Could be classified WoT, year 500+
Morocco continued to press its claims over the disputed Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla during Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's visit this week, Spanish newspapers reported Saturday.
El Mundo said Morocco had hardened its position over the two enclaves on Morocco's northern coast, which have been a source of friction between the two countries. It cited a senior Spanish diplomatic source as saying the subject was raised during Friday's talks between Zapatero and his Moroccan counterpart Abbas El Fassi. "We have the right to get Ceuta and Melilla back and I told Mr Zapatero that," El Mundo and another newspaper, ABC, quoted El Fassi as telling the Moroccan media.
Rabat considers Ceuta and Melilla, held by Spain since 1580 and 1496, to be "occupied." Madrid refuses any discussion on the subject. Don't forget al-Andalus. Kufr occupied since 1492.
Parts of it were Christian long before 1492; parts of it never fell to the Moors.
Moroccan-Spanish relations have thawed since Zapatero's Socialist Party came to power, following an end to eight years of rule by the conservative Popular Party government led by Jose Maria Aznar. Chances of a Re-Reconquista looking up!
A low point in Spanish-Moroccan relations was a dispute in 2002 when Spanish troops expelled a group of Moroccan soldiers from the disputed Mediterranean island of Perjil. Tensions simmered again in November 2007 when Spain's King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia visited Ceuta and Melilla. Morocco recalled its ambassador to Spain in protest after the royal visit was announced. The ambassador returned to his post in January. Spain is Morocco's most important trading partner after France.
Posted by: ed ||
07/12/2008
18:54 ||
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#1
The nation of Spain existed well before the concept of Morocco... so how can they have a claim?
"The main reasons behind the fall of the pro-Moscow regime in Kabul were not defeat on the battlefield nor military superiority of the resistance but the regime's failure to achieve economic sustainability and its overreliance on foreign aid," says a document called Economic Development in Afghanistan during the Soviet Period 1979-1989: Lessons Learned from the Soviet Experience in Afghanistan.
In fact, it says, the Soviets focused too much on security. "The emphasis on the security situation in Afghanistan compromised sound economic development during the period 1979-1989 ... The Afghan economy continued to be overly dependent on foreign aid. The study argues that without breaking this dependency, no long-term solution to stabilize Afghanistan is possible."
The authors say Afghanistan should redevelop its petroleum wealth as part of the solution. "Revenues from the sale of natural gas were a substantial part of Afghan state income until 1986. The development of oil and natural gas industries has great potential to benefit the Afghan economy."
Other lessons Defence researchers gleaned from the Soviet period include:
-- "Successive battlefield victories do not guarantee strategic success."
-- "Engaging and enfranchising local populations and power centres is of critical importance."
#1
Jihad is the controlling purpose of muslims. It cannot be stopped. If you launch limited war against them, you fail in the end. We need to wage the same war of de-conversion that they wage against us. I would start by dealing with Mecca, Medina, Karbala and Qom. Neutralize those jihad viral carriers, and you eliminate islam as an ideology.
#3
This is one of the big elements I suggested at the very onset of the Afghan campaign. Because the Afghan minimum wage is about $50 a month, we could have employed almost every unemployed man in the country. 1.67 million men for just $1B a year.
We could have put this army of manpower to work rebuilding their country, buying every bit of food the farmers could grow to feed them, and sending their wages home for their families. Maybe $2B a year total, which by our standards is peanuts.
They would be digging canals, preparing new land for farming, rebuilding entire towns, planting forests, mining mountain passes for professionals to pave as roads, and anything else we could think of.
The women would be set up as town councils, with micro banks to create all sorts of small businesses as the family business for when the men returned home. Mandatory secular school for all children.
The central government would be given a MacArthur constitution, in force without change for 10 years, and their government would be required to function to modern standards. Their courts would be Common Law, and no Sharia at all. All religious sermons would have to be approved by the government.
Most of our soldiers would become a de facto border patrol, to keep out the Pakistanis.
The first few years, western professionals would run the government while training Afghans to do their job. Then the Afghans would run the government while the westerners supervised, until they were confident that they knew every aspect of their job. Then the westerners would monitor them for another two years. Government employees would also cross train in other offices, so they could either move laterally or be competent in promotion.
Yes, it is utterly authoritarian. And yes, after a decade or two, it would be fully functional, and the old ways would be dead and forgotten. Then we could leave, and no Pakistani could cross the border into Afghanistan without total supervision and control.
Democracy would start from the bottom up, and it would be run by the women, not the men. Voting would be mandatory, at least until everybody understood how it worked.
When we left, we could completely leave. Their economy would be so good that little or nothing would be left of the public works projects, as it would pay too little. Their economy would probably have a growth rate between 10-20%.
#4
Muslims put jihad obligation over economic interests. When the Soviets invaded Central Asia's latrine, they posed grandiose development schemes. For Pashto Muslims then and now, emulation of and co-operation with the despised disbeliever (kaffir) is anathema. They only co-operate for the same reasons why the Soviet Union allied with the West in WW2.
Taliban will stop fighting when there are no kaffirs in their filthy little country. We need to destroy the most dangerous sections, while partitioning the rest. Forget about the UAE and Cologne connections: 9-11 was made in Pashto, Afghanistan. We need to think of them as having the humanity of a cockroach.
#5
Anonymoose has got it right here. The benighted souls in these countries have equal creation, and they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That they live in foul cultures, which deny these, is a horror that they must overcome. Perhaps with the slight help that we can offer, they will.
I recognize you from 'back in the day' as the kids say. About the time I found the 'Burg on the internets, I was saying make that sh*thole a showcase but then the whole Iraq thang, and I'ma still hoping for a showcase, now in Iraq, to redirect the foul Izlamoids.
So, whatever. Let's show the Religion of Peace our generosity or our fury. I just want them to process the message ASAP that they can never win.
Tony Snow, a conservative writer and commentator who cheerfully sparred with reporters in the White House briefing room during a stint as President Bush's press secretary, died Saturday of colon cancer. He was 53.
"America has lost a devoted public servant and a man of character," President Bush said in a statement from Camp David, where he was spending the weekend. "It was a joy to watch Tony at the podium each day. He brought wit, grace, and a great love of country to his work."
Snow died at 2 a.m. at Georgetown University Hospital, according to former employer Fox News.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/12/2008
14:26 ||
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#1
What the president said. Not enough of us can go to our deaths knowing we've made a difference in the world. May his memory bring comfort to those he left behind.
