to restore calm in the city.
Sectarian violence has flared on a number of occasions in Tripoli since the revolt broke out in neighboring Syria in March 2011, including deadly street battles in May that erupted over the controversial arrest of Islamist Shadi al-Mawlawi, who was released last week..
Bab al-Tebbaneh and Jabal Mohsen have been gripped by frequent fighting, reflecting a split between Leb's parties where the March 14- led opposition backs the revolt in Syria while a ruling coalition led by Hizbullah supports the Damascus regime.
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[An Nahar] French President Francois Hollande ...the impending Socialist president of La Belle France... said Friday that no solution is possible in Syria without "the departure of Bashir al-Assad."
He spoke at a presser with Russia's 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... "There must be sanctions" against the Syrian regime, Hollande added, noting that he recognized "the risks of destabilization, the risks of civil war" in Syria.
"Bashir al-Assad's regime has conducted itself in an unacceptable and intolerable manner. It has committed acts that disqualify itself" from governing, Hollande said.
He said Assad's departure was "a prerequisite for a political transition" in Syria.
Putin, who met separately with German Chancellor Angela Merkel ...current chancellor of Germany. She was educated in East Germany when is was still run by commies, but in 1989 got involved with the growing democracy movement when the Berlin Wall fell. Merkel is sometimes referred to by Germans as Mom... and Hollande, warned the situation in Syria was "extremely dangerous" and said he saw emerging signs of a civil war.
But he struck a fiery ...a single two-syllable word carrying connotations of both incoherence and viciousness. A fiery delivery implies an audience of rubes and yokels, preferably forming up into a mob... tone in the joint presser with Hollande, saying "sanctions hardly ever work in an efficient manner" and indicating that Assad's departure would not in itself resolve the crisis.
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The doctor who helped the US find Osama bin Laden has been convicted of treason. Is Pakistan reacting out of guilt rather than moral outrage?
If rage were the criterion, Pakistain would be adjudged 'rogue'. Infested with the hobgoblins of terror, it snarls at foreign victims who plan their destruction. Terror's serum, violence, runs in its veins: political discourse is flecked with destructive long marches; women are being burned with acid, maidservants tortured to the third degree; infants are thrown live into canals, children maimed and killed at school and madrassa; peaceful 'oppressed nations movement' (PONAM) could be killing innocent people in Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... and Sindh. The Overlord of Terror Al Qaeda surveys the scene and is satisfied that his final dominion has come into being, with politicians, judges and the generals lined up in obedient columns.
Surgeon Shakeel Afridi has been found guilty of treason under the tribal justice system of Khyber Agency and sentenced to 33 years in jail and fined Rs 320,000 ($3,500) along with confiscation of his property. He was fired as a government doctor in February 2012. The treason charge brought against him after US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta ...current SecDef, previously Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Panetta served as President Bill Clinton's White House Chief of Staff from 1994 to 1997 and was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993.... , in January, disclosed Afridi had worked for US intelligence collecting DNA to verify bin Laden's presence 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.... Afridi was not present in the court and not given a chance to defend himself because under the tribal system he would not have had access to a lawyer. He was thereafter moved to prison in Beautiful Downtown Peshawar and put under heavy guard probably in anticipation of another Abbottabad-like operation by the US. In October the Abbottabad Commission inquiring into the death of Osama bin Laden had recommended that he be tried for treason.
As if to further provoke an already outraged military established Panetta had said he believed someone in authority in Pakistain knew where bin Laden was hiding. The wrath that resulted from this remark likely led to the 'prejudgement' on Afridi. Pakistain already prostrated by the violation of its illusory sovereignty by Al Qaeda and its foreign affiliates got out of hand. Now the US was the enemy and Al Qaeda was an enemy susceptible to Pak appeasement. Al Zawahiri ... Formerly second in command of al-Qaeda, now the head cheese, occasionally described as the real brains of the outfit. Formerly the Mister Big of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Bumped off Abdullah Azzam with a car boom in the course of one of their little disputes. Is thought to have composed bin Laden's fatwa entitled World Islamic Front Against Jews and Crusaders. Currently residing in the North Wazoo area. That is not a horn growing from the middle of his forehead, but a prayer bump, attesting to how devout he is... could not be such an imbecile as to ignore that commonality of enemy makes you friends.
