A plague of parakeets have caused thousands of pounds worth of damage to a church - after pecking away at the wooden spire. This is real, not a parrot-dy
Congregation members revealed this week that the brightly-coloured vandals had started nesting in the 150-year-old spire of St John the Evangelist, Shirley, which has been blighted by hundreds of beak-sized holes. "It ruined the polly-urethane finish."
Church spokesman Bernard Maguire, 67, said: "They showed up last winter, and have been pecking away ever since. We enjoyed them at first, they were quite pretty, but then we realised what they were up to and now the novelty has definitely worn off." "We'd repair the damage, but we don't have enough in the budgie to cover it."
Posted by: Mike ||
07/25/2008
16:39 ||
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#1
News For Parrots is pleased to report that these are rouge parakeets and NO parrots were involved.
Posted by: bruce ||
07/25/2008 17:22
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There are millions of the little buggers in Eastern Australia, but for some reason here in the West we don't have any small parrots. Plenty of the big ones (Cockatoos) though.
Looks like our gang war may be heating up...
Gaza Ma'an Four are dead and twenty injured after the car of a Hamas leader in Gaza exploded west of Gaza City Friday evening. One of the dead is reported to be Amar Mussubyih, who was wanted by the Israeli army. He was a prominent leader of Hamas' Al-Qassam Brigades in the area west of Gaza City. Also killed were Iyad Al-Hayah, nephew of local Hamas leader Khalil Al-Haya and Nidal Mabiad. All are affiliated to the Al-Qassam Brigades. The fourth death was that of an unidentified little girl.
Ihab Al-Ghussain, spokesperson for the de facto ministry of the interior, said that the reasons behind the explosion are unknown. He affirmed that Gaza police will search for the perpetrators, though he did not rule out the idea that the deaths were the result of "outsourcing" by the Israeli army. Geez, everybody's doing it...
This is the third explosion in Gaza on Friday. Earlier in the day, one Palestinian was killed in the first blast at Ag-Gazira café in the centre of the city. The man dead was assumed to have been the bomber. Shortly after the café bombing there was another explosion outside the house of Dr Marwan Abu Ras, a Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, also in Gaza City, though no one was injured. Amar Mussubyih is dead. So are Moe Green, Barzini, Tattaglia...
The Hamas armed wing issued a statement blaming "members of the fugitive party" -- a derogatory term for Fatah -- for Friday night's blast at a major junction outside Gaza City.
"We have information that some elements are planning to carry out bombings against the interests and leaders of Hamas in order to sow anarchy," said senior Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya, whose son, himself a gunman, was wounded in the blast.
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh won a vote of confidence this week, allowing his ruling party to keep in play a proposed nuclear partnership with the United States.
A loss also would have doomed a nuclear deal, announced in 2006 and signed by U.S. President George Bush and Singh a year ago, that would expand U.S.-Indian cooperation in energy and satellite technology.
The deal would give India access to U.S. nuclear fuel and technology for civilian nuclear power plants -- even though New Delhi, which tested nuclear weapons in 1974 and 1998, declined to join international nonproliferation agreements.
The leaders of India's two Communist parties have accused Singh of surrendering India's sovereignty to the United States with the deal.
CNN spoke to world affairs analyst and author Fareed Zakaria about this week's developments.
CNN: What does the confidence vote in India mean?
Zakaria: On the surface, nothing, because the government stays in power. But it's potentially a huge shift. The Congress Party now rules without the support of the Communist Party. The Communists have been a huge obstacle both on economic issues and the nuclear deal.
CNN: What does it mean for the nuclear deal?
Zakaria: India will now go forward with the deal negotiated with the United States. If all goes as expected, it will mean that India will become a "recognized nuclear power," in return for which its programs will be subject to some international scrutiny.
Some nonproliferation hardliners are opposed to the deal, but they don't seem to realize that these were the only terms under which India would have been willing to come inside the nonproliferation tent.
CNN: But India has nukes already, how does this make things different?
Zakaria: In economic terms it means that India will now have access to nuclear technology from around the world. In geopolitical terms it is a huge shift.
It marks the beginning of a new Asian balance of power, with India moving closer to the United States to keep a check on the growing power of China.
CNN: What will an Indian government without Communist Party support mean?
Zakaria: The government has the opportunity to jump-start economic reforms. Despite the sterling reputation of the current economic team, the Indian government has actually done almost nothing in terms of economic reforms.
Its term so far has been a huge wasted opportunity. Now it has a second chance. It could put in places economic reforms, spur growth and investment, and move India to a higher growth trajectory.
CNN: Will this make the U.S. and India get closer?
Zakaria: I think that's already happening. India and the U.S. have been getting closer. Getting rid of the Communists will make the government-to-government relationship stronger.
But there is also a society-to-society relationship that is becoming very deep.
Every week, some delegation of Indians visits America and vice-versa. These two countries seem to understand each other. They're large, messy, chaotic, multicultural democracies.
The wonder is it took them so long to find each other.
Posted by: john frum ||
07/25/2008
16:00 ||
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There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.
And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society -- in which people sometimes make the wrong choices -- and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.
"The Dark Knight," then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year's "300," "The Dark Knight" is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.
Conversely, time after time, left-wing films about the war on terror -- films like "In The Valley of Elah," "Rendition" and "Redacted" -- which preach moral equivalence and advocate surrender, that disrespect the military and their mission, that seem unable to distinguish the difference between America and Islamo-fascism, have bombed more spectacularly than Operation Shock and Awe.
Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth? Why is it, indeed, that the conservative values that power our defense -- values like morality, faith, self-sacrifice and the nobility of fighting for the right -- only appear in fantasy or comic-inspired films like "300," "Lord of the Rings," "Narnia," "Spiderman 3" and now "The Dark Knight"?
The moment filmmakers take on the problem of Islamic terrorism in realistic films, suddenly those values vanish. The good guys become indistinguishable from the bad guys, and we end up denigrating the very heroes who defend us. Why should this be?
The answers to these questions seem to me to be embedded in the story of "The Dark Knight" itself: Doing what's right is hard, and speaking the truth is dangerous. Many have been abhorred for it, some killed, one crucified.
Leftists frequently complain that right-wing morality is simplistic. Morality is relative, they say; nuanced, complex. They're wrong, of course, even on their own terms.
Left and right, all Americans know that freedom is better than slavery, that love is better than hate, kindness better than cruelty, tolerance better than bigotry. We don't always know how we know these things, and yet mysteriously we know them nonetheless.
The true complexity arises when we must defend these values in a world that does not universally embrace them -- when we reach the place where we must be intolerant in order to defend tolerance, or unkind in order to defend kindness, or hateful in order to defend what we love.
When heroes arise who take those difficult duties on themselves, it is tempting for the rest of us to turn our backs on them, to vilify them in order to protect our own appearance of righteousness. We prosecute and execrate the violent soldier or the cruel interrogator in order to parade ourselves as paragons of the peaceful values they preserve. As Gary Oldman's Commissioner Gordon says of the hated and hunted Batman, "He has to run away -- because we have to chase him."
That's real moral complexity. And when our artistic community is ready to show that sometimes men must kill in order to preserve life; that sometimes they must violate their values in order to maintain those values; and that while movie stars may strut in the bright light of our adulation for pretending to be heroes, true heroes often must slink in the shadows, slump-shouldered and despised -- then and only then will we be able to pay President Bush his due and make good and true films about the war on terror.
Perhaps that's when Hollywood conservatives will be able to take off their masks and speak plainly in the light of day.
Posted by: Mike ||
07/25/2008
15:18 ||
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"Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth?"
The question answers itself. It's obvious to Hollywood that common sense belongs in a comic book.
#2
"The Dark Knight" is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year's "300," "The Dark Knight" is making a fortune.
Conversely, time after time, left-wing films about the war on terror have bombed.
Why is it then that left-wingers feel free to make their films direct and realistic, whereas Hollywood conservatives have to put on a mask in order to speak what they know to be the truth?
The left wingers know that they are the accepted conventional wisdom. So they know they can come right out and hit you between the eyes with their sermon.
But the right is anti-establishment. It cannot make its statement explicitly. So it has to use art to make the audience think.
That is why the best movies were made under the Hayes code. There are few moments in film as erotic as Rita Hayworth brushing her hair in Gilda. But that's all she's doing, brushing her hair. When you can get a rise out of somebody brushing their hair you've gone a long way.
And because the audience has to think, they are part of the creative process. There is little doubt in my mind of what Carl Foreman would think of the war in Iraq. Because his script was an attack on the McCarthy hearings, sanctioned by the establishment, he had to be indirect in the same way as today's conservatives. But when today's audience watches Will Kane walk down the street they see W, a result Foreman would no doubt abhor, but a result of allowing the audience to think and help create the entire experience.
Leading me to conclude that censorship may be bad for artists, but it's good for art.
#1
It doesn't take a very astute observer to notice that the libs, greens and "progressives" have undergone a marked radicalization over the last 10 years. They are becoming Americas fascists legions that will have to be disassembled at a great cost to us all.
#2
Everything old is new again. The American left circa 2008 bears a striking resemblance to the political ruling class in a certain European nation circa the mid-1930s.
He should challenge Mahmoud to a duel. Of auras...
PARIS - Democrat Barack Obama said Friday that Iran should promptly accept an international call to freeze its uranium enrichment program, which some nations see as a potential step toward obtaining nuclear weapons, and not wait for the next U.S. president. Instead of stringing us along like they've been doing for the last five years while they advance the program? How stupid are you? Stupid enough not to include 'or else ...' at the end of his statement.
Speaking later at a news conference, Obama said Iran should accept the proposals made by Sarkozy and other Western leaders. He urged Iran's leaders not to wait for the next U.S. president to push them "because the pressure, I think, is only going to build." So sez The Sage of the South Side...
The United States and other Western nations accuse Iran of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons and demand that it freeze its uranium enrichment program. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
Obama said that he and Sarkozy agreed that Iran poses "an extraordinarily grave situation." He said the world must send "a clear message to Iran to end its illicit nuclear program." Obama said: "My expectation is that we're going to present a clear choice to Iran: change your behavior and you will be fully integrated into the international community with all the benefits that go with that. Continue your illicit nuclear program and the international community as a whole will ratchet up pressure with stronger and increased sanctions. And we should have no illusion that progress will come easily." Kinda like they've been doing for the last five years?
Obama is in the midst of a weeklong tour of the Middle East and Europe as the first-term U.S. senator seeks to burnish his international credentials for the general election campaign against Republican rival Sen. John McCain. The trip began with a campaign-season tour of the war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan and ends with meetings with old allies France and Britain. Obama told reporters that "Afghanistan is a war we have to win." The Taliban and terrorist groups it supports, he said, pose an unacceptable threat to the U.S., France and other nations."We've got to finish the job," said Obama, who often has said the Iraq war was an unwise move that distracted the United States from efforts to find Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders and to root out the Taliban forces in Afghanistan.
The joint news conference had many light moments. Sarkozy called his guest "my dear Barack Obama," and said the French have been following the U.S. presidential race "with passion. It's fascinating to watch what's happening there," he said. It's almost like Josephine Baker came back from the dead...
Obama urged U.S. political reporters to seek Sarkozy's insight because "he seems to have a good nose for how things play out." Sarkozy wished Obama luck, but did not endorse him. He said it was up to Americans to choose their president.
Asked by a French reporter how he would differ from President Bush on foreign policy, Obama noted that he is a senator, not president."I am a candidate for president," he said. "But there's a wonderful tradition in the United States, that's not always observed, but I think is a good one. Which is that you don't spend time criticizing a sitting president when you're overseas. What I can say affirmatively is that an effective U.S. foreign policy will be based on our ability not only to project power but also to listen and to build consensus," Obama said. Well...isn't that comforting.
Western diplomats and nuclear inspectors who frequently travel to Tehran as part of the international effort to persuade the Iranians to halt their uranium enrichment activities report that a sense of paranoia appears to have gripped the regime in recent months.
There has certainly been a change of mood since the start of the year, a Vienna-based official told me this week. In the past they always appeared very self-confident and sure-footed in their dealings with foreign officials. Now they come across as very suspicious, and watch our every move.
Tehrans changed political atmosphere might be explained by the fact that President Ahmadinejad and his senior officials realise they are running out of time in their negotiations with the West. After more than four years of painstaking talks with the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran is continuing to enrich uranium at its underground facility at Natanz, a clear breach of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Even senior officials at the agency, who have gone out of their way to accommodate the Iranians concerns, have little confidence that the Iranians have any intention of reaching a compromise. All they seem interested in is extending the talks as long as possible while all the time they continue with their uranium enrichment programme, said an official close to the talks. Their entire strategy appears to be based on playing for time.
#2
Do you suppose Commmander nutjob wet his pants laughing at this latest beatitude from the chosen one?
I wonder what Obamaramalamadingdong is going to say when a city somewhere disappears courtesy of the Iranian Mullahs? Is he going to want to negotiate? Threaten them with another letter? Maybe we'll really get tough and ask for a non binding resolution from Congress or the UN?
Posted by: James Carville ||
07/25/2008 18:32
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LOWELL, MA The Lowell Spinners, Class A affiliate of the World Series Champion Boston Red Sox, announced today that this weeks upcoming homestand against the State College Spikes, a Pittsburgh Pirates affiliate, will salute both the sensitive nature of political correctness and incorrectness.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 23 Political Correctness Night at LeLacheur Park. Returning for a second season, the Spinners will take measures to make sure nobodyincluding the playersleaves the ballpark offended. Players committing an error will not be identified for fear of hurting their feelings, and gender-neutral terms will be used to refer to the players, for example first baseperson instead of first baseman. Along the same lines, there will be no bat boy, but instead a bat person. Additionally the Spinners will make every effort to not demean anyone, referring to the shortstop as the vertically-challenged stop. In addition, bases will not be identified as first, second, or third, and will be treated equally without numerical ranking, the foul lines will be identified as fair lines and instead of having one fan of the game, every fan will be recognized as Fan of the Game. Finally, trophies will be handed out to each participant in between-innings promotions, which will be evenly matched for Title IX purposes, because there are no losers and everyone is a winner, where the contests will be evenly matched among genders for Title IX purposes. Lastly, the Spinners will be paying added attention to Going Green on Political Correctness night, encouraging fans to recycle and promoting carpooling and public transportation to the game, as well as a salute to Hybrids. For the July 23 game the first 250 fans, male or female, in attendance will receive Lowell Spinners potholders. Conversely, the following evening, only the first 250 females will receive the potholder.
THURSDAY, JULY 24 Political Incorrectness Night at LeLacheur Park. One night after paying homage to the overly sensitive nature of being politically correct, the Spinners will go incorrect for the night. In addition to publicly identifying those players who commit errors, the Spinners will for one night create Men Only entrances to the ballpark and allowing only men to participate in the between-innings promotions. Furthermore, the first 250 women in attendance will receive pink Lowell Spinners potholders to use in kitchen while preparing dinner for their husbands. As a result, only females will take orders at the two main concession stands.The Spinners are also happy to provide napping areas for any senior citizens who feel the need to rest their eyes during the game. Cot stations will be set up on the concourse, available to any fans over the age of 60. The Spinners will continue their salute to the incorrect, offering complimentary gas cards to fans to encourage them to use as much gas as possible, including encouraging families to drive to the game separately. A tribute to gas guzzlers will include needlessly driving vehicles during each between-inning break.
Unlike Obama, I would not speak to anyone as a fellow citizen of the world, but only as an ordinary American who wishes to do his best for the world, but with a much-appreciated American identity, and rather less with a commonality indistinguishable from those poor souls trapped in the Sudan, North Korea, Cuba, or Iran. Take away all particular national identity and we are empty shells mouthing mere platitudes, who believe in little and commit to even less. In this regard, postmodern, post-national Europe is not quite the ideal, but a warning of how good intentions can run amuck. Ask the dead of Srebrenica, or the ostracized Danish cartoonists, or the archbishop of Canterbury with his supposed concern for transcendent universal human rights.
With all due respect, I also don't believe the world did anything to save Berlin, just as it did nothing to save the Rwandans or the Iraqis under Saddam or will do anything for those of Darfur; it was only the U.S. Air Force that risked war to feed the helpless of Berlin as it saved the Muslims of the Balkans. And I don't think we have much to do in America with creating a world in which famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands. Bad, often evil, autocratic governments abroad cause hunger, often despite rich natural landscapes; and nature, in tragic fashion, not the carbon we send into atmosphere, causes terrible storms, just as it has and will for millennia. . . .
Go read it all.
Posted by: Mike ||
07/25/2008
12:39 ||
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empty shells mouthing mere platitudes, who believe in little and commit to even less
#2
it was only the U.S. Air Force that risked war to feed the helpless of Berlin
Just for the record, the RAF flew 541,000 tons of supplies into Berlin during the Airlift. An outstanding effort that included the loss of British aircraft and crews.
A total of 101 fatalities were recorded as a result of the operation, including 39 Britons and 31 Americans, mostly due to crashes. Seventeen American and eight British aircraft crashed during the operation.
#3
We should never take anything away from the Brits' efforts in the late unpleasantness(es).
However, the Berlin Airlift could not have gone forward without the US' big stick. Germany was a mess, the Brits had exhausted their stock of young men and their equipment was getting worn out.
France....
We not only did a huge amount of hauling, we covered the operation by making sure the Sovs didn't just stop it. IOW, we risked war.
VDH is right in the larger sense, and may or may not have been talking about the hauling particularly. If he was, he was remiss.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
07/25/2008 15:43
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Concur for the most part, RA, except that without the 25% carrying capacity the Brits contributed to the Airlift, the mission would have failed.
What triggered my first post was the use of the word "only".
#5
VDH has never had a problem with integrating Islamic culture with Western Civilization. He is villian 1 in nation building lunacy. If we had tossed nukes instead of dollars after 9-11, where would we be?
#7
Pappy, Right on the money. It is not, despite what some would say, to viciously and maliciously squander the lives of civilians even those of our enemies. Yes, some will continue to point to Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Iraq, and they will all still continue to be wrong in their assessments.
In each case, the actions ostensibly targeting civilian populations was done to reduce the military capacity of that civilian population to continue to support their military's activities then and in the future. The actions were not taken without protest in many quarters of our own military establishments and were not taken without approval, and much handwringing, by the President and the Joint Chiefs.
Nuking Afghanistan would have had repercussions in Pakistan (already dangerous and in possession of nukes of its own), Russian, and India, not to mention Iran and a few other 'stans to the north. Russia has nukes capable of reaching this country. Afghanistan's civilian population was repressed and oppressed by the Taliban. Nuking hundreds of thousands of people and irradiating tens of millions of others simply to take out a handful of terrorists is simply unconscionable to moral people and could constitute one of the few actions under which a serviceman or woman can legally refuse the orders of a superior when other options are available and have been shown to have worked.
There are people out there, like Mad Eye, who simply cannot believe that there are moral people in America and in our military organizations. Mad Eye may believe that we're all gun-totin' cowboys just chomping at the bit to loose our nukes against everyone in sight. He might actually enjoy it should that ever happen as he'd be able to sit back and laugh and say "Look, I told you so!" until the fallout reaches his part of the world.
#12
Our Canadian neighbors have, for the most part, given us a lot of help in the WoT notwithstanding the occasional drivel that comes from the mouths of their government and media. I've heard nothing but good reports regarding the performance of the Canadian armed forces.
#13
ION RIAN/TOPIX > RUSSIA COULD BASE LR STRATEGIC BOMBERS IN LATIN AMERICA, NORTH AFRICA IN RESPONSE TO US MISSLE SHIELD. Cuba, Venezuela, + Algeria; + KOMMERSANT > Russ also plans to start construc of new FOURTH GENERATION MISSLE SUBS [Project 955 YURI's]???
The coldest summer ever? You might be looking at it, weather folks say. Must be caused by "Climate Change".
Is Al Gore in Anchorage right now?
Right now the so-called summer of '08 is on pace to produce the fewest days ever recorded in which the temperature in Anchorage managed to reach 65 degrees. That unhappy record was set in 1970, when we only made it to the 65-degree mark, which many Alaskans consider a nice temperature, 16 days out of 365.
This year, however -- with the summer more than half over -- there have been only seven 65-degree days so far. And that's with just a month of potential "balmy" days remaining and the forecast looking gloomy.
National Weather Service meteorologist Sam Albanese, a storm warning coordinator for Alaska, says the outlook is for Anchorage to remain cool and cloudy through the rest of July. "There's no real warm feature moving in," Albanese said. "And that's just been the pattern we've been stuck in for a couple weeks now."
In the Matanuska Valley on Wednesday snow dusted the Chugach. On the Kenai Peninsula, rain was raising Six-Mile River to flood levels and rafting trips had to be canceled.
So if the cold and drizzle are going to continue anyway, why not shoot for a record? The mark is well within reach, Albanese said: "It's probably going to go down as the summer with the least number of 65-degree days."
In terms of "coldest summer ever," however, a better measure might be the number of days Anchorage fails to even reach 60. There too, 2008 is a contender, having so far notched only 35 such days -- far below the summer-long average of 88.
Unless we get 10 more days of 60-degree or warmer temperatures, we're going to break the dismal 1971 record of only 46 such days, a possibility too awful to contemplate.
Still, according to a series of charts cobbled together Tuesday evening by a night-shift meteorologist in the weather service's Anchorage office, the current summer clearly has broken company with the record-setting warmth of recent years. Consider:
70-degree days. So far this summer there have been two. Usually there are 15. Last year there were 21. In 2004 there were 49.
75-degree days. So far this summer there've been zero. Usually there are four. It may be hard to remember, but last year there were 21. In 2004 there were 23.
So are all bets off on global warming? Hardly, scientists say. Climate change is a function of long-term trends, not single summers or individual hurricanes. Last year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that it's "unequivocal" the world is warming, considering how 11 of the warmest years on record have occurred in the past 13 years.
So what's going on in Alaska, which also posted a fairly frigid winter? Federal meteorologists trace a lot of the cool weather to ocean temperatures in the South Pacific. When the seas off the coast of Peru are 2 to 4 degrees cooler than normal, a La Nina weather pattern develops, which brings cooler-than- normal weather to Alaska.
For most of the past year, La Nina (the opposite of El Nino, in which warmer-than-normal ocean temperatures occur off Peru) has prevailed. But that's now beginning to change. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Web site, water temperatures in the eastern South Pacific began to warm this summer -- and the weather should eventually follow.
The current three-month outlook posted by the national Climate Prediction Center in Camp Springs, Md., calls for below-normal temperatures for the south coast of Alaska from August through October -- turning to above-normal temperatures from October through December.
#5
Are there still people who pretend to care about AGW? Over here (UK) the government finally realised that nobody believed a word of it, so they invented a couple of other scare stories instead: knife crime and childhood obesity. AGW is now buried next to flared trousers in the Remembrance Garden of Silly Ideas.
#6
come to think of it, Alaska Paul hasn't been posting much. Too frozen to type? We ask, you decide
/Commodore Frank
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/25/2008 19:26
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#7
I live at the 1700 ft level in the mountains north of Anchorage. Typical night time temps are 38F to 42F, and daytime temps are in the 50s to low 60s. Snow on the 5500 foot level in the mountains Wednesday. Some global warming, heh.
Posted by: Alaska Paul with his Parka on ||
07/25/2008 20:16
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#8
Rumors of my demise by extreme hypothermia are greatly exaggerated......
Posted by: Alaska Paul with his Parka on ||
07/25/2008 20:18
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#9
It has been colder than usual here. And drier too. Some global warming.
Heeheehee heeheehee. Watch this, Beavis...