Addressing High Gas Prices
Skyrocketing gas and energy prices are hurting Nevadas working families. Thats why I am pushing Congress to pass legislation to address the root causes of the problem and reduce the burden on consumers and the economy. Excessive speculation on Wall Street and around the world has helped drive dramatic increases in oil and energy prices. The bill I introduced would curb speculation, go after OPEC for collusion, and convince the oil companies to start investing their huge profits in clean, affordable alternatives like wind, solar and geothermal energy to power our economy. I've forced votes at least five times this year on legislation to help restrain energy prices and help the consumers. For those who say we should drill more at home, I believe the oil companies should start using the 68 million acres of onshore and off-shore leases they already own, before asking for more land. But let me be clear, we can't simply drill our way to lower prices or to real energy independence because America has less than 3% of the world's oil supplies and uses more than 25% of its production. That is why we must increase our investment in renewable energy sources like the ones that are so abundant in Nevada.
For more information on my energy plans, click here.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/12/2008
14:21 ||
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#3
ATM we still produce domestically about 40% of our oil.
Which, if I take Dingy Harry's figures, means we're producing .25*.4= 10% of the world's oil production with 3% of its resources, even as much as retards like him have limited it.
#4
Not Scrappleface. I signed up for Harry's newletter a while back, so I cound get fun little nuggets like this one, which I share with my friends at the 'Burg. Enjoy.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/12/2008 17:24
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#5
Yeah, he's right - a lot of the price of oil is speculation. Speculators are betting on increased future demand and tightening supplies of petroleum. Nothing wrong with wind, solar, or geothermal power - except they're not exactly going to provide energy to power our cars anytime soon. I also notice no mention of nuclear power - which is proven and does not require R&D.
Drilling in Alaska, off both coasts, and off of Florida WOULD drop prices, as the markets would factor in a large increase in future supply.
The smart move would be to drill now, build nuclear plants, AND invest in alternative energy R&D. But now one would EVER accuse Harry Reid of being smart.
#6
Well, if he was serious, he could call for Vegas to dim their lights for a few hours to help conserve energy.
;)
Posted by: Swamp Blondie in the Cornfields ||
07/12/2008 18:31
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#7
Sorry, but drilling anywhere is not going to do anything to gas prices for a long time. Potential demand is far higher than actual supply. I suppose if you nationalized it, it could help, otherwise it would still be sold to the highest bidder (which would be China). It's simple economics people, not rocket science. And you would still have to build up a lot more refining capacity. No, a better solution is to start devoting some of the billions we are spending in Iraq to increasing hydrogen infrastructure. We've all but got Iraq won, as we start drawing down we could dump billions into that. We have to get off of oil. That's the only solution. And no I am not some greenie, I am a realist. I don't believe in AGW, hell I don't even believe we know for sure if the climate is warming. Regardless, get us off oil, make the oil ticks irrelevant, let China deal with them.
#8
Sorry, but drilling anywhere is not going to do anything to gas prices for a long time.
Actually it will if the speculators believe that we're serious about ramping up production. Throw open *all* federal lands to *all* types of mineral production and you halve oil prices in a matter of months. Actual available supply isn't necessary to turn long speculators into short sellers.
#9
Azcat is correct. A "We're gonna drill" announcement would have an immediate impact on the speculators (nobody wants to be holding the short end of an expensive stick), and an effect at the pump shortly after
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/12/2008 19:09
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#10
Do you folks realize that by saying the price of oil is rising due to speculators you are agreeing with Idiot Reid? There are no speculators except the people who have oil but choose not to pump it. And who does that definition fit? The Democrats!
#11
Call 'em whatever you want NS but the folks driving up the value of oil futures contracts are partly to blame here. Trading futures is speculation until and unless someone produces a working crystal ball.
Of course the speculators aren't entirely to blame but they're the most quickly and easily dealt with component of the problem.
#12
Increased drilling has been happening, tied to the rise in oil prices over the past few years. It just takes a while to get to the point where the oil comes out of the ground, as apparently it takes longer than the six weeks needed to build a normal house.
#13
They are absolutely not to blame and to say so exposes your naivete. Buying and selling oil is as much speculating as futures.
Dealing with speculators who drive up the price for extended periods is easy because they don't exist. The people who are driving up the price are the people with oil in the ground who won't drill for it. They are speculating the price will go up and they are Democrats.
Posted by: Large Whinegum6365 ||
07/12/2008 19:29
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#15
NS - speculators exist and they are significantly impacting the markets. Consider, for example, this bit from Consumer Affairs.
Here's a very relevant anecdote:
In 2007, speculators owned just 37 percent of the contracts to buy West Texas Intermediate Crude on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The remaining 63 percent was controlled by oil refiners, wholesalers, trucking companies and other end users of petroleum products.
By April of this year, the proportion had almost reversed itself. Speculators controlled 71 percent of the contracts while oil users held only 29 percent.
With more and more money from speculators chasing a finite number of oil futures contracts, the supply and demand principle takes hold. When demand for something outpaces the supply, the price rises.
Take the speculative money out of the market, for example, and watch what happens. With another 71 percent of oil contracts up for grabs, and no speculative money to compete for it, oil users are the only ones left bidding for contracts. They don't have to bid as much, now that there is less demand.
#16
NS is right, speculators don't drive up the price of oil over any period longer than a few days. That requires physical hoarding of oil and as a practical matter that can only occur by not pumping oil, which OPEC has done for many years. Were a business to do this, there is nothing wrong with it. Holding product back from the market in the hope of higher prices later is a legitimate business practice. The problem with OPEC is that it is a cartel.
#17
Nimble: My cousin has 28,000 acres of coal and oil bearing wheat/cattle land in Montana. She has 2 refineries withing 20 miles.
NEITHER ONE WILL PAY HER MORE THAN $20 BBL.
So she shut her pumps off!
#18
AzCat, in a market there are always an exactly equal number of buyers and sellers.
The article you quote is poorly written and it's not clear if long positions held by speculators are now 71%. If they are then there must have been an exactly equal increase in short sellers. Who are they? Other speculators? Oil companies? OPEC? Without knowing this, we are just speculating. A plausible scenario is OPEC is gaming the speculators.
Otherwise, you have a point and futures markets feed a bubble mentality that spills over into the physical market, because prices people pay are determined by the spot physical market and not the futures market.
#19
One point not made so far: by refusing to drill here at home, we send $147 a barrel to people like the Saoodis, Nigerians, etc. It makes sense to me to keep as much of the money here at home as we reasonably can. This also means that the jobs required in drilling stay home. And whatever we produce here can be taxed here by the states and the Federal gummints. Therefore drilling at home makes more sense than buying oil abroad.