Afridi was sentenced under Penal Code clauses related to offences against the state, conspiracy or attempt to wage war against Pakistain, concealing with intent designs to wage war against the state and on charges of working against the country's illusory sovereignty. The doctor had been recruited by the CIA for an elaborate scheme to vaccinate residents for hepatitis B, a ploy to get a DNA sample from those living in the house to see if they were bin Laden family members.
The American position was terse and it came from Pentagon: 'Without commenting on specific individuals, anyone who helped the United States find bin Laden was working against Al Qaeda and not against Pakistain'. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ... sometimes described as The Heroine of Tuzla and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as Another Edward Livingstone ... said, 'We think his treatment is unjust and unwarranted. The conviction and jail sentence has no basis and the doctor's fate is among the many issues important to the United States and the international community that the US is discussing with Pakistain's leaders'.
In a punitive measure, the Senate Appropriations Committee has requested $1 billion in aid for Pakistain for fiscal year 2013, down from about $1.5 billion. Its leader said: 'Afridi's sentencing will be hard for people in the US to understand or bear. Americans will have great difficulty knowing that one year after the United States found and killed the most notorious terrorist in modern history hiding on Pak soil, the most visible action being taken to find out how he came to be in Pakistain is the conviction in a Pak court of the physician who helped the United States identify Osama bin Laden'.
At the risk of being called 'CIA agent' the Human Rights Commission of Pakistain said: 'One is concerned about the security of the country, but that cannot be made the basis of denying rule of law to anyone. HRCP notes with concern that the trial of Dr Afridi falls well short of the due process standards on many counts, not least because the core principle of natural justice has been ignored and Afridi denied due legal assistance. The question of trying Dr Afridi on charges of treason also remains controversial. His actions may well have been prompted by the declared policy of the State to fight all forms of terrorism in sincerity'.
In a recent article Pakistain's reputable nuclear physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy pointed out the topsy-turvy sense of justice in Pakistain sent out of kilter by terror by stating that Supreme Court was demanding that the government move quickly to rebuild Islamabad's Jamia Hafsa, the madrassa adjoining Lal Masjid that was illegally built on government land and torn down in 2007, ignoring the acts of terror carried out by elements inside Lal Majid known as a watering-hole of Al Qaeda and its Pak minions. Al Zawahiri had announced reprisals and announced the setting up of Tehrik Taliban after the Lal Masjid operation.
Pakistain became unhinged in 2011 when it caught hold of CIA contractor Raymond Davis after he had killed two dacoits in Lahore and allowed the nation to become a blood-thirsty animal calling for his death. Later Davis was allowed to go scot-free under an Islamic provision which no one gave credit to. The same kind of imbecilic reaction was displayed in reaction to the Salala attack in November 2011. The nation wants war with the US but the parliament wants the NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... supply route resumed. Even this back-step was not rational. It wanted emotional satisfaction through an apology instead of a realistic compensation that would have helped the country's sinking economy.
Is Pakistain reacting out of guilt rather than moral outrage which is what the people of Pakistain are being made to feel by the TV channels? Reported in Mashriq (15 Feb 2012) ex-ISI chief and possibly ex-army chief Ziauddin Butt stated that Musharraf and ISI officer Brigadier Ijaz Shah had kept Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad. Musharraf gave the permission and ex-ISI and then ex-IB chief Punjab Brigadier (Retd) Ijaz Shah built the facility where Osama was living before the Americans killed him. Ijaz Shah later fled to Australia. And when Musharraf tried to send him to Australia as ambassador the Australian government refused to accept him. (Ziauddin Butt denied that he had made the statement).
People may be emotional by nature and when they are a mob they may be likened to an animal but the state must at all times act coolly in the ultimate interest of its economy. The punishment meted out to Afridi is an act of anger which will not appease Al Qaeda which increasingly thinks that Pak Army is not capable of fighting it. It does not think that Pak Army can be a sincere friend in bringing about the change Al Qaeda has prepared the ground for with 'nation-building' through fear.
Continued on Page 49
#3
Well, everything after the first paragraph is repeated after "continued from page 4". Also, you have a rogue html tag in there somewhere, because everything after the highlighted bit about "the Army of the Pure..." goes haywire when you mouse over. Looks like a tag didn't get closed.
#4
I don't see any of that on the iPad, Angie. But I don't see it Page 49'd, either, except now as I am commenting, so there's another anomaly. Which browser are you using?