A Sandy man took offense to a motorist, who, after getting him to roll down his window, asked, "Excuse me, sir, do you have any Grey Poupon?" Heeheehee heeheehee... After hearing the request for Dijon mustard, the 22-year-old driver pulled a black handgun from his glove compartment, cocked the weapon and pointed it at the three people in the other car. "Here's your Grey Poupon, roll your [expletive] windows up," he responded. Oooookay. I guess you don't... Peasant ...
The confrontation happened June 18 at the intersection of 900 East and Winchester Street (6500 South) in Murray, court documents state. One of the three people in the car wrote down the SUV's license plate number. Murray police later located the man, who admitted to an officer that he pulled out the gun, racked the slide and threaten the other car. He was charged Tuesday with aggravated assault, a third-degree felony. Believe it or not, officer, that was the third time that day some punk kid pulled that shit on me. Swear to god...
I'll bet they wish they could slam her...
KUALA LUMPUR - THE youth wing of Malaysia's opposition Islamic party on Thursday slammed an upcoming concert by an Indonesian songstress, saying her hip-swivelling dance moves were 'too sexy and immoral.' Do you wish our heads to EXPLODE!
Mr Kamaruzaman Mohamad, Kuala Lumpur PAS youth chief said party workers would distribute about 20,000 pamphlets to discourage youths from watching Inul Darastita's concert on Sunday at the Bukit Jalil sports stadium south of the city. 'This concert not only promotes un-Islamic values, it is also a very immoral showmanship and even non-Muslims would agree with me,' he said. Ummmmmmmm...why, no.
'Just watch her videos on YouTube website and you will see what I mean. It is too sexy, erotic even and not suitable for Malaysians,' he said. ...and I have them all. And they are even more disgusting everytime I watch them.
PAS youth has in the past opposed performances by Gwen Stefani and Beyonce in Malaysia, saying they promoted a 'very, very immoral' culture among youngsters. 'We are experiencing a moral decay in society so we should work to promote a cleaner culture, not one that is sinful." I mean, look at these videos! Look at them! I will play them again so you can get a good look!
'We are not denying public rights to have a concert but please, Indonesia has a host of very good, classy artists so why can't they bring them instead?' Mr Kamaruzaman said. Songstress Inul is well known for her 'dangdut' song and hip-swivelling dance routines which she performs in form-fitting, sexy attire. FILTHY INFIDEL TEMPTRESS!
Last week her concert in southern Johor state was cancelled by the state government, with no reasons given. Inul reportedly fainted in distress upon hearing the news, reports said. Quick! The salts!
PAS, which rules the northern state of Kelantan, has had ambitions of turning mainly-Muslim Malaysia into a theocratic state under Islamic rule. But in recent years it has begun introducing reforms designed to tone down its hardline reputation and woo young voters. You'll love living in a bag and reading the Koran for fun...
Three ballistic missile crew members in North Dakota fell asleep while holding classified launch code devices this month, triggering an investigation by military and National Security Agency experts, the Air Force said Thursday.
The probe found that the missile launch codes were outdated and remained secure at all times. But the July 12 incident comes on the heels of a series of missteps by the Air Force that had already put the service under intense scrutiny.
Is the USAF strategic side of things falling apart due to crap leadership? This on top of failed nuclear security earlier, and their stupidity and intransigence in the UAV area spells big trouble - no wonder they sacked a lot of AF leadersip a while back. Bring Back SAC! (and SAC standards). Or maybe its time to put the USAF back under the Army again.
Maybe they ought to forbit flag rank promotions to any combat aircraft pilot (except A-10s) for the next 6 years, and fill the flag ranks from the intelligence, support, missile and transport people.
#2
According to my dad, who served in the 68th Strategic Missile Squadron back in the 70's, falling asleep was a court martial offense, an extremely serious one. I'm curious if standards have fallen so much that this won't merit that?
#4
The AF hasn't accorded the nuclear mission much respect since the creation of Air Combat Command by Merrill McPeak in 1992. Fighter pilots never really understood nukes, treating bomber pilots with condescension and missile guys with contempt. Things have gone steadily downhill since. I, for one, am happy to see the white scarf crowd rendered obsolete by UAVs. Given the current AF leadership, the only way to get control of the nuke situation is to take it away from ACC and, possibly, from the AF.
#8
I guess it's comforting to know that the chances of nuclear war are so slim that the guys charged with being prepared for it are bored out of their skulls.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
07/25/2008 15:37
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#9
Lemay would have these guys for dinner.
In the early sixties, when LeMay was head of the Air Force, there were a couple back-to-back incidences where USAF planes strayed across the German border into Communist territory. LeMay flew to Germany to inform the USAFE commander that if another such violation occured that he had better be on the plane. That put a stop to that.
#10
My first guess would be young people, post-Cold War complacency, 'Net Generation, and too many coffee refills - in certain individuals, once the caffeine levels are high enuff, can make one feel suddenly sleepy as opposed to staying awake. I DO AGREE, HOWEVER, YOUNG OR OLD, COLD WAR OR NO COLD WAR, LEMAY WOULD SKIN THEIR BUTTS.
#11
Hard to imagine how low fucked you'd feel if Curtis Lemay waz about the rip you a new one.
I go back JUST far enough to have served with men who served in LeMay's SAC and who had been on the recieving end of his ire. One thing I remember about their stories is that however funny they may have been, no one EVER laughed about it. SAC's attitude - right up to the end - was that failure to meet standards was total, complete, and utter failure in everything. It is a sad commentary on the modern USAF that they simply threw away the most demanding and successful standards in US military history (IMHO the USN's nuclear power standards coming in a VERY close second)solely because of an attitude problem.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
07/25/2008 20:00
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#12
All this stuff about LeMay reminds me of a serious ass-chewing Ned Almond gave an Army tank group captain during a Chicom offensive in Korea. The Army guys had been retreating in the face of overwhelming force when Almond, in a jeep, drove up and stopped them. He proceeded to rip the guy in charge a new one and told him in no uncertain terms to get his tanks turned around and go kick some enemy ass RIGHT NOW. Almond then jumped back in the jeep and headed parallel to the line to go "inspire" some other retreating soldiers.
When Almond had gone, the second-in-command of the tank force asked the OIC what he was going to do since heading back to the fight was almost certain death. The OIC said, "Didn't you hear the man? Hell, we've got no choice but to go back. At least we can use our guns against those guys!"
#1
there is no possibility of negotiation on the issue of Iran's enrichment of uranium
They have said this from day one.
They have never deviated from this position.
Why are we still negotiating with them if they have no intention of cooperation?
Time to remind the world why you don't screw with the U.S.
#2
Duh! The Bush administration has set an agenda for direct talks with Iran. Bush - like Carter - has a fanatic belief in religious based pseudo peace in the Middle East. Next year, he will be nothing but a bad memory (with Board status with every company dealing with Saudi Arabia).
#4
ION WAFF.com > XINHUANET - RUSSIA BEGINS CONSTRUCTION OF AIRCRAFT CARRIERS. Construx signals new Russ effort to modernize Navy + improve Russ National-Geopol credibility - desires 5-6 Carriers ["Mine" CV = ASW?, + STOBAR] for Pacific + Northern Fleets.
July 25, 2008: The success of the surge offensive resulted in an intelligence windfall. Documents and prisoner interrogations (as well as identifying the dead) provided a lot more information on hostile Sunni and Shia groups, as well as interesting observations about the factions currently controlling the government. All this clarified and confirmed the very factious nature of Iraqi society. Seems anybody with a quick mouth and a lot of guns can form their own little army. This factionalism is accompanied by a self-righteousness that seems to justify a wide range of bad behavior. This includes corruption, but also murder, torture, rape, theft and a long list of exotic crimes. The religious factions invoke God a lot, but the more sectarian groups make a big deal about protecting the family or tribe. Not a lot of loyalty to Iraq, or the concept of nationwide law and justice. Iraqis will make a lot of noise about being Iraqi, but the real loyalty begins closer to home, family, tribe or mosque.
Some Iraqis are still loyal to a foreign power. The largest group are those who follow senior Shia clerics and scholars in Iran. These guys believe in the Iranian concept of a world-wide Islamic dictatorship, run by clerics of the Shia persuasion. Al Qaeda, or what's left of it in Iraq, has the same idea, only the leadership would be from the mainstream Sunni form of Islam. There are even some socialists and communists left (Saddam's thugs hunted them for sport), who yearn for their own form of international dictatorship.
Seems like most Iraqis either want someone to tell them what to do, or want to be the guy issuing the orders and death sentences. A really rough neighborhood. And it's getting worse partly because of all the training American instructors have been giving to the new Iraqi army and police force. There are still plenty of incompetent commanders and troops, but about a third of the units are pretty good, The trouble is that most army or police units are led by officers who are loyal to one faction or another. The troops tend to share the loyalties of their officers. Iraq, like most of the Middle East, is a culture of Factions.
The intelligence bonanza has made it more clear what the relationship between Iran and various Iraqi factions (both Shia and Sunni, and even Kurdish) has been. Other captured data has made it easier to shut down the arms smuggling from Iran. But it has also revealed many long term relationships between some Iraqi politicians, and leaders of the clerical dictatorship that runs Iran. This sort of thing worries the Sunni Arab states to the south.
While Sunni parties have rejoined the government, Kurdish legislators are now jamming things up over Kirkuk. This city was, for centuries, a Kurdish place (by population and culture). But in the 1990s, Saddam Hussein began driving Kurds out and giving Sunni Arabs (from the south) their property. After 2003, Kurds began returning, seeking to get their homes, farms and businesses back. Some Sunni Arabs fled, but others joined with al Qaeda to fight. The fighting continues, and the Kurds are insisting that parliament pass a provincial voting law that will favor Kurds regaining political power in and around Kirkuk. Although political compromise is a new concept in Iraq, the issue of who "owns" Kirkuk has proved to be a very contentious one, and is holding up provincial elections (which were to be in October, but now look more likely in December, or even later).
The Shia militias, all under some degree of influence from Iran, have basically decided to accept a truce. Everyone wants to see if a power (and oil revenue) sharing deal can be negotiated without resorting to a civil war. Such a conflict would bring in outsiders (Iranians, Saudis, Syrians, Americans), and would mainly destroy Iraqi property.
The offensive against al Qaeda and the remaining Sunni Arab terrorists continues. For many Iraqi troops involved, this has become a training exercise with real bullets. The Sunni terrorists are outnumbered, out-thought and outfought. Many more are surrendering and accepting amnesty. Continuing police corruption is ruining this reconciliation opportunity. But corruption and factionalism are the twin curses that really make Iraq such a hellhole. It's long been ignored by the rest of the world. But with the religious fanaticism, and all the oil money, these local problems become international ones. The Middle Eastern miasma is not going away by itself
#2
"Seems like most Iraqis either want someone to tell them what to do, or want to be the guy issuing the orders and death sentences."
Submission and blood. Sounds as much like the prophet (peas be upon him) as the Crips and Bloods.
#3
We're stuck with the results of the Saddamite oppression, when the various groups took help from wherever they could find it. In another decade those ties may well matter not at all, politicians being for the most part faithless creatures.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/25/2008 18:17
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#7
I find this article filled with what I believe to be simplistic half-truths. Yes, to some extent there is a culture of "following the leader" and it is going to take two or three generations to change that. Things like that are impossible to change by decree or training.
Americans just seem to have no sense that some things take longer than an election cycle to fix and when it comes to core behaviors and basically, reflexive responses to things, you need to have a population that was raised in the new reality, not one simply exposed to it.
The generation children now in Iraq will make a completely different reality when they take the reigns of power ... in 40 years time.
MOSUL, IRAQ: The Battle for Mosul over the past several years has worked as a microcosm for the larger Iraqi conflict, with Coalition and Iraqi forces successfully imposing their will only after al Qaeda and other insurgent groups held large parts of the city and region for long periods. Control over the city of 1.9 million people and the surrounding Ninewa province has been lost to Coalition and government forces twice since 2003. A successful security operation in May brought attacks to their lowest recorded levels since the conflict began.
Operation Lions Roar in May involved 5,000 Coalition forces and 55,000 Iraqi Police and Army members and cut insurgent attacks in the city to less than one a day over the next two months. The tactics used to defeat the insurgents were similar to successes in other parts of the country: joint operation with improving Iraqi forces, a focus on intelligence gathering, and economic reconstruction to create jobs to lower a national unemployment rate of 25-40 percent, which is higher in rural areas.
The fight in the North is still on-going. Its a balanced fight, pursuing insurgent on the one hand and doing reconstruction and supporting Iraqi government activities, said Major General Mark Hertling, commander of Multinational Division North and the US 1st Armored Division in an interview on July 22. When you talk about the growth of security, you have to mention that the government is getting stronger.
Mosuls central position, bisected by the Tigris River and the historic crossroads between Syria, Turkey and the rest of Iraq, made it a critical hub for the Sunni insurgency. Al Qaedas facilitators used the citys western Sunni-dominated neighborhoods as a center for funding, insurgent traffic and safe houses after the US-led Coalition toppled Saddam Husseins government in April 2003.
Mosul was overthrown by US Special Forces and Kurdish Peshmerga militia units on April 11, 2003, and operations were taken over by then Major General David Petraeus in late May with the 101st Airborne Division. Through the summer and fall Petraeus implemented many of the counter-insurgency techniques he would later use across Iraq, setting up a local government, rehiring police personnel, rebuilding roads and organizing reconstruction projects.
By January 2004, the 101st left and was replaced by a unit half its size, allowing ethnic tensions between Sunni and Kurdish Iraqis to grow and security to be undermined. In November, several hundred insurgents attacked police stations around the city, prompting almost all of the citys 5,000 police officers to abandon their posts.
Three battalions of the US 25th Infantry, along with several thousand Kurdish militia later retook parts of the city, but a two-year stalemate ensued with the Kurdish force, re-flagged the 2nd Iraqi Army Division, dominating the east bank of the Tigris River, while Sunni insurgents controlled the western side of the city, maintaining a travel corridor for foreign fighters traveling from Syria to safe havens throughout the country.
The security problem was a political problem, said Ahmed Mohammed Khalif al Jibouri, the police chief of Ninewa province from December 2004 to October 2005. Tensions between Kurdish political parties and the Sunni population in Mosul caused civil order to collapse, he said. They destroyed the police stations and left Mosul without a government for two months.
Khalif al Jibouri reconstituted the provinces police and, although terrorist activities decreased through the year, he was fired in October after losing support within the Kurdish-dominated provincial assembly. Insecurity again returned to Mosul, while the February 2006 mosque bombing in Samarra, north of Baghdad, pushed the country to the brink of a civil war, threatening a wholesale withdraw of US forces from the region.
In 2007, Petraeus returned to Iraq with his surge doctrine that increased Coalition combat forces and built tens of dozens of company-sized combat outposts, creating a permanent security presence in neighborhoods and a tactical template to be used by Iraqi forces if the Coalition began to downsize.
In additional, the formation of Sons of Iraq, an armed neighborhood-watch program that now includes 2,700 members in rural areas to the south of Mosul, denied insurgency safe havens to terrorists that had used them in past years.
You can attribute a lot of our success from Sons of Iraq, said Major Oscar Diano, intelligence officer for the 3rd Armored Calvary Regiments 1st Squadron located at Q-West, about 60 kilometers south of Mosul, where IED attacks have fallen by 90 percent since January. They took responsibility for security in their area.
The success of Lions Roar, when troops shutdown Mosul for 72 hours, had its start in January, with an increase in manpower through the arrival of the US 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and the creation of the Ninewa Operations Command, allowing the coordination of Iraqi Army, Iraqi Police, Border Patrol and Iraqi Special Operations troops with Coalition forces.
The national government of Nouri al Maliki also appointed Lieutenant General Riyadh Jalal Tawfiq, a Sunni with roots in Mosul, to lead the Ninewa Operations Command, boosting the potential for cooperation between the predominately Kurdish-led Iraqi Army Divisions and the Sunni-dominated local police forces, the US Army said.
In the first two months of 2008, Iraqi and Coalition forces captured or killed 142 al Qaeda in Iraq insurgents. Hertling said US strategy in Mosul would be similar to the strategy in Baghdad, with the expansion of command outposts in neighborhoods in order to sustain 24-hour-a-day security. By March, the Coalition had built 20 command outposts in Mosul and, on May 10, the lockdown began.
US M-1 Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles circled the city, freezing insurgent reinforcements from reaching Mosul while Iraqi Army and police set up an inner circle of security checkpoints, trapping the enemy within neighborhoods for days.
The operation captured more than 1,000 insurgents, 12 tons of home explosives, 500 mortars and artillery rounds that could be used in Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), 84 rocket propelled grenades, and 221 IEDs.
One of the key leaders captured at the time, Abu Nas, said forces discovered more than 70 percent of the arms caches he personally knew of, suggesting Iraqi intelligence has deeply penetrated the insurgency.
The insurgency is no big deal now, its our duty, so we wont stop fighting it, said Brigadier General Noor Aldeen, commander of the 2nd Iraqi Divisions 8th Brigade. But the bottom line is we are free. It is only outsiders to Mosul that are the problem.
Attacks are expected to increase with the run-up to regional elections, which were originally scheduled for October. Sunnis, who make up more than 60 percent of the regions population, boycotted the last regional election in 2005, leaving them with a meager two seats out of 41 in the regional assembly.
Registration rates in the Ninewa province were the highest in the country during the first week of the 30-day registration, which ends Aug. 15, leaving open the possibility that a more politically engaged Sunni population turning completely against terrorism, said Lieutenant Colonel Robert Molinari, head of operations for the 3rd Armored Calvary Regiment in Mosul.
Our solution for Iraq will become obvious with the regional elections, Molinari said. If you can get a representative government that is interested in getting essential services, then the terrorist will not have a leg to stand on.
The July 23 veto of voting legislation by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani could delay regional elections for several months. Talabani, who is Kurdish, rejected the law after it passed with less than 50 percent of parliament members present. The dispute is over the makeup of a provincial council in Kirkuk, the northern city which sits on some of Iraqs largest oil reserves and is contested by both Arabs and Kurds.
CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Friday that any U.S. troop withdrawal would have to satisfy both parties and protect Iraq's sovereignty.
Maliki, who earlier this month suggested that a timetable may be set for the departure of U.S. troops, would not be drawn on any specific dates when asked by reporters after meeting Pope Benedict at the Pontiff's summer residence.
"There is a dialogue between us and the multinational forces, and we hope that we can reach results that satisfy both parties and protect the achievements made in Iraq and protect the sovereignty of Iraq," Maliki said.
U.S. troop levels are a key battleground in November's U.S. presidential election and Democratic contender Barack Obama has pledged to remove U.S. troops within 16 months of taking office should he win the election.
#1
It seems the original statement trumpeted by our journalistic elites was a mis-translation... in fact it took a third translation to get it right. Apparently Prime Minister Maliki's original statement was pretty much what he said in this one.
Americans should be outraged at the latest sweetheart deal in Washington. Congress will put U.S. taxpayers on the hook for potentially hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It's a tribute to what these two institutions which most Americans have never heard of have bought with more than $170-million worth of lobbyists in the past decade.
With combined obligations of roughly $5-trillion, the rapid failure of Fannie and Freddie would be a threat to mortgage markets and financial markets as a whole. Because of that threat, I support taking the unfortunate but necessary steps needed to keep the financial troubles at these two companies from further squeezing American families. But let us not forget that the threat that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to financial markets is a tribute to crony capitalism that reflects the power of the Washington establishment.
What should be done? We are stuck with the reality that they have grown so large that we must support Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac through the current rough spell. But if a dime of taxpayer money ends up being directly invested, the management and the board should immediately be replaced, multimillion dollar salaries should be cut, and bonuses and other compensation should be eliminated. They should cease all lobbying activities and drop all payments to outside lobbyists. And taxpayers should be first in line for any repayments.
Even with those terms, sticking Main Street Americans with Wall Street's bill is a shame on Washington. If elected, I'll continue my crusade for the right reform of the institutions: making them go away. I will get real regulation that limits their ability to borrow, shrinks their size until they are no longer a threat to our economy, and privatizes and eliminates their links to the government.
It's time to get America on the right track by creating the jobs that will build a strong foundation under our housing markets. We need to address the high cost of gasoline and other energy sources, and transform health care to be cheaper, higher quality and built around the needs of patients. But most of all, we need to reform Washington and wrest control from the special interests that have created this problem.
#2
This is good election campaign fodder but it's not really correct. We as a nation decided that we wanted people to own homes rather than rent. I think that has been good for us, too, as it has helped us be a more conservative nation.
Fannie and Freddie have generally been willing to lend to slightly more questionable purchasers than completely private companies because they have operated with an implied U.S. Government promise of financial backing. They were implementing the overall consensus about homeownership as a beneficial thing, and I see nothing wrong with that.
Where it went wrong was that they followed the commercial lenders down the path of business expansion through making loans to unqualified customers. Fannie and Freddie were never as bad as some were, most of whom have gone bankrupt, but they were worse than they should have been. They'll be punished for it.
However, the loans on their books that will not eventually be made good in one way or another are a very small number. It is much less than the 2% that are claimed to be in trouble. The likelihood of the taxpayer eating the $25 billion that one reputable source said might be the worst-case scenario cost is very slim.
The situation needs some attention, granted, but it's not the major crisis it's being portrayed as. See Thomas Sowell's two articles on "Bankrupt Exploiters" that were published this week.
The U.S. Senate soon could be debating whether you, your spouse and each of your children -- as well as your in-laws, parents, grandparents, neighbors and everyone else in America -- each will be spending $2,500 or more to reduce poverty around the world.
The plan sponsored by Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for the office of president, is estimated to cost the United States some $845 billion over the coming few years in an effort to raise the standard of living around the globe. S.2433 already has been approved in one form by the U.S. House of Representatives, and now has been placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar for pending debate.
WND previously has reported the proposal demands the president develop "and implement" a policy to "cut extreme global poverty in half by 2015 through aid, trade, debt relief" and other programs.
Cliff Kincaid at Accuracy in Media has published a critique asserting that while the Global Poverty Act sounds nice, the adoption could "result in the imposition of a global tax on the United States" and would make levels "of U.S. foreign aid spending subservient to the dictates of the United Nations." He said the legislation, if approved, dedicates 0.7 percent of the U.S. gross national product to foreign aid, which over 13 years he said would amount to $845 billion "over and above what the U.S. already spends."
The plan passed the House in 2007 "because most members didn't realize what was in it," Kincaid reported. "Congressional sponsors have been careful not to calculate the amount of foreign aid spending that it would require."
A recent statement from Obama's office noted the support offered by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "With billions of people living on just dollars a day around the world, global poverty remains one of the greatest challenges and tragedies the international community faces," Obama said. "It must be a priority of American foreign policy to commit to eliminating extreme poverty and ensuring every child has food, shelter, and clean drinking water. As we strive to rebuild America's standing in the world, this important bill will demonstrate our promise and commitment to those in the developing world.
"Our commitment to the global economy must extend beyond trade agreements that are more about increasing profits than about helping workers and small farmers everywhere," he continued.
Obama has continued to lobby for such massive expenditures on his campaign stops. During an address as recently as last week, he said, "I'll double our foreign assistance to $50 billion by 2012, and use it to support a stable future in failing states, and sustainable growth in Africa; to halve global poverty and to roll back disease."
Beck and Kincaid pointed out that the plan not only commits the U.S. to the anti-poverty spending proposal, it also adopts for the U.S. the United Nations Millennium Development Goal, which includes a variety treaties and protocols advocated by the U.N.
Objections have remained strong. On a posting also available at the All American blogger, a commentator warned that the U.S. has yet to be able to win its own war on poverty.
"On January 8, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson declared "all-out war on human poverty and unemployment in these United States." This "all-out war" would last through the presidencies of Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush. We have spent billions of dollars fighting this war, and what have we achieved?"