Second point: oil companies drilling in America have to be careful and responsible to the environment. That's the law and the Feds generally do a good job enforcing it. The 'law' in Nigeria isn't nearly so strict, so there is a lot more pollution there. By saying that we won't drill at home, we encourage the pollution of the world elsewhere. Try that one on a liberal friend and see how they respond.
Third point: drilling at home would send a message to the world that we're serious. Combine that with better efficiency (NOT conservation, since few like to be lectured about conserving but everyone likes to be more efficient), a move to flex-fuel plug-in hybrid cars, producing ethanol from switchgrass, buying ethanol from Brazil (*), and a serious push to nuclear power, and you have a plan that dampens speculation substantially.
(*) Would you rather buy ethanol from Brazil or oil from Iran? Discuss.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/12/2008 20:46
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#20
DIpshit Harry is missing one thing: the speculation woudl nto be possible were it not for severely constrained supplies and loose trading rules.
Tighten margin requirements (or eliminate them completely) will force speculators to put up sufficient capital instead of miniscule amounts.
That kills the bubble from the demand side.
Drill here, drill now - that fixes it form the supply side. Knowing that the US is going to be exploring and bringing on 10's of millions of barrels in the next 5-6 years domestically is more than enough to take the edge off the supply squeeze and reduce upward pressure. That will cause the futures to steady, which will driuve the specualtors out as well.
Stable markets are not exploitable to the degree we have seen with the speculation bubble, especially if you take into account a higher opportunity cost (raising margin requirements).
This is only to buy breathing space while we build nukes for primary baseload power, wind and solar for peak, and push for petroleum replacement for vehicle fuel.
And don't forget natural gas - we are the Saudi Arabia of Natural Gas.
#21
One other thing dumbass Harry missed - the current leases are NOT as good a land as are the off limits area. The reason they havent been exploited is those areas show little promise to be productive enough even at today's rates. They are the "leftovers", the likely non-producing areas.
Basically what this dipshit is saying, were this to farmers, is that he wants us to farm the rocky slopes, before he lets us farm the fertile plains.
Moron - its political BS and obfuscation of the worst kind.
#22
I agree that margin requirements are too low, but that doesn't lead to futures traders being able to drive up market prices for this long. It's real, not speculators.
ps, 3dc your cousin's a speculator and I hope she makes money on the gamble.
#23
And yes speculators can be the cause of this bubble by themselves.
Remember, unlike a buying customer, who will put ALL of the capital into a contract and take delivery, speculators can borrow most of the money, putting little of theirs in.
That means the only cost of the trade to them, for the most part, is the interest cost. ANd as long as they can say that the price will go up faster than the interest rate, they will buy the contract, sell it for a profit - probably to another speculator.
Many contracts trade as much as 20 to 60 times before a delivery (final) contract is taken.
That means speculators, on margin, are driving the bubble up on their own by trading between themselves, creating high velocity of money and momentum trading.
Put it this way:
Given oil at 140 a barrel, and say Oil looks to be going to 150 due to less supply and sustained demand for the indefinite future. Its fluctuating wildy and will swing $5 in a week, possiby in a day.
Not unreasonable.
OK, say we have a corporate fleet that makes bulk discounts, and uses 10,000 barrels equivalent a quarter. To buy the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil, a consumer, who takes delivery, pays out $1.4 million to fix the price in place.
Now lets look at a speculator at a hedge fund or brokerage with access to large credit lines, instead, has a 5% margin and 8% interest.
So he enters the market - grabbing the same lot of 10,000 barrles at $140. He pays 5% out of pocket for the margin = 70K. He gets a loan for the $1.33M, and takes on $2046 a week in interest costs (106.4K annual interest).
He now holds for a swing in price.
As previously stated, oil looks to be going to 150, so a week later he finds another speculator that will buy from him for 145 (betting on 150), putting $1.45M in his pocket.
He pays back the $1.33M in loan and $2046 in interest for the week.
So: he put up $70,000 of his own, and got back $1.45M - 1.35046M = $99540 Thats a gain of $29540 in a week. A 42 percent return on investment.
As long as the momentum keeps up (cheap money, constricted supply), its behooves the trader to keep trading and pushing the price. His risk is minmal, compared ot the returns.
So the specualtor only puts $70K of his own, whereas the consumer has to put up $1.4 million.
HUGE difference. Increse the margins makes the yield go down. Increase production reduces upward pressure which increases the risk for the speculator.
#24
addendum: jumping margins requirement to 100% or requiring the fuutures buyer to take delivery kills the rise to $145- the buyer buys at 140 and it stays there until supply/demand moves it. And increasing supply reduces upward pressure on the product, as do demand reduction. Plus supply/demand curse will decrease demand once the prodcut becomes too expensive.
the problem is speculators do not have the same supply demand as the commodity they trade - they creade demand and supply themselves with their trading activity.
So thats why whacking speculators by either eliminating them by restricting trade to actualy suppliers and consumers (true supply/demand) or taking away margin will cause corrective action and allow for a true supply-demand marketplace, thus bubble deflation.
In that environemnt, supply side actions like increasing drilling, will have an effect on price quite quickly, as anticipation of price increases will soften, allowing price to drop or at least steady in the face of increased supply.
Having read this book, I wondered about this -- (have read all of his books) He writes in a way, you wonder where fiction ends and truth begins. The death threats are indeed, real.
The author of the best-selling new thriller, "The Last Patriot," says his life already has been threatened for contending the Muslim holy book contains errors and is not based on the last revelations of Muhammad.
"I've already had multiple death threats come in, and that's something that we're taking very seriously with the tour coming up," said Brad Thor, whose "Patriot" already has climbed to No. 1 on the Amazon fiction list after its release last week. Thor says he's adding security precautions as he goes forward with a national book tour.
In the book, which is being called the "Islamic Da Vinci Code," Thor posits that Islamic scholars have engaged in a conspiracy to cover up missing parts of the Quran that allegedly reveal their prophet had a final moderate revelation that abrogates the violent passages of the Quran.
Oh that's going to tighten a few turbans ...
Thor, who has served as a member of the Department of Homeland Security's Analytic Red Cell Program, says his research confirmed that parchments and fragments of parchments of the Quran were uncovered at the Great Mosque in Sana'a, Yemen, in 1974. "What they found when they started studying them was, uh-oh, there's stuff in here that doesn't look like the Quran today," he explained, "and we've gone around telling everybody that the Quran is perfect and now here are these discrepancies."
More than 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide believe their holy book is the perfect, inviolate word of God -- an exact word-for-word, perfect copy of the original book as it exists in Paradise and just as it was transmitted, without a single error, by Allah to the Prophet Muhammad through the Angel Gabriel.
