AP IMPACT: An American life worth less today
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer
WASHINGTON - It's not just the American dollar that's losing value. A government agency has decided that an American life isn't worth what it used to be. The "value of a statistical life" is $6.9 million in today's dollars, the Environmental Protection Agency reckoned in May -- a drop of nearly $1 million from just five years ago.
The Associated Press discovered the change after a review of cost-benefit analyses over more than a dozen years. Though it may seem like a harmless bureaucratic recalculation, the devaluation has real consequences.
When drawing up regulations, government agencies put a value on human life and then weigh the costs versus the lifesaving benefits of a proposed rule. The less a life is worth to the government, the less the need for a regulation, such as tighter restrictions on pollution.
Consider, for example, a hypothetical regulation that costs $18 billion to enforce but will prevent 2,500 deaths. At $7.8 million per person (the old figure), the lifesaving benefits outweigh the costs. But at $6.9 million per person, the rule costs more than the lives it saves, so it may not be adopted. ...and why? TA DA!
Some environmentalists accuse the Bush administration of changing the value to avoid tougher rules -- a charge the EPA denies."It appears that they're cooking the books in regards to the value of life," said S. William Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, which represents state and local air pollution regulators. "Those decisions are literally a matter of life and death." He's gonna kill us all! He's a maniac! A MAAAAAAAAAANIAC!!
Dan Esty, a senior EPA policy official in the administration of the first President Bush and now director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, said: "It's hard to imagine that it has other than a political motivation." Look soon for my new book, "Bush Wants You Dead So He Can Eat The Meat Off Your Bones".
Agency officials say they were just following what the science told them. Well, obviously, they're lying. Or using the "wrong kind" of science.
Never could trust those shifty scientists ...
The EPA figure is not based on people's earning capacity, or their potential contributions to society, or how much they are loved and needed by their friends and family -- some of the factors used in insurance claims and wrongful-death lawsuits. Instead, economists calculate the value based on what people are willing to pay to avoid certain risks, and on how much extra employers pay their workers to take on additional risks. Most of the data is drawn from payroll statistics; some comes from opinion surveys. According to the EPA, people shouldn't think of the number as a price tag on a life.
The EPA made the changes in two steps. First, in 2004, the agency cut the estimated value of a life by 8 percent. Then, in a rule governing train and boat air pollution this May, the agency took away the normal adjustment for one year's inflation. Between the two changes, the value of a life fell 11 percent, based on today's dollar. EPA officials say the adjustment was not significant and was based on better economic studies. The reduction reflects consumer preferences, said Al McGartland, director of EPA's office of policy, economics and innovation. "It's our best estimate of what consumers are willing to pay to reduce similar risks to their own lives," McGartland said.
But EPA's cut "doesn't make sense," said Vanderbilt University economist Kip Viscusi. EPA partly based its reduction on his work. "As people become more affluent, the value of statistical lives go up as well. It has to." Viscusi also said no study has shown that Americans are less willing to pay to reduce risks.
At the same time that EPA was trimming the value of life, the Department of Transportation twice raised its life value figure. But its number is still lower than the EPA's. EPA traditionally has put the highest value on life of any government agency and still does, despite efforts by administrations to bring uniformity to that figure among all departments.
Not all of EPA uses the reduced value. The agency's water division never adopted the change and in 2006 used $8.7 million in current dollars. From 1996 to 2003, EPA kept the value of a statistical life generally around $7.8 million to $7.96 million in current dollars, according to reports analyzed by The AP. In 2004, for a major air pollution rule, the agency lowered the value to $7.15 million in current dollars. Just how the EPA came up with that figure is complicated and involves two dueling analyses.
Viscusi wrote one of those big studies, coming up with a value of $8.8 million in current dollars. The other study put the number between $2 million and $3.3 million. The co-author of that study, Laura Taylor of North Carolina State University, said her figure was lower because it emphasized differences in pay for various risky jobs, not just risky industries as a whole.
EPA took portions of each study and essentially split the difference -- a decision two of the agency's advisory boards faulted or questioned. "This sort of number-crunching is basically numerology," said Granger Morgan, chairman of EPA's Science Advisory Board and an engineering and public policy professor at Carnegie Mellon University. "This is not a scientific issue." No matter what it is, my head hurts.
Other, similar calculations by the Bush administration have proved politically explosive. In 2002, the EPA decided the value of elderly people was 38 percent less than that of people under 70. After the move became public, the agency reversed itself. Dammit, he wants to kill us all!
Soylent Green is granny and gramps!!!
#1
not confined to this report:
right now San Franfansisco is looking at a retrofit to the Golden Gate bridge to try to stop those that want to jump. The $$ amount is staggering and they are trying to determine how to defend that amount.
snark/ seems diving boards would be cheaper, and limit costs associated with clean up /end snark
#1
Maybe the Times should worry about it's own problems...
Virtually announcing to the world that the New York Times Company is in the process destroying shareholder value, investment bank Lehman Brothers is telling investors that its 12 month price target for a share of New York Times Company stock is $8 a share, down 46 percent from $15.06 at the time the report was published.
Lehman sees ad revenue declining even faster than it had previously predicted, along with acceleration in the decline of earnings per share. It warns investors away from an asset play here, no doubt because the Sulzberger family is committed to keeping the company intact. So the only way the company's shares should be evaluated is on the basis of its rapidly deteriorating fundamentals.
Worst of all, Lehman sees a possible dividend cut ahead. That would be painful for many members of the ruling family, and could threaten Pinch Sulzberger's control eventually.
#2
I agree with the editorial. Charity deductions should indeed be limited at some point. And private, charitable foundations should be required to spend money and do as they say they're going to do rather than save the money in perpetuity so that their boards can have nice dinners.
If the Ford Foundation, Heinz Foundation, etc. were required to disgorge their monies, people might would be helped. As it isn't as if there is a natural law requiring that the Ford Foundation be allowed to go on forever.
Likewise, Leona Helmsley's damned dog doesn't need 8 billion dollars, and Leona's estate shouldn't be allowed to play that game.
Nope, the NYT got this one right. The charitable deduction should be limited at some dollar amount -- ordinary giving should not be affected but the wealthy should be forced to pay their share.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/10/2008 17:13
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#3
I disagree Steve.
No limits on donations to charities. I plan on leaving a fairly good sum to my Church, and the local diocese Catholic Charity fund. Some of that will go to an endowment that helps pay for the "upkeep" of seminary students who are studying for the priesthood. That requires investment, management, etc.
I'd rather the government not get in my way of what I want to do with my money, nor the perpetuation of contributions that are needed for future generations.
But I do agree on a start to limiting the way the charities handle the money - require that it be spent properly, instead of enriching those running the charities.
#5
Neither you nor I have Leona's money, so we wouldn't be taxed. Ordinary people should be able to give tax-preferred money to a charity. But at a certain point the deduction should go away, much as we phase out certain other deductions when ordinary income is above a certain point.
[For example, your deductions on Schedule A on a Form 1040 are phased out based on being over a certain cut-off in adjusted gross income. Same idea here.]
A lot of the 'charitable' giving is a shell game to keep the money under family, or quasi-family, control for generations. Again, consider the Heinz Foundation, or the Ford Foundation. Why should my taxes be higher so that Henry's heirs can enjoy the dough?
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/10/2008 18:50
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#6
Steve,
I think you are headed in the right direction. The accumulation of wealth and the power of tax exempt compound interest is building a huge reservoir of wealth in the hands of unaccountable institutions including universities.
Maitland rightly pointed out that one of the unique aspects of English law was the trust. But its tax treatment has led to the creation of an unaccountable leviathan unseen since the monasteries.
#8
But at a certain point the deduction should go away, much as we phase out certain other deductions when ordinary income is above a certain point.
Schedule A deductions as a whole (where charities go) start to phase out at $150K AGI for MFJ filers. If you're subject to AMT, you lose all Schedule A deductions, except for charitable contributions and casualty / theft losses.
The head of Total, Christophe de Margerie, told the Financial Times the company's planned development of the huge South Pars gas field in southern Iran would not go ahead.
"Today we would be taking too much political risk to invest in Iran because people will say: 'Total will do anything for money'," he said.
Total was the last major Western energy group to have seriously considered investing in the country's huge gas reserves.
Analysts say the move will be a big blow to the Iranian energy industry - it means Iran is now unlikely to significantly increase its gas exports until late into the next decade.
Israel's defense minister hinted Thursday that Israel was ready to attack Iran's nuclear program, saying it didn't balk before "when its vital security interests" were at stake.
Thank goodness someone is willing ...
Defense Minister Ehud Barak's allusion to Israel's 1981 airstrike on an unfinished Iraqi nuclear reactor came at a time of intensified tensions between Israel and its archenemy, Iran. "Israel is the strongest country in the region and has proved in the past that it doesn't hesitate to act when its vital security interests are at stake," Barak told a meeting of his Labor Party.
But he quickly tempered his remarks, noting that "the reactions of enemies ... need to be taken into consideration as well."
Israeli defense officials have said there were no major surprises in the latest Iranian missile tests. The officials said they appeared to be more of an exercise in psychological warfare than a breakthrough in military technology.
In another act of muscle-flexing, Israel displayed its new spy plane Thursday at the headquarters of state-run Israel Aerospace Industries. Israel unveiled the plane last year and will exhibit it at the Farnborough air show in England next week. Israeli defense officials said the aircraft went on display at IAI headquarters in response to the Iranian war games.
IAI spokesman Assaf Dargan said the plane "has the most sophisticated early warning and intelligence devices to date and is capable of reaching all destinations required by the air force." He declined to elaborate, citing security considerations.
#1
Damn I can't see how Iran could ever be "defanged" in a timely enough fashion, or have its far flung Nuke facilities and materials properly and thoroughly inspected with enough confidence so to stop Israel's military intervention.
On the heels of a recent Israeli Air Force exercise — and cautionary words from the United States — Iran, quite literally, fired back on Wednesday. According to military and press accounts, Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) units test-fired nine missiles, including a medium-range Shahab-3, capable of reaching Israel.
While the Iranian missile test was enough to ratchet up regional tensions (and trigger a new spike in oil prices), it is possible to read too much into the dayÂ’s events, at least militarily. First, this type of drill is hardly an unusual event; IRGC missile units conduct an average of two or three major exercises each year, and missile crews practice continuously at their garrisons. Preparations for the test had been underway for several days and, presumably, detected by U.S. and Israeli intelligence.
Secondly, reporting on the missile test — or at least the information available so far — ignores the salient question about the supposed “highlight” of the exercise: the launch of an extended range Shahab-3 that could target Israel. This is not the first time Iran has tested a longer-rage version of the Shahab-3; launches involving that type of missile date back almost a decade.
But many of those tests had something in common: they resulted in failures, ranging from missiles that blew up in flight, failed to achieve the desired range, or strayed badly off course. So far, Tehran hasnÂ’t provided details on WednesdayÂ’s Shahab-3 launch, only saying that it has a maximum range of 1250 miles and is capable of carrying a one-ton payload. If the extended-range Shahab-3 remains unreliable, it will pose less of a threat to Israel and other potential targets in the Middle East.
In fact, Iran reportedly stopped work on another missile program (dubbed the Shahab-4), replacing it with BM-25 intermediate range missiles from North Korea. The BM-25 — based on an old Soviet SLBM design — arrived in Iran more than a year ago but has not been operationally tested. Cancellation of the Shahab-4 and slow progress with the BM-25 suggest continuing problems with Tehran’s intermediate and long-range missile programs.
Deficiencies can also be found among operational systems. Media reports on Wednesday’s launch are wildly inaccurate in one important element: characterizing many of the missiles tested as long-range systems. The Shahab-3 is actually classified as a medium-range system; the other missiles tested appear to be short-range systems, capable of reaching targets less than 150 miles away — and with only limited accuracy.
In fact, the three missiles that were launched simultaneously (and highlighted in press photos) are unsophisticated battlefield rockets, probably a Zelzal variant. Iran first introduced the Zelzal in the mid-1990s; it was based on the Russian Frog-7 design, which dates from the 1950s. Not exactly state-of-the-art. But the western press accepts Iranian military claims uncritically and often inflates the threat, much to TehranÂ’s delight.
Remember that advanced fighter that Iran built, supposedly equal to our own F/A-18? ItÂ’s actually a remanufactured U.S. F-5, with a second vertical stabilizer and marginally upgraded avionics. Or that high-speed torpedo? It is based on a Soviet design from World War II, requiring precise pre-launch calculations. If the target changes speed, zig-zags, or does anything to upset the firing solution, the torpedo misses its mark.
But with the media unwilling (or unable) to call Tehran’s military bluff, the exaggerated claims continue. After Wednesday’s launch, a senior Iranian officer told reporters that “our missiles are ready for the shooting at any time or place.” He said the purpose of the exercise was to show “we are ready to defend the integrity of the Iranian nation.”
In reality, his claims about a “hair-trigger” alert status are a bit of a stretch. Under some scenarios, it would take Iranian crews several hours to mount a strike due to the technology used in their missile systems. For example, older Shahab-3 variants use highly-voliatle liquid fuel, which must be loaded onto the missile before it can launch. While a highly-proficient crew can prepare the missile for firing in about an hour, less-skilled personnel may need two or three hours to complete the same task.
ThatÂ’s a critical concern because it means the missile will sit at a fixed site while the preparations are made, increasing its vulnerability to detection and air attack. The problem is further compounded by the limitations of some Shahab-3 launchers which cannot raise an already-fueled missile to the firing position. As a result, the missile must be elevated prior to fueling, making the Shahab-3 easier to detect.
However, those problems do not mean that Iran’s missile threat can be ignored or marginalized. Ballistic missile “hunting” remains an imprecise art, at best. In a country like Iran (which is roughly the size of Alaska), there are plenty of launch sites where Shahab-3 crews could escape detection and targeting. Tehran also has detailed knowledge of our intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems, sometimes scheduling missile movements and other activities during “gaps” in overhead coverage.
Iran has also invested in underground facilities for its missile units, allowing crews to conduct maintenance and training operations without being detected by intelligence systems. One such facility, built specifically for the Shahab-3, contains a vertical launch shaft, permitting the missile to be fueled and fired with minimal warning. Tehran has also begun building in-ground silos for some of its missiles, making it more difficult to monitor activity. These trends, coupled with IranÂ’s efforts to build more missiles and outfit them with nuclear weapons, are reasons for concern.
Still, itÂ’s important to place events like the missile test in their proper context, at least from an operations perspective. IranÂ’s ballistic missile forces are improving, but they remain hindered by old technology and limited accuracy. It would be difficult (at least over the short term) for Tehran to build a nuclear weapon small enough to fit atop one of its existing missiles. Until that obstacle is overcome, Iran will lack a viable option for delivering a nuclear device, particularly against distant targets.
The bad news is that Iran has the cash, resolve, and technological access to overcome these obstacles. Liquid-fueled systems are being replaced by solid-fueled missiles and rockets (which can be launched in a matter of minutes) and left unchecked, Tehran will eventually get its hands on technology for smaller nuclear warheads, ideal for short and medium-range missile systems. Measures aimed at concealing missile and nuclear activity are also improving.
From a technical and military standpoint, Iran revealed nothing new in Wednesday’s test. Indeed, the event was (to some degree) an exercise in opportunism, allowing Tehran to grab some headlines, boost oil prices, and send messages to its adversaries at the end of a G-8 summit and in the middle of a U.S. presidential campaign. While preparations for the test began weeks or months ago, it is possible that Iran delayed the launch until the “right” political moment arrived.
And that brings us to a pair of salient points, with clear implications for our future dealings with Tehran. First, it would be reassuring to know that our intelligence community wasn’t fooled by today’s launch. A good barometer in that area is the presence of an RC-135 Cobra Ball aircraft, which tracks missile tests at long range. With sufficient warning from various intel sources, “The Ball” is usually in position ahead of time, ready to collect data with its infrared telescopes and other on-board systems. The appearance of Cobra Ball (or other intel platforms) also sends a powerful message to our adversaries: we know what you’re up to. On the other hand, if our sensors weren’t in position, it would raise the dire prospect that we’re losing track of the Iranian missile program and other, more ominous activities.
The final point focuses on the larger question of dealing with Iran and its WMD ambitions. Not long after WednesdayÂ’s missile salvo was revealed, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama called for more sanctions against Iran and direct negotiations. But weÂ’ve been trying that approach for several years (largely through the European Union), with no appreciable progress. Why does Mr. Obama believe the failed policies of the past will now work with the clerics in Tehran?
If anything, the missile test is a reminder that there are limits to diplomacy, and at some point the next commander-in-chief may be forced to try something else. Senator Obama’s refusal to consider those other options will only embolden Iran, and likely lead to further acceleration of its missile and nuclear programs. There’s no way you can read “too much” into that reality.
#2
Iran is trying to do two things. First, they need to support oil prices. They feel they can damage us by keeping the price of oil high. Early in the week oil prices were on the way down and were nearly $10 a barrel less than they had been the week before. So Iran makes a bunch of statements and bingo ... the price goes back up on "supply jitters" in the minds of futures traders.
Secondly, Iran would rather rain destruction on others as retaliation rather than an outright first strike so being provocative is in their interest if it precipitates an attack on them. In their minds, that then gives them the justification they need to unleash terrorist attacks globally, attack Israel and probably unleash Hezbollah in Lebanon again.
Playing into this thinking would be security agreements Iran has with Russia, China, and Syria. If Iran is attacked, those mutual defense treaties come into force.
Of course Iran is bluffing, and they will continue to bluff until they feel they have the strength to completely eliminate Israel in a first strike and then they will do that regardless of the consequences because they don't mind martyring their entire population to do that.
In short ... the current government if Iran is insane. So don't go attempting to find rational explanations for irrational organizations, you are just wasting time.
#3
You know it's funny. I remember reading an article back when the Shah was still in power that claimed that Iran was the powerhouse of the mid-east and that militarily, they were aiming for a position where the US would be hard put to beat them in a limited war.
Regardless of the accuracy of the analysis - it was MSM - it seems that these guys are continually pooping in the punchbowl.
#4
Here's another worry for the persians. If any other enemy of Israel (take your pick) launches a strike which is not immediately traceable - as in within a few days, who is the most likely suspect? Now, who counts both Iraq and Israel and enemies, or at least rivals, and wouldn't mind seeing a little mutual mayhem? Finally, if all that happens, would Iraq in any way want to deny culpability and shift the blame?
All that is certainly a worry for Israel, but hasn't Iran dangerously exposed themselves to attack and retaliation from known and hidden enemies?
I suppose the remaining step is for Israel to simply pre-emptively blame Iran - not that it may alter anything.
Posted by: Pearl Jeager2939 ||
07/10/2008 19:01
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#5
I know ima being in bad form for saying this from my Arm-Chair..
WASHINGTON - Former White House adviser Karl Rove defied a congressional subpoena and refused to testify Thursday about allegations of political pressure at the Justice Department, including whether he influenced the prosecution of a former Democratic governor of Alabama.
Rep. Linda Sanchez, chairman of a House subcommittee, ruled with backing from fellow Democrats on the panel that Rove was breaking the law by refusing to cooperate — perhaps the first step toward holding him in contempt of Congress. Just like 91% of the population.