#18
I'm using Firefox as well (sorry to be so late, just got up). Seamonkey and Konqueror show the same, but the latter doesn't have the wild mouseover text.
[Dawn] The chief of the paramilitary troops in Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... has claimed that billions of rupees were being spent to spread a state of unrest in the insurgency-hit province, DawnNews reported.
Speaking to media representatives at the FC headquarters here on Saturday, Inspector General Frontier Corps Balochistan Major General Obaidullah Khan Khattak said on Saturday that over 30 cut-thoat training camps had been set up across the border in Afghanistan to launch terrorist and anti-state activities in Balochistan.
Maj Gen Khattak also claimed that around 121 jihad boy training facilities were operating in different parts of the province.
Teachers, doctors and many civilians have fallen prey to murders, said Khattak adding that over 100,000 people had migrated from the province due to its law and order situation.
About 550 incidents of terrorism have taken place in the province so far this year, out of which several groups have claimed responsibilities of 258 such incidents, he informed the media.
The future of the country is in Balochistan, said Khattak, alleging that foreign powers had their eyes set on the province for the same reason. Moreover, a well-planned conspiracy had been hatched for a propaganda campaign against the FC and intelligence agencies, he added.
The Frontier Corps had recently come under much criticism over its alleged role in forced disappearances and human rights One man's rights are another man's existential threat. violations in Balochistan. The Supreme Court is also hearing a case on the province's law and order situation.
The IG FC's comments come after a hearing on Friday in which a bench of apex court judges, headed by the chief justice, assailed the FC and described the recent killing of three people whose whereabouts were being sought by the court as a chilling reminder to it.
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#5
Soros too busy manipulating the Eurocrisis to throw those hundreds of thousands of untraceable card donations to Obama? Or just reminding him who really is the boss?
#6
gorb, as i understand it, a debit card can also put charges on the user; perhaps a credit card would be the better way to go; they would still have the transaction fees to contend with and the user wouls have none.
but i like, really like your idea. it is lovingly nasty!
[An Nahar] The head of Syria's largest exile opposition group said Saturday he would welcome Arab military action aimed at ending attacks by Bashir al-Assad's regime against Syrian rebel forces and civilians.
Burhan Ghalioun, head of the Syrian National Council, made the comments before a meeting of Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... foreign ministers in Doha.
The envoys are to discuss the bloodshed in Syria, including last week's massacre of more than 100 people in Houla.
Gulf nations such as Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in their national face... and Qatar have pledged funds to aid Syria's rebels, but there is no direct evidence that anti-Assad forces are becoming better armed.
The Arab League, however, does not appear ready to deploy its own troops.
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#1
Proposed OWG "Islamic/Muslim Union", or another US or Euro-led UNSC action???
Of all the proposed Regional, Trans-, + Continental OWG "Unions", thus far only the European Union, aka EU or EuroZone, has formally setup - HOWEVER, WE SEE ALL THE MAJOR M-A-J-O-R DIFFICULTIES ITS BEEN HAVING.
[Al Ahram] General Mounir Ramadan confirmed Saturday that the Mubarak trial verdict would bring further consequences down on the ousted president.
According to Ramadan, Article 123 of the military constitution states that any accused found guilty in a final verdict automatically loses his military rank and all privileges as well as being stripped of all medals.
The general also cited the second paragraph of Article 25 of the penal code that states, "Whoever is found guilty is to be deprived from all military rank or medal."
According to the military code issued by presidential decree 289 in 1972, those who fall under Article 123 of the military constitution are to be handed to civil prison authorities to fulfill their sentence.
Mubarak's lawyer, Fareed El-Dib, mentioned earlier during the trial that as a military man the ousted president is to enjoy his military status until he dies. El-Dib referred to a law issued by former President Sadat in 1979 in appreciation of the military leaders of the armed forces during the October 1973 War.
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[Al Ahram] The UN's top human rights When they're defined by the state or an NGO they don't mean much... official said Saturday that there should be no amnesty for serious crimes committed in Syria, even if the threat of prosecution might motivate members of the regime to cling to power at all costs.
Asked if Syrian Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Supressor of the Damascenes... should be allowed to leave power in exchange for safe haven, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said international leaders seeking peace may be drawn to "politically expedient solutions which may involve amnesty or undertakings not to prosecute."
But she said that would be wrong under international law.
"You cannot have amnesty for very serious crimes," she told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named during an interview in Brussels. "So my message is very clear -- there has to be accountability."