But Thor's main character in "Patriot" uncovers aberrations that differ from Islamic dogma, meaning the case could finally be made that the Quran needed to be re-examined in a historical framework.
"He had always believed that the Quran had been written by man, not God," Thor writes about his moderate Muslim protagonist in the opening chapter of his novel. "If such a thing could be proven, Muslims around the world would be able to re-examine their faith with a modern, 21st century perspective, rather than the outdated, unenlightened perspective of seventh-century Arabia."
Thor then spins a tale of murder and intrigue. "The one thing I've learned from doing my research is Islam has some very dark, very scary skeletons in its closet that it does not want out there, that it absolutely cannot defend," he said.
Friends have warned Thor that his book will be viewed as blasphemous by Muslim fundamentalists. "You're going to have a fatwah on you" like Salman Rushdie, said CNN's Glenn Beck, a family friend. "This is the kind of stuff that's going to get you killed."
Rushdie has lived under sentence of death since writing his novel, "The Satanic Verses." Muslim clerics condemned the book as blasphemous against Muhammad and the Quran.
But Thor says "Islam is getting a free pass," and he has the right to write anything he wants to write and Muslims have the "right not to read it."
He adds that he's tired of the chattering class in Washington glossing over the violent nature of Islam, sugarcoating it as a "religion of peace" that doesn't need to be reformed. "I hear all the time about Islam being a religion of peace and I thought, wow, that's weird, there's so much violence in there," he explained in a recent interview with Beck. "And the more I study the Quran, the more I realize that it's unlike the Bible."
Thor notes that since 9/11, more than 11,000 deadly attacks have been committed by Muslims "in the name of Islam." "We see these horrible things happen in Islam every day," he said, "and we don't even see mainstream Muslims standing up" to protest them.
Next week, the gutsy author even plans to stop for a book-signing appearance at the Borders in Baileys Crossroads, Va., which boasts one of the highest concentrations of Arab and Muslim immigrants in the nation.
#2
The note about Bailey's Crossroads is interesting. I've often wondered why I see ten times as many Muslims around here as I did on my recent travels in Europe, eg Brussels, Amsterdam, etc.
Oooooooh, lets hope so...
WASHINGTON - Barack Obama's presidential campaign has requested information from Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd as part of its search for a possible vice presidential candidate. The former White House hopeful and Connecticut lawmaker indicated Wednesday that he has been approached by the campaign. "There's been some inquiries, yeah," Dodd said. "They ask for a lot of stuff. I'll leave it there." So will they unless they are incredibly stupid.
Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton and Dodd's Senate office declined comment Thursday. Harrumph harrumph harrumph...
Recent moves by Obama have stoked speculation about the search for the No. 2 on the Democratic ticket. On Wednesday, Obama made an unscheduled stop at the building housing the law firm of one of his search committee members, Eric Holder. Obama also traveled to New York with another member of the search team, Caroline Kennedy. Meanwhile, at Castle Breck...the brooding continues.
Dodd, 64, is a five-term senator with a lengthy foreign policy resume. A fluent speaker of Spanish, Dodd served in the Peace Corps and has had a strong interest in Latin American affairs throughout his career. A longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he's been able to wield a heavy influence on U.S. involvement in the region. Sure he has. Just ask him.
Recently, Dodd, who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, has struggled with allegations that he got cut-rate mortgages from a leading offender in the subprime mortgage meltdown. Save thousands on your mortgage! Ask me how!!
BEIJING: Chinese police has shot down five suspected criminals in the troubled Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region sending out clear signals that the government would allow no disturbances ahead of the Olympic Games.
Uighur separatists had been earlier blamed by the Chinese government of plotting to blow up Olympic facilities.
But the government did not clarify if the Uighurs shot dead belonged to a specific separatist group or were merely oridinary criminals with no political intensions.
Two other persons sustained bullet injuries after the police opened fire on a group of people trying to resist arrest after they had stabbed a police officer in this Muslim dominated area. Eight others have been arrested. Police said that the 15-member gang had burst into a beauty saloon and injured its owner.
Never forget. Never forget. And remember the role of the Dutch ...
SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Hercegovina, July 11 (AFP) Some 30,000 Muslims from across Bosnia gathered Friday to remember the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and bury the remains of more than 300 newly identified victims. The sombre funeral ceremony for the 308 Muslims, who were among 8,000 killed in Europe's worst atrocity since World War II, was held at a memorial site just outside the eastern town. The remains of the victims, aged between 15 and 84, were exhumed from mass graves after the end of Bosnia's 1992-1995 war and identified by DNA analysis. Thousands more are yet to be exhumed and identified in the area, where some 70 mass graves have been uncovered.
In Belgrade, President Boris Tadic vowed Serbia's new government would do its utmost to arrest former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, still wanted on genocide charges in relation to the massacre. Mladic and the other main accused, his former political leader Radovan Karadzic, remain at large and are thought to be hiding in Serb-run parts of the Balkans.
Srebrenica remains a part of the Serb-run entity of Republika Srpska, which along with the Muslim-Croat Federation makes up post-war Bosnia.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/12/2008
12:41 ||
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#1
Search "Srebrenica" on youtube. That is the worst scam going. Serb ethnic cleansing of Muslims followed Muslim cleansing of other nationalities. In fact, to this day it is unlawful to either build a Christian church in Bosnia. Permits to renovate of even repair are rarely given.
Contrast Euro treatment of the remnant savages of Ottoman imperialism, with Muslim attitudes to Jews and Christians in the Middle East. Since 1958, no American President has said a single word about the oppression of Christians in the Levant. In fact, tens of billions of dollars have been hand delivered to the oppressors.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, July 11 (AP) Militants will start killing a group of hostages if several militant prisoners are not released by Saturday afternoon, Pakistani Taliban spokesman Maulvi Umar Friday said. Umar claimed the Taliban kidnapped 29 people, most of them security forces. However, Hangu district official Haji Khan Afzal said 16 or 17 people were being held. The hostages were taken during a militant siege of a police station Wednesday. A man named Rafiuddin suspected of being a deputy to top Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud is believed to be among those prisoners. Umar said the government must release the prisoners by Saturday afternoon or the hostages will be killed.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/12/2008
12:39 ||
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BEIJING: Chinese authorities have replaced top police and security officials in the Muslim dominated Xinjiang province, which is the hotbed of separatism and political violence. They have also closed down 41 "illegal" places of worship.