He continued, "Very little. In 1964, there were 36 million Americans living in poverty, or about 19 percent of the population. In the 40 years between 1964 and 2004: ... poverty never measured less than 11 percent of the population. In 1983, under President Reagan, poverty registered 15.2 percent; in 1993, at the beginning of Bill Clinton's presidency, poverty was measured at 13.7 percent of the population. In 2004, under George W. Bush, a president often accused by the political Left as not caring about the poor, the poverty rate declined to 12.7 percent. Still, some 37 million Americans remain poor."
Despite that performance, "Obama is ready to take the fight global," said commentator Duane Lester. "In addition to seeking to eradicate poverty, that declaration commits nations to banning 'small arms and light weapons' and ratifying a series of treaties, including the International Criminal Court Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol (global warming treaty), the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child," he wrote.
Tom DeWeese at NewsWithViews said the plan "is very telling" about what Obama would do as president. DeWeese, president of the American Policy Center, warned the over-arching plan includes the ideals of consolidating all international agencies under the U.N., regulation by the U.N. of all corporate environmental issues, license fees charged by the U.N. to use air, water and natural resources, a restructuring that would give hand-picked non-governmental organizations huge influence, authorize a standing U.N. army and require registration of all arms.
#3
This guy, along with a bunch of others need to have an accident. The Call to Arms point is getting closer and closer.
Posted by: Grease Dark Lord of the Algonquins9226 ||
07/25/2008 10:16
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#4
I say if we're going to dig everybody's hole $2500 deeper, then we might as well get something for it. I say use it to take out the remainder of the countries on the planet who are just a thorn in everyone else's side.
#6
Why does the U.S. have to bankroll the entire world?
Norway, Sweeden, Belgium, CHINA, Russia, Australia, and a host of other countries all have plenty of bank too. So why does this ballsack want to soak us and nobody else? Divide it between 10 countries and ding us for $250 apiece. Americans dont mind helping people, we never have minded, but we don't like getting hustled either.
#7
Considering the UN administered Oil-for-Bribes program, its a UN bureaucrat's lotto. Nothing more, nothing less. It's the Chicago way, of buying votes of the elite.
#8
The point is not to do anything about poverty but to feel good about ourselves whatever the cost. Pouring money into places without free markets or the rule of law is such an obvious, glaring waste of resources it can't have anything to do with economics. The explanation lies in psychology, particularly the minds of over privileged elites who have no clue as to how their privileges arose or what keeps them afloat. It is balm for the conscience of the ignorant.
Posted by: Baba Tutu ||
07/25/2008 13:11
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#9
Nawlens has proved that pouring money into any place willing to sit back and accept largess without any effort is a waste of $. Screw them all.
#10
Well I think the point here is that this is taking charity from a voluntary thing to a govt. mandated asset grab. And eventually to a UN mandated grab on American citizens' money. Once they get their hooks into us they will bleed us dry. Americans have always dug deep and given big to the rest of the world, without being forced to give by law. This should be snuffed out immediately and without the slightest ambiguity. We are rapidly approaching the need for another whiskey rebellion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion
#11
Foreign aid has generally polled as one of the least popular programs. Nevertheless, Transi and most StateDept apparachniks have been successful over the past decades in increasing this item.
It will be more difficult for them in the next administration. There is now plenty of academic research which correlates foreign aid with dictator longevity, plenty of documentation of foreign aid being stolen, being diverted to terrorist support, etc.
A future president Obama would have a tough fight on his hands to drastically increase foreign aid even with a democratic majority in both houses.
If the McCain people are smart, they'll let Obama make this a centerpiece of his campaign and then hammer him on it.
#12
$2,500? $250? I wouldn't give these dopes $.25. Here's a news flash to the rest of the world - get off your own asses, raise the children you were grown up enough to produce, fix your govt's and quit asking us for handouts. Oh, and fuck you to Obama.
#13
I think it depends on the country, the UN is not the intermediary you want handling it regardless. But there are people in this world that are grateful and hardworking, and don't chant Death to America in the streets. They just have a shitty govt. or economy and need an extra bump to get them started. I have no probs at all with giving to people like that. Ukraine is a good example I think. Israel is another. Columbia is starting to look that way, still some probs with corruption there, but they are working hard to turn it around. So I think the UN is out, but there are a few countries that can do good for themselves with a little help.
#15
If it's our money, yet we have no say in what is done with it, how close is this to "taxation without representation"?
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
07/25/2008 18:15
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#16
We've already paid through the nose for their benefit due to globalization and increased immigration. Just think how much better off this country would be if we had never had the post-1965 immigration reforms. Population would be down, gas demand would be down, societal cohesiveness would be up, budgets would be in better shape...the list is endless. The rest of the world brought a lot of its garbage to us and dumped it. Thanks for nothing. Screw them and the horse they rode in on.
I've already said that if Obama gets in two things will rise exponentially: taxes and the number of anti-black racists. I was wrong: it's three things: taxes, anti-black racists, and tax cheats.
#17
ION REDDIT/FREEREPUBLIC > SCIENTISTS: MORE GLOBAL WARMING WILL RESULT IN LESS/FEWER WEATHER STORMS. IOW, More SOLAR HEAT will overwhelm the Earth's natural mechanisms for producing storms; + REDDIT/RENSE > PERSONAL LAPTOPS CAN NOW BE CHECKED AND DOWNLOADED AT US BORDER CHECKPOINTS.
*BREAKING NEWS > MSM - POTUS Dubya has once again utterly failed to prevent TERROR ATTACKS BY THE SUN ON THE MOTHERLY OWG USA = USSA/USR.
D *** NG IT, MSM > JUST BECUZ WE DEMANDED DUBYA NOT ATTACK THE SUN DOESN'T MEAN HE HAD TO LISTEN TO US, THUSLY ITS DUBYA's FAULT FOR NOT UNDERSTANDING WHAT WE REALLY MEANT WHEN WE DIDN'T TELL HIM = DEMANDED HE DO THE OPPOSITE!
US actor Danny Glover, who plans an epic next year on Haitian independence hero Toussaint-Louverture, said he slaved to raise funds for the movie because financiers complained there were no white heroes. "Producers said 'It's a nice project, a great project... where are the white heroes?'" he told AFP during a stay in Paris this month for a seminar on film.
"I couldn't get the money here, I couldn't get the money in Britain. I went to everybody. You wouldn't believe the number of producers based in Europe, and in the States, that I went to," he said. "The first question you get, is 'Is it a black film?' All of them agree, it's not going to do good in Europe, it's not going to do good in Japan.
"Somebody has to prove that to be a lie!", he said. "Maybe I'll have the chance to prove it."
"Toussaint," Glover's first project as film director, is about Francois Dominique Toussaint Louverture (1743-1803), a former slave and one of the fathers of Haiti's independence from France in 1804, making it the first black nation to throw off imperial rule and become a republic. The uprising he led was bloodily put down in 1802 by 20,000 soldiers dispatched to the Caribbean by Napoleon Bonaparte, who then re-established slavery after its ban by the leaders of the French Revolution.
Due to be shot in Venezuela early next year, the film will star Don Cheadle, Mos Def, Wesley Snipes and Angela Bassett. "I wasn't the first one who had this idea," he said. "Sergey Eisenstein had the same idea, Anthony Quinn had this idea, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, and this goes on."
The "Lethal Weapon" co-star, just turned 62, finally raised 18 of the 30 million dollars needed from a Venezuelan cultural body set up in 2006 by his friend President Hugo Chavez to counter what he termed "the Hollywood film dictatorship".
Venezuelan filmmakers last year slammed the investment. "It is Mr Glover who should be bringing dollars to Venezuela," the National Association of Film Makers and the Venezuelan Chamber of Film Producers said in an open letter.
Glover, a longtime activist, has supported Chavez's political revolution since he was first elected in 1998. An admirer of the Senegalese writer-filmmaker known as the father of African cinema, Ousmane Sembene, Glover has helped produce African films, including the recently-acclaimed arthouse movie "Bamako" by Abderrahmane Sissako.
"The first African films that I saw were films that portrayed Africans as savages, ignorant and uncivilized, and I wanted to know something else," he said. "I was very fortunate, I had the chance to read writers like Mariama Ba, Aime Cesaire ... and Leopold Sedar Senghor. I read him when I was 20."
"When I saw Sidney Poitier on screen, I was probably 10 or 11," he added. "That was a different image, an image I had never seen before, on screen. The African-Americans I saw, they danced, they were buffoons, that was the image. So Sidney brought another image."
History, Glover said, had enabled him to play a wide range of roles because of the changes taking place in society. "I think cinema has played a great role in our re-imagining ourselves," he said. Hot on the heels of Clint Eastwood being attacked for not depicting blacks at Iwo Jima. Hollywood is obsessed with "rainbow diversity", not matter how nonsensical.
This movie will flop massively, since it will be a leftist polemic piece of shit.
Look at the red meat:
Due to be shot in Venezuela...
Sergey Eisenstein (communist supporter) Harry Belafonte (anti americal leftwing looney)
raised 18 of the 30 million dollars needed from a Venezuelan cultural body set up in 2006 by his friend President Hugo Chavez
I hope Danny is happy, because he will not get work again after throwing this much money down the crapper for whats bascially a left wing version of a Riefenstal pice.
Anyone else wonder why we need to get off foreign oil? SO Huge will not havemoeny to waste on leftist shit-heads like Glover.
#11
Hati's a basket case, and Glover's a lefty airhead, albiet one who is a pretty decent actor.
The story of Toussaint's uprising is an interesting bit of history that isn't well known. If the script sticks to reality, it could make for something worth watching.
Or, it could suck, for any of the reasons why movies suck--bad dirceting, bad acting, bad production values, a script that tries to filter events through Marx or postmodernism or the screenwriter's cocaine habit, or just isn't all that well written to start with. We won't know until we see it.
I do think it hilarious that our moral superiors in the compassionate Hollywood Left are refusing to finance the project because there aren't enough white people in it.
Posted by: Mike ||
07/25/2008 15:15
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#12
I do think it hilarious that our moral superiors in the compassionate Hollywood Left are refusing to finance the project because there aren't enough white people in it.
Mike, actually, we only have Danny's word that the Hollywood elite rejected it because it didn't have enough white people in it. They could have rejected it because they thought it sucked like a bilge pump.
Posted by: Rambler in California ||
07/25/2008 18:06
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#13
Haiti and the U.S., the first two independent nations in the Western Hemisphere. One overwhelmingly black, the other predominantly white. Haiti is known for what? Voodoo? Papa Doc? Can't think of anything else they're known for except unwanted refugees. "Born under a bad sign" indeed.
Just another example of the fact that anyplace there is a black government there are tremendous problems with the governance of that political entity. See Detroit as a U.S. example.
#15
OS, I value your insight, but please feel free to clarify how Detroit, under its succession of black mayors, meets your assessment as a cause of failure. Be careful, though. If you claim that Kilpatrick sees all blacks as his "clan/tribe," you are not only being politically incorrect, the infighting going on there about his actions among blacks themselves brings the validity of your observation into question.
We won't even start on the idea of how a Bama presidency might lead to greater anti-white racism and discrimination.
Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton said the United States should assist Israel in any strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. The ex-U.S. envoy in an op-ed in the July 15 Wall Street Journal said the United States must consider what assistance to extend to Israel before and after an airstrike.
We will be blamed for the strike anyway, and certainly feel whatever negative consequences result, so there is compelling logic to make it as successful as possible," wrote Bolton, who was known for his hawkish foreign policy views. "At a minimum, we should place no obstacles in Israel's path, and facilitate its efforts where we can."
Bolton said the efforts to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions through sanctions had failed, and even if they could still be enacted, the time for their effectiveness has passed. He also lashed out at presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama for advocating the threat of sanctions and incentives for changed behavior to divert Tehran from its present course.
Bolton had only a slightly milder appraisal of presumptive Republican nominee John McCain's approach, describing the Arizona senator's call for a workable missile defense system to protect the United States from the Iranian threat "only a component of a post-failure policy."
#2
I agree with Darth Vader's assessment of John Bolton. He makes tingly down my leg. Wouldn't it be great to run him in an electon for Supreme Great Leader of Gaia against His Worshipship, The Great Obama. Words of reason and power against BO's cotton candy words. If he were to win, then Gaia would return to being earth. How's that for a fantasy movie?
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
07/25/2008 10:59
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#3
We will be blamed for the strike anyway, and certainly feel whatever negative consequences result, so there is compelling logic to make it as successful as possible,"
This guys isn't your average govt. numbskull.
I think we should make use of the one guy in D.C. that can actually say what he thinks.
#5
FOX NEWS AM > seems IRAN has released new photos of its military strength = assets as per its Air Force [Iran F14's, MIG 29's]. HOWEVER, FOX > said Air Force photos may only be that of MODEL PLANES, NOT THE REAL THINGYS???
As for BOLTON being VEEP, REDDIT > specul still favors MCCAIN-GUILIANI versus OBAMA-CLINTON???
*FOX NEWS AM WAPO-WSJ Poll > MCCAIN leads ober Barack in majority of US + RED States, BUT BARACK IS AHEAD IN BIG BLUE STATES - OBAMA's lead as per BLUES is not SOLID OR DECISIVE???
IOW, IFF ELEX WERE HELD TODAY, BASED ON ABOVE POLL ONLY MCCAIN WOULD PROB STILL DEFEAT OBAMA.
#6
Bolton's got balls and brains. That's not a common combination in DC these days, and almost inconceivable anywhere near the UN (unless a NYC cop walks by). No wonder those UN eunuchs hated him.
#7
See also WAFF.com > BOLTON - THE DECLINE THAT NEVER WAS. Why the "Declinist View" of America is wrong - America will as a Concept will continue to endure, prevail, succeed and expand, as long as it adheres to its founding beliefs and above all is willing to undertake SUBJECTIVE RISKS ON ITS OWN BEHALF, NOT PRE-GUARANTEES.
Compare wid REDDIT > TELEGRAPH.UK > DOCTORS: UK SHOULD LIMIT FAMILIES TO TWO CHILDREN PER FAMILY TO HELP COMBAT AGZ GLOBAL WARMING.
D *** NG IT, IIRC/IICC TELEGRAPH ARICLE > EVEN "UNPLANNED" TEENAGE PREGNANCIES MUST IN FUTURE BE "PLANNED" TEENAGE PREGNANCIES?, + FUTURE HUMAN GENERS MUST WEAR GREENHOUSE GASES-CAPTURING PERSONAL DEVICES AS THEY WILL BE RELEASING MORE GG THAN THEIR PREDECESSORS???
You just knew those COWS wid GG THINGYS STRAPPED ON THEIR BACKSIDES-ARSES WASN'T GOING TO END WELL FOR US HUMANS.
SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE NO. ????? > THE FARTS OF OUR DISCONTENT???
NBCs Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube get the skinny on the abrupt cancellation of Barack Obamas visit to Landstuhl and Ramstein yesterday. The campaign tried to excuse it by claiming that it wouldnt be appropriate to visit while on a campaign-funded portion of his trip, but that wasnt the real problem. When Obama found out he couldnt use the visit as a photo op, he canceled:
One military official who was working on the Obama visit said because political candidates are prohibited from using military installations as campaign backdrops, Obamas representatives were told, he could only bring two or three of his Senate staff member, no campaign officials or workers. In addition, Obama could not bring any media. Only military photographers would be permitted to record Obamas visit.
The official said We didnt know why the request to visit the wounded troops was withdrawn. He (Obama) was more than welcome. We were all ready for him.
In fact, those same rules applied for the CODEL trip to Iraq and Afghanistan. They serve to keep politicians from exploiting military facilities for political reasons, and to ensure that all visitors get treated fairly. Andrea Mitchell, also of NBC, complained of this very issue during the earlier visits with the troops when she told Chris Matthews that the media couldnt get access to Obama when visiting troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This makes the decision track very clear. Obama and his team set up the visits to military installations before going overseas. After seeing how the media got excluded in Iraq and Afghanistan, they decided it wasnt worth traveling to Ramstein and Landstuhl to visit the severely wounded troops because they couldnt bring the campaign and get the photo ops they wanted. Instead, Obama went shopping in Berlin.
As I wrote yesterday, thats certainly a revealing set of priorities for a man who wants to lead these troops as Commander in Chief.
#1
Obamessiah thinks he has the election locked up while he doesn't even have the nomination clinched. Many more dumb moves like this and he may go into the convention behind Big Mac.
This election will be close and uncallable on election day. And if he loses, Obamessiah will have no one to blame but himself...his wife, his pastor, his spiritual advisor...
#3
There is a big buzz out in the media these days. The MSM has their panties in a wad because Obamaramalamadingdong has not gain a "bump" in the polls from his "worlds longest drive by photo op"
I hope this story gets out.
I think more people should realize how superficial this all is. He is a manufactured product of media hype and PR grooming. He's a polished verious of the Peter Sellers gardener.
Rush played some cuts from JFK's Berlin speech and made a very telling point. There is not one Democrat out there who could make that speech today. JFK sounded more like Ronald Reagan than Barak Obama.
The last thing that I think is going to turn on the Dems and the MSM is this gross insinuation that if the US does NOT elect Obamaramalamadingdong president, it will be proof of how racist the US still is....as if using your head and voting qualifications and depth of character don't count.
Personally, if Obama is defeated, it will be the end of the MSM as a democratic cheerleader. They will be finally rendered impotent and fangless. Maybe some of the networks should cancel the nightly news.
Posted by: James Carville ||
07/25/2008 10:37
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This just makes me sad in that he "did" intend to use America's most noble, our wounded, as a prop for his elitist tour. It goes beyond emotion and anger and just burns at my soul in disapointment that he could even have one supporter in this nation of ours. Our nation is drifting away.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
07/25/2008 10:52
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#5
It's not our nation, 49 Pan. Just Candidate Obama and his little friends, who are just as they've been for the last several generations; the honourable senator just isn't clever enough to hide it. The nation stages surprise parades for troops on leave for a home visit, sends care packages to total strangers, repairs homes on television (or with no publicity at all) for the family waiting back home. Rejoice, 49 Pan, that this time it isn't at all like Viet Nam, however much Candidate Obama and his little friends would like it to be.
#9
Thanks TW! This guy and his followers frighten me more than any armed enemy I have faced. I just find it hard to believe he is even a contender to lead this great nation, he certainly is not qualified.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
07/25/2008 13:31
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Gibbs said Obama had decided several weeks ago he wanted to visit wounded troops in Germany. Asked whether either the senator or aides had considered that the trip might be viewed as political, he replied, "We had taken some of that into consideration but we believed that it could be done in a way that would not create, it would not be created or seen as a campaign stop."
But after hearing from the Pentagon, he said, "We decided, Senator Obama decided having made that decision he was far more willing to take the criticism from some political people or political opponents in a political atmosphere than to put our troops in the middle of our campaign back and forth."
Counterpoint:
At the Pentagon, spokesman Bryan Whitman said Obama was told he could go to Landstuhl, but the visit would have to conform to Defense Department guidelines that restrict political activity on military installation. That meant campaign staff would have been barred from accompanying him, he said.
At the same time, he said, "The Pentagon certainly did not tell the senator he could not visit Landstuhl."
One of South Africa's leading female jurists who won acclaim defending apartheid opponents was nominated Thursday to serve as the next United Nations high commissioner for human rights.
Navanethem Pillay was formally put forward for the job by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who cited her "outstanding credentials in human rights and justice." Pillay, who holds a Harvard Law School degree, serves as an appeals chamber judge with the Dutch-based International Criminal Court, where she has been since 2003. Pillay, who is in her mid-60s, is of Tamil descent.
Her selection now goes to the General Assembly for consideration where she is likely to be approved at a plenary meeting next Monday, U.N. officials and diplomats said. The world body previously elected Pillay as a judge to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 1995. She became that court's president in 1999.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador, said Pillay will occupy a very important position. "She has to be the voice for human rights, focus on the violations of human rights, speak clearly and focus world attention on the egregious violations of human rights that unfortunately still take place in many places around the world," he said. "We look forward to working with her."
In 1967, Pillay became the first woman to establish a law practice in South Africa's Natal Province, where she defended apartheid opponents. She also became the first woman of color to serve on her country's High Court, whose divisions hear both civil and criminal cases. She also co-founded Equality Now, a New York-based international women's rights organization.
During the selection process some nations, including the United States, had expressed reservations about Pillay, including her support for women's access to abortion, contraception and other reproductive freedoms, and how she might handle next year's follow up to the 2001 U.N. World Conference on Racism in Durban, South Africa, which drew controversy due to anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli stands.
If confirmed to the job, Pillay will take over the fast-growing U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, based in Geneva, Switzerland. During the coming year, the office will have almost 1,000 employees and budget approaching $120 million. She would succeed Louise Arbour, a former Supreme Court judge in Canada, who stepped down at the end of June. Pillay won out over two other finalists for the job, Pakistani lawyer and human rights activist Hila Jilani and Argentine human rights lawyer Juan Mendez.
Twenty-three people were wounded when a gang of 40-50 men armed with steel bars and machetes attacked residents at a refugee centre in Norway late on Thursday, officials said on Friday. No one was seriously wounded, but 10 were sent to hospital and 13 treated at a local clinic, hospital officials said.
An official at the centre in Oestfold south of Oslo said the attackers were Chechens and the victims Kurds. Police declined to confirm or deny that and said they had made no arrests so far.
"There was an attack from outside the asylum centre by people who don't live here, Chechens, 40 to 50 men armed with steel bars and other weapons," Ole Morten Lyng, an official at the centre, told NRK public radio news. "There also seem to have been knives involved," Lyng said. "They went into the rooms and pulled out Kurds and beat them up."
A police officer said some of the attackers had machetes.
Lyng told Norwegian news agency NTB that the conflict stemmed from a minor dispute between Kurds and Chechens at the centre that got blown out of proportion.
Posted by: ed ||
07/25/2008
07:47 ||
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#1
Why are there gangs of Chechens roaming the streets in Norway?
#3
We weirdly and mysteriously, but of course only legally technically tangentially coincidentally correctly, missed His Divine Visitations to the Temple known as PENN STATE AGAIN, those Cyclon Yarns/Tears, DIDN'T WE???
Interesting take on 2009 oil prices
Oil prices will continue falling and dip below $100 a barrel by the end of this year, unmasking an "export recession" in Canada that will result in anemic growth, a government export agency said on Thursday.
...
Speculative investors have been behind much of the recent climb to record highs in oil prices, Hall said, but that behavior is now starting to unwind. When the U.S. dollar stops falling against the euro, speculators will abandon crude and prices will fall, averaging about $84 a barrel in 2009, he said.
Posted by: ed ||
07/25/2008
07:01 ||
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#1
There could be new interest in Technology based stocks. Game Software companies are flourishing. Maybe we will have another 'nineties type of boom.
#3
I'd bet prices are well below $90 per barrel in '09 cause there will be a deep recession. Who ever gets in is going to wring the speculative fever out of the economy and blame it on Bush preparing for a big recovery in '10.
#6
NEW YORK - Oil prices sank to their lowest point in weeks Friday as investors questioned whether crude has cooled enough to reflect a serious deterioration in demand. Prices at the pump eased to nearly $4 a gallon and the AAA auto club said that could drop another quarter by Labor Day.
Light, sweet crude for September delivery fell $1.60 to $123.89 a barrel in on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier the contract dropped as far as $122.50, its lowest point since June 5.
In another sign that Americans continue to struggle with soaring energy prices, filling station operators hungry for business ratcheted down the average price for a gallon of regular by 2 cents, according to auto club AAA, the Oil Price Information Service and Wright Express.