Lawyers for former Liberian President Charles Taylor The former President-for-Life of Liberia, of whom the best that could be said was that he wasn't quite as horrible as Prince Johnson, at least not usually. , who was sentenced Wednesday by the Special Court for Sierra Leone to 50 years in prison, had argued that giving him a long sentence would send the wrong message to Assad.
Courtenay Griffiths, an attorney for Taylor, criticized the court for refusing while setting Taylor's sentence to take into account his decision to step down from power after his indictment in 2003.
"What lesson does that send to President Assad?" Griffiths asked. "Maybe the lesson is: If you are a sitting leader and the international community wants to get rid of you, either you get murdered like Qadaffy, or you hang on until the bitter end." Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffy ... one of those little rainstorms from the Arab Spring... was killed by a mob in October.
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#1
I prefer a long, bloody Syrian "civil" war. But, I thought, UN has different preferences.
#3
On second thought, I think Turkey's in the same situation. They can't afford to appear to be pro-Syria but they can sure talk about how horrible the regime is while they o so carefully avoid doing anything effective. Quel Horrible! If only we had a military!
[Tolo News] Taliban are pro-peace negotiations and prefer to hold talks with the United States at the first stages, Member of Taliban's Leadership Council, Agha Jan Motasem told BBC.
In an exclusive interview with BBC, Mr Motasem said that currently the war has been imposed on Taliban and they are ready to have talks with the Afghan government and other foreign nations at the second phase of peace negotiations.
He also said that Taliban is led by a single leader and the Haqqani network is an inseparable part of Taliban.
"Taliban are pro-peace negotiations and currently the war has been imposed on them, foreigners have occupied the country," Motasem told the BBC.
"Peace Negotiations can't be a one phase process, it should have many phases. We prefer to negotiate with the US at the first phase, then with the Afghan government and other foreigners."
Meanwhile, ...back at the secret hideout, Scarface Al sneeringly put his proposition to little Nell... Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed the statements and said it's a positive sign, but it stressed that those groups who don't respect democracy and Afghan constitution will not be included in peace talks.
"Ministry of foreign affairs welcomes talks with Taliban who accept Afghan constitution and democracy, we call on Taliban to join the grinding of the peace processor, currently talks with Taliban are underway," Janan Musazai, a front man for the Afghan Ministry Foreign Affairs said today.
"Afghan government will continue fighting those who don't believe in the achievements of Afghan people and never believe in peace," Musazai added.
This comes as Agha Jan Motasem has said that the only demand of the Taliban is a strong Islamic state and stressed that those who claim to be supporting the Afghan constitution are violating it most of the time.
Foreign relations advisor of the Afghan High Peace Council, Mohammad Ismail Qasimyar says that a government which respects the rights of men and women and democracy in Afghanistan is acceptable.
"We want an Islamic and people-owned government which pays respect to human rights ...which often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless... , rights of men and women in the country, protects the past achievements and brings stability in Afghanistan," Qasimyar said.
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#1
The talk I'd like would be "Do you have any last words before sentence is carried out?"
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
06/03/2012 0:18
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#2
Direct negociations with the US are far more lucrative for the Talban, they remove the middle-man [Karzai].
[Tolo News] Two foreign aid workers and their two Afghan colleagues, who were kidnapped and held by faceless myrmidons in northern Badakhshan province on May 22, have been rescued in an early morning raid, Isaf said.
The two foreign aid workers, Helen Johnston, Moragwe Oirere and two of their Afghan colleagues who work for the non-government organization Medair, were stopped by a group of gunnies while travelling on horseback between the Yaftali and Ragh districts of the country's furthest north-eastern province of Badakhshan.
Medair, a humanitarian non-governmental organization is based near Lausanne, Switzerland. ...home of the Helvetians, famous for cheese, watches, yodeling, and William Tell... Gen. John Allen, the top commander of American and Isaf forces in Afghanistan, said in a statement that coalition forces conducted the rescue mission early on Saturday with the support of the Afghan Ministry of Interior.
"This morning's mission, conducted by coalition forces, exemplifies our collective and unwavering commitment to defeat the Taliban," he said.
"I'm extremely grateful to the Afghan authorities and proud of the Isaf forces that planned, rehearsed, and successfully conducted this operation," Mr Allen added.