These places of worship were used as training ground for conducting a "holy war", Chen Zhuangwei Chen, the police chief of Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang province, said. Xinjiang, which borders central Asia and Pakistan, has been the scene of a pro-independence movement by a section of the eight million Uighurs living there for a long time.
The authorities also announced they have detained 82 "suspected terrorists" in the past six months in view of fears that they might disrupt the Olympic Games. They belong to five groups that "allegedly plotted sabotage against the Beijing Olympics", the official Xinhua news agency quoted the police chief in Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital, as saying.
The government has annouced the replacement of army and security officials in the ranks of three deputy core commanders, political commissars and the head of the Communist Party organisation department in the army. The replacement suggests that the central government has been unhappy about the inability of local officials to put down the surging separatist movement in the province.
The new head of the organisation department is Liu Xiang Song, the government announced. One of the three new core commanders is Hanabati Sabukhaya, an officer from the Kazak race. Xinjiang borders Kazakisthan and several other countries including Pakistan and Russia. "From now, all police officers must act urgently, get involved once more in Olympic security, to make sure large and small incidents alike do not happen," Chen was quoted by official media as saying.
#3
Anonymoose, trailing daughter #2 made use of your non-Gatorade suggestions on the 600-mile bike trip her youth group recently finished, and she was the only one who didn't suffer from electrolyte depletion. Thank you!!!!
#5
'moose, if they do, I hope they leave my Uighur friend Shakir alone. Actually, even in East Turkestan (Uighur-land) relatively few of the people are actively opposing the Central Chinese government and most of those who are in opposition have fairly legitimate greivances (similar to Tibet situation). The mosques may be the organizing centers of the opposition but in 'most' cases militant Islam is more of a parasitic addition to the opposition rather than its cause.
#8
I spend a fair bit of time in the Nevada and Utah desert. My trick is:
I have a hydration pack (Camel Back, etc.) to which I add only a single scoop of Gatorade powder. It makes it really dilute, not enough to really taste it much, just a hint of a flavor but enough that the water isn't completely flushing me of electrolytes.
I use Morton "Light Salt" while I am out there. That is a 50/50 mix of Sodium Chloride (regular table salt) and Potassium Chloride (AKA "salt substitute"). I use that on food out there and that helps provide both sodium and potassium.
And last year I took some huge Vitamin C tablets I can suck on ... they are like horse pills but they taste good. They also contain calcium.
Add to that some salty snacks like jerky and those individually wrapped large dill pickles and so far we have managed to avoid hydration issues or electrolyte problems.
I did have some problems back in 2004 and that was due to drinking too much straight water which simply acted to flush the electrolytes out without putting any back in. I completely avoid soft drinks, beer, etc. until the late afternoon/evening. I feel best sipping my water and chewing on a hunk of jerky in the hottest part of the day.
HANOI, Vietnam, July 11 (AP) Five people, including three children, died in central Vietnam when 30-year-old unexploded ordnance left behind from the Vietnam War exploded, police and state media reported Friday. Three boys, aged 12 to 14, were killed in an explosion Thursday in the Hai Lang district of Quang Tri province, said a district police officer. The boys discovered four unexploded bombs in bushes and the explosives went off when they examined them, he said.
On Tuesday, two men were killed in the central highlands province of Kon Tum when an artillery shell they were cutting up for scrap metal exploded, the Tuoi Tre newspaper reported.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/12/2008
12:37 ||
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#1
I don't recall any bombs being dropped south of the DMZ. They probably were not artillery from the Dong Ha base. Perhaps they were dropped by NVA rocketeers being pursued by Marines or nailed by the 1/40th 105 battery.
CHITTAGONG, Bangladesh, July 11 (AFP) Four members of one family were trampled to death early Friday after a herd of wild elephants strayed into a remote village in southeastern Bangladesh, police said. The incident happened in Banderbon district, around 140 kilometres south of the port city Chittagong, the area's deputy police chief Syed Tariqul Hasan told AFP.
Hasan said a farmer, his wife, their 10-year-old son and five-year-old daughter were killed when the elephants destroyed their home while they were sleeping.
Once again, Evin Prison in Tehran, Iran, has drawn the attention of human rights activists; this time the notorious jailinfamous for housing political and social figuresis holding 10 women on hunger strike.
Almost one month has passed since the doors of ward 209 were shut on women's rights activist Mahboubeh Karami and nine other women; and the Iranian judiciary still has not presented the legal basis or accusations on which the detainees are being held.
"It has been weeks since I have officially accepted to defend the case of Ms. Karami, but I have not succeeded to visit my defendant yet. Nor am I aware of the charges against her," said Hooshang Poor Babaee, Karami's advocate lawyer.
On the fourth week of their detention, the 10 female inmates, exhausted by the grave conditions, began a hunger strike to protest the "illegal approach" of the judicial and prison officials.
In an interview with the United States-funded Persian-language Radio Farda, Sadigheh Masaebi, Mahboubeh's mother talked about the last conversation she had with her daughter: "'They are killing us here,' she [Karami] told me on phone. She said that her body is full of bruises, and the ten of them are crawling into each other in a tiny cell. She said that she and the nine other inmates are going on hunger strike from Sunday [July 6]."
Karami is 39. The ages of the other inmates range from 17 to 70, according to what Karami has told her mother.
The women were arrested during a protest against "economical corruption" in Tehran. But Karami has denied any involvement in the protest, and said her presence in the tumultuous area had been entirely coincidental. She said that she was passing through the area on a bus when the police and plainclothes officers stopped the vehicle and arrested them.
"'The police stopped the bus in front of the Mellat Park. Then they began hitting the windows with their batons and forced the driver to open the doors. They attacked a man in the bus. I could not keep silent and when I protested, they took me in too,'" Mahboubeh's mother quoted her daughter as saying.
Those demonstrating in Mellat Park were protesting the June 11 arrest of Abbas Palizdar, who had accused several senior Iranian officials of financial corruption in speeches he made at universities in Hamedan and Shiraz in May. He had been involved in a parliamentary Judicial Inquiry and Review Committee that had conducted an investigation into affairs of the judiciary. The protest had been organized by foreign-based opposition television channels that the Islamic Republic considers illegal and decadent.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has welcomed his Syrian counterpart, Bashar Assad, to the Elysee Palace.
They mean 'counterpart' in the loosest possible way ...
The meeting, part of a weekend of diplomatic efforts centred on the Middle East, marks a return to the world stage for the Syrian president.
Relations between the two countries became strained following the assassination in 2005 of Lebanon's former Prime Minister, Rafiq Hariri. France accused Damascus of involvement, an allegation denied by Syria.
And now Sarko has let them off the hook ...