AAA spokesman Geoff Sundstrom said such a large decline indicates a deteriorating demand by the world's thirstiest oil consumer. Retail prices have fallen about a dime per gallon in just the past week
A gallon of gas now sells for $4.006, the first time it has been that low in nearly seven weeks. Diesel dropped nearly a penny and a half to $4.774 a gallon. Sundstrom said prices at the pump should slip below the $4 mark over the weekend and could drop by at least another 25 cents by Labor Day, if oil stays on its downward path.
By afternoon Friday, crude was down nearly 16 percent from its peak above $147 a barrel two weeks earlier. Still, prices remained about 65 percent higher than they were this time last year.
In other Nymex trading, heating oil futures fell 2.18 cents to $3.5453 a gallon while gasoline futures lost 2.54 cents to $3.034 a gallon. Natural gas prices sank 15.3 cents to $9.17 per 1,000 cubic feet. In London, September Brent crude fell $1.46 to $125 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.
#8
$4.17 a gallon for regular in Will County, IL this morning. It was $4.31 two weeks ago.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/25/2008 18:42
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#9
Economists seem to think that gasoline demand is inelastic. Some of it is but most is not. Free markets work. I'm willing to bet that when the Chevy Volt comes out it's the highest selling auto in the history of mankind. I'd gladly shell out $40K for one just to think that every time I drove it I was keeping money away from the ME oil ticks.
#10
every time I drove it I was keeping money away from the ME oil ticks.
You won't be. You'll be keeping money away from Americans, Canadians, Saudis, Mexicans, Venezuelans and Nigerians. Not a lot of ME there. you'll just be making the price lower for the Chinese and Indians and Japanese and Europeans. They'll thank you.
And if the Volt sells, GM won't be able to meet demand.
A Yemeni security official says a suicide car bomber has rammed a vehicle into the Interior Ministry's headquarters in eastern Yemen, killing a policeman and injuring eight others.
Posted by: ed ||
07/25/2008
06:59 ||
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Dirty Wars follow suicide attacks. Unfortunately for north Yemenese, the south is both more secular and is better armed.
#2
After reading several links from fellow rantburgers on the topic, it seems there is no shame for the penetrator in muslim society. Only penetratee need feel shame over the act. It didn't really work out for him this time though. He's going to be the penetratee for the next 15 years if there is any justice left in this country.
#4
Why would we ever want to allow another Muslim to immigrate to the U.S.? This bastard, along with all the rest of his co-religionists, should be forcibly deported and their mosques bulldozed.
One or more people have been killed and more than a dozen injured in a series of explosions in the city of Bangalore, southern India, police said today.
There were four blasts in the city's Madiwala neighbourhood, Ahmed Hussain, a police officer, told the Associated Press. The number varied in other media reports. Hussain said a woman was killed but he had no immediate information on casualties or the cause.
Indian media reports said there may have been six blasts and three people killed. Television footage showed police from bomb squads searching areas covered with shattered glass. The pictures suggested the explosions were small.
Bangalore is one of India's main centres of outsourcing for western financial and IT firms, and has the headquarters of many foreign companies operating in India.
In May, a courthouse in Bangalore was bombed. Investigators suspected it was a retaliation by militants from the banned Student Islamic Movement of India for a series of arrests in January.
In recent months other Indian cities have been hit by explosions that have been blamed on Islamist militants.
#2
i wouldn't arrest them... i would just arrange some 'cross-fires' might even be able to borrow the shutter-gun from the RAB... seems they aren't using it right now anyway
Posted by: Abu do you love ||
07/25/2008 11:49
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Soon after Osama bin Laden's driver got here in 2002, he told interrogators the identity of the al Qaeda chief's most senior bodyguard -- then a fellow prison camp detainee. But, inexplicably, the U.S. let the bodyguard go.
This startling information was revealed in the fourth day of the war crimes trial of Salim Hamdan, 37, facing conspiracy and material support for terror charges as an alleged member of bin Laden's inner circle.
Michael St. Ours, an agent with the Naval Criminal Intelligence Service, NCIS, provided the first tidbit. He testified for the prosecution that his job as a prison camps interrogator in May 2002 was to find and focus on the bodyguards among the detainees.
And Hamdan helped identify 30 of them -- 10 percent of the roughly 300 detainees then held here. They had just been transferred to Camp Delta from the crude compound called Camp X-Ray, and U.S. intelligence was still trying to unmask them. Chief among them was Casablanca-born Abdallah Tabarak, then 47, described by St. Ours as ''a hard individual,'' and, thanks to Hamdan, ``the head bodyguard of all the bodyguards.''
St. Ours said he was eager to speak with Tabarak. But the Moroccan was ''uncooperative,'' and St. Ours moved on to other intelligence jobs -- and never learned afterward what became of him.
Then, on cross-examination, Hamdan defense attorney Harry Schneider dropped a bombshell: ''Would it surprise you to learn he was released without ever being charged?'' St. Ours looked stunned.
''Yeah,'' he said.
Prison camp and Pentagon spokesmen did not reply Thursday to a request for an explanation. Tabarak's name was gone from an official prison camp roster drawn up by the Defense Department in September 2004, after some 200 captives had been sent away. A month before, Morocco's state news agency said all five of its nationals had been repatriated from the camps, for investigation.
For two days, FBI and other federal agents have testified about the extent -- and limits -- of Hamdan's cooperation in a string of interrogations since his November 2001 capture by U.S.-allied Afghan forces at a checkpoint in southern Afghanistan.
Defense lawyers have sought to portray the father of two with a fourth-grade education as ultimately helpful to the Americans -- after he initially covered up his relationship with bin Laden.
Prosecutors have called him truculent, a loyal and trusted member of bin Laden's inner circle who grudgingly spoke with interrogators -- and never came clean on why there were two surface-to-air missiles in his car when he was captured. Hamdan said at his Nov. 25, 2001, battlefield interrogation that he borrowed the car, and the missiles happened to be inside it.
This article starring:
Abdallah Tabarak
Salim Hamdan
Posted by: ed ||
07/25/2008
06:56 ||
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Tabarak: Released or ....disappeared? Heh
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/25/2008 12:01
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Sadly not. Wikipedia sez: In August 2004 Abdullah Tabarak Ahmad was released from Guantanamo to Morocco police custody where he was then released four months later on bail.[7][1][8][9] Security analysts puzzled over the release as camp commander General Geoffrey Miller on February 2, 2004 told the Red Cross that Tabarak was the sole remaining detainee they would not be allowed access to and the Moroccan authorities described him as the emir of Guantanamo.
3 years for mass murder. Our leaders hold American life to be cheap.
Posted by: ed ||
07/25/2008 12:55
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The big story is the Obama speech. We were told that this was not a political speech, not a campaign speech. Mm-hmm . . . To repeat what I said elsewhere (which I note only because Im recycling material, and that somehow requires disclosure, even though its the blog equivalent of as I was telling your screener) I first read the speech on Drudge, which made me think hed conclude his address with the words developing . . . Not rhetoric that stirs the soul, but enigmatic in a stay-tuned sort of way. It would also be interesting if John Edwards starting making appearances with that red-and-blue flashing light on his head.
Upon reading the whole thing, its like watching a striptease from the Invisible Man revealing, but empty. You cant really expect anything but high-flown remarks in a situation like this; unless theres a particular reason for such a speech, and there wasnt one here, youre going to get noble wind. Or, as Drudge might say, breaking noble wind. Developing! But there were some interesting reveals.
The remark that will get passed around on the right with no small glee is the citizen of the world phrase: "Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen -- a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world."
Hm. Well. The world is a large and diverse place; its like saying an amoeba is a citizen of the Milky Way. Accurate in a sense but not terribly enlightening. We are occupants of the world, residents of the world, but citizens? That implies membership in a political entity that does not exist. Membership in a common species is not the equivalent of citizenship; that term carries a specific meaning, with rights and duties and the rest. And of course thats how its used here, but mostly in the duty sense.
Not that anyone enforces those duties at the moment. Novel sentiments aside, World citizen is used as a badge of empathy that carries no responsibilities. The more its used, though, the more it dilutes actual national citizenship, which naturally takes second place to World Citizenship. As it did in Obamas speech - he said he was a citizen of America and a citizen of the world, not the other way around. To say youre a citizen of the world and a citizen of America places the latter in the primary slot, no? Its like saying I am a married man, and I am also a lover of women. People would assume youre sneaking around.
If we are all citizens of the world, then rules about national citizenship sound like archaic encumbrances. If you do not consider yourself a citizen of the world, then you must not care about anyone else but your fellow national citizens, or at least you care less, and thats not a sentiment you express in polite company. To say that you care more about a bomb in New York than you care about a bomb in Malaysia almost sounds chauvinistic, what with the death of one man anywhere diminishing us all, and so on. Its a perfectly reasonable sentiment for someone to hold in private, but it is difficult for an American president to say that he cares as much about displaced workers in a Chinese province as he cares about Ohio factory workers. If its true, then he hasnt really grasped the nature of his job. If its false, its just more windy BS.
Ah, but the leader of America is different, and in a sense has to care about everyone, so much power does he wield. With great power comes great responsibility, as Spiderman taught us. So true. You try to strike arrangements that are mutually beneficial, with give and take. Go your own way, and you get Smoot-Hawley. But pragmatic, rational, national self-interest has to undergird a presidents decisions. Harsh and chauvinistic as it may sound, there are times when you have to tell the world to get stuffed. Otherwise, what does it profit a man to gain the world, but throw his presidency under the bus? To coin an ungainly phrase.
For some reason Obama felt compelled to describe the victims of the 9/11 attack thus, as an example of global interconnectedness:
The terrorists of September 11th plotted in Hamburg and trained in Kandahar and Karachi before killing thousands from all over the globe on American soil.
Well, most werent from all over the world. Most were Americans. Which makes sense, since the attack was explicitly aimed at America, not The Globe. American soil was not chosen as the stage because the other venues were booked through 2003. I dont know why some feel compelled to deemphasize the nationality of the victims; I have no problem empathizing with Brits or Spaniards when they suffer a terror attack. Its not as if I learn that one percent of the tube-bombing victims were Portugese and Polish, and think Oh Those Bastards, now theyve really done it. Those were citizens of the world. The people who died in the Twin Towers were overwhelmingly Americans. From here, from there, but Americans. Whats the problem with proclaiming that fact? Would this example of Islamist god-bothering murder frenzy been less horrible if both towers had collapsed, but killed only Nebraskans? Would an audience in Berlin rolled their eyes if 9/11 was presented in anything less than internationalist terms?
The speech did mention some of the challenges that face the citizens of the world:
As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.
Here are the current drought conditions in Kansas. Such a thing is not unknown in the Plains. Obama may have heard of the Dust Bowl, which ravaged the plains before the wise hand of FDR doth stilleth the wind. It seems a bit much to assert with utter confidence that this drought is the result of cars in Boston. But nevermind: if this is the case, then we are obligated, in our interconnectedness, to do our part. To do something about those cars in Boston, and use our shining example to compel China to do something about their coal plants. Of course they wont, but thats no excuse for not imposing carbon rations on the Beaners.
The theme of global climate peril was large in the speech in the list of things which we must do now, since THIS IS THE MOMENT, terrorism was first, just to get that off the table, and global warming was last. When you write a speech you build to your strongest points, and I suppose for a European audience thats the barn-burner. Or rather the burning-barn extinguisher. End with a ringing denunciation of Islamists in the bosom of Europe, using her money and tolerance to spread ideas antithetical to the Enlightenment, and everyone looks at their shoes. The West is a divisive concept anyway, steeped in blood and sin the non-sin sort, that is; imperialism and militarism and Catholicism and the rest of the ash-heap notions. If Obama had declared himself a Citizen of the West, he would have struck a hammer blow for a certain set of virtues and values, but we cant have that. As a Frenchman will tell you, all cultures are equal. Equal in being inferior to France, but otherwise equal.
He also called for an end to nuclear weapons. (This was also Reagans dream, but he had a different way of going about it.) Of course, this isnt going to happen, but it sounds nice. Who wouldnt want a world in which everyone decommissions the nukes, and Iran says wait, what? We thought these were cool. Well, then, well give them up. Geez, next thing youll tell us, Izod shirts with popped collars are out. We will never poke the Genie back in the bottle, and Obama knows this. But the words loft well on the breath of the assembled. The problem, however, is that he didn't just set forth ideas humanity would be wise to make manifest - he made them moral imperatives that must be done now, because the THIS IS THE MOMENT, and NOW IS THE MOMENT THAT THIS IS, and the moment to come in a few moments is also the moment, but its a few moments past the previous moment, which was also now. THIS IS THE MOMENT to do something about Darfur. Fine. What? THIS IS THE MOMENT to do something about Burmese dissidents. Fine. What?
Nothing will be done about either; they are, unfortunately, matters inconsequential to the general order of things. This is not to say that they are not obscene, or horrific, or more evidence of human perfidy both general and specific, but just as the world summed the strength to turn away from Rwanda and Cambodia, it will manage to struggle with the daunting task of doing nothing about Darfur or Burma. The drone of a jet engine outside your window, bearing you to another international conference, does an admirable job of masking the sound of a machete striking bone down below.
Get a diplomat drunk and off the record, and hell tell you that Russia gets to play yob tvoiu mat with Chechnya, China gets to make money in Sudan and oppress Tibet, no one cares what France does in Africa, and America has Iraq. The last one matters as a focal point for international outrage because it extends a popular narrative. People feel better about themselves for criticizing America; its what smart people do. Leave a little juice left over for frowning at China, and make nervous Bear jokes about Russia and tell a few ha-ha jokes about the old KGB days, really, what else can you expect from those people? Hopeless since Ivan and probably before. Serfs, the lot of them. Meanwhile, everyone looks forward to the day when theres a stable democratic Iraq, not run by that gangster good source of profits, but a boor and the Iraqi government votes against the US in the UN. Thatll be rich. Comeuppance and all that. Pass the champagne.
In the end, THIS IS THE MOMENT, but the moment will pass; its a list of things we can expect not to be fixed, which makes it little different from other speeches in the genre by politicians of either stripe. It is interesting to note that the poll bounce seems small so far, and that Gallup reports Obama has a slim lead over his opponent.
Slim?
He has an opponent?
There was something else in the speech, too the constant mention of Europe, as opposed to the nations that make up Europe. From here it sounds as if every particular country and culture has been gently drowned in the warm bath of the Great Continental Arrangement. It is the dream of some, after all; imagine theres no nations. Its easy if you try. Its easier if you use the diplomatic community to craft treaties that subsume local identities to the iron rules of anal-retentive Belgian bureaucrats anxious to rule on the exact strength of Scottish malt, but even Lennon couldnt make that line work as a lyric.
I can understand why Europe is still gun-shy about nationalism, what with all the guns deployed on the concepts behalf, but the mandatory self-abasement mixed with smoldering resentment you detect wafting off constituent elements of the continent suggests that not everyone is happy casting off his tongue and dress for the shapeless smock of the EU.
As a lifelong Star Trek fan, I would love to live in an age when the globe was united in peace and prosperity, but I am unwilling to endure the paradigm-wrecking nation-shattering nuclear war and eugenic-master-race tyranny required to get to that point. Absent those factors, the idea that post-national / trans-national ideas represent a glimmering ideal within our grasp seems naïve at best and alarming at worst, a gilded facade erected by those who wish to pursue self-interest behind a new arrangement that defines traditional concepts of culture and national identity as regressive impediments. I can understand the appeal for some - if I'd spent 100 years worrying about Germany, it would be nice if Germany, as a discrete actor, ceased to exist, or was tied down like Gulliver in rules and regs. If this is the way Europe wants to go, fine; I have a Sharpie, and I can cross off the names of the countries on the map and write EUROPE over everything. But until that day, I'd be inclined to treat Europe like Chicago. At least give a shout-out for the differences between the North side and the South. Hell, I wouldnt be happy if someone who wanted to be President of the EU came over here and addresses us as North Americans. But I am not a young Berliner.
Let us close with the key phrases of the speechs conclusion: Our challenge is great. The road ahead will be long. Also, let us once again engage in that noble struggle to bring justice and peace to our world. For a fellow with a golden tongue, these are dollar-store clichés. I want justice and peace as well. I want justice and peace for the people of the Sudan and Burma, and I wonder if theyre asking: fine. Wheres our airlift? Will we get that in January? Sooner would be better, but January will be fine too. Keep in touch. You have our number.
One last thing: Obama said "That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another. The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand." But of course they must, and will, if national sovereignity has any meaning. If he defines the "wall" as the existence of factual reasons why some countries succeed and others do not, it is unclear how these facts will be overcome. There's not a wall around Zimbabwe that creates a special magical inflation zone. There is, in spots, a wall between the US and Mexico; are we to expect he will make a campaign stop at the border crossing, and ask Mr. Bush to Tear Down This Wall? In a sense that would make him the heir to Reagan - in the same sense Paris Hilton is heir to Conrad.
Posted by: Mike ||
07/25/2008
06:19 ||
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#1
A fine rant and on-the-money analysis of the incredible emptyness of The Speech. Dollar store cliches, indeed.
Rather surprising, though, to see "Russia gets to play yob tvoiu mat with Chechnya" given that the italicized bit is a crude but multi-purpose Russian expression meaning, uh, your mother and I are close personal friends and have shared many an intimate moment.
My country learned a bitter lesson in this century: The scourge of tyranny cannot be stopped with words alone. So, we have embarked on an effort to renew our strength that had fallen dangerously low. We refuse to become weaker while potential adversaries remain committed to their imperialist adventures.
#5
As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.
Boston? Bullshit. Now it's personal Barry.
Ask the folks in Iowa about this year's "drought", dipshit.
#6
As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.
I did some doughnuts in the parking lot at work as my 'contribution'...
Australian TV is now reporting this as a midair explosion.
QANTAS passengers have told of a terrifying mid-air emergency that left a gaping hole in the side of a plane, forcing an emergency landing in Manila.
The Qantas Boeing 747, en route from London to Melbourne, via Hong Kong, landed safely today and a "gigantic" hole was discovered in the belly of the plane, near the wing.
Some of the passengers on board told of debris flying through the depressurised cabin, and oxygen masks dropping from the ceiling. Some said the plane had plunged about 20,000 feet after a door "popped".
"There was a terrific boom and bits of wood and debris just flew forward into first (class) and the oxygen masks dropped down," Melbourne woman Dr June Kane told ABC Radio. "I'm looking at the plane now and ... just forward of the wing, there's a gaping hole from the wing to the underbody," she said, adding that baggage was hanging out. "It was absolutely terrifying, but I have to say everyone was very calm."
Qantas tonight said it had arranged for a replacement plane to fly to Manila to collect the 346 uninjured passengers and 19 crew and fly them immediately back to Melbourne. The replacement Boeing 747 was expected to leave the Philippines capital shortly after 11pm local time (0100 AEST Saturday), to arrive in Melbourne tomorrow morning (AEST).
Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon said the flight had "a hole in its fuselage" and was being inspected.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau today said it was sending four investigators to Manila to inspect the plane.
"At approximately 29,000 feet, the crew were forced to conduct an emergency descent after a section of the fuselage separated and resulted in a rapid decompression of the cabin," the bureau said.
The crew brought the plane down to 10,000 feet and requested an emergency landing in Manila, where emergency crews were on hand to watch it come in. Mr Dixon said the airline was also sending its engineers to Manila.
Manila airport operations officer Ding Lima told local radio the plane lost cabin pressure shortly after takeoff from Hong Kong and the pilot radioed for an emergency landing.
"Upon disembarkation, there were some passengers who vomited. You can see in their faces that they were really scared," he said.
During the emergency part of the plane's flooring gave way, exposing some of the cargo in the hold, he said. Part of the ceiling also collapsed. Another passenger Brendan McClements, the chief executive of the Victorian Major Events Company, described hearing a big bang as the plane flew out of Hong Kong.
"There was a sort of rapid expulsion of wind. It went out of the plane, the air got sucked out, the oxygen masks dropped down and we put them on," he said from Manila. "Where I was sitting wasn't ideal, by no means ideal. "We landed about an hour or so ago, and there was a very large hole that wasn't there when we took off in Hong Kong."
Mr McClements praised Qantas staff for keeping passengers calm.
"The crew were terrific, they did a great job," he said. "Everyone gave them a round of applause as we landed."
British man Phil Rescall said he and other passengers realised how lucky they were when they saw the size of the hole in the plane's underbelly just in front of the right wing.
"You see the hole and you realise we were very lucky," he said. "Some people were crying, some people were pretty shaken when they saw the hole."
Another English passenger, Robin McGeechan, 42, said that despite the bang there was little panic. "We were told a door had popped. We only realised that there was a great big hole in the plane after we landed," McGeechan said.
#1
From the photos, it looked like the skin peeled off, not an explosion.
Posted by: ed ||
07/25/2008 7:20
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#2
This was obviously a terrorist bomb that went off in the baggage hold. I just learned that there was NOT ONLY the hole in the main fuselage structure that went outward to blow off the fairing but ALSO one that went from there and blew a hole through the floor into the cabin! Everyone is simply VERY LUCKY the blast didn't affect the controls or the controlability of the aircraft in any major way. The terrorists failed - THIS TIME... Are airlines lowering their guard again?
Posted by: Mike M ||
07/25/2008 7:29
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#3
We'll see. It could have been a bomb or a failure from the picture.
Posted by: The Rainman ||
07/25/2008 10:07
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#7
It is possible that it was an airmail package with prohibited material inside. People try to pull a sneaky and mail hazardous materials all the time. I don't know why, ignorance, to save money, whatever the reason. I'm thinking even a tiny bomb would cause much more damage than that. I saw a video of a 3 oz. plastique charge that blew a fuselage in half in a test.
#9
TW, I concur. Insufficient information at this time.
At altitude any rupture can be "explosive". And at these airspeeds air ramming into the hole might rupture the floor as they aren't designed to take load from below.
I suspect these folks will never see their luggage (grin). But they won't give a D###.
#10
747 flight controls are routed over the top of the cabin; there was an earlier wide body that crashed due to an inflight de-pressurization ( DC-10, or L-1011, cannot remember) that caused the floor panels and supporting structure to buckle and jam / bind the controls. looking at the one picture that shows the hole forward of the stbd wing, about the only control damage would have been to any leading edge de ice or maybe landing gear hydraulics. if the souce of the explosion ( if true) had been placed further aft, results may have been different ( like under the wing root / spar area). also no mention of any engine loss due to FOD from any baggage ingestion.
good piloting skills displayed here.
A happy smiley face would be appropriate for this.
Was sabotage responsible for disrupting a shipment of arms from Iran to Hizbullah? The London-based Daily Telegraph newspaper reported Friday of a mysterious explosion which devastated an Iranian supply convoy intended to reach Hizbullah. According to the report, the strong blast took place in one of Tehran's suburbs as a military convoy left a Revolutionary Guards' ammunition storehouse. At least 15 people were killed in the explosion.
Western sources reported that the blast took place on July 19 and that the convoy was carrying military equipment for the Lebanese terror organization. It was also reported that senior Revolutionary Guards officials banned the Iranian media from reporting the explosion, even though it was heard throughout the capital. The Guards launched an investigation into the incident.
An official source told the newspaper that the strong explosion was heard across Tehran, adding that the Revolutionary Guards were trying to silence the incident despite the fact that many people were killed. Additional explosions and mysterious incidents which have taken place in Iran recently are being investigated by the Revolutionary Guards. In one of the incidents, a blast rocked a mosque in the city of Shiraz, where weapons were being displayed, killing 11 people.
Iranian Intelligence Minister Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei said following the incident that the main suspect in the affair was arrested.
"The terrorist group had ties with the US and Britain. These countries were informed of the arrest by the Foreign Ministry," he said, "but the countries did nothing to prevent these terror groups' activity."
#3
"The terrorist group had ties with the US and Britain. These countries were informed of the arrest by the Foreign Ministry," he said, "but the countries did nothing to prevent these terror groups' activity."
And then his head exploded, right?