Meanwhile, ...back at the dirigible, Jack stuck the cigar in his mouth, stepped onto the gantry, and asked Got a light, Mac?
Von Schtinken stopped short, lowering the dagger and trying to control his features. If you light that thing, Herr Armschtröng, he pointed out, his voice tense, we all die!... the UK Prime Minister David Cameron ... has stated that he is certainly a big Thatcher fan, but I don't know whether that makes me a Thatcherite, which means he's not. Since he is not deeply ideological he lacks core principles and is easily led. He has been described as certainly not a Pitt, Elder or Younger, but he does wear a nice suit so maybe he's Beau Brummel ... called it an "extraordinarily brave, breathtaking" raid.
"It was an extraordinary, brave, breathtaking operation, he said."
"They had to cover the ground very rapidly... The terrain was incredibly difficult terrain, very rocky, with scrub, in a deep gully, it was about the most testing target you could imagine," he added.
The Primer said that the rescue involved a number of British troops, none of whom were maimed in the operation.
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#1
Nice Work Men! Just in time for the Queens Birthday. I bet her Grandson made a phone call.
[Yemen Post] Yemeni Defense Minister escaped an liquidation attempt carried out by angry soldiers in the trouble-torn province 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... local media reported on Saturday.
Angry soldiers fired at the convoy of Ali Nasser Ahmed as he was checking on the forces fighting al-Qaeda hard boyz in the province.
The soldiers are angry because their salaries have not been issued yet. They are all new recruiters, mostly from the tribal militias who have been fighting alongside the army troops for the past couple of months, according to some local sources.
For his part, Jamal al-Aqal, the governor of Abyan who was with the Minister when the liquidation attempt occurred, downplayed the importance of the incident saying the soldiers are new recruiters and that they only fired gunshots in the air as a way to express their protests and anger against not issuing their salaries yet.
He stressed that their rightful demands are being considered and that it would be soon settled.
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Abubakar Shekau is the leader of the cut-thoat Islamist group 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... , which has carried out a series of deadly attacks across northern Nigeria. Abdullahi Tasiu Abubakar from the BBC Hausa service looks at Nigeria's most wanted man.
The leader of the cut-thoat Islamist group Boko Haram is said to be a fearless loner, a complex, paradoxical man -- part intellectual, part gangster.
Fondly called imam or leader by his followers, Abubakar Muhammad Shekau was born in Shekau village in Nigeria's north-eastern state of Yobe.
Some say he is 34 or 35, others that he may be 43 -- the uncertainty adds to the myths surrounding Nigeria's most wanted man.
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(CNN) -- Cairo's main square Saturday overflowed with people angry that six former government aides were acquitted of charges of killing hundreds of pro-democracy protesters last year, while former strongman Hosni Mubarak ...The former President-for-Life of Egypt, dumped by popular demand in early 2011... was ordered to prison.
Mubarak and former Interior Minister Habib El Adly were sentenced to life in prison for their crimes. Mubarak was immediately transferred to a prison in southern Cairo to serve his sentence, and a prosecutor said the former president, who attended court on a gurney, would be transferred to the prison hospital.
Protesters in the square, the center of last year's protests, waved Egyptian flags as they demanded justice for those killed and injured during last year's demonstrations. At least 61 people were maimed Saturday in protests throughout Egypt, following the verdict, state TV reported.
"How is (Mubarak) imprisoned for life ... but his main aides are set free?" asked AbdulMawgoud Dardery, a member of the Freedom and Justice Party, which is part of the Moslem Brüderbund, Egypt's largest and oldest opposition group.
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#1
Egypt State TV is repor that MUBARAK suffered a post-sentencing "sudden health crisis" = heart attack while on his way to prison.
IFF WASHINGTON CONGRESSCITTERS WANT TO DO FOR DR. AFRIDI, I.E. GET RELEASED FROM PRISON + TRANSFERRED BACK TO THE USA, WHY NOT SIMIL FOR HOSNI MUBARAK???
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ... sometimes described as For a good time at 3 a.m. call Hillary and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as Another Walter Q. Gresham ... took a first-hand look Saturday at the way a warming climate is changing the Arctic, opening the region to competition for vast oil reserves.
Experts here estimate the value of the Arctic's untapped oil alone -- not including natural gas and minerals -- at $900 trillion, making it a huge prize for the five countries that surround the Arctic if they can reach it.