Mr Sarkozy will later host a meeting between Mr Assad and Lebanon's newly-elected president, Michel Suleiman, a day after the formation of a new unity government in Beirut. Mr Suleiman told the Associated Press that Lebanon wanted an "exchange of ambassadors and diplomatic relations" with Syria.
The two countries have not had diplomatic relations since Rafiq Hariri's death.
The Paris visit is a big boost for Mr Assad, helping Syria to break out of its diplomatic isolation, says BBC world affairs correspondent Nick Childs. But critics correctly say it is too much of a reward, when there are still serious question-marks over human rights in Syria and its alleged role in the killing of Hariri.
Earlier on Saturday, Mr Sarkozy held talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who will be a key player in the French leader's plan for a union of Mediterranean states, our correspondent adds. Mr Sarkozy is hosting a summit on Sunday to launch this union, which will be attended by 43 leaders of countries in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Only Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is expected to boycott it.
#2
There has been some talk that the half dozen or so top Syrian leaders could suddenly retire to Paris, with guaranteed personal wealth, assuming that the Alawite government suddenly collapses.
India has a "fair amount" of intelligence inputs about Pakistan's involvement in the Monday's suicide attack on its Embassy in Kabul, National Security Advisor M K Narayanan said on Saturday.
"We not only suspect but we have a fair amount of intelligence (on the involvement of Pakistan)," Narayanan told television channels when asked whether India suspects Pakistan's involvement in the attack.
"The ISI needs to be destroyed. We made this point, whenever we have had a chance, to interlocutors across the world... there might have been some tactical restraint for some time, obviously that restraint is no longer present," he said.
Posted by: john frum ||
07/12/2008
11:54 ||
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pakistan and iran need to be defeated in the WOT
Posted by: Paul ||
07/12/2008 12:06
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#2
From MK's lips to God's ears ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/12/2008 12:11
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The ISI is the world's heroin trafficking network. They have access to more money than the entire budget of Pakistan. They can recruit, train, and arm a larger army than the country of Pakistan can if they want to. There's a lot you can do with nearly 200 BILLION dollars a year in drug money.
There, fixed it for you. The ISI is just the nose of the beast. There is no part of Pakistan that doesn't think it's superior to the rest of the world, and that they should force the world to follow their "advice". The sooner Pakistan disappears, the faster the world can get "better" for everyone.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/12/2008 14:47
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#5
There are some things that an Indian NSA, or indeed an Indian politician, will never say in public...
Posted by: john frum ||
07/12/2008 15:53
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Sudan formally asked the Arab League on Saturday to hold an emergency meeting of foreign ministers after reports the International Criminal Court's (ICC) prosecutor may seek the arrest of Sudan's president. A senior European diplomat said on Friday the ICC's prosecutor would likely seek President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's arrest in a new Darfur war crimes case he will open on Monday.
Sudan has said any such move could undermine the Darfur peace process. Two senior government officials told Reuters Sudan would likely seek Chinese, Russian and African support at the United Nations to help block any warrant for Bashir.
The issue could also pit the demands of the U.N.-backed ICC against U.N. interests in deploying a peace force in Darfur -- home to the world's largest humanitarian operation -- and aid officials fear a potential backlash.
Sudan's main rebel groups, who have also been accused of rights abuses, said on Saturday any ICC arrest warrant for Bashir would be a triumph for justice, and pledged to hand over their own commanders if sought by the court.
An Arab League spokesman said Sudan had submitted a written request to convene a meeting of Arab foreign ministers, and that League Secretary General Amr Moussa was working on the issue.
"Amr Moussa is in Paris and is consulting with Arab foreign ministers for an extraordinary meeting of the council of foreign ministers," Arab League spokesman Abdel-Alim al-Abyad said. The officials are in France for a summit of European Union and Mediterranean leaders.
Egypt's state news agency MENA said Sudan wanted the meeting "to look into the situation between Sudan and the International Criminal Court". The Cairo-based Arab League said it was still too early to say when or where such a meeting would take place.
Sudanese officials said they were also seeking broader international support to stymie any arrest warrant. "Contacts are already established with China and Russia ... and they have shown their support ... But it's informal so far," said one senior government source on condition on anonymity.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
10:32 ||
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I always admired what an upbeat, decent, intelligent man he was. Fox has the story all day, I'm sure, but he was deeply devoted to his family, his faith, and his country. RIP, Tony
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/12/2008
09:04 ||
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#2
There are now a bunch of different kinds of "wireless pill endoscopes" in common use, and they are trying very hard to radically expand their use. You wear a special belt for a day, then swallow the big pill, and you don't even try to recover it, it is expendable.
You return the belt to them, and they download the images.
I knew a woman who had this procedure done just a few months ago. Two 10 minute outpatient visits, mostly administrative. Swallow a pill, put on a belt, do a functions check, then have a nice day. One day later, return the belt.
Heck of a lot better, faster and safer than general anesthesia and a typical endoscope that only sees a third as much intestine.
#7
I hope the MSM eulogy lasts as long as the one for the equally likable and talented Russert.
Oh, I doubt it. The inimitable AP spin...
Critics suggested that Snow was turning the traditionally informational daily briefing into a personality-driven media event short on facts and long on confrontation. He was the first press secretary, by his own accounting, to travel the country raising money for Republican candidates.
Although a star in conservative politics, as a commentator he had not always been on the president's side. He once called Bush "something of an embarrassment" in conservative circles and criticized what he called Bush's "lackluster" domestic policy.
The biggest political story of 2008 is getting little coverage. It involves the collapse of assumptions that have dominated our economic debate for three decades. Since the Reagan years, free-market cliches have passed for sophisticated economic analysis. But in the current crisis, these ideas are falling, one by one, as even conservatives recognize that capitalism is ailing. Not this conservative, E.J.
You know the talking points: Regulation is the problem and deregulation is the solution. The distribution of income and wealth doesn't matter. Providing incentives for the investors of capital to "grow the pie" is the only policy that counts. Free trade produces well-distributed economic growth, and any dissent from this orthodoxy is "protectionism." Yup, yup.
The old script is in rewrite. "We are in a worldwide crisis now because of excessive deregulation," Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said in an interview. A liberal speaks, and conservative principals are in free-fall?
He noted that in 1999 when Congress replaced the New Deal-era Glass-Steagall Act with a set of looser banking rules, "we let investment banks get into a much wider range of activities without regulation." This helped create the subprime mortgage mess and the cascading calamity in banking.