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/25/2008 5:57
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#14
#6 I wonder if some of our spooks had something to do with this. Posted by DarthVader
As a matter of fact, Darth, I believe the Revolutionary Guard is riddled with US, UK. and Jooooo spies and apostates. If any loyal Guards are reading this, I'd recommend they launch a purge right now! Don't wait! They'll confess...
#16
Absolutely true JDB!
At least one in 20 work for the US and one in 40 for the Israelis.
Satan's minions all..
The only way to deal with a minion of Satan is the rack...
#18
AC#2 Maybe a crazed bulldozer driver rammed one of the vehicles, or....
Dammit, Abdul, the cargo-lights burned out. I cant see whats in the back of our truck.
No problem, Hosni, heres my lighter. American made, very go...
A ZIPPO AC would be WAY fitting and set off Beautiful BOOMS!
~:)
Posted by: Red Dawg ||
07/25/2008 12:50
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#19
....but Hosni will have to do with good matches as my ZIPPO is NOT for sale nor will it ever be given to a Hosni....
Posted by: Red Dawg ||
07/25/2008 12:56
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#20
couldn't have happened to a nicer, more deserving bunch of folks...
#21
This is a win, win if ever there was.
Either we have a mole in there, or they now are sure we have a mole in there. Brace for the promised payback, heh, heh.
#24
Tensions have been running high in Tehran since Seymour Hersh, the respected American investigative journalist, revealed in the New Yorker magazine last month that President George W Bush had authorised up to $400 million to fund a major escalation in covert operations to destabilise the regime.
Having contended with Irans attempts to undermine the Iraqi government over the past five years, British and American military commanders are more than happy to undertake covert operations in Iran, and there have been unconfirmed reports that special forces are operating undercover in the country.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA...thanks, Sy, you respected American investigative journalist, you...
#26
Nah, I think slippery Sy was a tool. We have no assets in Tehran, it was just an accident, but Sy will have them looking under every rock for th spies.
I think that's my favorite version.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/25/2008 17:50
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#27
Slippery Sy is a tool.
As for the ammo storehouse being in a suburb, it's not surprising. Zoning, for one, isn't a strong point. The other is that it allows the IRGC to have assets near Tehran for both defense of the capitol and to combat civil insurrection.
But mostly the reason is that if the storehouse (or their nuke facilties) gets hit in an attack, there's civilian casualties.
#3
I guessed it from the hill. There was a hill overlooking the Britsh positions. VDH in "Carnage and culture" tells about undefensibleness of the position, of the mediocrity of the two officers in command... and how by making a couple things right tyhey emerged victorious where a twenty times larger troop in a betterr position had been exterminated at Isandlwana.
What is it with Al Gore? Why is he compelled to exaggerate climate change (excuse me, the climate crisis), and then to propose impossible policy responses? Its like hes inventing the Internet all over again!
OK, its pretty much standard rhetoric in Washington to say that if you dont do as I say, there will be massive consequences. But to say, as Gore recently did: The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk; and: The future of human civilization is at stake thats a bit much, even for the most faded and jaded political junkie.
Heres how Gore works. Hell cite one scientific finding that shows what he wants, and then ignore other work that provides important context. Heres a list of his climate exaggerations from his well-publicized July 17 rant, along with a few sobering facts.
Gore: Scientists . . . have warned that there is now a 75 percent chance that within five years the entire [North Polar] ice cap will completely disappear during the summer months.
Fact: The Arctic Ocean was much warmer than it is now for several millennia after the end of the last ice age. We know this because there are trees buried in the tundra along what is now the arctic shore. Those trees can be dated using standard analytical techniques that have been around for decades. According to Glen MacDonald of UCLA, the trees show that July temperatures could have been 5-13°F warmer from 9,000 to about 3,000 years ago than they were in the mid-20th century. The arctic ice cap had to have disappeared in most summers, and yet the polar bear survived!
Gore: Our weather sure is getting strange, isnt it? There seem to be more tornadoes than in living memory. . . .
Fact: The reason there seems to be more tornadoes is because of national coverage by Doppler radar, which can detect storms that were previously missed (not to mention that every backyard tornado winds up on YouTube nowadays). Naturally, the additions are weak ones that might, if lucky, tip over a cow. If there were a true increase in tornadoes, then we would see a definite upswing in severe ones, too. If anything, the historical record indicates a slight negative trend in the frequency of major tornadoes, based upon death statistics.
Gore: . . . longer droughts . . .
Hogwash. The U.S. drought history, given by the Palmer Drought Severity Index, is readily available and extends back to 1895. Theres not a shred of evidence for longer droughts in recent decades. The longest ones were in the 1930s and 1950s, decades before global warming became the climate crisis.
Gore: . . . bigger downpours and record floods . . .
Its true, U.S. annual rainfall has increased about 10 percent (three inches) in the last 100 years. But its equally true that this is a net benefit. Temperatures havent warmed nearly enough to increase the annual surface evaporation by the same amount, so what has resulted is a wetter country during the growing season. Farmers love this, because most of the nation runs a moisture deficit during the hot summer growing season. Increasing rain cuts that deficit.
Gore: The leading experts predict that we have less than 10 years to make dramatic changes in our global warming pollution lest we lose our ability to ever recover from this environmental crisis.
This is likely James Hansen of NASA, Gores climate guru. He has written and given sworn testimony that six feet of sea-level rise, caused by the rapid shedding of Greenlands ice, could happen by 2100. Why didnt Gore defer instead to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an organization with at least a few hundred bona fide climate scientists? Its 2007 compendium estimates that the contribution of Greenlands ice to sea level during this century will be around two inches. Gore also forgot the embarrassing truth that there has been no net change in the planetary surface temperature, as measured both by thermometers and satellites, for the last ten years.
It would be easy to go on, particularly about the preposterousness of Gores solution, which is to produce all of our electricity from solar, wind and geothermal sources within ten years. Ill leave that for the energy economists to tear apart.
#1
I didn't know that rainfall had increase by 3" in the USA. Although I suspect I know the reason and why temperatures have been increasing at many locations. It's a massive increase in irrigation over the last 100 years. And all of that water ends up in the atmosphere as water vapour, the most potent greenhouse gas.
#3
The eco-nuts don't want nuclear, they don't want natural gas, they don't want us to drill our own oil. They essentially want to halt the progress of mankind. Save China and Russia from this because they are the anti-hegemons. It's time we squash these filthy plotters of ruin.
Bomb blasts rocked a café and a Hamas politician's home in the Gaza Strip on Friday, killing at least one Palestinian in one of the biggest flare-ups in internal violence since Islamists seized the enclave a year ago. Hamas blamed unidentified gunmen for the bombings, suggesting the involvement of a Palestinian faction.
Hamas security forces said the first bomb went off outside a popular cafe in the centre of Gaza City, killing a passerby whose identity was not immediately known.
A few minutes later, a second bomb exploded outside the house of Hamas politician and leader Marwan Abu Rass. Nobody was injured in that blast.
#1
ION IRAN > IRNA > AHMADINEJAD: IRAN IN AN ECONOMIC STRUGGLE AGZ ITS ENEMIES [besides Pol + Mil, etc]; + KOMMERSANT > RUSSIA TO SUPPLY S-300 ADS MISSLES TO IRAN.
Also from KOMMERS > BELARUS SIDES WITH BOLIVAR [Hugo]. HUGO = Venezuela eyeing the possib purchase of up to 2500 IGLA-S BALLISTIC MISSLE SYSTEMS???
* INTERFAX > RUSSIA FEARS US MANY EXPAND AMD [Anti-Missle Defense]BEYOND POLAND AND CZECH BORDERS.
* CAMBODIA > Has formally requested UNO assistance in preluding IMMINENT WAR wid THAILAND???
#4
Well, things are relatively quiet with the Jooos. Time for another gang war...
Gaza Ma'an Gaza police said on Friday that they have arrested elements affiliated to the Fatah movement after two explosions in Gaza City. One Palestinian, believed to be the bomber, was killed in the first blast at Ag-Gazira café in the centre of the city in the early hours of Friday morning.
Security sources in the Gaza Strip had earlier reported that unknown persons launched an explosive device at the café, resulting in the death of at least one person and massive damage to the building.
A few minutes later there was another explosion outside the house of Dr Marwan Abu Ras, a Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, also in Gaza City, though no one was injured.
Media spokesman for the police Islam Shahwan, said that they have sufficient information that Fatah elements were involved in an attempt to attack high profile Hamas figures in Gaza . He said that the police arrested the suspects immediately after the explosion. Those arrested have apparently claimed responsibility for the attack.
He went on to confirm that police believe the man killed in the first explosion was in the process of planting the bomb when it went off unexpectedly.
The Gaza strip has witnessed a series of bombings of hairdresser's salons, restaurants and internet cafes in recent months, in each case the de facto police have claimed to have arrested those responsible.
Shahwan concluded by calling on Fatah to stop the elements that are "violating the law and enflaming the violence in the area."
* Australian-made torpedo sinks US warship
* Warship was due to be retired
* Explosive fun part of war games
AN Australian submarine has used a new super torpedo to sink an American warship off Hawaii.
The Courier-Mail reports HMAS Waller fired the heavyweight Mark 48 torpedo, which the US and Australian navies say is the world's deadliest, during war games this week.
Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon said the torpedo had been jointly developed by Australia and the United States and was used in the planned sinking of a retired US warship.
"This represents the first new heavyweight torpedo warshot to be fired by either Navy. Just as significant is the fact that the torpedo was assembled in Australia," Mr Fitzgibbon said.
#11
I, for one, am glad Oztralian keeps sending us interesting and useful information (intersecting sets, those) from Australia, even if occasionally misposted. After all, it's our job to keep the moderators from getting bored. ;-)
#14
Doesn't have to work against carriers, battleships, or cruisers. Most countries don't have them.
Might be interesting to see what it could do against a supertanker or a container boat.
#16
Re: "A tin can ain't much of a test. Don't we have any old cruisers or battleships? Maybe a carrier?"
it would have been intereisting to know what Damage Control Status the ship was in; if Zebra was set , then that is pretty impressive, if Yoke then not so much. but a broken keel is still a death blow.
And we sank the USS America a few years back to test a lot of 'stuff.' No word has surfaced about what it took to do it.
#17
It would be interesting to see the whole recording. But clearly the keel was broken. This ship was out of action and not returning to port for repairs. How long it took to sink was interesting but irrelevant.
The America, on the other hand, had to be scuttled. But again, we don't know what was thrown at it.
There are only two kinds of ships, subs and targets. The sooner the USN figures this out, the better.
#20
"That MK-48 is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."
On 25 February 2005 a ceremony to salute the USS America and her crew was held at the ship's pier in Philadelphia, attended by former crew members and various dignitaries. She departed the Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility on 19 April 2005 to conduct the aforementioned tests. The experiments lasted approximately four weeks. The Navy battered America with explosives, both underwater and above the surface, watching from afar and through monitoring devices placed on the vessel. These explosions were designed to simulate attacks by torpedoes, cruise missiles and perhaps a small boat suicide attack like the one that damaged the destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000.
After the completion of the tests, America was sunk in a controlled scuttling on 14 May 2005 at approximately 1130, although the sinking was not publicized until six days later. At the time, no warship of that size had ever been sunk, and effects were closely monitored; theoretically the tests would reveal data about how supercarriers respond to battle damage. The ship rests 16,860 ft. below the Atlantic Ocean surface, roughly 250 miles off the North Carolina coast.[6]
The ship was sunk at the edge of the Sargasso Sea.
#1
"The first mistake". ROFL! The arrogance is staggering. But you do have to give them credit for their sheer and unadulterated willingness to prostrate themselves for Obama, no matter how much he degrades them.
the first mistake. Hahahahah. I guess they gotta spin it somehow.
#3
Oh, my! Even the New York Times is starting to waver...
By DAVID BROOKS
But now it is more than half a year on, and the post-partisanship of Iowa has given way to the post-nationalism of Berlin, and it turns out that the vague overture is the entire symphony. The golden rhetoric impresses less, the evasion of hard choices strikes one more.
When John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan went to Berlin, their rhetoric soared, but their optimism was grounded in the reality of politics, conflict and hard choices. Kennedy didnt dream of the universal brotherhood of man. He drew lines that reflected hard realities: There are some who say, in Europe and elsewhere, we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. Reagan didnt call for a kumbaya moment. He cited tough policies that sparked harsh political disagreements the deployment of U.S. missiles in response to the Soviet SS-20s but still worked.
In Berlin, Obama made exactly one point with which it was possible to disagree. In the best paragraph of the speech, Obama called on Germans to send more troops to Afghanistan. The argument will probably fall on deaf ears. The vast majority of Germans oppose that policy. But at least Obama made an argument.
Much of the rest of the speech fed the illusion that we could solve our problems if only people mystically come together. We should help Israelis and Palestinians unite. We should unite to prevent genocide in Darfur. We should unite so the Iranians wont develop nukes. Or as Obama put it: The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.
The great illusion of the 1990s was that we were entering an era of global convergence in which politics and power didnt matter. What Obama offered in Berlin flowed right out of this mind-set. This was the end of history on acid.
Since then, autocracies have arisen, the competition for resources has grown fiercer, Russia has clamped down, Iran is on the march. It will take politics and power to address these challenges, the two factors that dare not speak their name in Obamas lofty peroration.
The odd thing is that Obama doesnt really think this way. When he gets down to specific cases, he can be hard-headed. Last year, he spoke about his affinity for Reinhold Niebuhr, and their shared awareness that history is tragic and ironic and every political choice is tainted in some way.
But he has grown accustomed to putting on this sort of saccharine show for the rock concert masses, and in Berlin his act jumped the shark. His words drift far from reality, and not only when talking about the Senate Banking Committee. His Berlin Victory Column treacle would have made Niebuhr sick to his stomach.
Obama has benefited from a week of good images. But substantively, optimism without reality isnt eloquence. Its just Disney.
#4
David Brooks is hardly the New York Times. But the Washington Post does seem to be picking up on the Obamessiah at least at the editorial page. The Times is so far in the tank for him, that the WaPo may recognize that the best move, economically as well as editorially, is to detach itself from the lock step with the NYT and become the national middle of the road paper with the MYT to the left and the WSJ to the right.
A Swiss-led, five-nation panel proposed Thursday that the United Nations assert itself as leader of a global fight against terrorism and establish a new agency or program to coordinate that effort.
U.N. ambassadors from Costa Rica, Japan, Slovakia, Switzerland and Turkey suggested that the U.N. General Assembly create an agency for counterterrorism along the lines of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. It also recommended that the U.N. assist counterterrorism officials from individual nations in promoting "a human rights-based approach to counterterrorism" that disdains torture and preserves prisoners' rights.
The panel, launched by the Swiss U.N. mission in November, is an attempt to involve more of the General Assembly's 192 member nations in fighting terrorism. It also seeks to shift some of the emphasis away from military or police work and onto grappling with interrelated social, economic and health factors.
Its proponents say the panel's conclusions, reached after holding five workshops on three continents, is a response to the U.S.-led war on terror and the counterterrorism work of the powerful U.N. Security Council. "It's an attempt maybe to shift or, should I say, to rebalance the focus away from the war on terror to a more comprehensive way in dealing with terrorism," Swiss Ambassador Peter Maurer told The Associated Press.
Another panel member, Costa Rican Ambassador Jorge Urbina, also serves on the 15-nation Security Council. "There is a need to deepen interagency cooperation and cooperation, both at the national and international level, and this should not be limited to traditional counterterrorism actors, but also include human rights, development, health and social services," he said. "We continue to advocate for the creation of a body that unites all current U.N. counterrorism efforts under one roof, and gives it a clear mandate and direction."
In March, President Bush said the global war's main challenges included securing Iraq, fighting al-Qaida, combating Iran's "destructive influence," and ending "the flow of suicide bombers through Syria." But the panel pointed toward an alternative strategy, an approach based on a belief that the U.N. also must provide a framework all nations can participate in. "The problem is that it is a one-dimensional view, suggesting that with military deployment and military means you can cope with the phenomenon of terrorism," Maurer said.
Isn't it enormously ironic that Barack Obama now finds himself the unintended beneficiary of the Iraq surge that he so vocally -- and wrongly -- opposed?
It seems that Obama's untimely calls for a withdrawal timetable have lingered long enough to have some merit in the eyes of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Al-Maliki told Der Spiegel, a German magazine, that U.S. troops should withdraw from Iraq "as soon as possible, as far as we are concerned. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."
Assuming al-Maliki said it, and there has been some dispute, it doesn't make Obama right -- even now. But it's hard to imagine al-Maliki would be saying anything helpful to Obama's campaign today if the United States had followed Obama's disgraceful surrender policy instead of implementing the surge in 2007 -- over his strenuous objections.
Obama Democrats have been adamantly opposed to our intervention in Iraq from the beginning, including when they voted for it for political expediency and then later claimed they were duped into it.
Even purple-stained Iraqi fingers, symbolizing the advent of democracy in Iraq, didn't stir an ounce of empathy, much less sympathy from these capital-D Democrats, who persisted, undeterred, in their demands for retreat, regardless of the consequences.
It seems in this life, anyway, there never will be accountability for those Democrats who opposed this operation every step of the way (following their initial fraudulent support) and continue to do so, no matter the state of the "facts on the ground."
Their mentality is always the same, and we see it rearing its head again on Iran, which by all accounts is dangerously close to producing a nuclear weapon. They believe it's always better to negotiate and that the enemy with whom we are to negotiate must always be given the benefit of the doubt -- especially against the sinister United States.
Iran, they believe, has legitimate grievances, just like the 9/11 terrorists, who may not have attacked us had we addressed those concerns. So we must always begin with a presumption of the enemy's good will, then sweet-talk, then cave -- anything to avoid violence and at any cost.
Think I'm exaggerating? Then explain Obama's statements shortly after the 9/11 attacks, reported in the Hyde Park Herald Sept. 19, 2001: "We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine or connect with the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy most often grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair."
If Obama's own words aren't enough to convince you of his reckless appeasement mentality, let's look at the position of one of his senior advisors, Richard Danzig. According to the U.K.'s Daily Telegraph, Danzig told the Center for a New American Security, "Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security."
Danzig believes we can draw lessons from the story to help us reframe our foreign policy toward the Arab world. "Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump on the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming down stairs. But sometimes he thinks there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping a minute and think about it." Danzig's other favorite source on terrorism is "Among the Thugs," a book about soccer violence in Britain.
Meanwhile, while the U.S. has reached out in sacred diplomacy to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the dictator has thumbed his nose at us, defiantly refusing to discontinue his uranium enrichment program. I suppose we need more empathy for him, too.
As we speak, Obama struts around Iraq with his signature arrogance and bereft of the shame he's earned for his insistence we withdraw in defeat there, pretending that history's repudiation of his surrender policy is a vindication of his prescience and wisdom. And they tell us President George W. Bush will never admit his mistakes!
How strangely paradoxical it would be if Barack Obama were to sail into the presidency on the strength of his own failures. Crazier things have happened.
#1
watching the video it becomes clear that it is true what they say...if he's not reading from a script, he just sounds as dumb as a box of rocks. If he does win (God help us) then it will be fun to watch the GW haters have to suck up the fact that Obama's speaking ability is about 1,000,000,0000,000 times worse than Bush's on his absolute worst day.
Four people including two militant terrorists separatists and a teacher were shot dead in separate attacks in Thailand's troubled south, police said on Friday.
The 30-year-old Muslim teacher was killed in a drive-by shooting in the Yarang district of Pattani province on Thursday afternoon while he was riding his motorbike home, police said. He was the 100th teacher killed in more than four years of unrest in the Muslim-majority provinces bordering Malaysia. Militants have targeted government-run school workers, whom they consider a symbol of Thai authority.
A 63-year-old Thai villager was also shot dead in the Khok Pho district of Pattani in another drive-by shooting late on Thursday evening.
In nearby Narathiwat, two Muslim militants, both wanted by police, were shot and killed after clashing with security forces in Rangae district on Thursday afternoon. Seven suspects were also arrested after 1,000 security officials, backed by a military helicopter, fought with terrorists militants for over five hours, police said.
SAN DIEGO -- Charges have been dismissed against a Camp Pendleton Marine sniper accused in the shooting deaths of two Syrians in Iraq.
The Marine Corps announced Thursday that the charges against Sgt. John Winnick II were dismissed without prejudice by the commanding general of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, meaning charges could be brought again at a later time.
Winnick, 24, was charged with two counts of voluntary manslaughter and failing to adhere to the military's rules of engagement by firing without reasonable certainty that his targets were hostile.
"In light of all of the circumstances, the commanding general has determined Sgt. Winnick's actions do not warrant referral of the charges to a military justice forum," said Marine Corps spokesman Mike Alvarez.
Alvarez did not know why Lt. Gen. Samuel Helland left the door open for possible future prosecution.
The dismissal of charges against Winnick follows a recommendation by an investigating officer that the Marine face a lesser charge of dereliction of duty for the June 2007 shootings in Iraq's western Anbar province.
"This is the first I'm hearing of it," Winnick's attorney, Gary Myers, told The Associated Press when asked for reaction to the dismissal.
"We are obviously pleased, and it was the correct result," he said.
Myers said Winnick was not immediately aware of the dismissal of charges but believed he would be "relieved" by the news.
"Now he can go back to being a Marine," he said.
During an Article 32 hearing, similar to a preliminary hearing, to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to send the Marine to court-martial, Winnick testified that he shot the men because he believed he was protecting his Marines.
The shooting began after a soda delivery truck stopped near a sniper team hideout on a busy road near Lake Tharthar where roadside bombs were a common threat.
During the hearing, Winnick's comrades testified that the Marine fired a fatal sniper round at a man who hopped out of the cab, removed a container or bag from a side compartment, and appeared to begin digging at the ground. Winnick then killed a second man with a shotgun after the team stormed out of its hiding place, they testified.
Winnick testified that he believed he was protecting his Marines.
Winnick had faced up to 40 years in prison and dishonorable discharge if convicted on all counts, which also included aggravated assault against two truck passengers who were injured in the fight.
Al-Qaida terrorists have been largely marginalized in Iraqs Babil province, thanks to the joint efforts of Iraqi and U.S. security forces, as well as local Sons of Iraq citizen security groups, a senior U.S. military officer posted in Iraq said today.
The organization related to al-Qaida is severely disrupted, as well as the [extremist] militia in Babil province, Army Col. Tom James, commander of the 3rd Infantry Divisions 4th Brigade Combat Team, said during a satellite-carried news conference with Pentagon reporters.
Overall, we are extremely optimistic about the security situation in Babil province, because of the professional actions of the Iraqi security forces and the populations strong desire for peace and stability, James said.
About 1.2 million people live in Babil province, located about 50 kilometers south of Baghdad, James said. Babils population is about 70 percent Shiia Muslim and 30 percent Sunni Muslim. Hillah is the provincial capital.
The improved security, he said, will stimulate positive governance and economic growth for the future, and eventually will result in irreversible, sustainable security.
James complimented his soldiers ability to adapt rapidly to extremely complex situations, and he also saluted Iraqi soldiers ability to adjust to conditions.
The last of the U.S.-provided surge forces recently departed Iraq, but improved Iraqi security forces are picking up the slack, James said. With the departure of the surge troops, Iraqi security forces are at a [capability] level to be able to handle that, he added.
The improved security is driving reconstruction and economic progress, James said, noting that 186 Iraqi-government-sponsored economic programs are under way in the province.
U.S. and Iraqi forces are helping Iraqi government officials prepare for provincial elections slated for later in the year. Twenty-three Iraqi voter registration sites have been set up in Babil province, James noted.