And with climate warming opening up some 46,000 square kilometres (18,000 square miles) a year that had once been bound in ice, the region is expected to burst open, not just with oil exploration but with East-West trade along a more accessible northern route.
Returning from a tour of the Arctic coastline aboard a Norwegian research trawler with scientists and government officials, Clinton told news hounds that she learned "many of the predictions about warming in the Arctic are being surpassed by the actual data."
"That was not necessarily surprising but sobering," she said.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Of course, if the entire Arctic ice cap melted, it would not raise sea levels one millimeter (unless the water temperature also rose).
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
06/03/2012 1:21
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#2
unless the water temperature also rose
And then it would go up a few centimeters, at least. Drop everything and run for your lives.
We've had entire civilizations wiped out by climate change from time to time. Maybe it's time for another round, maybe not. But there's no way we're going to stand between mother nature and what she has in mind.
I wonder how fair and balanced Hillary's advisors are on this "expedition".
#3
gorb, the last time I made the general comment about the sea level not rising one millimeter even if the the entire Arctic ice cap melted, someone here pointed out that if the temperature of the ocean rose, the volume would expand and the sea level would rise. As you pointed out, it would only rise a few centimeters.
If the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps melted entirely, it would be different. However, even the infamous IPCC report said that the Greenland ice cap wouldn't melt for a thousand years or so.
Somewhere I saw a map of what the Earth would look like if all the ice caps melted. Despite what people think, the entire world would not be underwater. Sure, Florida might be gone, but there would still be lots of dry land. (Sucks if you are from Florida, of course).
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
06/03/2012 1:55
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#4
Head for the hills, Greenland ice is melting. Oh wait! that was 80 years ago.
#5
If the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps melted entirely, it would be different.
Yeah, because all that water is above sea level, not 90% below it.
However, even the infamous IPCC report said that the Greenland ice cap wouldn't melt for a thousand years or so.
Dang. There went my Lex Luthor get-rich-quick scheme of buying up all the empty land I could find more than 250 miles from the shore.
Somewhere I saw a map of what the Earth would look like if all the ice caps melted. Despite what people think, the entire world would not be underwater. Sure, Florida might be gone, but there would still be lots of dry land. (Sucks if you are from Florida, of course).
Exactly why I didn't buy in FL. In fact, I'm planning to move to Mt. Ararat just in case.
#11
I'm starting to think that all the crap flying around about Global Warming is merely a distraction so the electorate can be diverted from dealing with more important issues that can and should be dealt with by them, e.g., control fraud, illegal immigration, etc., etc.
#12
I remember landing under sniper fire Glacial melting. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting carbon trading ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down swam with our heads just above water to get into the vehicles life rafts to get to our base.
#15
"Clinton in Arctic to see impact of climate change"
Bull. So say her advisers. She's taking the same vacation zillions of mid-60s ladies do, for a little adventure that doesn't require ideal physical fitness.
#19
Is she going to swing by Wasilla to look at Russia?
Posted by: Barbara ||
06/03/2012 20:03
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#20
Hillary better get it done quick because Putin + other are already busting moves to get Mil + Econ Assets, etc. set up in the Arctic.
* ION RENSE, DAILY MAIL.UK > LAST MONTH'S SOLAR FLARECREATED MYSTERIOUS EARTH PULSE | ...PULSE ON EARTH THAT SEEMED TO ANSWER SUN'S BLAST.
* SAME > [Cosmic Convergence] POSITIVE LIGHTNING STRIKES INTENSIFY [strength + frequency] AS COSMIC RAYS INCREASE.
Again, here in Hagatna/Agana I'd observed normal background reality being "bent/warped", something that I would like NASA-JPL + other major Space Perts, Academia to investigate as per changes in Solar EM + ultimately its Dynamo. IMO it also shows the importance of why our future desired OWG-NWO needs proper consensus among its Govts-Perts as per GWCC.
The above never happened like that before, even during Guam, Earth-visible Solar Flares/Storms where long tongues of fire can be visually seen protruding from the Sun.
Put it this way, SIRIUS EVENT + GWCC + 9-11, GWOT = POLITICS IS N-O-T "AS USUAL", + CAN NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN OR AS WE KNEW IT.
[STAR TREK:TNG's "Q" = "ITS DANGEROUS OUT HERE .... SPACE IS NOT FOR THE TIMID"! here].