Lawmakers subpoenaed Rove in May in an effort to force him to talk about whether he played a role in prosecutors' decisions to pursue cases against Democrats, such as former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, or in firing federal prosecutors considered disloyal to the Bush administration.
Rove had been scheduled to appear at the House Judiciary subcommittee hearing Thursday morning. A placard with his name sat in front of an empty chair at the witness table, with a handful of protesters behind it calling for Rove to be arrested. A decision on whether to pursue contempt charges now goes to the full Judiciary Committee and ultimately to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. I'm your faaaaather, Nancy...
House Republicans called Thursday's proceedings a political stunt and said if Democrats truly wanted information they would take Rove up on an offer he made to discuss the matter informally.
The House already has voted to hold two of President Bush's confidants in contempt for failing to cooperate with its inquiry into whether the administration fired nine federal prosecutors in 2006 for political reasons. The case, involving White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers, is in federal court and may not be resolved before Bush's term ends in January. The White House has cited executive privilege, arguing that internal administration communications are confidential and that Congress cannot compel officials to testify.
Rove says he is bound to follow the White House's guidance, although he has offered to answer questions specifically on the Siegelman case — but only with no transcript taken and not under oath. Democrats have rejected the offer because the testimony would not be sworn and, they say, could create a confusing record. "Confusion"? Aw, no. Can't have that in Congress.
Rove has insisted publicly that he never tried to influence Justice Department decisions and was not even aware of the Siegelman prosecution until it landed in the news. Mr. Rove, where were you when the Hindenberg blew up?
I don't think I was even born y...
ANSWER THE QUESTION!
Siegelman — an unusually successful Democrat in a heavily Republican state — was charged with accepting and concealing a contribution to his campaign to start a state education lottery, in exchange for appointing a hospital executive to a regulatory board. He was sentenced last year to more than seven years in prison but was released in March when a federal appeals court ruled Siegelman had raised "substantial questions of fact and law" in his appeal. Hey! I'm a Democrat! They can't do that!
Right you are governor. Baliff, release him!
Siegelman and others have alleged the prosecution was pushed by GOP operatives — including Rove, a longtime Texas strategist who was heavily involved in Alabama politics before working at the White House. A former Republican campaign volunteer from Alabama told congressional attorneys last year that she overheard conversations suggesting that Rove pressed Justice officials in Washington to prosecute Siegelman. I've heard suggetions that Rove causes earthquakes and volcanos and shit...
The career prosecutors who handled Siegelman's case have insisted that Rove had nothing to do with it, emphasizing that the former governor was convicted by a jury. Oh, so he was, like, guilty? No wonder they're pissed...
#3
When the Congress is Constitutionally overreaching into the Executive branch's powers and responsibilities, yes, a subpoena can be useless.
They will file contempt charges, and then it goes to the courts.
The influencing a prosecutor stuff has already been pretty much demolished over on Powerline, months ago. Their prime witness is a habitual liar and attention whore, who will get ripped to shreds in a court hearing over the subpoena.
#2
Was she standing on her head when it hit her?
That violates every law of physics that I know of that relates to electricity. Weird.
The odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are one in 500,000, according to WBZ meteorologist Mish Michaels. But over a lifetime, they're one in 5,000.
Is this guy saying that 600 people a year get struck by lighning?!? That seems like alot. Is that in the US? or Worldwide?
A British businesswoman is facing six years in a Dubai jail after she was allegedly caught having sex on a beach.
Michelle Palmer, 30, a publishing firm manager, says that she is “panicking” after being arrested by a police officer who saw her with a man on Jumeirah Beach in the tiny oil-rich state.
It has been reported that she was charged with having sex outside marriage, indecent behaviour in public, being drunk in public and assaulting a police officer.
Ms Palmer is said to be worried that the authorities will push for the harshest possible sentence to make an example of her behaviour.
Posted by: Jan ||
07/10/2008
13:59 ||
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#1
I'd usually say "when in Rome", unfortunately she wasn't there.
OPEC would not be able to replace Iran's oil production if supplies were halted in case of a war with Israel or the US, the oil cartel's chief said today.
"I hope there will be no attack on Iran. I hope that problem will be solved peacefully," the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries' secretary general Abdalla Salem El-Badri told a news conference in Vienna. "But if something were to happen it is impossible to replace the production of Iran."
Iran is OPEC's second-largest oil producer with an output of about four million barrels per day. "That's a huge quantity, it is almost impossible to replace," Mr El-Badri said, adding that OPEC had no contingency plans in case of war.
"We have no plans for wars," he said. "We have plans for national disaster or something like that. But for a country to attack another country, we don't have this kind of policy."
#2
No big deal, we'll just uncap the Texas mystery wells, bring in all those tankers idling in the Gulf of Mexico, take the Phish carbureator to market, recapitalize the PG&E Street Car lines, increase the subsidy for corn ethanol and hold Congressional Hearings.
#3
Iran would be bankrupt without oil sales. Consumers have leverage. If Iran's command and control centers were taken out, oil patch locals would then be interested in their own futures. I wouldn't forsee the same destruction that we saw after the Iraqis pulled out of Kuwait. If you look at the demographic maps, few Persians live near either the oil fields or Hormuz Strait. It is likely that the CIA has secured some tenative agreements, pending US sovereign control over strategic areas. That should happen, if President Bush choses NOT to coast out of office. I have my doubts.
Defense officials are criticizing what they say is the failure to capture or kill top al Qaeda leaders because of timidity on the part of policy officials in the Pentagon, diplomats at the State Department and risk-averse bureaucrats within the intelligence community.
Military special operations forces (SOF) commandos are frustrated by the lack of aggressiveness on the part of several policy and intelligence leaders in pursuing al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his top henchmen, who are thought to have hidden inside the tribal areas of Pakistan for the past 6Å“ years.
The focus of the commandos' ire, the officials say, is the failure to set up bases inside Pakistan's tribal region, where al Qaeda has regrouped in recent months, setting up training camps where among those being trained are Western-looking terrorists who can pass more easily through security systems. The lawless border region inside Pakistan along the Afghan border remains off-limits to U.S. troops.
The officials say that was not always the case. For a short time, U.S. special operations forces went into the area in 2002 and 2003, when secret Army Delta Force and Navy SEALs worked with Pakistani security forces.
That effort was halted under Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage, who recently blamed Pakistan for opposing the joint operations. Mr. Armitage just keeps popping up like a bad penny, and McCain has him onboard.
Mr. Armitage, however, also disclosed his diplomatic opposition to the commando operations. Mr. Armitage, an adviser to Republican presidential contender Sen. John McCain, told the New York Times last month that the United States feared pressuring Pakistani leaders for commando access and that the Delta Force and SEALs in the tribal region were "pushing them almost to the breaking point."
However, the officials said that without the training and expertise of the U.S. commandos, Pakistani forces took heavy casualties in the region, with about 1,000 troops killed by terrorists and their supporters.
Another major setback for aggressive special operations activities occurred recently with a decision to downgrade the U.S. Special Operations Command. Under Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the command in 2004 began to shift its focus from support and training to becoming a front-line command in the covert war to capture and kill terrorists. In May, SOCOM, as the command is called, reverted to its previous coordination and training role, a change that also frustrated many SOF commandos.
Critics in the Pentagon of the failure to more aggressively use the 50,000-strong SOF force say it also is the result of a bias by intelligence officials against special forces, including Pentagon policy-makers such as former CIA officer Michael Vickers, currently assistant defense secretary for special operations; former CIA officer Mary Beth Long, assistant defense secretary for international security affairs; and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, a former CIA director.
The officials said the bias among intelligence officials against aggressive military special operations is long-standing. As evidence, they note that one of the very few recommendations of the 9/11 commission ignored by President Bush was the panel's call for giving the Pentagon the lead role in paramilitary operations.
The commission report stated that "lead responsibility for directing and executing paramilitary operations, whether clandestine or covert, should shift to the Defense Department." That has not occurred, and the officials said one result is that bin Laden and his deputies remain at large.
Said one Pentagon official: "The reason some Pentagon leaders appear to be so indecisive about President Bush's order to catch Osama bin Laden dead or alive is that they have not unleashed the dogs of war. Too many bureaucrats have blocked ideas from the aggressive U.S. commandos in Afghanistan and at SOCOM headquarters who just want to carry out the president's orders to stop al Qaeda from rebuilding."
Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell declined to address any specifics of special operations policies but said he thinks senior commanders do not share the critics' views.
On the hunt for bin Laden, Mr. Morrell said: "No one should question our commitment to bringing Osama bin Laden and the rest of his cowardly lieutenants to justice, one way or another. It will happen. it's just a question of when."
#1
And if they did slip the leash off SOCOM, the media would have a freaking field day criticizing the USA for violating Pakistan's sovereignty. To heck with any results they might get, the idea is to damage the USA.
#4
Look, guys, you are worth over a million bucks each, on top of which, we like you. We want you to do your job, but at the same time, we'd like you to come back home okay.
I know it's frustrating now, but later you can thank us.
#5
I suspect that if they let them. They would bust a lot of heads, and still come home. Look at Great Britain, that's our future if we don't start acting like grownups and give this soft power thingy a rest.
#6
God forbid we capture him alive to only bring him back for all to see on Court TV.
I would only hope that the guys that catch him would have an accident with the gun going off, similar to Vincent and Jules in Pulp Fiction...
Posted by: Jan ||
07/10/2008 14:57
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#7
First Juan Hernandez. now Armitrage. I'm having SERIOUS issues about McCain's judgment being no better than Obama's in terms of advisers.
Choice seems to be between dumb and dumber, and every time I think McCain has moved up, I find something else that puts hem back.
#8
I think they'd have better luck if they looked for Osama's DNA in worm turds in the caves of Tora Bora because I'm sure he's at least a sixth generation worm turd by now.
Posted by: Bob ||
07/10/2008 15:55
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#9
Armitage is bad news. He definitely gets his power from the dark side of the force.
#10
Critics in the Pentagon of the failure to more aggressively use the 50,000-strong SOF force say it also is the result of a bias by intelligence officials against special forces, including Pentagon policy-makers such as former CIA officer Michael Vickers, currently assistant defense secretary for special operations;
As news spread across the world of Iran's provocative missile tests, so did an image of four missiles heading skyward in unison. Unfortunately, it appeared to contain one too many missiles, a point that had not emerged before the photo appeared on the front pages of The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers as well as on BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News, NYTimes.com and many other major news Web sites.
The Los Angeles Times, The Palm Beach Post and Chicago Tribune, among others, used the image on the front pages on Thursday.
Our homepage at 3:56 p.m. on Wednesday. Agence France-Presse said that it obtained the image from the Web site of Sepah News, the media arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, on Wednesday. But there was no sign of it there later in the day. Today, The Associated Press distributed what appeared to be a nearly identical photo from the same source, but without the fourth missile.
As the above illustration shows, the second missile from the right appears to be the sum of two other missiles in the image. The contours of the billowing smoke match perfectly near the ground, as well in the immediate wake of the missile. Only a small black dot in the reddish area of exhaust seems to differ from the missile to its left, though there are also some slight variations in the color of the smoke and the sky.
Does Iran's state media use Photoshop? The charge has been leveled before. So far, though, it can't be said with any certainty whether there is any official Iranian involvement in this instance. Sepah apparently published the three-missile version of the image today without further explanation.
For its part, Agence France-Presse retracted its four-missile version this morning, saying that the image was "apparently digitally altered" by Iranian state media. The fourth missile "has apparently been added in digital retouch to cover a grounded missile that may have failed during the test," the agency said.
Remember the MSM published pictures of Photoshop smoke in southern Lebanon a couple of years ago.
Iran probably gave Hezbollah some prototypes of the Photoshop rocket. They were untested and must of blown up on the launchpad. Hence the Photoshop smoke.
Could they be real and we have a "Photoshop Missile Gap".
Where is Muzzie Outrage Boy Photo when you need it? Here I am.
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#1
They want a veto over Western legislation while they reject all Western interventions in dar-islam. That's a good reason to turf out Muslim immigrants.
#1
Sounds like its a hit with the kids too. I guess if you can't get your hands on a copy of Line of Duty:Modern Warfare, its the next best thing to watch.
Abu Qatada, the man once described as Osama bin Laden's right hand man in Europe, was pictured out walking the streets on the third anniversary of the 7/7 terror bombings.
This photograph shows Qatada doing the family shopping in London. It was taken on Monday, the anniversary of the July 7 attacks, and can now be published after a court order banning recent pictures of the preacher was lifted.
Qatada managed to carry a pack of heavy bottles of Diet Coke, even though he has in the past claimed incapacity benefits for a bad back. Under his other arm was a family pack of toilet rolls and on his back was a green rucksack for other items.
Earlier he smiled in the summer sunshine as he exchanged a joke about his prayer beads with a woman in the street. His thinning hair, after nearly six years in jail, was covered by a white Islamic prayer cap, but round his right ankle, covered by a white sock, was the electronic tag which ensures he returns home.
Qatada, 47, is allowed out of his house for two hours a day – one in the morning and one in the afternoon- under the strict terms of his bail.
He was released from Long Lartin high security jail in Worcestershire jail last month after the Government failed to have him deported to Jordan where he is wanted for terrorism offences.
The Appeal Court ruled that Qatada would not get a fair trial in Jordan because statements against him may have been extracted by torture.
The case is being taken to the House of Lords but in the mean time Qatada's family is understood to be claiming around £47,000 a year in benefits - £500 a week in child benefits for the four of his five children under 18, £210 for income support, £150 for incapacity benefit, £45 in council tax benefit – along with a council home worth around £800,000.
Qatada has been described by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, as a "truly dangerous individual" who was "heavily involved, indeed at the centre of terrorist activities associated with al-Qa'eda."
They took the view that he had given religious authority to numerous high profile terrorists across the world, including the leaders of the September 11 attacks.
His bail conditions say he is specifically banned from receiving visits or communicating with a long list of individuals including Osama bin laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the preacher Abu Hamza.
He is also banned from attending a mosque or providing religious instruction to anyone other than his wife and children, and may not publish any statement without prior approval.
#2
Loaded down with all those goods and having mobility problems; it could be dangerous crossing those busy intersections. cars might not always stop in time......
just sayin is all.
Apparently to some. From the City Hall Blog at the Dallas Morning News:
A special meeting about Dallas County traffic tickets turned tense and bizarre this afternoon. County commissioners were discussing problems with the central collections office that is used to process traffic ticket payments and handle other paperwork normally done by the JP Courts.
Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections "has become a black hole" because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office.
Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud "Excuse me!" He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a "white hole." That prompted Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy.
Mayfield shot back that it was a figure of speech and a science term.
Judge Jones should be very glad that the central collections office has not become a white hole, a theoretical object that ejects matter from beyond its event horizon, rather than sucking it in. It wouldn't be fun for Dallas to find itself so near a quasar.
Anyone wanting to know a good deal about black holes should read the excellent new book, The Black Hole War, by Leonard Susskind, which has just been released. I'm in the middle of it, and the book's a fascinating tour of modern physics written for the layman. It's just been marvelous so far.
#1
Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud "Excuse me!" He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a "white hole."
#4
Judge Thomas Jones, (Affirmative) Action Hero and, undoubtedly, a pass-through attendee of our public school system, demonstrates basic ignorance of widely known and used scientific term/commonly understood metaphore.......
#12
Knew an old guy that retired from the Army as a commercial diver. He said it got so bad before he left that you couldn't even call one of those big paper tablets on a tripod a "flip chart" without pissing off all the Filipinos in the room. It's a chalk board now, not a black board. Women plumbers in NYC made the terms Ball Valve and Stopcock verboten, and I'm not even getting warmed up yet.
I have no respect left for 90% of the population and I don't think it's my fault.
#13
Price & Jones thought Mayfield was saying 'ho' and not 'hole' - accents are a cultural thing.
Posted by: Menhaden S ||
07/10/2008 14:51
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#14
yeah, and that little spot of front that the pilots sit cannot be called a cockpit anymore either. don't want to get sinktrapped for what it is called with an all female flight crew, however......(but it's name is also the place where you get tickets to a play)
#17
Me thinks there may be a lot of African Americans at the central Collections office.
However, Commissioner Price and Judge Jones, Rantburgers are up to the challenge of more racial sensitivity.
Here are name changes as a start:
Whiteberry - a hand held electronic device
White and Decker - power tools
Whitejack - a game of chance
Whitepool - a English beach resort
White Angus - cattle or restaurant chain
White Sabbath - rock band
White Gold - Oil, can be confused with jewelery
Whitewater - civilian security contractor, can be confused with river condition
Whiteout - power outage, can be confused with snow condition or correction fluid
"I'm a ho, yes I'm a ho!
And I don't mind tellin' you so!
I'm a jigger hi and I'm a jigger low!
I'm a jigger, I'm a n*gger!
And I don't mind tellin' you so!
_____________________
Borgboy sez after twenty years i can't get this drek out of my mind! BTW the name of this "song" was "Hey, Hey, We Want Some P*uuuuusssssay!"
#20
I am a Dallasite. Price and Jones are "old school" African-American politicians. Price has been county commisioner from an Aftican American section of Dallas that thinks the more intimidating thier representative is towards other races, the better. Thus, Price has been a commissioner forever.
Actually, much different than Obama, which is why they could never get anywhere in Politics (just like "Old School African American" Reverand Jesse Jackson was too crass and confrentational to be a viable Presidential candidate).
Word was Price kept an Uzzi machine gun in his car. During a protest against "blue eyed, lilly white" Dallasites as he called them (and he is now offended by Black Hole???), he kicked down a beat a white jogger who "got too close" to the demonstration.
They've been quite for a while around here, but, these morons think that now a black man is making a serious bid for the highest office in the land that they now have the license to intimidate white's like they did "back in the day" when they were younger local black politicians.
What they don't realize if they don't shut up this will HURT O'Bama in the long run, not help him, just like it torpedoed thier aspirations "back in the day".
Posted by: From Dallas ||
07/10/2008 17:31
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#21
P.S.
The reason Price didn't do serious time for beating down the white jogger was that during the assault trial, a major supermarket center in the predominately white North Dallas area was torched, brazzenly, during peak shopping hours, yet no one saw who did it. Word was put out on the street that if Price went down all of North Dallas would burn. The cowards in the Dallas justice system caved in.
Posted by: From Dallas ||
07/10/2008 17:55
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#22
Obama should whitelist these politicians so they don't whiten his chance of getting elected.
Although '20/20 vision' is a requirement of the position at St Mary's airport on the Isles of Scilly, the application form is offered in both Braille and audio format.
But the operators of the airport say they are merely adhering to equal opportunity guidelines to avoid accusations of discrimination.
The airport, operated by the Council of the Isles of Scilly, is seeking a fourth air traffic controller and offering a salary of up to £36,000.
The advertisement states that applicants must have excellent vision in order to guide aircraft safely into the hilltop airport, which is often fogbound.
Yet at the bottom is the note: "If you require this document in an alternative language, in larger text, Braille, easy read or in an audio format, please contact the Community Relations Officer."
A spokeswoman for the Council of the Isles of Scilly said the wording was included on all job adverts "to ensure that potential job applicants know that they can access information in a format to suit them."