James was accompanied at the news conference by Brig. Gen. Abdul Amir, commander of 31st Brigade, 8th Iraqi Army Division. The U.S. and Iraqi soldiers work together, along with Iraqi police and Sons of Iraq members, to conduct aggressive security operations across Babil province, James said.
Working in tandem, U.S. and Iraqi security forces were able to disable all these [al-Qaida] cells and enemies, Amir said. Most of the al-Qaida leaders in his area of operations, he said, are now in detention.
Today, in northern Babil province, there is no threat from al-Qaida or extremist militia, Amir asserted.
The reduced incidence of al-Qaida attacks, especially those in the form of improvised explosive devices, enables U.S.-supported Iraqi security forces to focus resources to quickly disrupt enemy activity, James said. Al-Qaidas weakened state in Babil province is obvious to us, based on their ability to deliver an effective IED attack, he explained.
Previously, the colonel explained, al-Qaida operatives in the province typically deployed suicide-vest bombers and used deeply buried IEDs.
Were not seeing those any more, James said. Explosive devices now employed by al-Qaida in his area of operations, he said, are much more primitive and much less effective.
The few remaining al-Qaida agents in Babil province are attempting to use their waning power to target Sons of Iraq leadership, with little effect, James said.
Thats the primary threat that weve seen over the last couple of weeks, James said.
Meanwhile, Iraqi security forces, he said, continue to zero in on remaining al-Qaida elements in the province. James saluted the security contributions provided by Iraqi soldiers, police and Sons of Iraq members.
I am honored to serve with the Iraqi security forces; they are true patriots, and we have built relationships that will last a lifetime, James said. I thank them and their families and the people of Iraq for their sacrifices in pursuit of a safe and secure country, so that democracy and freedom can flourish.
I would also like to thank the American people, James continued, especially the families of our servicemen and women, for their sacrifices and their support as well, as were forward-deployed here.
The colonel also saluted our servicemen and women for their contribution to freedom and those that have paid the ultimate sacrifice on the field of battle, and that is both, Iraqi army as well as coalition-force and U.S. forces, that have fought hand in hand to make Iraq a secure place.
In turn, Amir expressed his gratitude for U.S. military help in ridding his country of terrorists and insurgents.
I send my greeting to all the families of the 4th Brigade soldiers who are sacrificing with their lives for helping us to reform and rebuild our armed forces, the Iraqi general said.
And, I am hoping that they will go home safely and see their families, Amir said.
In January 2007, America's adventure in Iraq seemed like a chaotic failure. The country was riven with sectarian violence, and al-Qaeda in Iraq had gained a foothold in western Anbar province. Attacks on U.S. troops were running well over 1,000 a week, and Iraqi civilians were dying at a rate of more than 3,000 a month.
In that context, President Bush's announcement that month that he planned to "surge" more than 20,000 extra U.S. troops into Iraq felt to many critics, including Sen. Barack Obama, like doubling down on failure.
A year and a half later, though, violence is down dramatically and there's a cautious hope that both the U.S. and Iraq could achieve an outcome once seemed out of reach.
The surge didn't do all of that; a cease-fire by Shiite militias and the switch by Sunni insurgents from attacking Americans to fighting al-Qaeda helped enormously. But the extra U.S. troops, brilliantly deployed by Gen. David Petraeus, have made a huge difference in calming the chaos. In doing so, it also contributed to the other developments.
Why then can't Obama bring himself to acknowledge the surge worked better than he and other skeptics, including this page, thought it would? What does that stubbornness say about the kind of president he'd be?
In recent comments, the Democratic presidential candidate has grudgingly conceded that the troops helped lessen the violence, but he has insisted that the surge was a dubious policy because it allowed the situation in Afghanistan to deteriorate and failed to produce political breakthroughs in Iraq. Even knowing the outcome, he told CBS News Tuesday, he still wouldn't have supported the idea.
That's hard to fathom. Even if you believe that the invasion of Iraq was a grievous error and it was the U.S. should still make every effort to leave behind a stable situation. Obama seems stuck in the first part of that thought process, repeatedly proclaiming that he was right to oppose the war and disparaging worthwhile efforts to fix the mess it created. Hence, his dismissal of the surge as "a tactical victory imposed upon a huge strategic blunder."
The great irony, of course, is that the success of the surge has made Obama's plan to withdraw combat troops in 16 months far more plausible than when he proposed it. Another irony is that while Obama downplays the effectiveness of the surge in Iraq, he is urging a similar tactic now in Afghanistan.
As for the surge not producing sufficient political reconciliation in Iraq, it's true that efforts to integrate Sunnis into a Shiite-dominated political culture are only inching forward. But reconciliation takes many forms, and Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's military attacks against rogue Shiite militias in Basra and Baghdad's Sadr City were a hugely important signal to Sunnis.
Perhaps it's too much to ask that Obama risk being taunted by headlines such as "Obama says Bush was right." But for the nation to move forward on its single most vexing debate, it would help if the next president could admit the obvious whether that's Republican John McCain conceding that it was a terrible blunder to invade Iraq in the first place, or Obama acknowledging that the surge has worked better than he expected.
Americans don't expect their president to be right all the time. They do expect him to change course when he's proved wrong.
#1
One thing Obama's visit did, was to focus the media on the fact, that the surge worked.
Interesting, how many in the MSM are attempting to get the O to admit he was wrong, that the surge is working. Do they know, in doing so, they are announcing to the world, that yes, indeed, The Surge did work?
#2
Be careful. The decline in violent incidents in Iraq began when the Awakening movement of Anbar Province, began to work with local US commanders. That was several months before the Surge commenced. It is true that Sunnis took the Surge as a commitment of US troops to stand between them and aggressive Shiites, but it was really Sunni-Shiite politics that led to the rough peace that we see today. The Status of Forces Agreement ends on July 31; McCain needs to avoid setting himself up for an over optimistic assessment of what could amount to a transient peace. The fact that the Shiite Parliamentary majority expressed considerable support for the Iran President, during Ahmadinejad's June visit, manifests perverse manipulation. The Dems will jump on any over-statement. Just the facts, please.
#3
Compare wid MARKET ORACLE [Stratfor] > IRAN IS VITUALLY IMPREGNABLE FROM A SUCCESSFUL US INVASION/THE GEOPOLITICS OF IRAN - HOLDING THE CENTER OF A [pan-]MOUNTAIN FORTRESS.
Islamist-Radical IRAN is a poor State but has SUPER-DEFENSIBLE BORDERS + INTERNAL ENCLAVES, AND HAS UNDERTAKEN AND COMPLETED MOST OF THE VITAL STEPS NEEDED TO EFFEC ENDURE AND PREVAIL AGZ ANY MAJOR US ATTACK AND INVASION???
#4
It is true that Sunnis took the Surge as a commitment of US troops to stand between them and aggressive Shiites,
But that is 90% of victory in a guerrilla war. If people begin to think you are going home then they will help the guerrilla in order to not be killed once you have witrhdrawn and the more brutal the guerrilla the more they will help it.
In Algeria teh French Army (more exactly its paratroopers) had the FLN on the ropes and there were more nataives fighting the FLN that for it. Then De Gaulle began to make noises about leaving. Instant result: anatives rallied massively the FLN.
#5
Obama may really be a narcissist, I think by the way he's talking lately that he really believes this Obamassiah shit. He may really be slipping into total neurosis.
Taking the protest against the Gaza blockade to a new level, two boats packed with foreign left-wing activists will attempt to sail from Cyprus to the sealed Gaza harbor in two weeks' time. The operation is being directed by members of the International Solidarity Movement and the Israeli Commission against House Demolitions. A Web site, FreeGaza, has been set up to collect donations and update the public.
The group - which numbers some 40 activists - has purchased two boats, one called SS Free Gaza and the other SS Liberty, named after the USS Liberty that was mistakenly bombed by the Israel Air Force during the Six Day War. Thirty-four American sailors were killed in the bombing. The boats are scheduled to set sail from Cyprus on August 5 and arrive, according to organizer Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, at the Gaza coast a day or two later.
"The purpose is to get into the Gaza harbor and breach the siege," Godfrey-Goldstein said Thursday. "The IDF will probably stop us but part of the point is to show that Gaza is closed off." She said that if the boats were stopped by the Israel Navy, they would likely remain at sea for a few days in an effort to get the government to change its policy and allow free access to Gaza by sea. Such access is not allowed and the waters off the coast are patrolled by the navy, mainly due to weapons-smuggling from Egypt and other countries.
In April, The Jerusalem Post reported that Iran was increasing its efforts to smuggle arms into the Strip by dropping floating devices off the Gaza coast that are then picked up by Gazan fisherman.
According to defense officials, Iran was sending rockets and other advanced weaponry to Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip via tunnels dug under the Philadelphi Corridor from Sinai as well as by sea. Officials said the navy was doing an effective job in curbing the smuggling by sea but that there were shipments that Israeli forces had not succeeded in intercepting.
The IDF Spokesman's Office would not say what the navy intends to do in the event that the protest boats try to enter the Gaza harbor.
#5
And in the meantime Blacks are being massacred in Sudan to the utter indiffernce of those activiists. Why is it that the only peope for whom they move a finger are those who want to exterminate Jews?
Show me a pro-Palestinian activist and they will show you a Nazi.
#7
Time to try out another of those super duper revamped Mk.48 torpedoes (see above). They are expensive as hell but I for one am willing to take up a collection for this particular acquisition.
#9
And how are those clowns going to protest against Hamas missile attacks on Israeli civilians? If they are pro Hamas, then they are targets in the GWOT.
#10
I agree with Phil. The best way to let the situation pass under the radar is to let them into Gaza, then seal the port like they want. Survivor: Gaza. I love it.
#11
letting their boats in without searching and removing anything of value would be foolish. Strip em, let em in, and lock em in with the Paleos. They become just another set of mouths to feed, and prolly not very fun after the first news conference is over and the attention goes away
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/25/2008 7:59
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#12
So sink them. That'll mean the blockade is working and prove their point. Everybody's happy!
#17
I'm hoping for a rogue wave, or a sudden squall at sea.
If not, intercept and arrest. Let the extradition process take about 6 months while they rot in a jail cell with Paleostain buggerers.
The trip organizers think one of four things will happen to the ship: it may be stopped as it crosses or approaches the barrier marking the international waters boundary, in which case the crew is prepared to stay on board for at least two weeks in protest of the illegal halt of passage. The second possibility envisioned by the organizers is that the ship will be allowed to pass into the area, and will be stopped in the territorial waters. In this eventuality the crew expects to be arrested, and the ship dragged to shore. A third possibility is that the ship will be sunk by the navy.
The final option is that the ship actually makes it through to the Gaza port near Gaza City in the north of the Strip.
According to Holocaust survivor and crew member Hedy Epstein, in the event that they can get through to Gaza they will "open the port, fish with the fishermen, help in the clinics, and work in the schools."
The ship was invited to Gaza by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, and support for the initiative was provided in part from Carter Center in the US and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
#23
some metallic and kevlar strips adrift near the props will foul them. That, and some solvent in the diesel will cause the engines to burn out as well.
#26
Swamp the "vessels" at night with a couple of mines. Then an Israeli ELint Counter-Measures ship can "bend" their SOS signals enough to send any Paleo Helpers off chasing flying fish 150 miles away.
OH the GREAT WHITE Sharks are Hungry
For FAT FAT Paleo Snacks
OH the GREAT WHITE Sharks are Hungry
For FAT FAT Paleo Snacks
Repeat process with the Paleo Rescue "vessels".
Posted by: Red Dawg ||
07/25/2008 13:39
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#27
let them in, and as the ship gets close to shore, sink it. good chance they could survive if the Paleos assist them, but their ride home is now holding the seabed down.
#28
Let them into Gaza. Just don't ever let them out again. They can get the same treatment as Kuntar got from his dad and uncles. They'll probably like it.
Zimbabwean crisis talks due to start in South Africa struggled to get off the ground on Tuesday as chief negotiators had yet to leave Harare, sources from the opposition and ruling party said. Representatives of the ruling Zanu PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) were meant to begin negotiations towards resolving the country's political crisis after the signing of a historic pact on Monday. As representatives from both parties remained tied up in Zimbabwe, the European Union sought to tighten the screw on veteran President Robert Mugabe's regime by stepping up sanctions on Tuesday. The long-awaited Pretoria talks, given a tight two week timeline, were now expected to begin "in earnest" on Thursday, said Mbeki's spokesman Mukoni Ratshitanga.
Zimbabwean government sources said that Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa and Labour Minister Nicholas Goche - the chief negotiators for the ruling Zanu PF party - had been locked in a cabinet meeting all afternoon and were not now expected to fly until Wednesday morning. Meanwhile a source in the larger faction of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said its top negotiators, party chairman Lovemore Moyo and secretary-general Tendai Biti, had also yet to leave. However a source in the smaller faction of the MDC, which is also taking part in the talks in Pretoria, said its representative had already arrived in South Africa.
Both sides agreed in their memorandum of understanding inked in Harare to observe a media blackout during the course of negotiations that are expected to conclude within a fortnight. While commentators have warned significant obstacles remain in the path towards forming "an inclusive government", both Tsvangirai and Mugabe tried on Monday to draw a line under a crisis sparked by disputed elections in March. At a ceremony in Harare overseen by chief mediator and South African President Thabo Mbeki, Mugabe and Tsvangirai shook hands in their first meeting since the opposition leader formed the MDC in 1999 - albeit with few signs of warmth.
(Xinhua) -- The military in Sri Lanka said government troops captured an area of 10 square kilometers from Tamil Tiger rebels and killed 25 of them in the north of the country on Thursday.
Officials from the Ministry of Defense said the troops captured the Vavunikulam Tank area in the Mullaittivu District at around 10:00 a.m. local time (0430 GMT).
The military also said fighting ensued between the troops and the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) Thursday morning as security forces pounded identified rebel positions with heavy artillery and mortar fire.
Seven rebel bodies were recovered after the troops captured the area.
The military said at least 25 rebels were killed in the clashes.
Sri Lanka's government troops are currently battling the LTTE in the north with the aim of completely crushing the organization.
The LTTE has been fighting against the government since the mid-1980s to establish an independent homeland for the island's minority Tamils, which led to the death of more than 70,000 people.
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(Xinhua) -- A blast killed two children and wounded two others in southeastern Turkey on Thursday, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported. The explosion occurred in the village of Guldiken in Lice town of the southeastern province of Diyarbakir, according to the report. The injured children were rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment, said the report, adding that a full investigation into the blast is underway.
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(VOI) - Police forces on Thursday arrested two suspects and defused a roadside bomb in Wassit, a security source said. "An ordinance explosive team defused a 20-kg sophisticated roadside bomb planted in al-Gardhiya district, 4 km south of Kut, which houses the biggest fuel reservoirs in the south," a Wassit security source, who requested anonymity, told Aswat al-Iraq - Voices of Iraq - (VOI). The source noted "police forces discovered the bomb based on a tip-off reported by a resident," adding "it was defused half an hour before a high-level government official passed the area." Elsewhere in Wassit, the same source said police forces captured two suspects in al-Numaniya district, north Wassit, during a raid-and search operation.
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(Xinhua) -- The summit of Pakistan's ruling coalition partners Wednesday reached a consensus that the situation facing the country warrants the evolution of a long-term policy across the board with the support of all political partners.
The ruling coalition partners held a meeting here and it was agreed that Pakistan's national security and internal stability was paramount and no one would be allowed to challenge the writ of the state, the News Network International news agency reported.
It was also agreed in principle that in order to mobilize public support for greater national consensus on Pakistan's battle against extremism and militancy, parliament will discuss the formulation of a national policy to address the situation.
The coalition partners also reiterated that Pakistan's territory would not be used for terrorist attacks, nor would attacks from external forces on Pakistan's soil be tolerated.
The meeting was attended by Pakistan People's Party Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz President Shahbaz Sharif and other political leaders and senior government officials.
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The law enforcement agencies and intelligence agencies, acting on information of ethnic and religious violence to occur, may conduct 'Operation Green' soon against militants who aim to disturb peace in the city.
Sources said that after the army operation in different areas of NWFP, the militants have taken shelter in various areas in Karachi, including Sohrab Goth, Benaras Colony, Landhi, Quaidabad, Shah Latif Town and other areas. The green signal for the operation has been given after consultation with the federal government, the Sindh government and the coalition partners of the Sindh government, following reports of the presence of the militants.
The sources also said that the approval for the operation was given after the seven bomb blasts that rocked the city within the space of an hour on July 7. The operation has become inevitable after intelligence reports that those militants against whom the government has launched the recent operation in NWFP may target political and religious figures.
It is also learnt that the intelligence and law enforcement agencies have already indicated that there are some militant religious parties involved that are backed by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan Commander Baitullah Mehsud.
Acting Karachi CCPO Wajid Ali Durani said that the operation has not begun yet but the media will be informed when it is launched.
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#1
'Operation Green'? It'll probably commence when when we send them a couple of million bucks worth of Priuses.
Ziauddin Sardar
The Taliban have given an ultimatum to Pakistan: leave Peshawar within five days or face the consequences. That a band of terrorists can tell a democratically elected government to quit its own territory says a great deal about the power of the Taliban. Far from being beaten and on the run, as we are constantly being told, the Taliban are stronger than ever.
The ultimatum was issued this past week by Baitullah Mehsud, a prominent leader of the Taliban. Mehsud's men are already in Peshawar, the largest city of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and birthplace of al-Qaeda. Peshawar is also the administrative centre for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) of Pakistan. The Taliban have been in total control of Fata for almost a decade. Peshawar will be the jewel in their crown. And if Peshawar goes, the rest of Pakistan would not be far away.
The NWFP government rejected the "five-day ultimatum" and is now bracing itself for the consequences. The city, my friends tell me, looks like a garrison town. Armoured vehicles belonging to the Pakistan Frontier Corps occupy key positions. Paramilitary forces and anti-terror units patrol the streets. Nevertheless, Taliban warlords freely roam the city in pick-up trucks. Abductions and hit-and-run raids have become routine facts of life.
I fear for Pakistan. Commentators in Islamabad are talking openly about losing Peshawar. Many believe the Talibanisation of Pakistan is well under way and impossible to reverse.
The problem is that Islamabad has no coherent policy towards the Taliban. It has tried to appease them, to buy their loyalty, has bombed their villages and schools and, when required, used them as its proxy. Even peace treaties, such as the one made in September 2006, have been half-hearted. During the election campaign, both the People's Party and the Muslim League emphasised the Taliban problem required a political rather than a military solution. After the elections, politics was abandoned in favour of military operations.
The newly elected government of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani seems too preoccupied with internal political feuding to realise that it has a full-blown rebellion on its hands.
The newly elected government of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani seems too preoccupied with internal political feuding to realise that it has a full-blown rebellion on its hands.
Pakistan's predicament is that of the war on terror. The only secure solution must deal with the totality of the social conditions underpinning the problem. There is no military solution that does not exacerbate social problems, thus fuelling the instability in which the Taliban can thrive. The war on terror has merely extended the agony it was meant to obliterate.
The Taliban may look invincible, but they are nothing more than a marauding band of zealous puritans. A typical "Taliban commander" is a warlord with fewer than a hundred armed men. He pays them with money earned from drugs or extortion. He takes over an area, ruthlessly imposes taxes, administers summary and brutal justice, and declares himself the ruler. He murders his opponents and kidnaps others for ransom. Any Pakistani soldiers captured are slaughtered in the most barbaric way.
There are roughly 500 Taliban commanders, every one of whom is known to the Pakistani authorities. The reason that they have not been captured is simple: Islamabad believes it can use them for its own purposes.
There are roughly 500 Taliban commanders, every one of whom is known to the Pakistani authorities. The reason that they have not been captured is simple: Islamabad believes it can use them for its own purposes. This illusion has now become dangerously obsolete.
It is not sufficient, however, merely to defeat the Taliban. Candidates to replace them will not be hard to find in territory that has never been equitably incorporated into the nation state. And as a nation, Pakistan, having diverted so much aid and development to the military Establishment, has little to offer the Fata territories. This is the underlying conundrum that makes not only crushing the Taliban, but also sustaining Pakistan so difficult.
The Taliban are a Pakistani problem, created and nourished by Pakistan itself. To defeat the Taliban and defeat them truly, Pakistan must find a way to cure itself.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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#1
But, but, but Taliban is the essence of Pakistan. It's like asking Paleos to cure themselves of Hamas.
#2
The Taliban are a Pakistani problem,
They certainly are.
created and nourished by Pakistan itself.
Not so. Pakistan spent so much money on its military that it had nothing left over for education. Saudi Arabia stepped into the vacuum left, with its toxic form of Wahhabism, which created the Taliban. The Taliban is amply being nourished by the Saudis due to the generous prices the West is paying for its oil.
The Zimbabwean government is struggling to find enough cash to pay its workers, and more importantly the military, after it was forced to cut back on printing money because sanctions have severed its supply of banknote paper from Europe. Officials involved in the printing say the regime fears the presses could be shut down altogether if further political pressure causes the withdrawal of software licences used to design and print notes. Paper money is already in short supply because the state-run Fidelity Printers & Refiners in the capital, Harare, cannot keep up with demand created by the hyperinflation and rapid devaluation that causes notes to lose almost their entire value within weeks of being issued.
On Monday, the central bank issued a Z$100bn note, the highest denomination to date but worth 7p, printed on what remains of stocks of the German paper. The source said the firm had been told new supplies of paper were coming from Malaysia but, for now, it was unable to meet the demand for cash created by the hyperinflation, estimated at 40,000,000%. Fidelity's presses, which had been running 24 hours a day for many months, are now rarely started up. The firm has also had problems maintaining the presses because it is unable to obtain spare parts. The cash shortage is contributing to the rapidly deepening economic crisis and further threatening Mugabe's regime. The government needs a fresh injection of cash soon to pay its workers, from teachers and nurses to the police. It also needs to ensure money reaches the army.
Zimbabweans are limited to withdrawing just $100bn a day from their bank accounts, less than half the cost of a loaf of bread, although the government has just increased the allowance to Z$1.5tn a day for those in the military. The cash is delivered to the barracks by the banks to save soldiers standing in line for hours.
From the website: "Visitors to ZWNEWS.com over recent days will have noticed disruption to normal service. This is because hackers, based in, or at least routed through, China have damaged the site."
#1
Speaking from experience, China is a horrible place to route through, as any packet going out is examined and throttled. On the other hand, anyone working with the government can get special lines that are just as good as any originating from America.
My web browsing speed is usually in the range of 5-10k/s. Sites inside China are lightning-fast, though.
Swat-based Taliban would retaliate if security forces continued operation in the region, a satellite channel reported on Thursday. According to Aaj News, the decision was made at the end of a two-day meeting of a Taliban Shura (council) held under Mulla Fazlullah at an undisclosed location in the Swat valley.
The participants decided that Taliban should react in case the security forces did not halt attacking their pockets in the tribal and settled areas of the NWFP. The Swat peace deal was also discussed in the meeting, the channel reported. It was decided in the meeting that any decision to revoke or maintain the Swat peace deal would be taken after the assent of Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud. The decision taken by the Taliban leader would be binding, the participants decided.
Meanwhile, Swat-based Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan said that army troops were being amassed in the Malakand district. The NWFP government released two key Taliban militants close to Fazlullah from Taimergara Prison, official sources and locals said. One of them is Mulla Esa Khan, a founder of Sharifabad FM Radio, the locals added.
This article starring:
Taimergara Prison
BAITULLAH MEHSUD
Taliban
MULLA ESA KHAN
Taliban
MULLA FAZLULLAH
Taliban
MUSLIM KHAN
Taliban
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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Another suspect in the kidnapping of a television news crew was arrested by the military in Sulu, a military spokesman said Thursday.