[Dawn] ON Thursday, women protested bravely in Beautiful Downtown Peshawar against the discriminatory remarks made by a holy man -- and former MNA -- from Kohistan ...a backwoods district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa distinguished by being even more rustic than is the norm among the local Pashtuns.... in a Friday sermon. They were taking a stand in the face of threats issued by Maulvi Abdul Haleem, who declared that women working for NGOs would forcibly be married to local men if they tried to enter Kohistan. This was in keeping with his other obscurantist views, according to which girls should not be educated, women should not work unless accompanied by mahrams and 'honour' killing is a religiously-sanctioned practice. The common thread running through all of this is a fear of women's empowerment: if female NGO workers inform Kohistani women of their rights, the latter might start questioning the restrictions under which they are made to live.
The sermon was part of a worrying trend in Pakistain in which NGOs are increasingly under pressure from a variety of sources. Since Dr Shakil Afridi's involvement in the the late Osama bin Laden ... who knows that it's like to live in the belly of a whale only he's not living... affair surfaced, western NGOs too have come under suspicion by the state, with employees being denied visas, supplies being held up, and organizations being monitored and even being asked to stop working in certain areas. Because vaccination was used as a front, the 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... campaign is now reportedly facing suspicion from the communities it tries to serve. The security situation in Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... and Fata prevents non-profit work there. Take, for example, the killing of a second worker of the Balochistan Rural Support Programme after six were kidnapped in the province, or reports this week of threatening letters issued against NGO workers by South Wazoo hard boys. Maulvi Haleem's sermon is a reminder that gender, too, is a barrier for NGO workers in parts of Pakistain. In a country where the government provides limited social services, this trend will only make life more difficult for Pakistain's disadvantaged and marginalised communities.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2012
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(Sh.M.Network)-The United Nations ...An organization originally established to war on dictatorships which was promptly infiltrated by dictatorships and is now held in thrall to dictatorships... should beef up its operation in Somalia, and other countries who want to help the war-torn state should actually move in and set up bases there, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday.
Erdogan's direct remarks at a international conference onSomaliainIstanbul, the second hosted inTurkeyin two years, was the latest sign of his administration's growing interest and clout inAfrica.
"Without living there you cannot devise the correct policies and you cannot help. I invite the international community to open representative offices," Erdogan told the conference attended by U.N. Secretary-General the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon ... of whom it can be said to his credit that he is not Kofi Annan... , the Somali interim president and delegations from more than 50 countries.
"We have really struggled to makeSomalia's voice heard, to make those who do not see or feel what's going on inSomalia, see and feel," he said.
Most aid agencies funding projects in Somalis are actually based in neighboringKenyaor further afield.
Many moved their headquarters out of the country years ago to avoid kidnappings, looting and fighting between al-Qaeda allied forces of Evil and Somali troops backed by African forces.
Somalia has been mired in turmoil since the 1991 overthrow of Dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
Erdogan made a high-profile and whirlwind visit to the Somali capital in August last year, bringing his family and a plane full of ministers and consultants.
For all its brevity, the trip was still the first time a non-African leader had visited the country in almost 20 years.
While the visit was aimed at drawing attention to the famine that swept across the Horn of Africa nation, it was also part ofAnkara's wider strategy of positioning itself as a growing regional power and influential voice within the Mohammedan world.
Turkeyhas since opened an embassy in Mogadishu, built hospitals and schools and started direct flights between the two countries. It has also sent hundreds of Somali students to study inTurkey.
WhileTurkeyhas been largely applauded for its assistance in Somalia, critics say Ankara's headfirst policy and relative inexperience in the region leaves it vulnerable to manipulation by different political factions.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2012
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Top|| File under: al-Shabaab
#1
If nothing else, a big influx of UN corruptocrats might encourage Toyota to set up a few service centers for the usual fleet of white Land Cruisers. They'd have to bring in mechanics from outside the country, but certainly some of the locals could be trained to do vehicle detailing. Just as long as you can keep them from ripping out the leather upholstery to make belts and purses. And I guess Toyota would have to bring in some security staff to make sure the nifty super-duper premium stereo systems remained in place...
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
06/03/2012 15:19
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#2
Address first your muslim brothers to do so, Erdi.
Why infidels should do it?
[An Nahar] Arab leaders called for U.N. action on Saturday as at least 27 people were killed in Syria amid growing concern that Kofi Annan ...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo... 's peace plan is failing and the country descending into all-out civil war.