While Frank is a liberal, the same cannot be said of Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Yet in a speech on Tuesday, Bernanke sounded like a born-again New Dealer in calling for "a more robust framework for the prudential supervision of investment banks and other large securities dealers." Bernanke said the Fed needed more authority to get inside "the structure and workings of financial markets" because "recent experience has clearly illustrated the importance, for the purpose of promoting financial stability, of having detailed information about money markets and the activities of borrowers and lenders in those markets." Sure sounds like Big Government to me.
This is the third time in 100 years that support for taken-for-granted economic ideas has crumbled. The Great Depression discredited the radical laissez-faire doctrines of the Coolidge era. Stagflation in the 1970s and early '80s undermined New Deal ideas and called forth a rebirth of radical free-market notions. What's becoming the Panic of 2008 will mean an end to the latest Capital Rules era.
What's striking is that conservatives who revere capitalism are offering their own criticisms of the way the system is working. Irwin Stelzer, director of the Center for Economic Policy Studies at the Hudson Institute, says the subprime crisis arose in part because lenders quickly sold their mortgages to others and bore no risk if the loans went bad. "You have to have the person who's writing the risk bearing the risk," he says. "That means a whole host of regulations. There's no way around that."
CEOs "benefit substantially if the risks they take pay off" but "pay no penalty" if their risks lead to losses or even catastrophe -- another sign that capitalism, in its current form, isn't living by its own rules.
Frank also calls for new thinking on the impact of free trade. He argues it can no longer be denied that globalization "is a contributor to the stagnation of wages and it has produced large pools of highly mobile capital." Mobile capital and the threat of moving a plant abroad give employers a huge advantage in negotiations with employees. "If you're dealing with someone and you can pick up and leave and he can't, you have the advantage."
"Free trade has increased wealth, but it's been monopolized by a very small number of people, if you leave out the Chinese and Indians," Frank said. The coming debate will focus not on shutting globalization down but rather on managing its effects with an eye toward the interests of "the most vulnerable people in the country."
In the campaign so far, John McCain has been clinging to the old economic orthodoxy while Barack Obama has proposed a modestly more active role for government. But the economic assumptions are changing faster than the rhetoric of the campaign. "Reality has broken in," says Frank. And none too soon.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/12/2008
07:06 ||
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#1
EJ Dionne is frequently a good barometer for the truth. Read his column, and the truth is usually the opposite. I hope Barney gave him a reacharound
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/12/2008 9:02
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#2
ARRRGGGHHHH
It's not capitalism that caused this it's the fucking govenemnt regualtor of money!!!!!!!
The engineered a credit explosion, that seperated the financial economy from the real economy and caused vast amounts of mal-investment. These investments are now negative yeilding and thus worthless.
The credit bubble caused a huge amount of inflation (destroying house price affordability and crushing rental yields), but that was masked by the deflationary effect of chinese imports.
With the weight of these negative investments killing the dollar, and now chinas internal growth stopping the deflation effect we are seeing inflation on imports and deflation in houses.
How to prevent this in the future?
A LAND VALUE TAX to keep the ratio between earnings and land prices stable.
The federal reserve to raise the reserve requirements in response to rising credit cration.
Keep interest rates targeting as is (i.e. slight financial expansion to stop people sitting on their currency instead of investing it).
#3
I would say overregulation is a huge part of the problem. Maybe that's not the right word but preventing drilling and building of nuke plants for the past few decades has not helped the current energy problem and the cost of oil is effecting prices accross the board.
We'd ride the mortgage problem without a hitch if hte energy crisis wasn't happening at the same time.
#4
I am afraid that USA is heading in this stupidity since this idiot like many others doesnt grasp that it was THE STATE(FED) REGULATION OF RATES that made the subprime.
He also doesnt grasp that the increase in income all over the world due to increased trade.
But i am not afraid, all Eastern Europe is much more capitalist than USA and even parts of Asia is getting deregulated. What happens in US doesnt have the impact it had in the past.
#6
Before everyone gets the idea that laissez faire and non-federal regulation is the answer, you better go back and read up on the multiple economic crisis of nineteenth century [the Panic of 1857, Panic of 1873, Panic of 1893, Panic of 1896, and Panic of 1907] and their impact on the economy and the society. Thinking you don't need some of this is like parents who think their kids can do without inoculations cause they haven't lived through the real alternative.
Can it be better. yes.
Can it be perfect. no. More often than not, the problem is the same one as at Three Mile Island, humans ignoring the warnings and doing things [or not doing things] they're suppose to do. The tools are often already in place to address the pending crisis. Its stupid human tricks that create the folly.
#7
The credit bubble caused a huge amount of inflation (destroying house price affordability and crushing rental yields), but that was masked by the deflationary effect of chinese imports.
Inflation by definition is excess credit.
We don't have that. Banks ain't lending and interest rates irrespective of the rate at any discount window is about to skyrocket.
We have deflation.
How to prevent this in the future?
A LAND VALUE TAX to keep the ratio between earnings and land prices stable.
The federal reserve to raise the reserve requirements in response to rising credit cration.
Keep interest rates targeting as is (i.e. slight financial expansion to stop people sitting on their currency instead of investing it).
Taxes are very poor policy, and increasing them is even worse policy. The folly here is that anything the government can do in its tool bag ( fiscal and tax policy) can prevent anything except prosperity, the one thing government and its policies can damn sure do in the shortest amount of time.
Cut government spending to the bone and lower taxes even more. The whole problem with China making our goods is that companies which invest in China are backed by the knowledge the government will always overspend and thus will go borrow money to make it through the next crisis.
Treasury bills will always be there to back any export/import policy including jobs.
the ONLY solution is to reduce the absolute size of government at all levels and make it illegal for congress to mandate anything except only those matter which actually affect the federal government.
Because it its oversize appetites, the federal government and state government have become monsters in the way of genuine prosperity domestically.
Reduce federal government size and power and you will see these problems go away.
#8
multiple economic crisis of nineteenth century [the Panic of 1857, Panic of 1873, Panic of 1893, Panic of 1896, and Panic of 1907]
The Great Depression, the recessions of 1946, 1958, 1960, 1970, 1975, 1982, 1987, 1993, 2001. The bubbles of 1987, 1998, 2001, 2003 and 2007 and the current commodities bubble. Guess what? Even more bubbles and recessions than ever before. If this is progress, then that explains why liberalism is which a contradictory and dishonest political economic philosophy.
#9
Reduce federal government size and power and you will see a LOT problems go away, Bad.
Let's start with Health and Education. Nothing in the Constitution gives the federal gummint the right to meddle in either of these areas. >:-(
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
07/12/2008 12:50
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#10
If this is progress..