The suspect was identified as Abu Sayyaf member Munhamer Sattari alias Brain Damage, who was collared in Kandang village, Maimbung town, at 5:35 p.m. last Tuesday, said Lieutenant Colonel Edgard Arevalo of the Navy. No details are available as of posting time.
Sattair is the third suspect to be captured in a week. Last Friday, authorities arrested two others, including a 14-year-old boy in Timpook village, Patikul town.
On June 8, ABS-CBN news anchor Ces Drilon, her cameramen Jimmy Encarnacion and Angelo Valderama, and their guide, Mindanao State University (MSU) professor Octavio Dinampo, were seized in Sulu by suspected Abu Sayyaf bandits. Valderama was freed on June 12, while the rest was released on June 17. Police said ransom was paid.
This article starring:
Abu Sayyaf
Angelo Valderama
Brain Damage
Abu Sayyaf
Ces Drilon
Jimmy Encarnacion
Munhamer Sattari
Abu Sayyaf
Octavio Dinampo
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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The British government has increased the age of marriage visa seekers from 18 to 21 year as part of a crackdown on forced marriage, the British High Commission (BHC) said in a statement on Thursday.
"On 23 July 2008, the Home Office announced that the age at which someone can apply for a marriage visa would increase from 18 to 21 as part of a crackdown on forced marriage," BHC statement said.
The five key proposals announced include raising the age of sponsorship for a marriage visa from 18 to 21; asking foreign spouses to enter into an agreement to learn English before they come to the UK; introducing a power to revoke leave to remain where there is evidence that the marriage route has been abused; requiring all sponsors to register their intention to marry overseas before they leave the UK, and ensure through a code of practice that specialist teams can identify people vulnerable to the risks of forced marriage.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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#1
Dunno. UK judges are Sharia friendly. Most muslims follow their "prophet's" example and sanction marriage of adult men to young girls. Muhammad seized the betrothal of Aisha when she was 6, and consummated the marriage when she was 9. He was: 55. In 2002, Iran had to raise the age of marriage of girls to 13, after legalized pedophilia led to over population.
(VOI) -- The Iraqi Supreme Criminal Court on Thursday resumed its third session to try the Friday prayers case, in which 14 officials of the former regime are being tried on charges of detaining a large number of civilians, lynching many of them, rendering several families homeless, and decimating whole villages in the provinces of Baghdad, Missan, Samawa, and Basra in February 1999.
The session, headed by Chief Justice Muhammad Uraiby, began with hearing a witness's statement, who spoke from behind a curtain for security reasons. The witness depicted events that took at that time, then a number of defendants and their attorneys spoke.
The Friday prayers incidents erupted after the assassination of Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Muhammad Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr and his two sons in the city of al-Kufa on February 19, 1999, whose death is blamed on the former regime's intelligence agencies. The death of Sadr, the father of Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, was followed by security tension in many Iraqi cities then, including the then Saddam City (currently al-Sadr city), where the al-Mohsin and al-Hikma mosques were attacked, leaving a large number of worshipers killed and scores others detained.
At least 25 Tamil Tiger rebels and four soldiers have been killed in fighting across Sri Lanka's northern region, the defence ministry said Thursday.
The ministry said the clashes between troops and members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) happened Wednesday and brought the number of guerrillas killed since January to 5,176. The four troop deaths brought the toll since January to 454, according to the ministry tally. Casualty claims cannot be independently verified as the ministry bars reporters from visiting the conflict-affected areas.
Meanwhile, Sri Lankan warplanes Thursday carried out air strikes against a suspected rebel training centre in the guerrilla-controlled Mullaittivu area, the airforce said. Airforce spokesman Wing Commander Janaka Nanayakkara said pilots confirmed they had hit the camp. Separatist Tamil Tigers, fighting for a homeland for minority Tamils since 1972, had no comment on casualties.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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(VOI) - Seven individuals were killed and 24 others wounded by a suicide bombing targetting a commander for anti-Qaeda group in Diala on Thursday, a security source said. "A woman rigged with an explosive belts blew herself up targetting a commander of popular committees in Baquba al-Jadida, killing him and six individuals including bodyguards and wounded 24 others", a Diala security source, who requested anonmity, told Aswat al-Iraq-Voices of Iraq(VOI).
Boom bitches are becoming an AQI trademark.
The source identified the anti-U.S group commander as Naeem al-Dulaimi. Earlier, the source noted "the explosion took place when a roadside bomb placed inside a popular committees commander's car blew up".
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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#1
That will backfire. Revenge will be disproportionate.
Legislators in France have voted to allow companies to sidestep the 35-hour workweek by negotiating individual overtime agreements with their employees.
The new legislation, which was passed by Parliament late Wednesday night and which will take effect in September, is the boldest step yet in stripping what many view as an emblematic labor law, without quite getting rid of it. While the workweek limit is as good as buried, every hour beyond 35 that is worked will be considered overtime and will therefore be more expensive.
"We wanted to put an end to the rigidity of the labor market" Labor Minister Xavier Bertrand, one of the chief architects of the change, said Thursday on France Info radio. "Everything will be negotiated company by company."
The opposition Socialist Party, which reduced the statutory workweek to 35 hours from 39 hours a decade ago, voted against the changes, accusing the government of pandering to big business at the expense of workers.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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#1
And labor doesn't pander to its members?
Never forget - labor IS big business. Unions are the big business of providing workers. This isn't a David vs Goliath thing. It's two Goliaths.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
07/25/2008 5:40
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#2
Unions can win all the concessions they want then stand by and watch unemployment increase. They never learn.
#3
In the US, labor unions are a political racket to extort millions of dollars for the Democratic Party from American workers. When was the last time you saw a union give money to the RNC?
NATO will not enter Pakistan to hunt Taliban insurgents, but reserves the right to hit the militants there should they attack alliance troops across the border in Afghanistan, the alliance's chief said on Thursday.
NATO says militant attacks along the border in eastern Afghanistan have jumped by 40 percent this year since de-facto ceasefires came into effect between Pakistan's new government and insurgents in the border tribal regions.
Afghan officials say the ousted Taliban and al Qaeda have bases in Pakistan's tribal areas and President Hamid Karzai last month said he might send troops there to fight them after a series of high-profile attacks by the militants.
Standing alongside Karzai at a Kabul news conference, NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer was asked if the alliance was considering a wider mandate from the United Nations to go after militant sanctuaries inside Pakistan. "My answer is an unqualified no. We have a United Nations security mandate for Afghanistan and that's it. If NATO forces are shot at from the other side of the border, there is always the right to self-defence but you will not see NATO forces crossing into Pakistan territory," Scheffer replied.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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#1
Hunt = search
Killing is not searching. We already know at that point where they are.
#2
As long as border = security, there is no way to extermanite these vermin. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to pursue these Bad Boyz to the ends of the earth?
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
07/25/2008 10:37
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#3
Is NATO's position mandatory for American Special Forces troops already wandering, ghostlike, on the far side of the border?
(Xinhua) -- Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir Wednesday vowed to boost Sudan's efforts to provide better security for the United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur, according to the United Nations.
"For the inhabitants, we intend to continue providing the same high level of skilled service."
He made the pledge when meeting with Rodolphe Adada, the joint special representative of the mission, at the mission's headquarters in El Fasher. "You are our guests and our partners," said al-Bashir, "and we are ready to provide any assistance that will help you do your work."
He also expressed his condolences to those peacekeepers that have lost their lives in Darfur while serving the mission. Seven blue helmets were killed in an ambush earlier this month in North Darfur, and, just over a week later, another was shot dead in West Darfur.
Adada, for his part, said the mission's deployment was besieged by numerous challenges but the mission was strengthening its resolve to reach its full capacity as soon as possible. He said his mission had thousands of containers awaiting "movement along the difficult and sometimes dangerous routes into Darfur," calling on the Sudanese government to ensure that the convoys reach their destinations safely.
This article starring:
President Omar al-Bashir
Rodolphe Adada
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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#1
I will cover them with my giant hat and epaulets...
(Xinhua) -- Afghanistan National Army (ANA) clashed with Taliban militants on Thursday in southern Afghan province of Zabul, leaving 70 militants dead, according to a statement of the Interior Ministry. "The Taliban rebels ambushed convoy of ANA on the Kabul-Kandahar highway in the Shah joy district of Zabul province," the statement said, "after hours' fierce fighting ANA foiled the attack killing 70 enemies, arresting four others and a large number of weapons. Some dead bodies of foreign fighters were also found in the battle field."
Earlier, Zahir Azimi, spokesman of Defense Ministry, told Xinhua ANA killed 34 Taliban insurgents in the highway clash. Jailani Khan, the provincial deputy police chief also confirmed the clashes between ANA and Taliban fighters and put the number of Taliban casualties as 37, adding the highway is now secured and re-opened.
Meanwhile, Qari Yusuf Ahmadi, the purported Taliban spokesman told Xinhua via phone from an unknown hideout that the outfit ambushed ANA convoy, successfully destroying two army's vehicles and killing over 12 Afghan troops.
This article starring:
Jailani Khan
Qari Yusuf Ahmadi
Taliban
Zahir Azimi, spokesman of Defense Ministry
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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#1
another Quagmire report! 70 is a good start
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/25/2008 7:54
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#2
I just caught the message of your picture. Rockettes for rockets. Dumb me.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
07/25/2008 11:03
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(VOI) - Iraqi army forces arrested on Thursday morning ten wanted men and found a stockpile of weapons and ammunitions in eastern Baghdad, a source from the Baghdad's operations command said. "A force from the 11th division of the Iraqi army arrested ten wanted men and seized amounts of weapons and ammunitions found in their possession during a crackdown operation in Sadr City in eastern Baghdad," the source told Aswat al-Iraq - Voices of Iraq (VOI). "The same force found a weapons cache during a security raid in the sector 63 in al-Qayara region in Sadr City," he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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#1
Wanted man in Kabul
Wanted man in old Wazoo
Wanted man in Peshawar
For rapin' at the zoo...
-- Johnny Al-Kash
#2
They gave him his orders a tad outside Peshawr
Saying Steve Mo you're gonna do fine,
This ain't an airplane it's a cheep old dumptruck
Put 'er into Kabul on time.
Itn a purdy long ride from Peshwar to Kabul on a rhode that's 3 percent grade...
Mo came rollin down deh grade making 90 miles an hour
His tonsils broke into a scream
He was found (LGF got PICs) in the wreck with his hand on the fuse box
You see what a mess he made.
An underground operative was killed during a "shootout" between his cohorts and police at Malsan village under Raninagar upazila of the district early yesterday.
The dead was identified as Abdul Hakim alias Kalu, 32, regional commander of Purba Banglar Communist Party (ML-Lal Pataka). Ever notice it's always the commies that end up dead and not a jihadist?
Acting on a tip off, a police team from Raninagar Police Station raided an area beside Baragachha-Malsan road at around 3:00am where Kalu and his accomplices were holding a meeting. "Down on the corner, out in the street,
Kalu and the poorboys are meetin;
Bring a nickel; tap your feet."
Sensing the presence of the police team, the outlaws opened fire, "Hark! It's da law. Let um have it, boys!"
forcing the law enforcers to retaliate. BANG KAPOW KABLOOY!
According to police, Kalu received bullets during the gunfight while his cohorts managed to flee. "Ouch.....rose..bud"
The outlaw was sent to Raninagar Hospital where the doctors declared him dead. "He's dead, Jim"
Police recovered a pistol and nine bullets from the scene. Sub-Inspector Ataur Rahman of Raninagar Police station said Kalu was wanted on twelve systems in a number of criminal cases.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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#1
Was this the RAB or have the locals stolen their schtick?
Either way, another bad day for Purbo Banglar and his Orchestra...
(VOI) - The Multi-National forces in southern Iraq said on Thursday that their warplanes shelled a site of Katyusha rockets launchers directed against their base at the Basra International Airport. "The British base at the Basra International Airport came under Katyusha rockets attack late Wednesday without causing casualties," Captain Chris Ford told Aswat al-Iraq - Voices of Iraq (VOI). "The British jets shelled the place where the rockets were launched near the airport in al-Meaadan region in northern Basra," he added. British soldiers were stationed in one base - the Basra International Airport, 25 km northeast of the province - after handing over the former presidential palaces, which they took as a military base, to the Iraqi forces.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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#2
Almost no one other than political junkies pays much attention to the Presidential race until September. If Obama's losing ground now just wait until people actually start paying attention.
#5
Obama is in self-destruct mode. He is talking without reading from a script. Er, ah, he is ah, er, In my opinion, ah, he um , is um-ah er, I'll get back to ya.
(Bloomberg) -- Ford Motor Co., the world's third- biggest automaker, posted a record quarterly loss of $8.7 billion and accelerated a conversion to fuel-efficient vehicles to wean itself from money-losing trucks.
Just a piece of advice: keep producing trucks if you want, stop producing anything that runs on gasoline or diesel. Produce nothing but trucks and cars that'll run on natural gas or propane in the interim, with the ultimate goal of running them on hydrogen without major modification. If you build it, they will come, and the distribution system with them. Most of us by this point will be happy to avoid any of our dollars going to any Arab or African oil producing nation, and happy enough to see Exxon, Shell, and Citgo in penury.
Ford shares fell the most in almost seven years after the company reported a second-quarter deficit of $3.88 a share compared with a profit of $750 million, or 31 cents, a year earlier. The figure included $8 billion in pretax writedowns for plant closings and the declining value of truck leases at Ford Motor Credit Co.
Don't timidly try and compete in the hybrid market. Make a bold break and go for CNG/LNG.
The automaker said it will double production of hybrid vehicles, sell more European autos such as the Fiesta in the U.S. and convert three North American truck factories to make a redesigned Focus and other small cars.
The Focus isn't half-bad. It gives them something to sell while they figure out what to do. Guess they thought they could sell the Explorer forever ...
The revamping is a response to record gasoline prices that have ravaged sales of large pickups and sport-utility vehicles and derailed Chief Executive Officer Alan Mulally's turnaround plan. ``They believe this is a permanent shift in buyer sentiment that they have to adjust to no matter how hard it will be,'' said Maryann Keller, an independent auto analyst and consultant based in Greenwich, Connecticut. `This is going to be expensive.''
Converting a car from gasoline to CNG/LNG costs about $100 in parts. Approaching the problem from the ground up you may come out with negative costs.
The loss marks the sixth in eight quarters under Mulally, 62, recruited from Boeing Co. to revive the Dearborn, Michigan- based automaker. Gasoline approaching $4 a gallon and plunging sales of F-Series pickups forced the CEO in May to abandon his target of returning to profit in 2009.
Six losses in eight quarters sez the old imagination factory's getting a little run down.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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#1
No, that would require competent management and flexible workers, both of which are nonexistent at the Big Two.
#4
can't disagree with the variable fuel philosophy, but McZoid's mid-sized chevy won't move that bed set or ATV to the desert. There are some things a truck is necessary for, and the first of my friends that gives me shit for my 2004 F-150 4X4 will find it is no longer available to borrow to pick up that new BBQ at Lowes or help move their kid to a new apartment. I love my truck
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/25/2008 8:07
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#7
will find it is no longer available to borrow to pick up that new BBQ at Lowes or help move their kid to a new apartment.
From my C20HD days.... "you don't know me but I sat behind you in the 4th grade, can I borrow you and your truck to help us move this weekend... pizza and beer?"
The pizza was always small, the bier Old Mill... still sometimes it worked.
#8
are people still driving ATVs in the desert? Anyone whos doing that has no right to criticize your truck.
These days, if you want to pick up stuff or move someone, the rental prices on trucks and vans aint too bad, IIUC. Easier to find than a compact for rent.
#9
If sombody makes a vehicle that will pull a horse trailer with 2 horses or a trailer with 200 bales of hay and still gets 30mpg I'll buy it. Until then I'll keep my Dodge 2500.
#10
If they thought record gasoline prices would never ravage sales of large trucks and SUVs they deserve to go under. I can't blame them for selling these things as long as they could but they had to know this day was coming and they should have been prepared for it. Big trucks may come in handy if you have a big load to haul. But it doesn't make much sense these days to drive some big ass truck or SUV to work every day when the bed is empty.
#12
If sombody makes a vehicle that will pull a horse trailer with 2 horses or a trailer with 200 bales of hay and still gets 30mpg I'll buy it. Until then I'll keep my Dodge 2500.
#13
concur, Frank. My dodge ram 1500 quad cab 4x4 always seems to be in demand from some of my so called "eco-neighbors" out here. My enviro uncle asked me if I needed something that big - I said "No, but I can afford something this big". God Bless America.
#14
Re big private trucks: let's not forget that any city and town has numerous contractors who will haul your stuff on short notice. They usually have a 3 hour minimum and charge $15-$20 per hour. I give them business.
#15
Mad Eye Gromotle44 - I have an SUV and a Grand Caravan for that.... little Saab doens't even fit my 6'4" 230lb body.
Neither will a prius.
Some of us just need big stuff.
#19
at 6'-2", 275, I doubt I fit in the parameters of our friend's "optimal" parameters. I would suggest he is a small man. In every measure of the phrasing. We do not share the same needs and his will be imposed over mine when he can enforce it. I hate pencilnecks.
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/25/2008 21:11
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#3
The wearing of the bikinni was way more important that the invention - which happened long time ago, just not made. I recall dehVini had a nice umber wash of one.
A blast occurred outside the Nawab Nauroz Stadium in Mastung on Thursday but caused no casualties, Dawn News reported. According to the channel, the blast took place at a time when Balochistan Chief Minister Nawab Aslam Raisani and six other cabinet ministers were watching a football match inside the stadium. Police officials confirmed that the chief minister and others remained unhurt and the blast damaged only a portion of a wall of the stadium. They said the blast was a part of the ongoing acts of sabotage and insurgency in the province. Police and law enforcement personnel reached the scene soon after the blast and cordoned off the area.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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(VOI) -- One Iraqi soldier on Thursday was killed, and two others were wounded when a car bomb driven by a suicide attacker went off targeting an Iraqi army checkpoint, eastern Mosul, said a security source from the Iraqi army in Ninewa province. "One Iraqi soldier was killed on Thursday afternoon, while two others were wounded when a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb, targeting an Iraqi army checkpoint in al-Intisar neighborhood, eastern Mosul city," the source told Aswat al-Iraq - Voices of Iraq - (VOI) on condition of anonymity. "The attack targeted the checkpoint at the inlet of the Iraqi army's 4 contingent, 5 brigade, 2 division's headquarter in Mosul," he said. "The attack was a slight distance away from the checkpoint, due to the blocks on the road," he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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A radical Somali Islamist leader has condemned attacks on humanitarian workers in Somalia. Aid workers have increasingly become a target in the conflict pitting Islamist and clan-based militias against the transitional government and the Ethiopian troops backing it.
"I weep for you," the Walrus said:
Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, the leader of a radical faction of Somalia's Islamist opposition based in the Eritrean capital Asmara, says his group will work to protect aid workers in areas it controls.
"I deeply sympathize."
U.N. officials and aid agencies have warned in recent weeks that rising insecurity threatens humanitarian efforts in the country. More than 20 aid workers have been killed in Somalia this year, and several more abducted.
With sobs and tears he sorted out
A spokesman for Sheikh Aweys' faction, Zakaria Mohamud Haji Abdi, blamed the Ethiopian-backed Transitional Federal Government for such attacks.
Those of the largest size,
"We are condemning the killing of the U.N. officials in Mogadishu. And this act is actually perpetrated by the Ethiopian occupation and the militia of Abdullahi Yussuf in order to starve the Somali people whom they have displaced from their homes and from their neighborhoods in Mogadishu," he said.
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
According to Somalia's Garowe Radio, the transitional government parliament Wednesday condemned attacks on aid workers, blaming them on insurgents trying to derail a peace agreement signed last month with a more moderate opposition faction.
Before his streaming eyes.
This week Aweys claimed control of the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia, a coalition of exile Somali opposition leaders based in Asmara, saying he has replaced the more intelligent moderate Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed. The United States and United Nations say Aweys has ties to al-Qaida. The Islamist opposition has for some time been effectively split between the two leaders' factions. The divide became more pronounced after Ahmed signed a U.N.-backed peace agreement with the transitional government in June. That deal has done little to curb violence. Ahmed and many of his backers remain in Djibouti, where that deal was signed.
"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because They'd eaten every one.
This article starring:
Abdullahi Yussuf
SHEIKH HASAN DAHIR AWEYS
Islamic Courts
SHEIKH SHARIF SHEIKH AHMED
Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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The federal government has asked the NWFP government to gather details of the assets of banned religious groups and their financers, Dawn News reported on Thursday. It said the ministry had directed the provincial government and political administrations of all the seven tribal agencies to collect the data, and would likely recommend freezing the funds of the banned groups.
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07/25/2008
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
A Dhaka court yesterday expressed dissatisfaction over negligence in duties by police personnel in executing arrest warrants against seven absconding Harkatul Jihad (Huji) members accused in the August 21 grenade attack case.
Metropolitan Sessions Judge Mohammad Azizul Haque asked the Public Prosecutor (PP) to take actions against the policemen who failed to comply with the court order. The court said it had issued arrest warrants against the absconding accused on June 23 and directed the authorities concerned to send copies of the arrest warrants to their addresses the same day.
But the officers-in-charge (OC) of different police stations, who had been asked to return reports on arrest warrants to the court by yesterday, did not comply with the court order.
The court also said the police submitted the charge sheet of the case after four years of the grenade attacks and have been trying to delay trial.
Only Barisal Kotwali police submitted a report on the arrest warrant against Abu Bakar alias Hafez Selim mentioning that they could not arrest him.
Meantime, the same court rejected the bail petitions of detained former deputy minister Abdus Salam Pintu and three Huji members, Arif Hasan Sumon, Jahangir Alam and Shahadat Ullah Jewel. Huji Chief Mufti Abdul Hannan and Sumon submitted petitions for retraction of their confessional statements saying that they were forced to give the statements.
The court fixed August 10 for next hearing of the case and directed the OC of different police stations to submit reports on arrest warrants against the seven absconding accused on the scheduled date.
The prosecution told the judge that they would try to make sure that police submit the reports in due time.
Moving the bail petitions, the lawyers told the court that their clients were implicated in the case as part of a conspiracy to harass them. The prosecution said the petitions should be rejected as they had earlier confessed to their involvement in the incident.
The case was filed for carrying out grenade attacks on an Awami League (AL) rally on August 21, 2004 that left 23 people dead and around 200 injured.
Detained former lawmaker Pintu and other accused, who are in jail custody now, were produced before the court. The seven absconding accused are Pintu's brothers Maulana Tajuddin and Maulana Liton, Anisul Mursalin and his brother Mahibul Muttakin, Iqbal, Jahangir Alam Badar and Khalilur Rahman.
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07/25/2008
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Unidentified men kidnapped a telecom engineer and his driver in the Khyber area of Landikotal on Thursday. According to sources, the kidnappers abducted Amjad from Zeeray Road where he had gone to inspect a mobile tower with his driver. They said the kidnappers took both men towards the Gagranna Bazaar area, adding that the Khasadar force had launched a search operation for their recovery.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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Two mortar shells fired from across the border hit a house in Bajaur Agency on Thursday causing serious injuries to a tribesman, officials said.
Bajaur Agency political administration officials told Daily Times that two mortar shells fired from across the Pak-Afghan border at 1pm hit Islam Gul's house in Charmang Hashim, 40 kilometres from Khar, the headquarters of Bajaur Agency.
Officials said Gul was seriously injured. Locals said that the house was also damaged in the attack. An investigation is underway.
Meanwhile, also on Thursday, unidentified militants attacked Bajaur Levies checkpost at Rarang, 30 kilometres from Khar, and kidnapped Levies officer Hayatullah, sources said. Sources added that political administration officials had started efforts to recover the Levies official.