All air traffic controllers have to meet international standards and pass a medical, including a stringent eye test.
However, the move was applauded by Bill Alker, from the Royal National Institute for the Blind.
"We welcome the Isles of Scilly's Council for their good practice and would hope more employers do the same," he said.
Keri Jones, the controller of Radio Scilly, said the note had attracted widespread ridicule.
"We have had loads of calls about it and people generally find it quite funny," she said.
"The islands are always at the cutting edge of innovation, so it would certainly be something for Scilly to have the world's first blind air traffic controller."
#1
Is the UK turning into one giant Monty Python skit?
Posted by: Swamp Blondie in the Cornfields ||
07/10/2008 13:56
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#2
Reminds me of an old joke:
Airline passengers were aghast when they saw the pilot coming down the gangway with dark glasses and a red and white cane. Worse yet, the co-pilot had a seeing eye dog. Nonetheless, the plane taxied out to the runway and started to take off. As they approached the end of the runway, the passengers screamed in terror. At the last minute, the plane took off.
The pilot turned to the co-pilot and said "You know, Bob, one of these days they're not going to scream loud enough, and we're all going to die".
Here, let me try.
"After failing to stand up to Access Hollywood, voters wondering that if he can't do that how will he stand up to Ahmadjinninthere, Jackson's remarks confirm that he does indeed have a pair."
Here’s the piece. The title –“We’re fat and scared, so I’m glad petrol and food cost more” give you a hint of the remarkable insights that follow. Just so we're on the same page, I am not irritated that someone criticized excess. This sort of hand-fluttery babbling free-association nonsense about the End of Everything and the Rise of Horrible Things and the How Keen It Is That We May See the End of the Poison of Plenty just strikes me as more of the same bizarre cultural self-hatred we discuss here from time to time.
Back? Okay.
There’s so much twaddle in that piece it’s hard to know where to start – it’s like a bucket of depression larger than a human head, flavoured not with reason but panic-flavored fear-sauce – but there is one telling line:
Abundance takes the value from everything.
Ingratitude takes the value out of everything. I can easily imagine the columnist complaining about the abundance of a civilized frippery like toilet paper, and wishing we could go back to corn cobs, which would get us back in touch with nature. Literally.
If you needed any benchmarks about what the apogee of comfort looks like, there you are: a newspaper columnist paid to worry about the size of other peopleÂ’s popcorn purchases.
Hold on: after reading more, I discovered that she actually does complain about bulk toilet-paper purchases, which one can obtain at that imported American horror, Costco. I belong to Costco; I go there a few times a year. I like it. She says: “it encourages a mentality of fear, famine and greed.” Well, at the 1930s Soviet Inner Party Costco, yes, but ours is rather cheerful.
She says: “It encourages people to consume more than they need. Eat three chocolate bars for the price of one. I've opened that kilogram bag of chips, so I may as well polish it off.”
Speak for yourself, maÂ’am.
Because it's cheap people feel they're getting value for money. They're not. It just means they're eating more, spending more and feeling emptier. Instead of going to the local supermarket to buy what they need, they're driving kilometres, taking 20 minutes to park and buying stuff they don't need, because it's cheap. And it's there.
I canÂ’t speak for Australia and its parking lots so wee it takes a third of an hour to find a spot; around here I find a spot in 30 seconds. But I will admit that I drive actual kilomitres, or miles as we Yanks call them, to get there. But why do I go there, when the local supermarket has what I need? Because it doesnÂ’t, or because it costs too much. Because Costco sells large deli trays for the party weÂ’re having, printer ink at low prices, great barrels of gummi vitamins the kid likes at half the price, and great bolshy bags of dog food I can store in the basement so I donÂ’t have to walk to the common market and buy a half-pound bag every other day.
I know she would prefer that I slump to the PeopleÂ’s Distribution Node every afternoon wearing sandals made out of old tires and walk home with a farking bag of Purina on my head and two hemp sacks of produce nurtured in night soil strung around each shoulder, but that sort of rich, community-building, soul-enriching experience is usually reserved for people who have to pause on the way home because a soldier butted their ear with a rifle butt for sneezing in front of a picture of Mugabe, and it hurts.
Finally:
Costco is opening this year in Melbourne. That sentence seems benign enough until you realise what Costco it. It's an American chain of warehouse clubs.
O the horror. If they had the cruel audacity to open one in a poor rural country, I expect she’d consider flying there to lay down in front of the bulldozers. And then decide against it – carbon excess, and all that.
Okay, one more thing. I listen to a lot of Obama speeches and remarks, and will probably discuss them here more than what McCain says. McCain is not a fellow who throws off surprises daily. Obama either makes a good prepared speech that lofts bromides into the stratosphere on gusts of good intentions, or makes foreign policy statements that seem to put more faith in stern palaver and the malleability of Iranian leadership than the evidence would suggest is wise. Or he vamps, and things come out.
I agree that immigrants should learn English,. But understand this: Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English — they'll learn English — you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. . . .You know, it's embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe, and all we can say (is), 'Merci beaucoup.'
I don’t object to the encouragement to speak a second language – I’ve had my kid in Spanish classes for three years. (And she doesn’t say “yuk” to tacos, so we may be jake with the British thoughtcrime, or rather totcrime encorcers.) If he’d left it at that, it wouldn’t be controversial - if that is, he’d made a push for foreign language proficiency outside of the context of laws that would require the official business of government to be printed in English, and if he’d made the point without his usual habit of turning a Should into a Must, and avoided turning the serious quesiton of the necessity of a monolingual culture into an opportunity to talk down to people because they don't speak enough French. Like many politicians, he has boilerplate preconceptions familiar to fellow inhabitants of the ideological bubble; unlike more seasoned politicians, however, he tends to air them in public without realizing how they sound to people outside the bubble. Let's run that last part again:
You know, it's embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe, and all we can say (is), 'Merci beaucoup.'
Oh the shame of being embarrassed in front of the Europeans. For some people they are the cool teens, and Americans are the mortifying parents.
ItÂ’s the old argument among the betters with well-stamped passports: fie on those foolish grunting hoi polloi who show up in Paris in loud shirts expecting people to speak English and calling everyone Pierre. In the context of English-as-a-national-tongue laws, itÂ’s an interesting assertion: Apparently it is right to expect people who visit Paris to speak French the day they get there, but it is cultural chauvinism to expect people who want to live and work in America to understand English well enough to navigate a ballot.
In any case, it seems that Obama speaks as much Spanish as JFK spoke German, but when Kennedy said he was a Berliner (yes, I know, jelly donut, etc.) it wasn’t his command of the tongue that thrilled people; it was the sentiment. If Reagan had said “Mr. Gorbachev, leave this wall in place” in Russian, I think a great many people would have been impressed with his cultural sensitivity and worldiness, and hang the text of his remarks.
It was the self-satisfied and chummy laughter that greeted the remarks that sealed the deal; everyone basked in the wonderful moment of a presidential candidate dinging the average Dorkus-American for not going to Europe more, and showing up dreadfully unprepared when he did. Quel horreur. Well, it’s a big country. There’s a lot to see here. Europe has grand sights and wonderful food, but I’d bet a few dollars that the people who sneer about Americans who don’t have passports haven’t toured the plains of North Dakota, the small towns of Maine, the mountains of Montana, the outback of the Southwestern deserts, the coastal glories of California, the croc-snapping Everglades, the Appalachian trail, the Boundary Waters where the US blends into Canada – and so on.
Some people like to get to know their own country. You donÂ’t need a passport or a phrasebook, either. They even have museums and old stuff, too! Honest. To state the obvious, Europe is a continent made up of countries, and America is a country that spans a continent. If people in Wisconsin spoke Wisconsinee, IÂ’d learn a bit, but I can travel vast distances, experience different places and different cultures, without having to switch tongues. I suppose that makes the experience less genuine, somehow.
(Note: I have a French niece, a highschooler, who speaks English – modern idiomatic teen English, and more - flawlessly. Not a trace of an accent. She works at the neighborhood grocery store now; I was talking to a cashier who said she didn’t know she was French until a Frenchman showed up in the line and his accent gave him away, and they started talking. My niece knew about 20 words of English when she got here. She picked up her English in her early teens going to English-speaking school. She loves it here. Such an enormous place; so many things to explore. [Her dad, a Frenchman who now lives in America and works for a Minnesota multinational, travels abroad for his job, and sell wares in many countries. His good English comes in more handy than the French, I suspect.])
Posted by: Mike ||
07/10/2008
11:56 ||
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#1
Plagerizing Will Smith now?
To me this statement is as arrogant as the "clinging to Bible and Guns" remark. (gotta take a walk, be right back). What, we kids were not raised right? I guar-un-tee the language bo speaks, Ivy League, is not the same language spoken out here; ever hear of a 'Post Turtle' mister? I know that he probably had to learn Arabic in his studies, but out in this part of the world a second language is also a requirement already - but we sure didn't know what arugula was until this year. Scholastic background in language - Spanish, French, Japanese. Learned on the fly utilitarian German and Italian. Moshi Moshi Usted smartypants, which dialect of Spanish should I have learned? Becuase what I learned is not the same language my neighbors/friends speak. This chic self loathing disgusts me.
#4
Well then ya know what, Catherine, go live in a fuckin cave then. A little tiny one so you don't take up too much of Mother Gaia's space and piss her off.
#5
I speak pretty dang good soutrhon English. That usually suffices, if it don't suffice I has a credit card and that usually does for the other. CAPRICE?
Here kid, haven ye a MarkLite for seine momma san. Yar?
Also of course LOL I can has invented cheesburger.
...A transition from La Niña to ENSO-neutral conditions occurred during June 2008, as sea surface temperatures (SSTs) returned to near-average across the central and east-central equatorial Pacific Ocean...
----------------
It will take the atmosphere a few months to fully entrain the ocean temps but this may result in some marginal suppression of Atlantic Hurricane formation. Also, it should marginally increase world temps in the lower troposphere
#3
The effects of El Nino and La Nina are strongest in the equitorial regions and weaker in the mid latitudes.
However, generally La Nina correlates with more numerous tropical storms in the Atlantic and fewer tropical storms in the E.Pacific.
La Nina also correlates with higher precip between 35N and 45N lattitude in the US.
The way this works in a causal sense isn't really understood very well; the correlations are thought to be the result of the atmospheric response to the ocean surface temps but no mathematical model has yet been developed which shows significant skill (i.e. beats regression to the mean climatology) in predicting these effects.
#4
El Nino and La Nina are the 500 pound gorillas of weather. And they are also indicative of the system as a whole, which is why they are so important. For instance, during this solar quiescent period, if La Nina reappears, and reappears strongly, it could make for a very cold winter.
This March, for example, the phenomenon had sea temperatures in SE Asia down by 2C degrees. This is why it was kicking butt on temperatures all over the northern hemisphere.
Conversely, a weak El Nino may stabilize falling temps, giving us a milder winter. The system seems to have a corrective mechanism, instead of a reinforcing one, so this is possible as well.
We shall see. But the one thing I wouldn't expect would be a strong El Nino.
The development of civilization depended on urbanization, which depended on beer. To understand why, consult Steven Johnson's marvelous 2006 book, "The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic -- and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World." It is a great scientific detective story about how a horrific cholera outbreak was traced to a particular neighborhood pump for drinking water. And Johnson begins a mind-opening excursion into a related topic this way:
"The search for unpolluted drinking water is as old as civilization itself. As soon as there were mass human settlements, waterborne diseases like dysentery became a crucial population bottleneck. For much of human history, the solution to this chronic public-health issue was not purifying the water supply. The solution was to drink alcohol."
Johnson notes that historians interested in genetics believe that the roughly simultaneous emergence of urban living and the manufacturing of alcohol set the stage for a survival-of-the-fittest sorting-out among the people who abandoned the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and, literally and figuratively speaking, went to town.
To avoid dangerous water, people had to drink large quantities of, say, beer. But to digest that beer, individuals needed a genetic advantage that not everyone had -- what Johnson describes as the body's ability to respond to the intake of alcohol by increasing the production of particular enzymes called alcohol dehydrogenases. This ability is controlled by certain genes on chromosome four in human DNA, genes not evenly distributed to everyone. Those who lacked this trait could not, as the saying goes, "hold their liquor." So, many died early and childless, either of alcohol's toxicity or from waterborne diseases.
The gene pools of human settlements became progressively dominated by the survivors -- by those genetically disposed to, well, drink beer. "Most of the world's population today," Johnson writes, "is made up of descendants of those early beer drinkers, and we have largely inherited their genetic tolerance for alcohol."
Johnson suggests, not unreasonably, that this explains why certain of the world's population groups, such as Native Americans and Australian Aborigines, have had disproportionately high levels of alcoholism: These groups never endured the cruel culling of the genetically unfortunate that town dwellers endured. If so, the high alcoholism rates among Native Americans are not, or at least not entirely, ascribable to the humiliations and deprivations of the reservation system. Rather, the explanation is that not enough of their ancestors lived in towns.
But that is a potential stew of racial or ethnic sensitivities that we need not stir in this correction of Investor's Business Daily. Suffice it to say that the good news is really good: Beer is a health food. And you do not need to buy it from those wan, unhealthy-looking people who, peering disapprovingly at you through rimless Trotsky-style spectacles, seem to run all the health food stores.
So let there be no more loose talk -- especially not now, with summer arriving -- about beer not being essential. Benjamin Franklin was, as usual, on to something when he said, "Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." Or, less judgmentally, and for secular people who favor a wall of separation between church and tavern, beer is evidence that nature wants us to be.
#1
In colonial America, nearly everyone of all ages drank beer or cider (less affluent) or wine (if they could afford it) for the same reason. When canny Scots came over and applied their distilling skills to maize, white lightning was born, and was mixed with water to make it more healthy to drink.
Johnny Appleseed planted apples not for direct consumption but for cider production, knowing that it was better to drink than most giardia-infected sources. In fact, up until the late 1800's, most apples were planted for cider, not fresh eating or preserves.
There's some evidence now that wheat, barley, and rye were not initially domesticated for bread, but for beer. Not so rice - which may explain the high numbers of Asians who have low alcohol dehydrogenase levels and cannot drink in quantities.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
07/10/2008 13:08
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#2
Also remember that Alcohol kills the little bugs in the water. People not only kept drinking booze because it made them feel good, but cut with water hydrated them and they didn't get sick.
So drink booze out in the wilderness. It will save your life ;)
Just make sure you don't say, "Hold my beer and watch this!"
#4
Braudel also pointed out a while back that brewing beer meant converting its calories and carbs into a form less likely to spoil or be eaten by rodents. The Structure of Everyday Life
#6
Slightly OT but relevant: My commute is through 38 fun-filled miles of western Washington 2 lane SR-20; to pass the time ( and in response to a former car pool companion) i began counting heavy truck traffic ( once you get behind one there is no room to pass and you are stuck). As the fuel prices have soared, the numbers have dwindled, however the number of beer trucks has remained fairly constant. might not need walmart crap, but gotta have a Bud.
#7
Beer was boiled, killing the cholera. They didn't know about sanitation, they just knew that you didn't get sick from beer.
Cholera is a particularly horrific, particularly avoidable disease. The ONLY way to get it is to drink water that people have defecated in. It is easily killed by the most basic of sanitation practices. Remember this the next time you read about a cholera outbreak somewhere.
But wine is not.
Romans used to cut the wine with water for daily drinking so they could stay hydrated and not sick (or drunk). When they exported wine to southern France, they forgot (or didn't tell) the natives to cut the strong Roman wine with water. Major outbreaks of alcoholism followed.
Mead followed the same principle for the Northern Europeans. You cut the 15% alcohol drink with water for daily drinking, but not for drunkfest feasts.
#11
A little ditty I heard in Cincinnati in the 1980s:
Beer, beer, three cheers for beer!
It's my way of keeping my mind fresh and clear!
Posted by: Mike ||
07/10/2008 16:38
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#12
When they exported wine to southern France, they forgot (or didn't tell) the natives to cut the strong Roman wine with water
Actually it was the Gauls who invented the cask thus opening the way to improving wine through aging. Romans only knew the clay amphora who does not allow to age wine. I am 99% sure that teh Gauls knew wine well before the Rioman invasion. And 100% sure they brewed beer.
It was the Greeks that introduced southern France to wine and the Romans made it a permanent part of the culture. Sorry, confused the Romans and Greeks in southern France.
The Romans brought wine and grapes north. If you look at the lands the Romans conquered, you will notice they don't stray far from where grapes can be grown. ;)
#14
Ah, but Marseille was actually a Phoenician colony and port before the Greeks. I suspect they brought wine there first.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
07/10/2008 20:57
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#15
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy
Ben Franklin
Good ole' Ben got it right for sure. Even in the darkest of times alcohol and beer, in particular, has always been a staple diet of most peoples. There was a daily grog ration onboard sailing vessels from the earliest times (British ships mandated the ration).
The grog ration, according to historians, was due to the fact that water, which was kept in wooden barrels, soon became slimey and impossible to drink. The daily beer and grog ration helped to keep the men fit on longer voyages (not to mention keeping the crews relatively happy).
#17
This article in the Beer Advocate describes the Prayer of Ninkasi, the Sumerian Goddess of Beer. People have actually made this ale.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
07/10/2008 21:37
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#18
Amazingly, I'm sure, I made my own "prayers" after drinking too much of the health food. In my yout days
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/10/2008 22:41
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#19
Spot on Eric. Local brewer master at Anchor Steam came up with the idea of brewing beer as close to the original recipe as possible...and it was called Ninkasi. The prayer itself appeared on the label. It's not the beer we recognise today but the point was to highlight the importance of beer. Communal agrigulture, centered on grain not as a direct food source, but for the production of beer. Oh...the owner of Anchor Steam...Fritz Maytag. Washer Machine giant and I believe behind Maytag Bleu Cheese as well. Drink up!
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
07/10/2008 23:40
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#20
I think Maytag was the man who realized that the prayer was also a recipe. He first reproduced the ale for a science conference, serving the brew to the assembled anthropologists and archaeologists in communal clay pots with long reed straws.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
07/10/2008 23:48
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AN elderly Indonesian woman famed nationwide for supernatural skills in lengthening penises has died.
Reclusive Mak Erot, famed for penis extension treatment incorporating traditional herbs and Islamic prayer, died last week in Caringin village on the western coast of Java island, the Kompas newspaper website reported today.
Mak Erot - who reports aged anywhere from 101 to over 130 - prompted legions of imitations of her famous clinics, many using her famously craggy and birthmarked face to lure in anxious men.
While her legacy has been closely guarded by male descendents intent on maintaining the purity of the treatment, Mak Erot has become a pop-culture icon in everything from advertisements to teenage romantic comedy films.
Reports of he death prompted a flurry of bemused online comments from internet users in the world's largest Muslim-majority country.
User "Jengkol" wrote on news website Detikcom: "Oh no, I didn't have the chance to go to Mak Erot and now she's dead. I'll just have to buy a vacuum. Maybe that could be the solution to my problem."