Annan himself warned of sectarian warfare, singling out Syrian Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators... and his regime as key to resolving the conflict.
"The spectra of an all-out war with a worrying sectarian dimension grows by the day," he told a ministerial meeting on Syria in Doha.
"The situation is complex and it takes everyone involved in the conflict to act responsibly if the violence is to stop. But the first responsibility lies in the Syrian government and President Assad," he said.
Up to 300 unarmed U.N. military observers have deployed in Syria since a putative ceasefire brokered by Annan went into effect in April as part of a six-point peace plan, which also stipulated that the army must pull out of towns and cities.
"I told Assad he must act now to implement all points of the plan, and must make bold and visible steps immediately to radically change his military posture and honor commitments to withdraw heavy weapons and cease all violence," Annan said.
He also said he told Assad to release detainees, open up the country to international humanitarian aid and allow freedom of expression as "this is essential to demonstrate his seriousness to the Syrian people and the international community."
Earlier, the Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... 's ministerial committee on Syria had called on Annan, the U.N.-Arab League envoy on the crisis who met Assad earlier this week, to set a time frame for his mission.
"We request Mr. Annan to set a time frame for his mission because it is unacceptable that massacres and bloodshed continue while the mission is ongoing indefinitely," Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani said.
"We demand the U.N. Security Council refer the six-point (Annan plan) to Chapter VII so that the international community could assume responsibilities," he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2012
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#1
Maybe it's time to arm both sides and let them have at it until they've both had enough.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Eric Holder, Barack Obama's attorney general and David Axelrod, his top political adviser had to be separated after squaring up during a furious row over attempts to impose White House operatives in the justice department. 
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
A car bomb attack near a church in the northern Nigerian city of Bauchi has killed at least 12 people. At least another five were wounded in the blast.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has denied his government's forces had any role in the Houla massacre. Assad called the killings an "ugly crime" that even "monsters" would not carry out. 
[Politico] Top national and North Carolina Democrats have taken a series of unusual steps to protect their candidates in the Tarheel State -- and President 
Religion can be an admirable guide for personal morality but should not compete with science on matters of empirical inquiry
Some 100 people defied a government ban Saturday to rally in the centre of the Tunisian capital against Salafist extremism, accusing the authorities of double standards.
[Boston Herald] Elizabeth Warren, who has railed against predatory banks and heartless foreclosures, took part in about a dozen Oklahoma real estate deals that netted her and her family hefty profits through maneuvers such as "flipping" properties, records show.
Four al 
(CBS) -- Illinois 
As many as 20 Afghan schoolgirls were poisoned in northern Takhar province on Saturday morning, local officials said.
A Pak anti-terrorism court freed on Saturday four men accused of involvement in the 2010 Times Square bomb plot, said a lawyer and family members of the men.
Zardari's wrong decision
Asif Ali 
Nawaz Sharif
[Yemen Post] Yemen's President Abdrabu Mansour Hadi Saturday called on the international community to back and oversee a five-year strategic development plan which must focus on improving various economic sectors in the country, Saba reported. 
[Business Day Online] The Nigerian Police must be eager to show some "performance" in the fight against terror that it took the whole country on a ride last week. The official line, as reported by the media, was: "3 ministers, journalists escape death as security operatives arrest man with grenades." The police account was that "eagle-eyed" security operatives 
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] A series of intertwined political crises that began with accusations that Iraq's prime minister was consolidating power have escalated into calls to unseat him, and paralysed the country's government.
Khaleda Zia
...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...
[Yemen Post] Several persons were killed and 
Half a dozen people were 
cycle of violence
[An Nahar] Syrian troops conducted raids in search of anti-regime 
Najib Miqati
...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...
Zawahiri
[Al Ahram] General Mounir Ramadan confirmed Saturday that the Mubarak trial verdict would bring further consequences down on the ousted president.
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
Charles Taylor
Two foreign aid workers and their two Afghan colleagues, who were kidnapped and held by 
David Cameron
[Yemen Post] Yemeni Defense Minister escaped an 
Abubakar Shekau is the leader of the
(CNN) -- Cairo's main square Saturday overflowed with people angry that six former government aides were acquitted of charges of killing hundreds of pro-democracy protesters last year, while former strongman 
US Secretary of State 
Hillary Clinton
[Dawn] ON Thursday, women protested bravely in 
the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon