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07/25/2008
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(Xinhua) -- Deposed Prime Minister of Hamas unity government in Gaza Ismail Haneya called on Egypt Thursday to reopen Rafah border crossing point to allow in Palestinian patients in need of proper medical treatment.
Haneya made the appeal after a Hamas woman lawmaker in the Hamas-dominant Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) was hit by a severe heart attack.
"The case of Om Nidal Farhat (the lawmaker) is not the only case that needs urgent medical treatment, there are dozens of patients that need an urgent treatment," Haneya told reporters when he was visiting Gaza Shifa Hospital.
Israel imposed a tightened blockade on the Gaza Strip after Hamas movement took control of the enclave by force and routed President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah security forces in June last year.
In January, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians thronged to Egypt's Sinai Peninsula to buy daily necessities of food, medicine and fuels after militants blew up the borders fence between the impoverished enclave and Egypt.
"We want Egypt to break the blockade and save the lives of hundreds cases," Haneya said, adding that "since the blockade was tightened, 250 patients died due to the lack of medical treatment in the Gaza Strip."
Israel and Hamas had agreed in a truce deal brokered by Egypt to ease security restrictions imposed on Gaza crossings. However, Rafah crossing has not been reopened due to splits between the two sides on its operation.
Gaza ruler Hamas wants Rafah crossing, the only Gaza passage to the outside world that bypasses Israel, to be run by Egyptian and Palestinian officials, but the Jewish state insists that its operation must abide by a 2005 agreement.
According to the U.S.-brokered deal in 2005, Abbas' presidential guard forces were put in charge of security at the crossing in addition to European Union (EU) monitors. The two parties left the crossing following Hamas' bloody takeover of Gaza.
In some occasions, Egypt opened the crossing for patients and some Hamas leaders who leave for talks in Cairo.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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Top|| File under: Hamas
#1
How many RPG's can fit in an "ambulance"?
Posted by: Rambler in California ||
07/25/2008 15:02
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#2
Egypt doesn't want Gazans in its territory either. The Israelis have repeatedly asked Egypt to take Gaza back, only to be laughed at and told "we're damned glad to be rid of those criminal bastards. They're your problem now, and welcome to it!" So much for Muzzie solidarity and all that.
(Xinhua) -- Nine people were killed and an unknown number of others wounded Thursday in the central Somali town of Beledweyn following a heavy shelling by Ethiopian troops, senior elder and witnesses said.
"I was informed of the death of six people and the injury of many in the town after the Ethiopian troops shelled Beledweyn," Daar Hersi Hoshow, head of the Council of Traditional Elders of Hiran, told Xinhua by phone from Beledweyn, 300 km north of the capital Mogadishu.
Hoshow said the casualty figure could be higher as the town is cut off from others after Ethiopian troops set up check points in and around the city.
"We had an agreement with both the Ethiopian troops and the Islamic Courts Union that both sides should not come and fight in the city but we do not know what has changed," Horshow said.
An eyewitness in Beledweyn told Xinhua that he saw three more civilians die as a result of the shelling.
Leaders of the Hiran Council of Elders last week reached a deal with commanders of the Ethiopian troops and fighters of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU). They agreed that Ethiopian troops who were stationed on the outskirts of the city would not enter the city while fighters in the city would leave it.
Reports from the town said that fighting has broken out when the fighters of the ICU returned to the town after Ethiopian troops carried out heavy shelling of the city before they started fanning out deeply into Beledweyn
Beledweyn is the provincial capital of Hiran region which borders Ethiopia and has been the scene of bloody confrontations between the two sides. The region has changed hands a number of times before.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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Attorney General Menachem Mazuz criticized the prime minister on Thursday saying that Ehud Olmert was deliberately obstructing the corruption investigation currently underway against him.
In response to a petition submitted by journalist Yoav Yitzhak asking the High Court of Justice to declare Olmert incapacitated and remove him from office, Mazuz said "the police have faced serious difficulties in setting dates for questioning of the prime minister, as well as in determining the length of the questioning."
"These are difficulties that the police have not faced while investigating any other public figure, including previous prime ministers," Mazuz went on to say.
Yitzhak petitioned the High Court of Justice asking the court to declare the prime minister incapacitated for a pre-determined period of time, during which he would be questioned every day in regard to all six open investigations against him. Yitzhak also asked that Olmert be compelled to comply with short notice summons for questioning should the investigation require it.
In a response to the High Court, Mazuz said that "the investigations against Omlert in various affairs are well underway, in advanced stages, but not yet complete. In any case, decisions have yet to be made, and it is not yet clear whether the evidence gathered will be sufficient to support an indictment in any of the cases, and which charges they will include."
"In light of the public sensitivity of the matter, we will do the utmost in our power to expedite the investigation process," Mazuz added.
In regard to the petition calling for Olmert to be declared incapacitated, the attorney general reiterated his previous assertion that Olmert's continued service as prime minister is not a legal issue, but rather a political one.
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07/25/2008
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A UK parliamentary committee has called for dialogue with Hamas, as a UN report says poverty has reached an unprecedented high in the Gaza Strip.
Gaza's economy has been hit hard by an Israeli embargo tightened when the militant group took control last year.
Major world powers refuse to speak to Hamas unless it recognises Israel.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, said 52% of Gaza households were living in poverty, and unemployment there had topped 45%.
The House of Commons International Development Committee said in a report on Gaza that the current truce between Hamas and Israel, agreed on 19 June, "offers the international community an opportunity to begin a dialogue with Hamas".
The aim of the talks should be to move the group towards accepting principles laid down by the international community and to repairing the rift between it and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party, it said.
The so-called quartet - the US, EU, UN and Russia - has said it will not talk to Hamas unless it recognises Israel's right to exist, renounces violence and agrees to abide by agreements made by the Palestinian Authority.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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The government has formed a four-member committee to review the Islamic justice system in Malakand, Dawn News reported on Thursday. The channel quoted official sources saying that the committee would hold its first meeting on August 4 and would take decisions on the implementation of the Islamic justice system, it said. The committee includes two members from the central government and two from the NWFP government -- Federal Law Minister Farooq Naik, Adviser to Prime Minister on Interior Rehman Malik, NWFP Law Minister Arshad Abdullah and Law Secretary Farooq Sarwar. Earlier, the caretaker government had formed a six-member committee, which has been reconstituted following objections raised by the population.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
...the caretaker government had formed a six-member committee, which has been reconstituted following objections raised by the population.
Objections because they want it, don't want it,...what?
ABS-CBN News senior correspondent Ces Drilon said Wednesday night that the suspect arrested by the military in Talipao, Sulu on Tuesday is not part of the group of Abu Sayyaf members who kidnapped her, two network cameramen and a peace advocate in the province last month. "The commander 'Brain Damage' is not the one we know who was part of the group that kidnapped us," Drilon said in a statement, adding that the military sent her a picture of the suspect via multi-media message on mobile phone.
Police, meanwhile, said that Drilon and cameramen Jimmy Encarnacion and Angelo Valderama will still be asked to identify suspects caught by authorities in Sulu when they are turned over to officials in Manila.
On Tuesday, a man named Munhamer Sattari, alias "Brain Damage," and is said to be a member of the Talipao town-based Abu Sayyaf Group under the late Commander Mujib Susukan, was apprehended by members of the Marine MBLT-4 in Barangay Kandang.
Amilbahar Amilasan, presidential assistant on the peace process, said Sattari has a pending arrest warrant for four counts of frustrated murder.
Amilasan said the suspect has been brought to the 3rd Marine Brigade headquarters. Col. Eugenio Clemen of the 3rd Brigade, however, was unable to confirm the report. He said he was in Zamboanga City Wednesday.
On July 18, two other suspected kidnappers of Drilon, her crew and peace advocate Octavio Dinampo were arrested at a Marine checkpoint in Patikul town.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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#1
Don't think'd wanna serve under a guy called Commander Brain Damage...
(VOI) -- An Iraqi army force on Thursday arrested three wanted persons in a raid operation in a village in western Kirkuk, said a source from the province's operations room. Illegal guns and two stolen cars were seized in a separate operation, according to the same source. "A force from the Iraqi army 46th brigade, 12th division arrested three wanted people, in a raid operation in Bajwan village, 15 km west of Kirkuk city," the source told Aswat al-Iraq - Voices of Iraq - (VOI) on condition of anonymity. "The operation took place based on intelligence tips," he said. "A combined Iraqi force of Kirkuk's emergency contingents and traffic police seized a number of illegal guns and two stolen cars (KIA brand), in a separate operation on Thursday morning in Rabreen area, southern Kirkuk," he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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(Xinhua) -- Islamic Hamas movement on Wednesday refused to comment on a initiative proposed by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter to exchange prisoners with Israel.
"There is a decision in the movement not to speak about anything related to the negotiations over the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit who is held in Gaza Strip, in order to achieve the swap under the Egyptian sponsorship," said Ismail Radwan, a Hamas spokesman.
Radwan added that the negotiations to exchange Shalit for a number of Palestinian prisoners are halted despite the Arab and international mediation efforts.
Hamas demands Israel to free 1,000 prisoners, including 450 who serve life sentences in exchange for Shalit's return. Hamas also wants Israel to release all women, children and old detainees.
Radwan revealed that Israel has earlier accepted to free about 70 prisoners out of the 450 and latest reports said that Israel has agreed to release 300.
He also ruled out the option of holding direct talks with Israel on the swap as Carter's initiative suggested.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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(VOI) - Police forces on Thursday managed to free a kidnapped person and arrested one of the kidnappers in south of Missan, said a police source. "The forces freed the woman, who was kidnapped by unknown gunmen, in al-Saaeeda region in south of Missan, and arrested one of the kidnappers," the source told Aswat al-Iraq - Voices of Iraq (VOI) on condition of anonymity. "The police managed to arrest one of the three gunmen and free the woman, while the two managed to flee," he added. "The woman was kidnapped in al-Qebla city in western Basra," the source explained.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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Top|| File under: Mahdi Army
France is to close 83 of its military units in a major shake-up of its defence strategy, the French prime minister has said.
Speaking at a press conference, Francois Fillon said money saved would be poured back into the armed forces. He also promised the government would help towns and villages cope with the economic fall-out when the local garrison moved on.
The changes are the biggest shake-up of defence policy in 14 years. Mr Fillon announced that the military sites which face closure include regiments, logistic centres and air force bases.
Interior focus
He added that the modernisation plan would generate savings of more than $3bn (1.9bn euros; £1.5bn) a year, which would be re-invested back into the armed forces. Last month, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said it was time to refocus France's defence priorities on interior rather than exterior security, warning the biggest threat to the country was now a terrorist attack.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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#1
IRNA > German Chancellor ANGELA MERKEL OPPOSES ANY PLAN TO DISSOLVE THE FRANCO-GERMAN BRIGADE. Wants France to keep EURO CORPS based in Germany; + NATO IN FOR THE LONG HAUL IN AFGHANISTAN.
Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Qazi Hussain Ahmad has warned the United States (US) against attacking Pakistan saying that if Washington committed "the folly of invading Pakistan", every Pakistani will fight them.
Talking to reporters after the meeting of JI Executive Council (Majlis-e-Amla) at Mansoorah on Thursday, Qazi said that the government was "playing into the hands of conspirators", threatening national security.
"The entire nation is being deliberately pushed into frustration," he said, adding that prices of petrol, electricity, gas and edibles had been increased deliberately. Qazi claimed that the US-led NATO forces were positioned against Pakistan on the Afghan border, and were building underground bunkers. He also warned that Pakistan was being used to fight "a war against Islam and Muslims". He said that the JI would mobilise Pakistanis against the American designs, and would welcome all the forces joining that cause. He said that leaderships of Iran and China would also be consulted in this regard.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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* "The Leaderships of both Iran and China wouod also be consulted" > COMPARE WID TOPIX > CHAVEZ/VENEZUELA SEEKS STRATEGIC/MILITARY ALLIANCE WITH RUSSIA.
#2
for some reason, when I read things like this I realize how weak the jihadis are. Time is not on their side. They are like the Klu Klux Klan moving into the 20th century. Their power and influence has a rapidly deteriorating shelf-life. Not to say they aren't dangerous and need to be dealt with, but in reality, Darwin is having a discount blow out sale to clear space for new product.
#3
These people keep spewing this nonsense like they actually believe it. Rumsfeld was absolutely clueless about the islamists, and needed a good butt-kick. These people only understand power. That's all Islam is about - the amassing and using of power. Our failure to show these nutjobs just how powerful we can be has cost us an estimated 1000 additional casualties. It's well past time we showed this bunch of mental midgits just how powerful the US is, and just how much it can ruin their day. We need to hit so hard, so deliberately, and so thoroughly, that not even a mouse would survive the attack point. Then we need to tell the islaminauts that what we've done at the attack point is only a PORTION of the disaster that would be afflicted upon their nation if they keep up their current BS. We need to scare them so badly they'll become as one with the back walls of their dismal cave hideouts. Then, and only then, can there be anything resembling "peace" with these nutjobs.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/25/2008 14:14
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#4
ION TOPIX > PHILIPPINES: TALKS BETWEEN MANILA, MUSLIM REBELS FOR MINDINAO ANCESTRAL HOMELAND FAIL; + PHILIPPINE, MALAY MUSLIM REBELS LAUNCH NEW ATTACKS.
Health officials on Thursday confirmed a fresh case of polio in an eight-month-old boy in Karachi. This is the third case of crippling type P1 polio in the country this month. The two earlier cases were detected in Swat valley, where unrest has prevented regular vaccination. The latest detection of polio in a middle class central Karachi neighbourhood has stunned authorities that have convened a special meeting on Friday to discuss ways to contain the disease. "I can confirm detection of type P1 polio virus in an eight-month-old boy in Sadar town," Dr Mazhar Khamisani, project director for Expanded Programme on Immunisation, told AFP. He said that samples were taken from the child on June 10 and sent to the National Institute of Health in Islamabad, adding that the virus was not detected, after which a sample was sent to a World Health Organisation lab in Geneva. "We got the confirmation from WHO Geneva today," Dr Khamisani said, adding that initial investigations showed that the child, who is alive, was regularly vaccinated. The total number of polio cases in Pakistan this year is now 18, officials said. The World Health Organisation recently listed Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan as the only countries in the world where polio is endemic.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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#1
The rumor of pork residue in Polio Vaccines has polluted the muslim rat-holes for decades. Doctors and nurses have been murdered for the Sharia offense of vaccination. Too bad that children are victims of the islamutts.
#7
Saline can only be used if one or more of the health officials is complicit. If there is dilution or theft of the vaccine it is tempting that the guilty be given to the family (that should go along with the tenets of sharia) but I do believe in the rule of law...
A tribal jirga has successfully brokered a peace deal between the local Taliban and the administration in the Hangu district, a source told Daily Times on Thursday. According to the source, the peace accord would come into effect anytime late on Thursday. The agreement espouses a ceasefire and a ban on arms display.
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07/25/2008
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Armed supporters of Tehreek Islami Khyber, a new militant group, led by Gul Rehman Afridi 'raided' the Landikotal headquarters hospital on Thursday and called for the immediate removal of the "corrupt" medical superintendent (MS). They raised slogans against MS Dr Zar Alam Shinwari and Agency Surgeon Dr Zaman Khattak. "He (the MS) is ineligible and corrupt," Afridi alleged.
He blamed Khattak for shifting the offices of agency surgeon staff to Jamrud. "The poor staff cannot afford to go to Jamrud," Afridi said. Shinwari, while talking to Daily Times, denied he had anything to do with the offices' relocation, saying it was the agency surgeon's job.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/25/2008
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NATO will not enter Pakistan to hunt the Taliban insurgents but reserves the right to hit the militants if they attack alliance troops across the border in Afghanistan, NATO Secretary General Jaap De Hoop Scheffer said on Thursday.
The existence of extremist sanctuaries is unacceptable and Pakistan should be a part of the "regional approach" to eliminate the global threat of terrorism, he said.
Scheffer was visiting amid high tension between Afghanistan and Pakistan over a spate of violence, including the Indian embassy's bombing, which Kabul has blamed on its neighbour's intelligence agency.
"The bottom line is that the present situation cannot be acceptable for anyone," Scheffer said after talks with President Hamid Karzai.
"Let us practise a regional approach and let us involve all the regional actors here," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
I read this as, "You come here, we'll chase you all the way back home, then blow it up. Capisce? (spelling? Italian is not one of my languages.)
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The coldest summer ever? You might be looking at it, weather folks say. 
July 25, 2008: The success of the surge offensive resulted in an intelligence windfall. Documents and prisoner interrogations (as well as identifying the dead) provided a lot more information on hostile Sunni and Shia groups, as well as interesting observations about the factions currently controlling the government. All this clarified and confirmed the very factious nature of Iraqi society. Seems anybody with a quick mouth and a lot of guns can form their own little army. This factionalism is accompanied by a self-righteousness that seems to justify a wide range of bad behavior. This includes corruption, but also murder, torture, rape, theft and a long list of exotic crimes. The religious factions invoke God a lot, but the more sectarian groups make a big deal about protecting the family or tribe. Not a lot of loyalty to Iraq, or the concept of nationwide law and justice. Iraqis will make a lot of noise about being Iraqi, but the real loyalty begins closer to home, family, tribe or mosque. 
CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Friday that any U.S. troop withdrawal would have to satisfy both parties and protect Iraq's sovereignty. 
Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton said the United States should assist Israel in any strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. The ex-U.S. envoy in an op-ed in the July 15 Wall Street Journal said the United States must consider what assistance to extend to Israel before and after an airstrike. 
After five and a half years at top of global diplomacy, Israeli ambassador bids farewell to UN with his head held high
One of South Africa's leading female jurists who won acclaim defending apartheid opponents was nominated Thursday to serve as the next United Nations high commissioner for human rights. 
What is it with Al Gore? Why is he compelled to exaggerate climate change (excuse me, the climate crisis), and then to propose impossible policy responses? Its like hes inventing the Internet all over again!
A Swiss-led, five-nation panel proposed Thursday that the United Nations assert itself as leader of a global fight against terrorism and establish a new agency or program to coordinate that effort.
Four people including two militant 
SAN DIEGO -- Charges have been dismissed against a Camp Pendleton Marine sniper accused in the shooting deaths of two Syrians in Iraq.
Al-Qaida terrorists have been largely marginalized in Iraqs Babil province, thanks to the joint efforts of Iraqi and U.S. security forces, as well as local Sons of Iraq citizen security groups, a senior U.S. military officer posted in Iraq said today. 
Why then can't Obama bring himself to acknowledge the surge worked better than he and other skeptics, including this page, thought it would? What does that stubbornness say about the kind of president he'd be?
Taking the protest against the Gaza blockade to a new level, two boats packed with foreign left-wing activists will attempt to sail from Cyprus to the sealed Gaza harbor in two weeks' time. The operation is being directed by members of the International Solidarity Movement and the Israeli Commission against House Demolitions. A Web site, FreeGaza, has been set up to collect donations and update the public.
The Zimbabwean government is struggling to find enough cash to pay its workers, and more importantly the military, after it was forced to cut back on printing money because sanctions have severed its supply of banknote paper from Europe. Officials involved in the printing say the regime fears the presses could be shut down altogether if further political pressure causes the withdrawal of software licences used to design and print notes. Paper money is already in short supply because the state-run Fidelity Printers & Refiners in the capital, Harare, cannot keep up with demand created by the hyperinflation and rapid devaluation that causes notes to lose almost their entire value within weeks of being issued.
Swat-based Taliban would retaliate if security forces continued operation in the region, a satellite channel reported on Thursday. According to Aaj News, the decision was made at the end of a two-day meeting of a Taliban Shura (council) held under 
Another suspect in the kidnapping of a television news crew was arrested by the military in Sulu, a military spokesman said Thursday.
(VOI) -- The Iraqi Supreme Criminal Court on Thursday resumed its third session to try the Friday prayers case, in which 14 officials of the former regime are being tried on charges of detaining a large number of civilians, lynching many of them, rendering several families homeless, and decimating whole villages in the provinces of Baghdad, Missan, Samawa, and Basra in February 1999.
(VOI) - Seven individuals were killed and 24 others wounded by a suicide bombing targetting a commander for anti-Qaeda group in Diala on Thursday, a security source said. "A woman rigged with an explosive belts blew herself up targetting a commander of popular committees in Baquba al-Jadida, killing him and six individuals including bodyguards and wounded 24 others", a Diala security source, who requested anonmity, told Aswat al-Iraq-Voices of Iraq(VOI).
(Xinhua) -- Sudanese 
(Xinhua) -- Afghanistan National Army (ANA) clashed with Taliban militants on Thursday in southern Afghan province of Zabul, leaving 70 militants dead, according to a statement of the Interior Ministry. "The Taliban rebels ambushed convoy of ANA on the Kabul-Kandahar highway in the Shah joy district of Zabul province," the statement said, "after hours' fierce fighting ANA foiled the attack killing 70 enemies, arresting four others and a large number of weapons. Some dead bodies of foreign fighters were also found in the battle field." 
An underground operative was killed during a "shootout" between his cohorts and police at Malsan village under Raninagar upazila of the district early yesterday.
(VOI) - The Multi-National forces in southern Iraq said on Thursday that their warplanes shelled a site of Katyusha rockets launchers directed against their base at the Basra International Airport. "The British base at the Basra International Airport came under Katyusha rockets attack late Wednesday without causing casualties," Captain Chris Ford told Aswat al-Iraq - Voices of Iraq (VOI). "The British jets shelled the place where the rockets were launched near the airport in al-Meaadan region in northern Basra," he added. British soldiers were stationed in one base - the Basra International Airport, 25 km northeast of the province - after handing over the former presidential palaces, which they took as a military base, to the Iraqi forces.
Unidentified men kidnapped a telecom engineer and his driver in the Khyber area of Landikotal on Thursday. According to sources, the kidnappers abducted Amjad from Zeeray Road where he had gone to inspect a mobile tower with his driver. They said the kidnappers took both men towards the Gagranna Bazaar area, adding that the Khasadar force had launched a search operation for their recovery.
The government has formed a four-member committee to review the Islamic justice system in Malakand, Dawn News reported on Thursday. The channel quoted official sources saying that the committee would hold its first meeting on August 4 and would take decisions on the implementation of the Islamic justice system, it said. The committee includes two members from the central government and two from the NWFP government -- Federal Law Minister Farooq Naik, Adviser to Prime Minister on Interior Rehman Malik, NWFP Law Minister Arshad Abdullah and Law Secretary Farooq Sarwar. Earlier, the caretaker government had formed a six-member committee, which has been reconstituted following objections raised by the population.
France is to close 83 of its military units in a major shake-up of its defence strategy, the French prime minister has said. 
Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Qazi Hussain Ahmad has warned the United States (US) against attacking Pakistan saying that if Washington committed "the folly of invading Pakistan", every Pakistani will fight them.
Health officials on Thursday confirmed a fresh case of polio in an eight-month-old boy in Karachi. This is the third case of crippling type P1 polio in the country this month. The two earlier cases were detected in Swat valley, where unrest has prevented regular vaccination. The latest detection of polio in a middle class central Karachi neighbourhood has stunned authorities that have convened a special meeting on Friday to discuss ways to contain the disease. "I can confirm detection of type P1 polio virus in an eight-month-old boy in Sadar town," Dr Mazhar Khamisani, project director for Expanded Programme on Immunisation, told AFP. He said that samples were taken from the child on June 10 and sent to the National Institute of Health in Islamabad, adding that the virus was not detected, after which a sample was sent to a World Health Organisation lab in Geneva. "We got the confirmation from WHO Geneva today," Dr Khamisani said, adding that initial investigations showed that the child, who is alive, was regularly vaccinated. The total number of polio cases in Pakistan this year is now 18, officials said. The World Health Organisation recently listed Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan as the only countries in the world where polio is endemic.