Kabul, 10 July (AKI) - Afghan and international forces have killed a Taliban commander involved in planning suicide attacks in the capital, Kabul, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force announced on Thursday. Mohammed Daud Rahimi was killed Wednesday in Lowger province, south of Kabul, ISAF said in a statment. So long, Mo. Say hello to Big Mo for me...
An unnamed woman was wounded in Wednesday's operation, given medical care and released after testing positive for recent contact with explosives, the ISAF statement said. Ummmmmmmm...huh? Cherchez la femme.
Daud Rahimi had recently had been recruiting Taliban fighters, identifying targets for suicide bombers in Kabul and transporting suicide bombers into the capital, according to ISAF. Geez, how will they get their rides now?
#1
Just how many "commanders" do these Taliban have? Can anyone just proclaim themselves to be a "commander"? It seems we have killed dozens, if not hundreds of these guys since we first went in there.
I would hope they are getting close to the bottom of the barrel in both experience and competence.
#2
If you control the actions of at least two others, you're a "commander" as far as the talibunnies are concerned. Still, the more we wipe out, the better chance the stupid shall inherit the position - by default.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/10/2008 15:40
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Looks like it was an exciting day in Rafah yesterday.
Gaza -- Ma'an - Unknown assailants blew up the headquarters of the Yabous Charitable Association in Rafah in the Gaza Strip in the early hours of Thursday morning. Guess they weren't charitable enough...
Eyewitnesses said they heard a huge explosion at 2 am. So I guess they're actually "earwitnesses".
The huge explosion destroyed the entire building, but no one was injured. Maybe their private stash went up. "Dude! You blew my stash!"
The reasons behind the attack remain unknown and the de facto government's police force have begun an investigation. Where were you last night, Mahmoud?
Ummmmmmmmmm...somewhere else?
VANCOUVER - Convicted terrorist Inderjit Singh Reyat will have to raise $500,000 bail before he is released from jail for the first time in more than 20 years, Canwest News Service has learned.
Bail? Bail? BAIL?
Mr. Reyat, the only man convicted in the Air India bombing that killed 329 people, was ordered freed on bail by the B.C. Court of Appeal yesterday, pending a perjury trial in January.
The conditions of his release were kept secret. "I think it is safe to say that they are about as strict as you can get. I am not prepared to go any further than that," said B.C. Attorney General Wally Oppal. "But I think the public should know that. They are extremely strict.
"But the presiding judge today wanted to hear from counsel before the bail conditions would be made public."
However, Canwest News Service has confirmed that one of the conditions is bail to the tune of half-a-million dollars. Mr. Reyat's friends and supporters had not yet provided the court with sureties guaranteeing the bail by the time the appeal court registry closed yesterday.
Relatives of Air India bombing victims said they were devastated that Mr. Reyat, 56, could soon be out despite allegations that he lied about his knowledge of the June, 1985 plot by Sikh extremists to target Air India flights with suitcase bombs.
At 9:30 a.m. yesterday, Appeal Court Justice Anne Rowles overturned Associate Supreme Court Justice Patrick Dohm's decision in March denying the Air India participant bail on the grounds that to let him out on bail would undermine public confidence in the system. Judge Rowles' reasons for reversing the earlier ruling were also kept secret.
I thought Canada was a democratic society ...
Mr. Reyat was charged two years ago with perjury for allegedly lying 27 times during his September 2003 testimony at the trial of two other Air India suspects. Both men -- Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik -- were later acquitted of all counts in the terrorist attack.
Mr. Oppal says the strict bail conditions for Mr. Reyat -- who pleaded guilty to manslaughter for his role in the Air India bombing that killed 329 people -- mean public confidence in the judicial system should not be undermined. Mr. Oppal said Mr. Reyat will first have to find sureties for the bail amount in order to be released.
Registry spokesman Patrick Boyer said he had no idea when Mr. Reyat's supporters would attempt to meet the bail conditions. "I expect the sureties will be here tomorrow because it is a high bail," he told reporters yesterday, refusing to disclose the amount.
Vancouver resident Rene Saklikar, who lost her aunt and uncle in the bombing, said she was blind-sided by the Reyat news. "I am deeply uneasy, deeply unhappy and have many unanswered questions," Ms. Saklikar said. "Air India is a Canadian epic that will haunt our nation until justice is served."
The fact no one has been convicted of murder in the biggest terrorist plot in Canadian history frustrates family members, she said.
Mr. Reyat has been in jail since he was arrested in February 1988 in England and charged in the Narita case. He unsuccessfully fought his extradition and was put on trial in 1990. He was convicted of manslaughter in 1991 for building a bomb that exploded on June 23, 1985, at Tokyo's Narita Airport, killing two baggage handlers. Just before his 10-year sentence was about to expire, he was charged in the Air India blast and received another five years after his plea in February 2003.
#1
Appeal Court Justice Anne Rowles overturned Associate Supreme Court Justice Patrick Dohm's decision in March denying the Air India participant bail on the grounds that to let him out on bail would undermine public confidence in the system.
#3
Speechless!! This kind of krep will eventually stop - one way or another. I try to make allowances because this is, after all, Vancouver . . . but still . . . madness.
When it comes to the judiciary and their asshat rulings Canada is most definitely NOT a democratic society. The judge has to be mugged before they change their attitudes.
The bombing of Air-India Flight 182 was the worst airborne terrorist action prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks. On June 23, 1985 a Boeing 747 en-route from Montreal, Quebec, Canada to New Delhi and Bombay, India via London Heathrow exploded as it entered Irish airspace at an altitude of 31,000 feet (9500 m). The plane crashed into the sea killing all 329 people on board, of whom 280 were Canadian citizens.[1]
Until September 11, 2001, the Air India bombing was the single deadliest terrorist attack involving aircraft. It remains to this day the largest mass murder in Canadian history. The incident occurred within an hour of the Narita Airport Bombing.
Gaza – Ma'an - One Palestinian was killed and three others injured when a tunnel collapsed on top of them in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, medical sources announced on Thursday. Another three people are still missing. Why don't they just leave them there? They gonna dig them up just so they can bury them again?
Dr Mu'awiyah Hassanein, director general of ambulance and emergency services in the Gaza Strip, said that a medical crew had removed the deceased and the three injured from the collapsed tunnel. He said that one of the injured is in a serious condition. Awwwww, that's...too bad.
It is noteworthy that there are many tunnels at the Egyptian-Palestinian border and many were collapsed and resulted in the death of many traders. Sounds like they...aren't too good at it maybe?
A network of tunnels runs underneath the Gaza-Egypt border, near Rafah. The tunnels are used to smuggle goods into the besieged Gaza Strip. Ah, shit. Better call OSHA?
What's OSHA?
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran test-fired more long-range missiles overnight in a second round of exercises meant to show that the country can defend itself against any attack by the U.S. or Israel, Iranian state television reported Thursday.
The weapons have "special capabilities" and included missiles launched from naval ships in the Persian Gulf, along with torpedoes and surface-to-surface missiles, the broadcast said. It did not elaborate.A brief video clip showed two missiles being fired simultaneously in the darkness. Wow. Two at once. And in the dark. I wonder if that's their "special capability"?
Among the missiles Iran said it tested Wednesday was a new version of the Shahab-3, which officials have said has a range of 1,250 miles and is armed with a 1-ton conventional warhead. That would put Israel, Turkey, the Arabian peninsula, Afghanistan and Pakistan all within striking distance. ...and the probable real reason for their little show.
Oil prices jumped on news of Wednesday's tests, rising $1.44 to $137.48 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange
#9
Hey, the enemy that predicts our immanent demise has mobile missiles that can hit US carrier groups. Maybe we have to take out large areas, where the missiles might be posted. How on earth could we do that? Let's dust off the shelves, and see what we have.
Hey, the Ayatollahs are raking in more money for missiles everyday. And in face of our indulgence, they will soon have a nuclear ICBM capability. Why is this happening?
The U.S. navy has sent a third aircraft carrier to its Fifth Fleet area of operations, which includes Gulf waters close to Iran, the navy said on Tuesday.
"Enterprise (aircraft carrier) provides navy power to counter the assertive, disruptive and coercive behaviour of some countries, as well as support our soldiers and marines in Iraq and Afghanistan," a U.S. Navy statement said.
The move comes weeks after a flotilla of U.S. warships sailed through the narrowest point in the Gulf to hold exercises off Iran's coast in a major show of force.
Tension over Tehran's nuclear ambitions has raised regional fears of a military confrontation. Recent U.S. naval presence in the Gulf has been the largest since the 2003 Iraq war.
The Fifth Fleet area of operations includes the Arabian Gulf, Arabian Sea, Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman and parts of the Indian Ocean.
#17
See also STRATEGYPAGE > NAVAL DEFENSES [US] AGAINST IRANIAN MISSLES. Iran versus the USN AEGIS System. USN confident on AEGIS, but worries more about Iranian attacks agz LAND BASES/
TARGETS, espec vv SHORT-RANGE MISSLES which AEGIS wasn't designed for.
#18
ALso from STRATEGYPAGE > HIZBULLAH READY FOR ANOTHER ROCKET WAR. In next Israeli-Hizb Lebanon conflict, Israel may face up to 300 LONG-RANGE ROCKETS + approxi 5000 SHORT-RANGE ROCKETS, which Irael intends to take out using mainly GROUND FORCES OPERATIONS.
ARTICLE - CLAIMS UN PEACEKEEPERS IN LEBANON ARE NOT DOING ANYTHING TO STOP THE HIZZIES, HUZZIES, HEZZIES, etal. FROM REARMING WID ROCKETS,ETC. BUT ARE ALLEGEDLY ONLY "PRETENDING TO DO THEIR JOB"???
The US government has awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin for 18 Sniper Advanced Targeting Pods (ATP), a part of the new advanced block 52 F-16 aircraft programme for Pakistan. With deliveries beginning in 2008, Sniper ATP's exceptional stability and superior imagery will allow Pakistan Air Force to perform intelligence, targeting, surveillance and reconnaissance missions from extended standoff ranges.
Pakistan is the eighth international customer to join the US Air Force and Air National Guard flying with Sniper ATP. The contract includes spares and training services. Terms of the contract were not disclosed.
Expect the Chinese to get a peek about a week after first delivery to Pakistan ...
"This sale culminates a two-year combined effort by Lockheed Martin's Missiles and Fire Control and Aeronautics businesses to upgrade the precision attack capability of one of our key allies," said Ken Fuhr, director of Fixed Wing Targeting Programmes at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control Monday. "Sniper continues to demonstrate exceptional performance in meeting the requirements and expectations of the Warfighter."
Sniper incorporates a high-resolution, mid-wave third-generation forward-looking infrared (FLIR), a dual-mode laser permitting eye-safe operation in urban environments, a CCD-TV along with a laser spot tracker and a laser marker. Sniper is fully compatible with the latest J-series munitions and precision-guided weaponry. Its superior detection ranges are vital to pilots, helping keep them out of range of threat air defences.
The Pakistan Air Force joins the UK Ministry of Defence; the Canadian Forces, the Royal Norwegian Air Force; the Polish Air and Air Defense Force; the Royal Air Force of Oman; the Belgium Defence and other international customers with its selection of the Sniper ATP.
Sniper ATP is currently flying on the US Air Force and multinational F-15s, F-16s, F-18s, A-10s, B-1s and the Harrier GR9. Sniper ATPs have accumulated tens of thousands of flight hours in thousands of sorties in support of Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.
Posted by: john frum ||
07/10/2008
07:44 ||
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#1
Sniper incorporates a high-resolution, mid-wave third-generation forward-looking infrared (FLIR), a dual-mode laser permitting eye-safe operation in urban environments, a CCD-TV along with a laser spot tracker and a laser marker.
#10
Sniper ATP's exceptional stability and superior imagery will allow Pakistan Air Force to perform intelligence, targeting, surveillance and reconnaissance missions from extended standoff ranges.
Extended standoff ranges? Wow. Those Al Qaeda - Taliban air defense systems must be really good.
Posted by: john frum ||
07/10/2008 19:36
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#11
US gives Pakistan 18 Advanced Sniper Targeting Pods for F-16s
#13
video: "8 mile" tracking acquisition of the flying transport-jet doesn't help my heart-burn one bit. We're handing them a remarkable upgrade.
Think of some of the old primitive missiles systems that have a manual/steerable boost phase. Then the terrorist Pakis set up on a ridge-line that is outside our defense ring at our base or airbase.
A) medium boost phase, B) five or six miles of wire C) and a proximity warhead.
OUR Helicopters and Transports will be sitting ducks.
ISLAMABAD: The World Bank (WB) and the Asian Development Programme (ADP) will give Pakistan $1.4 billion and $810 million in loans, respectively.
The WBÂ’s $1.4 billion lending programme will support development in various sectors during the current fiscal 2008-09 year, a senior official in the Economic Affairs Division told Daily Times on Wednesday. He said anonymously that the lending programme consisted of $1 billion loan under the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and $400 million loan under the International Development AssociationÂ’s (IDA) country assistance programme.
Interest: He said the $1 billion IBRD loan would be provided on market rate, elaborating that market rate loans had an interest rate of 17 percent. He added that the $400 million IDA loan would be a soft loan, which is likely to have one percent interest rate, and would be for technical assistance.
Sources in the Finance Ministry say Pakistan is facing problems to return WB loans as there is a condition that they will be returned in any currency (dollor or euro), which has a higher value.
The official said there was no money for mega power projects, such as Basha and Munda dams, in the lending programme.
A WB official said anonymously Pakistan was negotiating for mega power projects with the bank. The WB official said Pakistan had also asked the WB to finance three other reservoirs, including Tarbela-IV, Munda Dam and Kohala Dam, and that Pakistan would need $3 billion for these projects. The Water and Power Ministry held a meeting with a WB team in June in this regard. These projects will generate 3,000 megawatts of electricity daily.
He said that there was however an allocation for power distribution companies in the loan. He said the loan for power companies would bind Pakistan to end subsidy on electricity and that the WB had previously set December as the deadline to end electricity subsidy.
The official said the government was working to expand the Tarbela Dam under the name of Tarbela IV following WBÂ’s suggestion it could be operational earlier than other big power projects.
The sources in the ministry said the visiting WB team was also informed that the construction of these new projects would reduce PakistanÂ’s dependency on oil imports.
Power projects: The ADB loan will be for power projects, and the inflows are expected to begin in September, an official told Reuters anonymously. “The facility to be implemented over the next 10 years has been negotiated with power distribution companies and the formal approval by the bank is expected in August,” the official said, adding that “disbursement is likely to start from September or October”.
Posted by: john frum ||
07/10/2008
07:43 ||
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#1
The rest of the airport's not much better - 80 out of 1,000 bags on connecting flights from T5 do not get to their plane, against an average of 65-70 bags for the rest of the airport.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/10/2008 6:09
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#2
The baggage boys here are slipping - just got back from a trip to NY and none of my or my family's luggage was lost or damage either direction. Of course two of the suitcases are patched with duct tape after an encounter with Heathrow 4 years ago.
Posted by: Menhaden S ||
07/10/2008 7:36
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#3
Clearly carry-on is the way to go. Pack light, ladies and gentlemen, and do lots of laundry in the hotel sink.
#5
It's that longstanding British tradition of poor service delivered personally, AS.
(And no, don't ask about our last trip to Britain. I didn't think service standards could have slipped much since the previous one. I was wrong -- except for the eastern Europeans working as waitresses.)
#6
Got back from London last week with my extended family and not a bag was lost in either direction. I don't know if we went through Terminal 5 but I do know they've got a nice little Pub in Heathrow that makes waiting for a plan much more pleasant.
With all the brutal luggage handlers around may I suggest that you watch the Hippies and the Homeless and carefully observe what they use for luggage...
Well the most elegant but trusty Hippie Luggage is the Heavy-Duty-Black-TRASH-BAG lashed together with LIBERAL AMOUNTS of Duct Tape.
Yep It's So Useful and Repairable that I still use them today! AND they are a Fashion Statement!
(Xinhua) -- The tribal elders and local provincial government of Pakistan Wednesday inked a peace agreement in Khyber tribal Agency, local TV channel DAWN NEWS reported. According to the agreement, local pro-Taliban militants in the whole region of Khyber Agency will remain peaceful and not display their arms, said the report. The local government of North West Frontier Province also pledged conditional troop pullout from the area.
Security forces launched an offensive against local militant groups in Khyber Agency in late June in a bid to ensure peace in the area. The authorities last week directed the army to suspend its operation so that the elders and militants could hold peace talks.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2008
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Iraqi police say a bomb in the city of Fallujah has killed four police and one civilian. A police official says 15 people were injured in the blast outside a bank in the one-time Sunni insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad. The injured included an Iraqi television cameraman. Police and a crowd gathered in the bank area after an explosion at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday. A second blast caused the casualties. The police official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2008
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Jordanian Islamist Abu Qatada, who was recently released from the Long Lartin Prison in northern England, is banned from contacting 20 Islamists in Europe most of whom are held in British jails, Asharq Al-Awsat can reveal. Most of the Islamists Abu Qatada is banned from contacting are of Algerian descent and are currently in British jails, while one individual is held in France and another in the Czech Republic.
Abu Qatada who the British Home Office claims is the spiritual leader of Al Qaeda in Europe is banned from contacting Abu Hamza al-Masri who is serving a jail term in the high-security Belmarsh Prison. Recently, Al-Masri lost an appeal against a verdict to extradite him to the United States to face charges dating back to 2000. Abu Hamza al-Masri is a British national of Egyptian origin currently serving a seven-year jail sentence in Belmarsh Prison, southwest London. He was convicted in February 2006 of incitement to killing, hatred, and racism.
Asharq Al-Awsat saw Abu Qatada by sheer coincidence on his daily walk in West London between 2pm and 3pm. The controversial Islamist, who was carrying shopping bags from a store near his home, appeared to have lost a significant amount of weight, while his beard appeared to be greying. Geez, maybe he's dying of some painful wasting disease? Henna poisoning ... My heart simply bleeds. Anybody got any Tums?
The British Home Office set 20 conditions to release him under house-arrest restrictions. The conditions for the release of Abu Qatada include a ban on contacting Osama Bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Islamists based in London described these conditions as "obstructionist", while others said they are "unreasonable." What reasonable person can live with a ban on contacting Ayman al-Zawahiri?
Under these restrictions, Abu Qatada is prevented from sitting in the garden of his home and is allowed to leave his home only for two hours a day to go to limited places using a route defined by the police in advance. No more than one lawyer is allowed to visit his home at one time. And none of them can be Lynn Stewart...
He is banned from publishing any book or article without approval from the British Home Office. Abu Qatada cannot object to these conditions.
Abu Qatada, who is also convicted in Jordan of carrying out terrorist activities, is banned from going to any mosque, leading prayers and delivering lectures in any mosque, giving religious guidance, and issuing fatwas [Islamic religious rulings] to any person, except his wife and children. "Daddy? Can I have a fatwa?"
Also, Abu Qatada is prohibited from making any kind of contact with specific persons, including leader of the Al Qaeda organization Osama Bin Laden and his right-hand man, Ayman al Zawahiri. You said that.
Abu Qatada denied that he supported terrorism Isn't this the guy who issued the fatwa for GAI, telling them it was okay to slit little kids' throats?
and claimed that he will not receive a fair trial if he goes back to Jordan. I thought all the witnesses were dead? Witnesses are optional in Jordan ...
The British Home Office also set a condition that no Internet and cell phone can enter the London home of Abu Qatada. Moreover, he is banned from publishing any book or article without permission and banned from giving speeches and lectures and attending seminars. Also, he is not allowed to answer any question or issue any fatwa. "Daddy? Can I..."
"Shuddup! I already told you 'no,' y'little brat!"
No person above the age of 10 is allowed to visit his home. Abu Qatada is allowed to leave his home for two hours only, one hour in the morning and one in the evening. In a telephone conversation with Asharq Al-Awsat, a spokeswoman for the British Home Office refused to comment on the conditions for the release of Abu Qatada. She said the Home Office does not comment on individual cases. Let me know when he's forbidden to breathe.
This article starring:
ABU QATADA
al-Qaeda
HAMZA AL MASRI
Al Qaeda in Europe
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2008
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Iran test-fired nine missiles on Wednesday and warned the United States and Israel it was ready to retaliate for any attack over its disputed nuclear projects. Washington, which says Iran seeks atomic bombs, told Tehran to halt further tests.
Iran later announced night-time missile maneuver, and its missile tests rattled oil markets, helping crude prices to rebound about $2 a barrel after recent falls.
Speculation that Israel could bomb Iran has mounted since a big Israeliair drill last month. U.S. leaders have not ruled out military options if diplomacy fails to end the nuclear row.
Revolutionary Guards air force commander Hossein Salami said in televized comments that thousands of missiles were ready to be fired at "pre-determined targets." Missiles were shown soaring from desert launchpads, leaving long vapour trails. "Our hands are always on the trigger and our missiles are ready for launch," the official IRNA news agency quoted Salami as saying Wednesday. "We warn the enemies who intend to threaten us with military exercises and empty psychological operations that our hand will always be on the trigger and our missiles will always be ready to launch," he said, according to ISNA news agency. "Another night missile maneuver is taking place right now," Salami told state television later. He did not elaborate.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2008
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#1
Compare wid FREEREPUBLIC > LITTLE GREEN FOTBALLS -IRAN'S PHOTOSHOPPED MISSLE TEST.
#3
The pics that the MMs put out yesterday were SAMs - and looked to be ancient SA-2s at that.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
07/10/2008 6:47
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#4
Love the fact that the RG air commander is General Salami. I would have been even better if his name was a different sausage.
Also, the general thinking is that Iran has only fired one or two of their Shahab 3 and it was the old liquid fuel type - not the new solid fuel type they claim to have.
DAYTON, Ohio - It flew on a daring but unsuccessful raid to free U.S. POWs in North Korea in 1970. Actually it was Vietnam, but I'm sure those AP proofreaders are busy guys....
Thirty-eight years later, after subsequent tours in Bosnia and Iraq, helicopter No. 357 is being retired — with honor. The 88-foot-long special operations chopper has made its final landing at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, where it went on permanent display Monday. "It's been a busy aircraft," said museum historian Jeff Underwood. "It absolutely encompasses U.S. military history for the fourth quarter of the 20th century and carries into the first quarter of the 21st century."
No. 357 — nicknamed "Magnum" after the gun — flew for 38 years. It is the last to remain of the handful of helicopters used in the Son Tay raid in Vietnam. Its final flight was a combat mission in Iraq on March 28.
There were originally about 70 MH-53s. There are still 12 in service, but the last of those will be retired in September. The fleet will be replaced by the Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.
The massive MH-53s were created from the HH-53s — the "Super Jolly Green Giants" — by outfitting them with new engines, rotors and skins."This is really the first real beast of a helicopter that they ever made," said Lt. Col. Shawn Henrie, aircraft commander for the helicopter's final flight in Iraq. "When this thing was developed, it was enormous."
The MH-53s were later equipped with infrared sensors, global positioning systems and terrain-avoidance radar that enabled them to fly clandestine missions at night, in bad weather and under enemy radar.
Henrie, who now flies Huey helicopters in Wyoming, said he has developed a special attachment to No. 357 and other MH-53s he's flown. "I feel like I've cut off an arm and left it behind," he said. That was echoed by Tech Sgt. Vin Depersio, flight engineer on No. 357's final flight. "We've all lived through some pretty hairy conditions. The thing that always seems to bring you back home is the '53," Depersio said. "I've crashed in one. It took care of me. Even though we crashed, it still takes care of you."
The Son Tay raid using MH-53s was an attempt to rescue more than 50 U.S. prisoners of war believed to be held at the camp in North Vietnam. Fifty-six special forces troops used a full-size mock-up of the camp at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida to train for the raid. The force took off from Thailand at night, flying low. Arriving at the camp, one helicopter destroyed the guard towers with gunfire and another made a controlled crash landing in the middle of the camp. They found that the prisoners had been moved.
The Air Force says the attack boosted the morale of POWs and prompted North Vietnam to gather POWs in fewer locations to try to better defend against such raids, making communication and organization among POWs easier. The raid also served as a model of organization, cooperation among the services and flexible execution, according to the Air Force.
Henrie was aircraft commander for a March 28 mission in Iraq. He said it was a fitting last hurrah for a helicopter with so much history. The crew inserted a team of U.S. Army and Iraqi special forces into a spot north of Baghdad. "They grabbed all the bad guys they were looking for," Henrie said.
Master Sgt. Kevin James, a flight engineer on No. 357's final mission, said he has always been impressed by the helicopter's history."You walk out to 357 and you just think about what that thing has done," James said. "And you're just like, 'Man, I can't believe I get to fly on that bird today.'"
#1
It flew on a daring but unsuccessful raid to free U.S. POWs in North Korea in 1970.
Oooo! More proof of the imperialistikkk amerikkan empire launching illegal raids into soverign nations under the aspice of humanitarian efforts! I told you Behind Enemy Lines 2 was a covert bush administration attempt to gain support of the preneocons who conducted such aggrevis...wait what was that...this is coffee not kool-aid? Well then, for professional writers they sure suck last years Easter eggs.
Seriously, an impressive record with likely more impressive crews.
The fleet will be replaced by the Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.
I hope so, but I wouldn't let the JG's get dusty too quick.
A string of five rocket attacks in a high security zone of the Nowshera Cantonment rocked the area on Wednesday. One of the rockets landed on the ground of the Armoured Cover Centre at 4am, while another hit the house of a senior Irrigation Department official, though the residents of the house remained unharmed. According to police officials, the rocket attacks were carried out from the mountainous area of Badrashi Ziarat. The Nowshera police were receiving threats from the local Taliban.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2008
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#1
ION IRNA > NORTHEAST SEPARATISTS [ULFA Group-India] REFUSES TO LAY DOWN ARMS.
(VOI) -- Casualties from the suicide car bomb in Mosul that targeted on Wednesday the convoy of Staff Major General Riyadh Jalal Tawfeeq, Ninewa operations commander, rose to eight civilians killed, and 41 others wounded, said a source from Ninewa police. "The final casualties of the suicide car bomb blast that targeted the convoy of Staff Major General Riyadh Jalal Tawfeeq, Ninewa operations commander, on Wednesday in al-Faisaliya neighborhood (eastern Mosul city) is eight civilians killed, and 41 others wounded, including seven of Tawfeeq's personal guards and five traffic policemen," the source told VOI.
Earlier today, Ninewa operations command's official spokesperson said that casualties from the suicide bomb in Mosul that targeted the convoy of Staff Major General Riyadh Jalal Tawfeeq, Ninewa operations commander, rose to eight civilians killed, and 27 other persons were wounded.
He added that seven of Tawfeeq's personal guards are among the injured. "Casualties from the suicide bombing that targeted the convoy of Staff Major General Riyadh Jalal Tawfeeq, Ninewa operations commander, near the traffic building in al-Faisaliya neighborhood (eastern Mosul city) increased to eight dead civilians, and 27 injured persons, including seven of Tawfeeq's personal guards," Brigadier Khalid Abdul-Sattar told VOI. "Tawfeeq was 100 meters from the site of the attack," he said. "Four civilian cars and three Iraqi military vehicles (Hummers) were burnt in the attack," he added.
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Two bombs went off in Khyber Agency's Landi Kotal sub-division early on Wednesday, residents said. The improvised explosive devices were placed in two shops in the Sadukhel area. A third bomb, which was found by children in the area, was defused safely, the residents said, adding that there were no casualties. Security personnel arrested Malak Hamid Khan, the younger brother of tribal elder Malak Ataullah Kookikhel, in the Jamrud sub-division. Zwan Pakhtun Organisation Chairman Ikramullah Jan said Hamid was arrested on charges of possessing unlicensed weapons. He criticised the arrest, and said Hamid was a tribal chief and was carrying weapons for his safety. Security officials did not comment on the arrest.
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A top outlaw of Janajuddha faction of the banned Purbo Banglar Communist Party (PBCP) was killed yesterday in a 'shootout' with police at Taherhuda village in Jhenidah. Another commie bites the dust Never see this happening to an Islamonut, do ya ...
The dead was identified as Absal Hossain, 38, son of Monser Ali of Taherhuda village and a close aide to slain Janajuddha kingpin Dada Tapan. Now he's even closer
Officer-in-Charge of Harinakunda Police Station Abdul Khalek said they arrested Absal Hossain at Taherhuda village on Tuesday afternoon. "Howdy, Absal. Why don't you come down to the station with us and have a talk."
Acting on the information extracted from Absal, Sounds.....painful confessed to being at the grassy knoll, did he ...
they took him to a garden at the same village to recover illegal arms at about 1:00am. The old moonlight drive to the hidden arms cache
When they reached the place, Absal's accomplices opened fire on the law enforcers prompting them to retaliate. "It's the law! And dey's got Ab! Open fire recklessly!"
Absal was killed in the shoot out ... one behind each ear
... while his accomplices managed to escape. Like they were never even there
Two police constables Momtaj Uddin and Ibrahim Molla were also injured in the incident. They have been undergoing treatment at Jhenidah Hospital. "Coffee burns again, constable? You really need to get a insulated mug."
Police recovered a revolver, a light gun and eight rounds of bullet from the spot. I swear I've heard this same story a couple hundred times. They really need new script writers.
Absal was accused on twelve systems in eight cases on different charges including murder, police added. Was this the RAB, or are they teaching the locals how to do it so they can get a night off? Sounds like the locals picked up a copy of "Crossfires for Dummies" Only the RAB can check out the shuttergun.
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#1
Somebody please 'splain to me just how it is that the Amazing Disappearing Accomplices are ALWAYS at the secluded arms cache just when the RAB, complete with the soon-to-be-dispatched miscreant arrive....
I understand how Batman and Bruce Wayne are never around, but this...?
#2
Only wish our Congresscritters would take similar deliberation with the check every year or so. Sorry, it's back to the sub committee for further study, but we're working on it. I think they went to lunch, nothing four star, just safe which means outside the beltway.
The Church of England's vote for women bishops will be an 'obstacle' to reconciliation between Anglicans and Catholics, the Vatican has said.
The Church of England's General Synod voted in favour of consecrating women and against safeguards demanded by traditionalists opposed to the move. A Church group will now draw up a code of practice to try to reassure critics. But Roman Catholic leaders believe this goes against the will of Christ, who chose only men as his apostles.
Apostolic tradition
In a statement, Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, said: 'For the future, this decision will have consequences for dialogue, which until now had borne much fruit. Such a decision is a break with apostolic tradition maintained in all of the Churches in the first millennium, and is therefore a further obstacle for reconciliation between the Catholic Church and the Church of England.'
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#1
But Roman Catholic leaders believe this goes against the will of Christ, who chose only men as his apostles.
Not that in the patriarchal environment of the early church fathers, that Mary Magdalene would have been 'written' out of the story line even if she had been. We know what was left in the Bible. We know some of the stuff that they threw out. What we don't know is all the stuff they keep out.
Moses: The Lord, the Lord Jehovah has given unto you these fifteen...
[drops one of the tablets]
Moses: Oy! Ten! Ten commandments for all to obey! - History of the World:Part I (1981)
#2
Proc, the theology of this has been discussed for several hundred years of the ROman Catholic Church. There is simply no *Biblical* nor traditional evidence to support a change to add female appointment as priests and bishops (the apostolic successors from the original apostles), and considerable case for the opposite.
Unlike the priestly celibacy (which can be changed, and in all likelhood will be within our lifetimes), this one is non-negotiable. Christ had plenty of opportunity to designate female apostles - Mary and Martha, Mary of Magdelena, and even His own mom Mary - after all she was the first Christian (she was the first to believe His divinity).
This is another one of those things that have about 2 millinea behind it of thought, study, scholarship and tradition, and thus will not be changed in the Catholic Church (Roman and Eastern).
The Anglican Church, with civil divorce, openly practicing homosexual priests and bishops, etc, is straying ever further from the orthodox core of Christianity. This is just another step in their becoming Unitarians and completely abandoning the core of beliefs and Bible, and will eventually be leaving Christianity all together.
Thats why the (orthodox) American and African Bishops are fighting this, and will eventually schism, along with many of the US congregations.
#3
And FYI, the Red Sea Scrolls and other early manuscripts that have been recovered show that the Bible is remarkably unedited from its time in the 1st century to its canonization in the late 300's culminating in the Council of Trent and the Latin Vulgate Bible. That includes the deuterocanonical books tht have additions to Esther, the book of Judith, etc - which have prominent roles for women in positions of power, and (Daniel, the Story of Susannah) men of power misusing said power via lies to execute a woman who refused to be blackmailed into having sex ith them (and were excised by the Protestants for that reason, amongst many others).
(please note that these are NOT the same as "apocrypha", which is a term that seems to constantly be misused pejoratively by Protestants)
#4
While women were not chosen to be apostles, they were chosen by God to be prophets, or to "speak the Word of God". Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, Hannah, Abigail, Esther of the OT, and Anna, Mary, and the four unmarried daughters of Philip in the NT. In fact, Acts 2 promises that both sons daughters would prophesy in these Last Days. The only NT restriction for women in the Church is that of teaching in the assembled congregation, and Phoebe called a 'deaconess' by no less than Paul. Both Anglicans and Catholicism seem to have instituted non-biblical roles for women. Females can be rabbis is husbands and children don't prevent them from fulfilling their duties. If there is no law forbidding it, it can't be broken and therfore not sinful....it is in Christ, we have freedom.
#8
If there is no law forbidding it, it can't be broken and therfore not sinful
By the way that is extremely BAD reasoning - and poor philosophy as well as poor bilbilcan study and bad morality. You end up with nearly "anything goes" - tholgoy of that sort is what has openly practicing homosexual Bishops, gay marriage endorsing homosexual practices, and all kinds of other heterodox problems out there in the Protestant parts. Discarding centuries of biblical and tehologocal scholarship for a hip but stupid set of "feel good" reasoning is the way to destroy faith, not refine it.
A Dhaka court yesterday issued arrest warrant against Jubo League General Secretary Mirza Azam in a case filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) for amassing wealth worth over Tk 53 lakh illegally and giving false information to the commission. Arrest warrant was also issued against Momtaz Ahmed, wife of detained former state minister Redwan Ahmed, in a case filed for accumulating wealth through illegal means and concealing information of the assets to the ACC.
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(Xinhua) -- Cote d'Ivoire's Integrated Command Centre (ICC), a joint military body bringing together former rebels and government troops, has held discussions with pro-establishment militia groups in readiness for disarmament, according to official sources.
The meeting, which was attended by senior military officials and representatives of self-defense groups in the western part of the country, was held in the political capital of Yamoussoukro, the official Ivorian News Agency reported Tuesday. The meeting is a prelude to the implementation of the long-delayed process to Disarm and Dismantle Militias (DDM), one of the most important issues in the Cote d'Ivoire's peace process, according to keen observers.
Formerly one of the most stable democracies in sub-Saharan Africa, Cote d'Ivoire plunged into a serious political-military crisis six years ago after the New Forces rebels seized the northern part of the country in the wake of a botched coup against President Laurent Gbagbo. Since then, the world's largest cocoa producer has been divided in two and is currently in the middle of implementing a peace process that is expected to culminate in free and fair presidential elections later this year.
Speaking with reporters shortly at the end of the meeting, Col. Nicolas Kouakou, a senior ICC commander, said the meeting was intended to provide some useful information and also lay the basis for the official start of the DDM process. 'We have specifically agreed to begin with the disarmament of self-defense groups in the Grand West, because for us, this is one of the regions that have suffered the horrors of this terrible crisis,' said Col. Kouakou.
'The DDM activities have actually started in the presence of the head of state (Laurent Gbagbo). That is why, in an agreement with our partners, some heads of departments in places such as Blolequin, Guiglo and Toulepleu were chosen to carry out this mission,' he said.
A little more than a dozen groups, chief among them, the Front for the Liberation of the Grand West (FLGO), the Movement for the Liberation of Western Cote d'Ivoire (MILOCI), took part in the meeting, led by their leaders. At the height of the political-military crisis, currently in its sixth year, splinter self-defense militia groups sprouted across much of Cote d'Ivoire, especially in regions under governmental control, with the aim of helping the government to fight the former New Forces (FN) rebels.
The country embarked on a process to end the crisis after President Gbagbo and the FN leader Guillaume Soro, the country's prime minister, met and agreed to sign a comprehensive peace agreement in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in March 2007. Despite suffering a few setbacks and challenges, the latest being a rebel-led mutiny in the central parts of the country, the West African nation is well on the right path and there are hopes that it will emerge from the bitter crisis.
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(Xinhua) -- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday hailed the growth of his country's arms exports, saying Russia has already become one of the world's key weapons producers. 'The consecutive annual growth of Russia's arms exports prove that Russia has become one of the leading weapon producers of the world,' he said in a congratulatory letter for the opening ceremony of an international arms fair in Nizhny Tagil, a city on the eastern flank of the Ural Mountains that is considered the home of Russia's weapons industry.
A total of 463 Russian companies, as well as those from 11 foreign nations are exhibiting hundreds of pieces of military equipment and parts in a forested range near the once-secret city located some 1,500 km east of Moscow.
I never have been able to figure the success of Russian arms exports. I'm guessing it's their price that sells them. After watching its performance in the first Gulf War, they'd have to get me into a Russian tank with a crowbar before I'd face an Abrams.
You don't buy a T-80 to go up against an Abrams, you buy a T-80 to crush your own civilian population ...
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#1
They have a proud tradition of keeping every miserable despot and drug running warlord supplied with quality, up-to-date weapons. Not like the chinese and their junk they peddle.
#2
up-to-date is a matter of the conjecture. Also see above US sending advanced spotting systems to the Pakis and the spokesman has to be a first cousin to this russ.
THE story of the 14-year old girl from Rupganj is appalling. The girl is struggling to recover from the burn wounds inflicted on her by a neighbour. One more budding life has been shattered by the acid throwers, whose inability to place human life above satisfying their beastly instincts has for a pretty long time been an area of major concern.
What is particularly shocking is that despite the seminars and meetings, which are held to highlight the plight of women in society, and desperate appeals by women's rights activists to put an end to this barbaric practice, acid throwing is still a potent weapon often used to punish girls when they turn down any amorous overture. So screw the seminars and meetings. Start dumping your own acid down Mahmoud's pants and maybe he'll get the point.
There is no social resistance against the elements harassing and oppressing women. And there is no response from the community leaders and law enforcers to such ghoulish activities. The girl has complained that she was being harassed for long two years, yet her helpless parents could not do anything against the criminal who finally threw acid on their daughter. Is this how innocent girls are treated anywhere in the civilised world? Can the law enforcers evade the responsibility of having failed to protect the girl? Obviously, the law enforcers are known for such failures, but that puts society as a whole to shame
The women's rights activists are doing as much as they can to let us know that women are far from safe in our social context. Some of the acid victims have been rehabilitated, but the highly disquieting question is, will our sisters and daughters remain perpetually exposed to this kind of barbarism? How long shall we have to remain satisfied with what is being said to explain the failures of those that are supposed to protect? Or is it that most of the victims belong to poor families and, as such, the need for enforcing the law strictly is not being felt?
The acid throwers deserve no mercy and no amount of condemnation is enough to describe the enormity of the crime. The culprits must be given exemplary punishment and the law enforcers and local community leaders should be asked to explain why they couldn't do anything to stop acid throwing.
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#1
Welcome to islam, Infidel, where women are chattal, and men can get away with just about anything against a woman. Don't confuse islamic society with "civilization".
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/10/2008 12:45
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#2
Now, now, OP. Chances are good that this guy will feel the full weight of the Bangladesh Law land right on the back of his neck.
There has been a spike in mortar and rocket attacks from militants in Pakistan at United States and Afghan border outposts in Afghanistan, the top NATO commander said on Wednesday. US General David D McKiernan said he presumed that militants think they were safer because they were firing from the Pakistani territory. But McKiernan, who took command of the 40-nation NATO-led mission in early June, said US and NATO forces have been "returning fire".
I'm guessing more accurately than the fire they're receiving.
"I'm not sure that's the case, that they're any safer, because we do return those fires," in co-ordination with Pakistan's military, said McKiernan. He did not have figures, but said "there definitely has been an increase (in cross-border attacks) since I've been here in the last 30 days". McKiernan said the number of attacks had risen because militant groups had been free to operate in Pakistan's Tribal Areas and cross the Afghanistan-Pakistan border unimpeded.
This article starring:
General David D McKiernan
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#1
Pakistan and Iran must be priority countries in our WOT!!!
Posted by: Paul ||
07/10/2008 9:44
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Militants who carried out this week's suicide bomb attack on the Indian embassy in the Afghan capital received their training at camps in Pakistan, Reuters quoted Afghanistan's Interior Minister Zarar Ahmad Moqbel as saying on Wednesday. "Some nations are keen to derail the process of stabilisation in Afghanistan. The training centre for the terrorists who carried out the latest act of violence in Kabul at the Indian embassy is in Pakistan," he said. Pakistan strongly condemned Monday's attack and denied any involvement.
"Wudn't us," they said, washing their collective hands.
Separately, AFP quoted India's Ambassador to Afghanistan Jayant Prasad as saying that India will continue its presence in Afghanistan despite the suicide attack on its embassy in Kabul. Ambassador Prasad also told the Times Now TV channel that Afghan authorities were convinced that ISI was behind the attack.
This article starring:
India's Ambassador to Afghanistan Jayant Prasad
Interior Minister Zarar Ahmad Moqbel
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Local Taliban in Swat on Wednesday warned the NWFP government of vigilante action if it fails to take action against kidnappers in Malakand Division's Sakhakot area. Swat Taliban spokesman Haji Muslim Khan said in a statement that the government should arrest kidnappers in the area. He quoted Taliban commander Fazlullah as demanding the government recover hostages from kidnappers' custody. Fazlullah also demanded compensation for damages caused during the recent military operation in Swat. He said union council nazims were involved in irregularities in development funds and "the Taliban would also take action against them if they did not mend their ways".
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The Election Commission (EC) has accepted a good number of nominations filed by mayoral and councillor aspirants having criminal records.
Because good government starts with good people.
A few of them have even been convicted by local courts. Out on bail granted by the High Court, they are now seeking re-election on full throttle. Most of the contenders in question are incumbent ward heelers commissioners belonging to Awami League (AL) and BNP. The commission will unveil a final list of contestants after July 13, the last date for withdrawing nominations in the August 4 polls to four city corporations.
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#4
Bobby, I don't want to get into the background of my wife, but her family seems to think bo is 'the man of many cultures' and whisper his name just slightly louder than Ahmadjinninthere. Me, I think he is a neophyte tool who will make so many mistakes it will seem a Biblical catastrophe. Example here, if bo is referring to his joint chief of staff then why does he need to urge McCain to listen to Maliki?
Charges have been pressed against Barisal City Corporation (BCC) Mayor Mojibar Rahman Sarwar and Khulna City Corporation (KCC) Mayor Sheikh Tayabur Rahman in two separate cases filed against them in connection with ill-gotten wealth and extortion.
The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) pressed charges against BCC Mayor and president of district BNP committee Mojibar Rahman Sarwar and his wife Nasima Sarwar in a case filed for amassing wealth worth over Tk 9 crore illegally and giving false wealth information to the commission.
Sub Inspector Golam Rabbani of the Detective Branch of Khulna Metropolitan police (KMP) submitted the charge sheet against KCC Mayor and three others in connection with an extortion case.
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Your tax dollars at work... The Department of Homeland Security has solicited a proposal from a Canadian security company to develop a stun bracelet.
In order to enhance the security of air travel and to help manage illegal immigration, the Department of Homeland Security has solicited a proposal from a Canadian security company to develop a passenger stun bracelet. Like the pain collars featured in the classic Star Trek episode The Gamesters of Triskelion, Lamperd Less Lethal's electro-muscular disruption (EMD) bracelet is intended to incapacitate wearers on remote command. Yeah, I think somebody's been watching a little too much Star Trek....
A video at the Lampred Less Lethal Web site explains that the bracelet will obviate the need for a plane ticket and will help make passengers and baggage trackable while traveling. It also explains that the bracelet will provide in-flight security. Welcome aboard Lightning Airways.
Heh. Cute...
"By further equipping the bracelet with EMD technology, the bracelets will allow crew members, using radio frequency transmitters, to quickly and effective subdue hijackers," the video explains. "The electro-muscular disruption signal overrides the attacker's central nervous system and will render even the most elite and aggressive terrorist completely immobile for several minutes." Sounds like some diabolical Revenge of the Nerds...
As reported by The Washington Times, Lamperd's Web site hosts a copy of a letter from Paul S. Ruwaldt, an official with the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate, expressing interest in the bracelet. Ruwaldt did not immediately respond to a request to verify the authenticity of the undated letter or to comment on the Department of Homeland Security's apparent interest in the Lamperd Less Lethal bracelet. The Transportation Security Agency also did not immediately respond to a request for comment. I'm sure they consider this "thinking outside the box"...
"In discussions with my colleagues and immediate superior, we find your ideas have merit and believe it would be of great help on the borders, and indeed for anywhere else, for which the temporarily [sic] restraint of large numbers of individuals in open area environments by a small number of agents or Law Enforcement Officers (LEOs)," the letter says, citing a meeting on July 18, 2006. "We see the potential uses to include prisoner transportation, detainee control, and military security forces might have some interest. In addition, it is conceivable to envision a use to improve air security, on passenger planes." The letter concludes by asking for a written proposal. And ya got any videos? Everybody loves watching some poor schmuck get tasered.
Barry Lamperd, president and CEO of Lamperd Less Lethal, said that his company had been contracted to manufacture the bracelet by its inventor, Per Hahne, who was currently seeking funding for the device. I don't trust anybody who looks like they're missing a bunch of letters in their name....
A 2003 patent assigned to co-inventors Per Hahne and Ray Wark describes a similar concept, a belt designed to administer a disabling electric shock to air travelers. The patent details "[a] method of providing air travel security for passengers traveling via an aircraft comprises situating a remotely activatable electric shock device on each of the passengers in position to deliver a disabling electrical shock when activated." Shit, why not just turn all the seats into electric chairs?
Reached on a cell phone in his car, Hahne said he came up with the idea after the 9/11 terrorist attack, an event also cited in the patent description. "I like to call it the next generation of Taser," he said, "theirs being a one-shot deal and mine being a multiple-shot deal." So, ya wanna grab my ass, huh, Studley?
AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
This thing's great!
AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
Given the 9/11 scenario of airplane pilots grappling with attackers, Hahne said, "It was always my opinion that a pilot should not be engaged in armed combat while flying an aircraft." Wow. He really is a smart guy....
Because there simply aren't enough air marshals to defend every flight, Hahne envisioned a way to empower air crews to better defend their planes. "My thought was to devise an instrument to allow every flight segment to be covered and to use the air crew as air marshals," he said. What's up, Tiffany?
The old lady in 21A's giving me the hairy eyeball.
We'll see about that.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
I hope this guy wins a Nobel Prize!
Who wants to play Zap Bingo?
AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Anticipating questions about passenger willingness to don a shock bracelet, Hahne was quick to defend the idea. "When people say they're not going to wear one, they need to be made aware that the bracelets are totally inert until the flight is airborne and the flight crew determines an attack is underway," he said. But I've got a pacemaker.
Put it on, gramps, and can the lip. Or else...
"Say honey, how'dya like to wear this cute bracelet?"
"Up yours, shortie, I seen that trick before."
#2
So-o-o, IOW, by default the USA must weirdly and mysteriously buy that OVERSIZED, SO-HEAVY-IT-CRACKED-HEATHROW'S-RUNWAYS-IN-TAXI, GAS-GUZZLING, EUROBUS MEGA-JUMBO PLANE thingy from a few Cylon Yarns back???
#5
It would probably work great until some clever terrorist wraps his in foil. Or pushes it up onto his sleeve. Or dunks it in water. Or cuts it off. Or wraps it in electrical tape. Or hits it with a hammer. Or someone gets zapped by accident and it goes to court.
No starter. But don't tell the DHS that or they won't spend the money and someone will get their budget cut next year.
#9
Yes, neck collars for bureaucrats of the DHS. When you get PO'ed at the gate, just punch in 1-888-FEL-THIS and a random DHS official will get your message.
#14
OP, don't know how random it would be if 9/10 results would be favorable :)
As for Project Ride the Lightning, if Egypt Air have to put them on the pilots as well. The techniques for 5th Element and The Jaunt (stephen king short) actually make sense in comparison.
#15
Pilots already have the means to subdue passengers with less than lethal force; they can simply dial down cabin altitude and the lack of oxygen will cause a little nap time. that would allow the cabin crew to apply restraints and then dial the cabin pressure back up and when everybody awakens, Abduhl and Hajii will be all neatly trussed up. (of course this requires the aircrew to put on their oxygen masks ahead of time.)
#17
Since 9/11 they've already got a mechanism to subdue hijackers. Its called "every other passenger in the plane." People's eyes are open, now.
Posted by: Cowboy is a compliment ||
07/10/2008 15:36
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#18
Got control issues? Be a cop.
Got control issues with a decided taste for the kinky? Be an official at the DHS. (How else can you explain the detailed full body X-rays they are testing out at selected airports and this ankle bracelet idea?)
Posted by: Swamp Blondie in the Cornfields ||
07/10/2008 16:00
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#19
Mizzou, you don't understand, when the DHS people watch their version of Star Trek, Spock has a beard.
#20
That's a special governmental unit - the Stupidity knob goes to 11. The Islamic one has a that has that and an ignorance one that goes to 11 as well.
#21
The Department of Homeland Security has solicited a proposal from a Canadian security company to develop a stun bracelet.
Ohhhh who wants to beat the holy living hell or Shit out of every beauracrat, every politician and every lawyer [except AOS and any other RBee lawyer] this week end?
The Lahore Police CID arrested four alleged terrorists with strong links to banned militant organisations early on Wednesday. Intelligence sources told Daily Times that the CID personnel, working in co-operation with other law enforcement agencies, had also seized a large quantity of explosives from the accused. According to the sources, security has been beefed up at all official buildings and sensitive installations following intelligence reports that suspected terrorists have reached Lahore. Sources within the police said that over 1,000 mobile squad officials were patrolling their respective jurisdictions to thwart any terrorist attempts. They said that following instructions from Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, Punjab Inspector General of Police Shaukat Javed had also ordered the repair of all non-functioning CCTV cameras.
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A landmine went off at a camp in Kurram Agency on Wednesday, killing a man and injuring another, official sources said. The landmine went off in the Sateen Camp area of the Kurram Agency, the sources said, adding that the injured person had been admitted to Sadda Hospital. Meanwhile, some unidentified people blew up a CD shop and two centres believed to be drug dens in the Landi Kotal area of Khyber Agency. The political administration has started investigation into the incidents.
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Gunmen have murdered another driver working for the U.N.'s World Food Programme in southern Somalia, the humanitarian agency said on Wednesday.
Ahmed Saalim was the fourth WFP-contracted driver to be killed in the anarchic Horn of Africa nation this year. WFP said he was caught in crossfire during fighting between his convoy's guards and militiamen near Leego village on Monday. 'WFP food is reaching many people but our drivers are daily risking their lives to deliver it,' Peter Goossens, WFP Somalia country director, said in a statement. 'We send our condolences to the family ... and appeal for these killings to stop.'
Fighting between the interim government and Islamist insurgents has triggered a humanitarian crisis in Somalia that aid workers say may be the worst in Africa.
At least a million people have been uprooted by the violence since early last year, and their plight has been compounded by record high food prices, hyper-inflation and drought.
WFP said experts fear the number of Somalis needing food aid could reach 3.5 million people later this year -- nearly half the country's population.
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Top|| File under: Islamic Courts
(VOI) - Three anti-Qaeda Sahwa members were wounded by a rocket attack in Salah al-Din on Wednesday, a police source said. "Unknown gunmen fired a rocket targeting a checkpoint manned by Sahwa fighters in Bishkan village, 5 km east of Dhuluyia, leaving three variably wounded," a Salah al-Din police source, who requested anonymity, told Aswat al-Iraq - Voices of Iraq - (VOI). The source did not elaborate on the details.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2008
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Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Iraq
Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook are trying to hash out a custody agreement during a four-hour break in their divorce trial, the Daily News has learned. Testimony is delayed until 3 p.m. while the two sides hold talks, a source said.
Brinkley, 54, and Cook, 49, were coy about whether progress was being made. Asked whether she wanted to settle, the supermodel clasped her hands together and told reporters: 'It's what I pray for.'
Cook was cryptic. 'Do you like a cake when it's half-baked or when it's finished?' the architect asked the media. Asked whether he wanted to strike a deal or forge ahead with his case against Brinkley, he said, 'What purpose would it be to badger the mother of my children?'
Under a temporary custody agreement, Cook has the children from Friday night until Monday morning every other weekend and every Wednesday night. Brinkley has been pushing to curtail his visitation so that the children stay with her every weeknight - which would leave Cook with just four nights a month with the kids. Meanwhile, Cook has been pushing for more access than he has now.
The talks got started a day after a court-appointed psychiatrist was critical of both Brinkley and Cook on the witness stand. Dr. Stephen Herman testified Tuesday that both parents need therapy but that Brinkley should get full custody. He described Cook as a narcissist who wrecked his marriage by sleeping with an 18-year-old and performing sex acts on the Internet. The shrink also questioned Brinkley's choice of men and her track record of four failed marriages and said she hasn't been able to move on from Cook's betrayal.
Even if the couple strikes an agreement on custody, the trial isn't over. The next phase is a fight over their shared assets. I sure do hope they get this over with quick so I can devote all my time to reading about who A-Rod was banging last night...
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2008
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Top|| File under:
#1
No interest? She's old and she lost her looks. And she never had talent.
Heard a good one about Jeter the other day. When asked what was the most dangerous food he ever tried (expecting sushi, magic chicken, etc) he said, "Wedding Cake". Guess some people are allergic to such things - guess they shouldn't use children as guinea pigs.
CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. - Christie Brinkley's lurid divorce trial came to an abrupt end Thursday when lawyers for the former supermodel and her fourth husband reached an out-of-court settlement that gives her custody of their two children.
Heavy fighting erupted again Wednesday between pro- and anti-government supporters in northern Lebanon, killing at least three people and wounding 32 others and shattering a fragile truce that lasted just two weeks, security officials said. Five soldiers were among the wounded in clashes in the northern city of Tripoli that began overnight and continued Wednesday morning, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
Among those killed was a woman, identified as Leila Shami, who died of a heart attack after a hand grenade landed near her, the state-run National News Agency reported. It said the fierce fighting forced a large number of people to flee their homes to safer areas.
Last month, nine people were killed and 44 others were wounded in two days of fierce sectarian fighting between Sunni Muslim government supporters from Tripoli's Bab el-Tabaneh district and Alawite followers of the Hezbollah-led opposition in the nearby Jabal Mohsen neighborhood, before the army and police deployed to quell violence.
A bomb also hit an apartment building in Bab el-Tabaneh last month, killing one person and wounding 28 others.
The latest clashes began overnight when three hand grenades exploded in a street separating the two rival districts. It was not immediately known who threw the grenades. Gunmen from the two sides exchanged machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades for hours, the officials said. Despite an army and police presence in the area, tension has been rising between the two sides. About 20 houses in both neighborhoods were torched last month in apparent acts of revenge.
The violence in the north comes as Western-backed Prime Minister Fuad Saniora is having trouble forming a national unity Cabinet in line with an Arab deal that ended an 18-month political stalemate that nearly plunged Lebanon into a new civil war.
Located 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Beirut, Tripoli is Lebanon's second largest city and is predominantly Sunni Muslim, a majority of which support the government. But it is also home to Alawites, a small offshoot of Shiite Islam that is allied with Syria and the Lebanese opposition, led by the Shiite militant Hezbollah group.
The same area witnessed heavy fighting in May, when pro-government gunmen and militias loyal to the opposition clashed after Hezbollah militants overran streets in Beirut. Nationwide, the violence in May killed 81 and wounded over 200 people, and was Lebanon's worst since the 1975-90 conflict.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2008
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Top|| File under: Hezbollah
The Pentagon said today that it will rebid one of its largest programs -- a $40 billion contract to build a fleet of new aerial refueling tankers for the Air Force, essentially starting from scratch on a years-delayed deal to replace the service's aging aircraft.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced today that John J. Young Jr., defense undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, will oversee the competition and he wants it done quickly. The Air Force earlier this year awarded the contract to a partnership of Northrop Grumman and European Aeronautic Defence and Space, the parent of Airbus, but rival Boeing protested the decision as unfair.
Some defense analysts said they are skeptical that the Pentagon could rebid the complicated contract before year's end, and many anticipated that it would likely get kicked to the next administration, especially given that Gates recently fired the Air Force secretary and his chief of staff after questioning their leadership.
Suggestion: when they re-bid, specify that the winner gets to build 75% of the aircraft, and the second-place finisher gets to build 25%, each at whatever price was bid. That way there's a strong incentive to win but also reason to stay in the game. The Air Force has said previously that they were going to do the tankers in three lots, so even if you lose in the first bid, you have reason to build some planes and hope to do better next time.
This would force Boeing to stay honest and allow Airbus a shot of winning.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2008
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Top|| File under:
#1
Shoot makes sense to me Fred. Maybe help increase the production shedule to make up lost time and have some mission diversity.
#3
When visiting airshows and talking to the brave men and women who fly the refuelers--boy they are old, old aircraft. If making it impossible for America to fight or have a useful Air Force is the goal, it's only a decade away.
Posted by: Herb Jomolet3634 ||
07/10/2008 12:52
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#4
Gosh-darn it, we're going to rebid this until Boeing wins! I don't care how many times it takes!
#5
Not a Boeing-phile, but go back and read the RFP. The USAF screwed the pooch when they wandered from the requirements and started putting a lot of brownie points on the niceties.
And all the wanking about an old airframe; that is only a tube, the real value is in the systems; and those are top shelf. New for new's sake is what gets you Micrsoft Vista.
#8
USAF/NRO satellites? Like the one that failed to ever become operational and got popped by an SM3?
Not exactly inspiring confidence.
I hope they do this contract QUICK, and mark it for split production and subbing out.
My only beef, other than the inferior aircraft and short legs and lower cargo capacity and older design (= more maint), of the Boeing bid was their ramp is VERY slow compared to the NG/EADS delivery schedule.
We need something that's good enough to meet the specs - and we need it damned fast.
This delay isn't helping things at all, no matter what aircraft we end up with.
#9
agree OS with delay unacceptable; if Boeing hadn't poinsoned the well with tanker bid V 1.0 and tried to bribe USAF folks we would already see new birds on the ramp.
i would like to see your info re: maintenance issues, the 767 is proven and has gone thru several system upgrades, the airbust bird hardly exists. ok so it says NG on the grille, but underneath it is still airbust.
for the record: 18 of 26 years active duty was wrenching on Ironworks aircraft, so I do have a soft spot for Bethpage.
(Xinhua) -- A spokesman for Islamic Hamas movement said Wednesday his movement rejects the Israeli intentions to combine the case of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit with the current truce deal.
Fawzi Barhoum told reporters that the Israeli intentions to merge the dues of the truce with the release of the captured Israeli soldier are rejected by Hamas and other factions which involved in the capture of Shalit. 'Israel wants to merge the two issues in order to escape from implementing its dues of the truce, find excuses to dismantle the implementation of the truce and mislead the Israeli public opinion,' said Barhoum.
Two years ago, Hamas movement's armed wing and two minor Gaza militant groups captured Shalit in an armed attack on an Israeli army base near the border between southeast Gaza Strip and Israel.
On June 19, Egypt brokered a truce between Israel and Hamas movement. According to the agreement Israel stops attacks on Gaza, eases the blockade and opens Gaza crossings for stopping homemade rocket attacks on Israel.
However, Israel said that around ten mortar shells and homemade rocket attacks had been fired from Gaza at Israel since the truce was implemented. Israel closed Gaza crossings for five times in response to the rocket attacks.
On Tuesday, a Hamas delegation chaired by top leader Mahmoud al-Zahar headed for talks in Cairo with senior Egyptian security officials to discuss the truce and a prisoners swap between Hamas and Israel. 'The delegation would ask the Egyptians to enhance the talks on reopening Rafah crossing (on the border between Gaza and Egypt) and to isolate the file of the captured Israeli soldier from the current truce,' said Barhoum.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2008
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Top|| File under: Hamas
The district courts in Islamabad and Rawalpindi will remain closed on July 12 (Saturday) after District and Sessions Judge Mirza Rafiuz Zaman received a threatening letter by post on Wednesday warning that three suicide bombers would target the district courts on July 12. Islamabad Bar Association (IBA) General Secretary Riasat Ali Azad told Daily Times that Zaman immediately called a meeting of IBA officials and other judges, which decided that the judges would not sit in the courtrooms on July 12 and only cause lists would be displayed.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2008
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Top|| File under: al-Qaeda
A federal appeals court has upheld the conviction and 30-year sentence of a Pakistani man found guilty in an unsuccessful plot to bomb a busy subway station in New York. The Manhattan court decided that Shahwar Matin Siraj, 25, was treated fairly at his federal court trial. A jury found him guilty in a 2004 plot to blow up the Herald Square subway station in a congested shopping district where Macy's has long had its flagship store. Lawyers for the defendant had argued that a police informant had set up their client. But the government proved Siraj had shown an interest in violent jihad through books and a videotape.
This article starring:
Shahwar Matin Siraj
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2008
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Top|| File under: Global Jihad
#1
But...but...but...most Pakistan immigrants are hard working moderates who believe in America.
Investigators have begun to sift through the debris left behind by Monday's bombing of the Indian mission in Kabul, searching for clues as to just who might have carried out the murderous attack.
Afghanistan's secret service, the Riyast-i-Amniyat-i-Milli, India's Research and Analysis Wing and the United States' Central Intelligence Agency will also be scanning vast volumes of intercepted communications and pressing informants for clues
One important piece of the puzzle is, however, has long been in the public. For the past the last year, powerful Islamist groups have cast India's presence in Afghanistan as a plot to bring about the disintegration of Pakistan.
During a May 9 sermon at the Jamia Masjid al-Qudsia in Lahore, Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed charged India with following a plan of destroying Pakistan.
'India,' Saeed continued, 'is building dams on rivers flowing into the country. On the other hand, it is establishing training centres in Afghanistan where it is teaching its agents how to carry out terrorist acts in Pakistan. While our rulers insist that we should have good relations with the Afghan government, India is imposing wars upon us. Still, our rulers, pursuing a policy of unilateral friendship under foreign pressure, have promised the world we will not fight with India.'
Saeed's Jamaat-ud-Dawa is the parent organisation of the proscribed Lashkar-e-Taiba which, in turn, is a member of the Al-Qaeda-led International Islamic Front.
But Saeed isn't the only one making such claims. In May, a Jamaat-e-Islami spokesperson told Aaj Television that Pakistan authorities had erred in allowing the distribution of Indian films containing material objectionable and offensive to Islam.
He said:
''India is our enemy, and has been at the forefront of efforts to destabilise and damage Pakistan. The Indian Army is massacring Muslims in Kashmir, while India is constructing dams on our rivers in violation of treaties, in order to turn Pakistan into a desert.
''Besides, Indian consulates in Afghanistan are busy in conspiracies to undermine Pakistan's security. Still, we are providing India billions of dollars by importing its movies.''
Several jihadist ideologues have argued that circumstances are now right for Pakistan to adopt a more aggressive posture against India, in both Jammu and Kashmir and Afghanistan.
In February, former Inter Services Intelligence Directorate chief Hameed Gul wrote an article in the Nawa-i-Waqt, which asserted that the key to Kashmir is in Afghanistan. Lieutenant-General Gul argued that until the United States was defeated in Afghanistan, Kashmir would not be freed.
'But,' General Gul prophesied, 'I, being a professional soldier, say with full confidence that the U.S. can never win the war against terror in Afghanistan or Iraq. Following a withdrawal from Afghanistan in late-2009,' he asserted, 'the United States will disintegrate like the former USSR and this disintegration will result in the freedom of Kashmir.'
Some jihadists in Pakistan have called for military action to bring about this outcome, including the Hizb ut-Tehrira, a small group with little military capability, but considerable ideological influence among Islamists.
In a pamphlet circulated in Islamabad on May 17, 2008, soon after the United States fired a missile which killed 14 people inside Pakistan, the Hizb ut-Tehrir called on authorities to respond to this unprovoked American aggression blow for blow. How? 'Recently,' the pamphlet argued, 'Pakistan successfully tested the radar-evading Babar and Raad cruise missiles. Why not use this lethal weapons at this opportune juncture? Our ballistic missiles can wipe out American bases in Afghanistan in the twinkling of an eye.'
Saeed, too, issued a statement in June, after U.S. forces in Afghanistan attacked a Pakistan military post where the Taliban was located. He demanded that Pakistan dissociate itself from the U.S.' so-called war on terror and join the mujahideen to fight in Afghanistan and Kashmir.
Jihadists believe they have the backing of elements in Pakistan's armed forces, a perception shared by several analysts.
In February, the deputy head of the Lal Masjid in Islamabad asserted that 'a huge majority of Pakistan's army does not want to fight us.' He said: 'Had [President Pervez] Musharraf continued to support the jihad in Kashmir, the mujahideen would have broken India apart. Musharraf's biggest crime is abandoning jihad in Kashmir. Now, we have a new army chief. I appeal to him to adopt the old policy of jihad.
Monday's bombing, coming as it does in the context of heightened tensions along the Line of Control and in Jammu and Kashmir, has led many experts in New Delhi to fear his wish has been met.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2008
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Top|| File under: Lashkar e-Taiba
#1
Hameed Gul would look good with an ice pick sticking out of his eye.
(VOI) - Security forces on Wednesday arrested seven wanted persons in Thi-Qar province, a police spokesman said. "Thi-Qar department police, commanded by its chief Brig. Sabah al-Fatlawi, conducted a security operation in Dawaya district, 80 km north of Nassiriya, to implement arrest warrants for wanted individuals,"Maj. Nasir al-Majidi, spokesman for Thi-Qar police, told Aswat al-Iraq - Voices of Iraq - (VOI).
The spokesman pointed out "police forces coordinated with troops from the Iraqi army 40th brigade to set up stationary and mobile checkpoints at the district's inlets and outlets."
"The joint forces captured 8 persons who were on a wanted list and transfered their cases to investigating offices," he added. The spokesman did not elaborate on the details. Nassiriya, the capital city of Thi-Qar province, has witnessed security measures to contain those fleeing from the major military operation launched in neighboring Missan province in June.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Top|| File under: Iraqi Insurgency
On June 22, 2008, Islamist websites posted a video message by Al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan Abu Yahya Al-Libi, titled "Somalia - No Peace without Islam."
In the message, Al-Libi denounced the agreement signed earlier this month by the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS) and the Somali government, and urges the Somali mujahideen to continue their jihad until an Islamic state is established in the country. He also calls on the mujahideen to oppose the deployment of international peacekeeping forces in Somalia, and exhorts them to fight "the collaborating apostate government in Mogadishu" even if some of its members are their own relatives.
This article starring:
Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia
Abu Yahya Al-Libi
al-Qaeda
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2008
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Top|| File under: al-Qaeda
#1
No Peace without Islam, No Peace with Islam...what the hell friggin difference does it make in that place.
You wanna save Somalia? You put everybody there on ships and sail them out into deepwater. Then you bomb Somalia flat. Then you sink the ships.
Amin Saikal After nearly seven years of costly efforts to stabilise and rebuild Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai's Government and its international supporters have not been able to secure either the Afghan capital or many other parts of the country, particularly in the south and east along the border with Pakistan. The Afghan authorities have again pointed a finger at the Taliban and their Pakistani backers as the culprits. There is no question that these forces, which are also opposed to India's involvement in Afghanistan, bear much of responsibility for Afghanistan's woes, but this tells only part of the story.
The other side of the story is that Karzai presides over a corrupt and dysfunctional system of governance, with a very limited authority over the country. His Government is entirely dependent on the support provided by the NATO-led International Security fhAssistance Force (ISAF) and the US-led coalition forces, yet there has been little co-ordination between these forces and the Government's security apparatus.
The Afghan National Army is now claimed to be almost 70,000 strong, but it is still well short of the capacity to be a frontline fighting force. The ranks of the army, and for that matter the Karzai fhAdministration, are infiltrated by various opposition groups, most importantly the Taliban and its allies, more specifically Hezbi Islami, the Islamic Party of the former maverick Mujahideen leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
In the case of the suicide bombing of the Indian embassy, the perpetrators used a truck full of explosives. This meant they had managed to get a large amount of explosives into the fortified city of Kabul and into one of its most securely guarded central areas. They could not have done this without sufficient help from inside, as was the case with the Taliban's previous daring operations at Kabul's Serena Hotel and Ghazi Stadium, and at Kandahar prison. This is a very humbling experience for the Karzai Government and its foreign backers.
Undeniably, the Taliban has sanctuaries in Pakistan and receives a considerable amount of support from the country. The Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, has acknowledged as much. However, it should be noted that the Taliban has never been, nor will ever be, a major force: it is a militia composed of mostly poorly trained, clothed and equipped men. It has neither a strong system of command and control, nor any significant power behind it, as was the case with US backing for the Mujahideen in resisting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2008
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Top|| File under: Taliban
#1
See also WAFF.com Thread > THE RUSSIAN MILITARY IS CORRUPT [Mafia-Black Market].
#4
Actually, this makes a point. When we came into Afghanistan, the place was an utter disaster. There was no government or any responsible social systems.
Yet our inclination was "Hey! Let's try to rebuild what is good here!"
Wrong. There was *nothing* good in Afghanistan. What they needed above all else were *replacement* systems of government and society that actually worked, not the utter crap they were used to.
The first thing we should have done is written them a constitution. One based in the US constitution, not those stupid and inefficient European ones. Find every adult male with a brain, and spend the next three months teaching him how to operate the constitution.
At the same time, we should have been teaching other men how to be lawyers and judges. COMMON LAW, not that utterly worthless Code Civil.
By law, every child in the country would have to go to public school. If they couldn't safely do it where they lived, then public boarding schools where it was safe.
And a *real* education, not a religious one.
All unemployed men would become minimum wage workers for the government, so there would be zero legal unemployment. These men would be set to work in rebuilding their country, while the money they earned went back to their wives and families. Because their minimum wage is almost nothing, this would not have been too expensive.
Every rural town would have been populated solely with working men, women, old people and children. So the town would be run by the women. The money sent home by their husbands would be used to start small businesses, so there would be something for the men to do when they came home.
Had we done this from the beginning, Afghanistan would be a very different place today, and we could probably be preparing to leave.
#6
This meant they had managed to get a large amount of explosives into the fortified city of Kabul and into one of its most securely guarded central areas.
Fortified? How? It's been a long time since any city had massive walls surrounding it, and only four ways in and out. The reality is that Baghdad, with its massive US presence, isn't able - to this day - to prevent IED's and car bombs. There aren't many occurrences, but they do exist. The attacks occurring in Afghanistan have nothing to do with the Afghan government being corrupt - they've got to do with it having nowhere near Iraq's resources. We're not spending nearly as much money in Afghanistan - in terms of aid or troops. And Afghanistan certainly doesn't have much money to spend - they don't have any oil, remember?
GORDON BROWN used a graphic image of a man beaten to death in Zimbabwe to rally world leaders behind imposing new sanctions against President Robert Mugabe's regime. The British Prime Minister showed the G8 summit two pictures of Joshua Bakacheza, an opposition activist whose body was found on Saturday. No Flaming Michelin Neckware pictures available?
Afterwards, the leaders of the world's eight richest countries agreed to punish 'individuals responsible for the violence' in Zimbabwe with 'financial and other measures'.
But the Zimbabwe Government said threats of financial measures were an insult to African leaders. 'They want to undermine the African Union and [South African] President Mbeki's [mediation] efforts because they are racist, because they think only white people think better,' the Deputy Information Minister, Bright Matonga, said. ...and if whitey's so smart, how come everybody in Zimbabwe's a millionaire?
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2008
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#1
No Flaming Michelin Neckware pictures available?
Tires are now currency, like Yap rocks only vulcanized.
#2
What, the abducting and beating of the mayor's wife +4 just wasn't brutal enough? What happened to this guy which was just too much, testicles pulled through the nose? Dress him in a pink shirt and wig with clown nose?
Interesting theory - an unstable zim and sa to ruin power and authority of au. And all this racism could have been avoided if they all would have just put tobasco in their scrambled eggs.
United States commandos are prepared to stage raids into Pakistan's loosely governed Tribal Areas to stem mounting Taliban attacks against US troops in Afghanistan and to disrupt resurgent Al Qaeda operatives' efforts to map strikes against the US, a report published in The Houston Chronicle said on Wednesday.
Our special forces are pretty much ready for anything, particularly once they get a chance to train and to get a brief on the mission.
Congressmen Gene Green, Michael McCaul, and Henry Cuellar, who recently visited Pakistan, told Chronicle in separate interviews that the plans for stepped-up US military operations were a response to Pakistan's failure to disrupt terrorist training camps and cross-border attacks from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
The Bush administration is recalibrating US operations in the region because of a 40 percent increase in violent attacks against US-led forces in Afghanistan, that have pushed US casualties for the month of June beyond the monthly toll in Iraq, the lawmakers said.
The congressmen said they devoted much of their delegation's meetings with President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani last Friday to urging additional action against militants in the Tribal Areas. But the congressmen said Pakistani officials had rejected resumption of the joint US-Pakistani operations that ended in 2003, calling instead for additional US military assistance and intelligence co-operation to target seven or eight terrorist leaders operating in the Tribal Areas.
Thus removing them and making Perv and Gilani the continued strongmen in the Land of the Pure ...
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2008
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Top|| File under: al-Qaeda
#1
For about the thousandth time, our failure to level an area with a B-52 ARCLIGHT strike at the beginning of this war is coming back to bite us in the butt. One strike would have been enough to put the fear of God in to the hearts of every terrorist anywhere in the world. The longer we wait, the less likely such an event will take place. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/10/2008 11:08
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Detained former state minister for home Lutfozzaman Babar is going to be chargesheeted in a case filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) for possessing illegal wealth and concealing information about it.
Not that he'll ever have to worry about a crossfire ...
Sources said the ACC On Wednesday approved the submission of charge sheet against the ex- BNP minister for amassing wealth worth Tk 7.05 crore beyond his known sources of income and concealing information.
ACC Deputy Assistant Director Rupok Kumar Saha will submit the charge sheet next week with the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate's (CMM) Court, Dhaka. The first information report (FIR) was filed on January 13.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Local Taliban in Hangu district ended the siege of a police station after successful talks with the administration on Wednesday, Geo News reported. The Taliban besieged the Doaba Police Station following the arrest of seven colleagues, according to Staff Report. They were demanding the release of their colleagues. There were 35 policemen in the besieged police station. The seven Taliban had been arrested after an encounter with police, Hangu Senior Police Superintendent Muhammad Idrees Khan said. District officials alleged that the Taliban had also abducted 15 officials, including security personnel, from various areas of Doaba tehsil. Army spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas told AFP that the army had sent one battalion to the area to deal with the situation.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Top|| File under: Taliban
Hezbollah now has three times more rockets than it had when Israel went to war with the Lebanese militia two years ago, Israeli public radio cited intelligence officials as telling a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
Members of the security cabinet were told Hezbollah has an arsenal of 40,000 rockets ready to be fired at Israel, three times more than in July 2006 when Israel launched a devastating war in southern Lebanon after the militia captured two soldiers in a deadly cross-border raid.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had called Wednesday's meeting of the security cabinet to discuss what he said were violations by the Shiite Hezbollah of UN Resolution 1701 which ended the 34-day war.
The resolution called for the disarming of all militias -- an allusion to Hezbollah as well as to Palestinian militant groups -- and the prevention of illegal arms sales and smuggling operations in Lebanon.
In a telephone conversation with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner on Tuesday, Defence Minister Ehud Barak said Israel 'will not be able to accept the ongoing and growing undercutting of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 which is not being implemented, and the continued smuggling of all types of weapons into Lebanon, upsetting the delicate balance along Israel's border.'
Posted by: Fred ||
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Top|| File under: Hezbollah
(Xinhua) -- The two U.S. presidential candidates on Wednesday voiced their different policies on dealing with threats from Iran, with Barack Obama emphasizing diplomacy and sanctions, while John McCain underlined the establishment of a missile shield in Europe.
It's my guess, based on a very small statistical sample, mind you, that most people think we already have a missile shield.
In an interview with ABC's 'Good Morning America', presumptive Democratic nominee Obama said Iran's reported missile tests justify the need to conduct direct diplomacy with the country and impose tougher economic sanctions, combined with strong incentives to change Tehran's behavior.
What tougher 'economic sanctions'? We already have stuffed their banks, we ban direct trade with them (more or less), and we lean on our allies not to trade with Iran. The Euros, particularly the Germans, won't go further because they need the trade. So 'tougher economic sanctions' is already doomed.
And 'direct diplomacy' should be a non-starter. When you sit and talk with a thug without pre-conditions, you're 90% of the way to losing.
Code Pink was protesting Gary Ackerman today, than whom there aren't many more liberal, because he's supporting sanctions against Iran. But then, we already knew which side they were on.
The Illinois senator was responding to a report earlier in the day that said the Iranian government had tested nine long and medium-range missiles, an act that intended to show Iran's 'enemies' its 'resolve and might', as an Iranian military official put it.
Obama said he would listen to his national security team to decide whether 'this indicates any new capabilities on Iran's part.'
In response to another report released Tuesday that said U.S. exports to Iran rose more than tenfold under President George W. Bush despite hostility between the two countries, Obama criticized the Republican government for using bellicose language against Tehran while at the same time increasing exports to the country. 'It's that kind of mixed signal that has led to the kind of situation that we're in right now,' he said.
Meanwhile, presumptive Republican presidential nominee McCain said in a prepared statement that the Iranian missile tests were proof of the need to build a missile defense system in Europe. 'Working with our European and regional allies is the best way to meet the threat posed by Iran, not unilateral concessions that undermine multilateral diplomacy,' he said.
The Vietnam veteran has criticized Obama's stated policy of engaging Iran through direct talks as 'dangerously' 'naive.'
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2008
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Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
IRNA/TOPIX/LUCIANNE > IRAN HAS REACHED A TURNING POINT TOWARD A NUCLEAR STATE.
#2
Obama criticized the Republican government for using bellicose language against Tehran while at the same time increasing exports to the country. 'It's that kind of mixed signal that has led to the kind of situation that we're in right now,' he said.
He does have good speechwriters.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/10/2008 6:12
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#3
So, one of our brilliant candidates wants to talk all day, that is the one who said 'it's only words, speeches'. And the other wants to hide behind a missle shield while the enemy figures how to overcome it, the one who wants amnesty for all Mexicans.
I vote for the guy who wants to attack now and blame it on a skin rash or something.
Hey, while I'm at it, the Mexicans have pulled out of the Olympic Games.....everyone who can run, jump, or swim has already left Mexico.
The United States on Wednesday condemned the attack on its consulate in Istanbul and a State Department spokesman said he could neither confirm nor rule out al Qaeda involvement.
Three Turkish police officers and three gunmen were killed in the attack at the compound. 'The United States condemns the terrorist attack that took place on our consulate general in Istanbul earlier today,' said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.
Reports in Turkey said al Qaeda involvement was suspected. 'At this point one can't rule that out, but I also can't support at this point, those suspicions,' McCormack said. 'We're continuing our efforts to work with the Turkish government to determine who is responsible for it.'
He said the attack took place at a police booth about 75 feet from the entrance to the consulate. Witnesses told Reuters four attackers drove a car up to the compound. As the car halted, three jumped out and began firing at police at the guard post.
McCormack said Turkish police had responded quickly and effectively, and Washington appreciated their courage in protecting U.S. diplomats. He expressed condolences to the families of the dead and wounded officers. Turkey and the United States 'will continue to stand firmly together to confront the threat of terrorism as we have done in the past,' he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2008
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Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Turkey
Two residents of the southern Israeli town of Rahat were indicted Wednesday for allegedly being al-Qaeda operatives. Taher and Omar Abu-Sakut, who are registered members of the Islamic Movement, were arrested following a joint Shin Bet, police and Border Guard operation that took place in June.
According to Shin Bet records, Taher abu-Sakut's interest in radical Islam began in 2006, when he became involved with the Islamic Movement. Soon after that, the Shin Bet says, he began surfing al-Qaeda-affiliated websites, as well as sites calling for the destruction of Israel. According to the indictment, he then contacted several al-Qaeda operatives and provided them information about the location of various IDF bases and strategic facilities in Israel, in a bid to promote the terror organization's plans to stage an attack in Israel. Taher reportedly gave his handlers information about the location of the Azrieli Towers in Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion International Airport, and various routes in the West Bank, through which terrorists might be able to infiltrate Israel.
Taher and Omar Aabu-Sakut were arrested in early June and reportedly confessed to the charges. The two were arraigned at the Beersheba District Court. The indictment against them includes charges of affiliation with a known terror organization, aiding and abetting an enemy at war, and providing the enemy with intelligence intended to undermine national security.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2008
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Seven more teenaged boys went missing from various areas in the Swat district, raising the number of missing teenaged boys in the district to 25, a private television channel reported on Wednesday. According to Dawn News, eighteen teenaged boys had already been missing from the Dakorak and Gullibagh areas of Swat's Charbagh tehsil for about one week. The families of the missing boys say their children went to school but never returned. They fear that their children might have been murdered, the channel said. Swat District Co-ordination Officer Wakif Khan told the channel that he was unaware of the missing boys, since nobody had reported the incident at the Charbagh Police Station. Khan said it was not possible for police to carry out investigations in the absence of registered case.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2008
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The boss of French energy giant Total says he will not invest in Iran because it is too risky. The firm had been due to develop gas fields in the south of the country, but Christophe de Margerie told the Financial Times it would not go ahead.
The announcement comes a day after Iran test-fired a series of missiles, amid weeks of rising tensions with Israel over Tehran's nuclear ambitions. Analysts say the move will be a big blow to Iran's energy industry.
The US has recently stepped up the pressure to impose tougher sanctions on Iran and companies that do business with it. The FT reported that Total was the last major western energy group considering making a significant investment to develop Iran's huge natural gas reserves.
#1
The technology to develop the natural gas fields isn't that advanced. Perhaps the problem is that the nuke and missile programs commandeer all the talent.
If true I suppose Iran will be trying to talk the Chinese or Pakistani firms (if there are any) into taking the risk.
(Xinhua) -- The senate has accorded a rare standing ovation to former French-Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt, who was freed recently after spending over six years in captivity, deep in the jungles of Colombia, according to official sources.
Betancourt, who visited the senate Tuesday, was received through a moving tribute marked by a long-standing ovation interspersed with claps and words of encouragement from lawmakers, said one of the senators who took part in the emotionally-charged session. 'She explained that if she had been forced to celebrate the July 14 holiday in the jungle, then she would have dressed herself in blue, white and red,' said the source, noting that she was referring to the forthcoming French national day and colors of the flag.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2008
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#1
No Stockholm Syndrome? I'll wait until I see the FARC videos before I pronounce her a heroine.
Israeli troops raided the city hall of the West Bank town of Nablus on Wednesday, seizing computers and causing damage, Palestinian officials said. The troops also raided six mosques and confiscated three buses from an Islamic school in town, the officials said.
An Israeli military spokesman had no immediate comment on the operations, which coincided with a stepped up campaign against organisations that Israel suspects have links to the Islamist group Hamas. Nablus stores and businesses announced a general strike in protest against the raid.
Nablus is governed by President Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority, but the Israeli army mounts frequent raids into the city in what the military describes as efforts to prevent attacks by militants.
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said the incursions were "extremely disruptive" and undermined U.S.-backed security efforts by the Palestinian Authority to establish law and order in areas under its control in the West Bank.
Acting Nablus mayor, Hafez Shahin, said: "The municipality is a service institution. I see no reason to raid the place. I see it as an attack on the Palestinian Authority."
On Tuesday, Israeli forces raided a popular shopping mall in Nablus, ordering its closure for two years over its owner's alleged links to the Hamas. Hamas, which opposes Abbas's peace talks with Israel, seized the Gaza Strip from his Fatah faction in fighting a year ago.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2008
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#1
I have a better idea involving fast air enhanced demolition.
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As news spread across the world of Iran's provocative missile tests, so did an image of four missiles heading skyward in unison. Unfortunately, it appeared to contain one too many missiles, a point that had not emerged before the photo appeared on the front pages of The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers as well as on BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News, NYTimes.com and many other major news Web sites.
Apparently to some. From the City Hall Blog at the Dallas Morning News:
(Xinhua) -- The tribal elders and local provincial government of Pakistan Wednesday inked a peace agreement in Khyber tribal Agency, local TV channel DAWN NEWS reported. According to the agreement, local pro-Taliban militants in the whole region of Khyber Agency will remain peaceful and not display their arms, said the report. The local government of North West Frontier Province also pledged conditional troop pullout from the area. 
Iraqi police say a bomb in the city of Fallujah has killed four police and one civilian. A police official says 15 people were injured in the blast outside a bank in the one-time Sunni insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad. The injured included an Iraqi television cameraman. Police and a crowd gathered in the bank area after an explosion at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday. A second blast caused the casualties. The police official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
Jordanian Islamist Abu Qatada, who was recently released from the Long Lartin Prison in northern England, is banned from contacting 20 Islamists in Europe most of whom are held in British jails, Asharq Al-Awsat can reveal. Most of the Islamists 
Iran test-fired nine missiles on Wednesday and warned the United States and Israel it was ready to retaliate for any attack over its disputed nuclear projects. Washington, which says Iran seeks atomic bombs, told Tehran to halt further tests.
A string of five rocket attacks in a high security zone of the Nowshera Cantonment rocked the area on Wednesday. One of the rockets landed on the ground of the Armoured Cover Centre at 4am, while another hit the house of a senior Irrigation Department official, though the residents of the house remained unharmed. According to police officials, the rocket attacks were carried out from the mountainous area of Badrashi Ziarat. The Nowshera police were receiving threats from the local Taliban.
(VOI) -- Casualties from the suicide car bomb in Mosul that targeted on Wednesday the convoy of Staff Major General Riyadh Jalal Tawfeeq, Ninewa operations commander, rose to eight civilians killed, and 41 others wounded, said a source from Ninewa police. "The final casualties of the suicide car bomb blast that targeted the convoy of Staff Major General Riyadh Jalal Tawfeeq, Ninewa operations commander, on Wednesday in al-Faisaliya neighborhood (eastern Mosul city) is eight civilians killed, and 41 others wounded, including seven of Tawfeeq's personal guards and five traffic policemen," the source told VOI. 
Two bombs went off in Khyber Agency's Landi Kotal sub-division early on Wednesday, residents said. The improvised explosive devices were placed in two shops in the Sadukhel area. A third bomb, which was found by children in the area, was defused safely, the residents said, adding that there were no casualties. Security personnel arrested Malak Hamid Khan, the younger brother of tribal elder Malak Ataullah Kookikhel, in the Jamrud sub-division. Zwan Pakhtun Organisation Chairman Ikramullah Jan said Hamid was arrested on charges of possessing unlicensed weapons. He criticised the arrest, and said Hamid was a tribal chief and was carrying weapons for his safety. Security officials did not comment on the arrest.
A top outlaw of Janajuddha faction of the banned Purbo Banglar Communist Party (PBCP) was killed yesterday in a 'shootout' with police at Taherhuda village in Jhenidah. 
The Church of England's General Synod voted in favour of consecrating women and against safeguards demanded by traditionalists opposed to the move. A Church group will now draw up a code of practice to try to reassure critics. But Roman Catholic leaders believe this goes against the will of Christ, who chose only men as his apostles.
THE story of the 14-year old girl from Rupganj is appalling. The girl is struggling to recover from the burn wounds inflicted on her by a neighbour. One more budding life has been shattered by the acid throwers, whose inability to place human life above satisfying their beastly instincts has for a pretty long time been an area of major concern.
There has been a spike in mortar and rocket attacks from militants in Pakistan at United States and Afghan border outposts in Afghanistan, the top NATO commander said on Wednesday. US 
Militants who carried out this week's suicide bomb attack on the Indian embassy in the Afghan capital received their training at camps in Pakistan, Reuters quoted Afghanistan's 
Local Taliban in Swat on Wednesday warned the NWFP government of vigilante action if it fails to take action against kidnappers in Malakand Division's Sakhakot area. Swat Taliban spokesman Haji Muslim Khan said in a statement that the government should arrest kidnappers in the area. He quoted Taliban commander Fazlullah as demanding the government recover hostages from kidnappers' custody. Fazlullah also demanded compensation for damages caused during the recent military operation in Swat. He said union council nazims were involved in irregularities in development funds and "the Taliban would also take action against them if they did not mend their ways".
The Election Commission (EC) has accepted a good number of nominations filed by mayoral and councillor aspirants having criminal records. 
The Lahore Police CID arrested four alleged terrorists with strong links to banned militant organisations early on Wednesday. Intelligence sources told Daily Times that the CID personnel, working in co-operation with other law enforcement agencies, had also seized a large quantity of explosives from the accused. According to the sources, security has been beefed up at all official buildings and sensitive installations following intelligence reports that suspected terrorists have reached Lahore. Sources within the police said that over 1,000 mobile squad officials were patrolling their respective jurisdictions to thwart any terrorist attempts. They said that following instructions from Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, Punjab Inspector General of Police Shaukat Javed had also ordered the repair of all non-functioning CCTV cameras.
A landmine went off at a camp in Kurram Agency on Wednesday, killing a man and injuring another, official sources said. The landmine went off in the Sateen Camp area of the Kurram Agency, the sources said, adding that the injured person had been admitted to Sadda Hospital. Meanwhile, some unidentified people blew up a CD shop and two centres believed to be drug dens in the Landi Kotal area of Khyber Agency. The political administration has started investigation into the incidents.
Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook are trying to hash out a custody agreement during a four-hour break in their divorce trial, the Daily News has learned. Testimony is delayed until 3 p.m. while the two sides hold talks, a source said.
Heavy fighting erupted again Wednesday between pro- and anti-government supporters in northern Lebanon, killing at least three people and wounding 32 others and shattering a fragile truce that lasted just two weeks, security officials said. Five soldiers were among the wounded in clashes in the northern city of Tripoli that began overnight and continued Wednesday morning, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
The district courts in Islamabad and Rawalpindi will remain closed on July 12 (Saturday) after District and Sessions Judge Mirza Rafiuz Zaman received a threatening letter by post on Wednesday warning that three suicide bombers would target the district courts on July 12. Islamabad Bar Association (IBA) General Secretary Riasat Ali Azad told Daily Times that Zaman immediately called a meeting of IBA officials and other judges, which decided that the judges would not sit in the courtrooms on July 12 and only cause lists would be displayed.
A federal appeals court has upheld the conviction and 30-year sentence of a Pakistani man found guilty in an unsuccessful plot to bomb a busy subway station in New York. The Manhattan court decided that 
Investigators have begun to sift through the debris left behind by Monday's bombing of the Indian mission in Kabul, searching for clues as to just who might have carried out the murderous attack.
(VOI) - Security forces on Wednesday arrested seven wanted persons in Thi-Qar province, a police spokesman said. "Thi-Qar department police, commanded by its chief Brig. Sabah al-Fatlawi, conducted a security operation in Dawaya district, 80 km north of Nassiriya, to implement arrest warrants for wanted individuals,"Maj. Nasir al-Majidi, spokesman for Thi-Qar police, told Aswat al-Iraq - Voices of Iraq - (VOI).
On June 22, 2008, Islamist websites posted a video message by Al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan 
After nearly seven years of costly efforts to stabilise and rebuild Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai's Government and its international supporters have not been able to secure either the Afghan capital or many other parts of the country, particularly in the south and east along the border with Pakistan. The Afghan authorities have again pointed a finger at the Taliban and their Pakistani backers as the culprits. There is no question that these forces, which are also opposed to India's involvement in Afghanistan, bear much of responsibility for Afghanistan's woes, but this tells only part of the story.
United States commandos are prepared to stage raids into Pakistan's loosely governed Tribal Areas to stem mounting Taliban attacks against US troops in Afghanistan and to disrupt resurgent Al Qaeda operatives' efforts to map strikes against the US, a report published in The Houston Chronicle said on Wednesday.
Detained former state minister for home Lutfozzaman Babar is going to be chargesheeted in a case filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) for possessing illegal wealth and concealing information about it.
Local Taliban in Hangu district ended the siege of a police station after successful talks with the administration on Wednesday, Geo News reported. The Taliban besieged the Doaba Police Station following the arrest of seven colleagues, according to Staff Report. They were demanding the release of their colleagues. There were 35 policemen in the besieged police station. The seven Taliban had been arrested after an encounter with police, Hangu Senior Police Superintendent Muhammad Idrees Khan said. District officials alleged that the Taliban had also abducted 15 officials, including security personnel, from various areas of Doaba tehsil. Army spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas told AFP that the army had sent one battalion to the area to deal with the situation.
In an interview with ABC's 'Good Morning America', presumptive Democratic nominee Obama said Iran's reported missile tests justify the need to conduct direct diplomacy with the country and impose tougher economic sanctions, combined with strong incentives to change Tehran's behavior. 
In response to another report released Tuesday that said U.S. exports to Iran rose more than tenfold under President George W. Bush despite hostility between the two countries, Obama criticized the Republican government for using bellicose language against Tehran while at the same time increasing exports to the country. 'It's that kind of mixed signal that has led to the kind of situation that we're in right now,' he said. 
The United States on Wednesday condemned the attack on its consulate in Istanbul and a State Department spokesman said he could neither confirm nor rule out al Qaeda involvement.
Two residents of the southern Israeli town of Rahat were indicted Wednesday for allegedly being al-Qaeda operatives. Taher and Omar Abu-Sakut, who are registered members of the Islamic Movement, were arrested following a joint Shin Bet, police and Border Guard operation that took place in June. 
Seven more teenaged boys went missing from various areas in the Swat district, raising the number of missing teenaged boys in the district to 25, a private television channel reported on Wednesday. According to Dawn News, eighteen teenaged boys had already been missing from the Dakorak and Gullibagh areas of Swat's Charbagh tehsil for about one week. The families of the missing boys say their children went to school but never returned. They fear that their children might have been murdered, the channel said. Swat District Co-ordination Officer Wakif Khan told the channel that he was unaware of the missing boys, since nobody had reported the incident at the Charbagh Police Station. Khan said it was not possible for police to carry out investigations in the absence of registered case.
The boss of French energy giant Total says he will not invest in Iran because it is too risky. The firm had been due to develop gas fields in the south of the country, but Christophe de Margerie told the Financial Times it would not go ahead. 
Israeli troops raided the city hall of the West Bank town of Nablus on Wednesday, seizing computers and causing damage, Palestinian officials said. The troops also raided six mosques and confiscated three buses from an Islamic school in town, the officials said.