Well, growing up in lower middle class from the early 1950's, even with those 'bubbles', I certainly see things better per capita for people in similar strata today than we 'enjoyed' back then. People bitch and moan, but by large extent we are certainly better off. For example, back in the early 60s, 30 percent of all Americans enjoyed air conditioning. Today, its 30 percent of all classified as POOR who have air conditioning. Multiply that by all measure of living [to include life expectancy] and the doom and gloom doesn't match up. That is progress.
#11
The problem began with Frank Roosevelt. His solution to too much easy credit, which caused stock purchase on margin, resulting in the collapse of the stock market, was itself vast amounts of easy credit.
It mortgaged the future to pay for the present. And though it benefited the present very much, we are now living in the future, and the bill is due.
What is happening is a worldwide credit collapse. The eventual result is a foregone conclusion: you can no longer buy what you cannot afford. This applies from the individual level all the way up to the national and international level.
It is hard to imagine how different the US will be when it has to have a balanced budget, because no one will loan it money. The last time the US government ran out of money, J.P. Morgan, the man, stepped in to keep it from default.
The Laffer curve still applies, which even the US government has learned must be obeyed, because there will always be tax avoidance available to the wealthy. This means they cannot "tax America into prosperity", as Rush Limbaugh points out.
In practical terms, those parts of the economy that have real value based products and services will continue. But those parts that are based in economic leverage are doomed.
The old saying will again apply, that "You can only have credit if you don't need it", with 100% or *more* collateral, carefully assessed for value and even put in escrow, prior to your receiving credit based on all or some part of its value.
For most people this means they will only have debit, not credit. And those that have credit will have a limit based on cash they have on deposit with the credit issuer. So why have credit at all?
I suspect that with the international credit crisis, the US will fractionally redeem its international debt in exchange for food. That is, $10 bushels of produce for $10 cash, or $100, if they pay in relieved debt. And purchasers will have no choice, if they want to eat, yet have no cash, which most of them won't.
This will also mean stiff trade tariffs. If some manufacturer wants to sell it here, they will have no choice but to make it here. Imports will be raw materials for food, exports for cash only or relieved debt.
The salad days of speculation will be over for decades, and speculative corporations will fold.
#12
Mostly excellent analysis, Anonymoose. Before the 1930's most people, even most who were reasonably well off, lived in rented housing. The mortgage structure we have now simply didn't exist. Yes, I understand that there are positive intangibles regarding ownership vs renting. I am not sure that having as many people owning as we have the past twenty or so years is ultimately a good thing, though. I guess there will always be a certain percentage of folks who just can't manage their lives that way, for a host of reasons.
It is in fact a government intrusion into real estate (subsidization via mortgage interest deduction) that is ultimately to blame for the level of speculation we see now, not deregulation. If housing were treated simply as a sort of "durable good" and not an investment, there would be a lot less speculation.
I've always suspected that the changes in finance that led to the Depression were never really addressed by the New Deal, that the New Deal approaches were mere bandaids until the industrial runup in WWII.
The 50's were good in spite of those programs and attitudes persisting, due to the fact that we had an intact industrial base and trained workers, and nobody else on the planet had that combination. Things started going south by the late 60's, and have continued to deteriorate since then (I'm talking economics, not social/cultural stuff which has gone down, too, but that's for a different thread).
It is a physcial impossibility to tax and regulate an economy into wealth, and yet there are always those who try. Why? All of the data sets we have say it cannot work. Some regulation may be necessary, but always at a cost of economic growth.
I'm not sure about the tariff thing, that actually made the Depression far worse. Trade isolationism contributed to collapse before, and it could again.
As you've correctly pointed out, we have lots of food, and that is ALWAYS valuable. I like your plan to eliminate our debt. If everyone stays peaceful, that is.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
07/12/2008 16:36
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#13
(I'm talking economics, not social/cultural stuff which has gone down, too, but that's for a different thread).
No, it's the same thing. That's why the subject is properly called Political Economy as opposed to domestic economy or industrial economy.
And if you want to find the real beginning of the down slope it is the XVI Amendment, passed by the populist states of the west and south eager to tax speculators and evil Wall Street, that started tremendous changes that culminated in the Great Depression which has not yet been fully analyzed. Some people never learn.
#15
We could always go with the Wizard of Oz and free silver...
Investing is easy for those with a computer and web access, speculating is an adrenalin-high causing game, and lots of people aren't quite as smart as they think. The suckers get skinned as always, and the innocent pay the price when the problem is big enough to affect the economy. My father got caught in the stock market crash in the 1970s; he'd got a new Rolex watch and a stereo out of it before the sudden margin call ate our college money. Brilliant man -- a biochemistry research professor -- but he didn't then understand that people aren't like chemicals, therefore previous performance does not indicate future trends. I'll take regulation and an overblown government over another Great Depression, though.
#19
trailing wife: It's not an either-or scenario. Government and business are only constrained by factors beyond their control. In many ways, it is like the Panic of 1893.
The post WWII paradigms of our economy are collapsing, and we need a return to the stability of the early 20th Century.
This means the whole modern mindset of how to deal with the problem will not work. Government can only spend tax money, and once it is gone, there is no more money to spend. They cannot just raise taxes, or else they will have LESS money. They cannot have a deficit, because no one will underwrite it. If they cannot pay, they are bankrupt.
They must resolve their current debt to function, or it will take all of their revenues. Their two choices are to renounce their international debt, or to exchange it at a high rate for food, our most fungible commodity.
Initially there will be high inflation, because that is how they got out of this type of mess in the past. But it will not work, so it will likely be followed by high deflation. Instead of the currency being backed by credit, it will have to be backed by paper. Every dollar will have to have a paper equivalent. Imaginary money on computer will no longer work except in very transitory circumstances.
If a bank has $10B in deposits, it will have to have at least $10B in paper money. More if it wants to loan cash money.
Fortunately, paper checks still exist as a system, but they will function as debit instruments, requiring instant checks to insure they are solvent. They will act like debit cards.
The politics will be interesting. The winning political party will realize that it is a whole new ball game, and will do what it must to insure that the public does not starve and has a place to live. Any idea that does not have this as its first axiom will fail, despite best intentions.
Top down economics will be dead, as will efforts to restore easy credit. Efforts at inflation will also taint those responsible, but protectionism will be rewarded. A big plus to whoever gets industrial production working again in the US. The throttle for agriculture will be wide open.
My guesstimate is that 1/3rd to 1/2 of the government will have to be let go. The same with State and local government. Public education will be limited to in-State students, and tuition will be slashed to cash in hand.
Social Security, except for the poor, and Medicare will be over, with direct medical provision without paperwork, aka County hospitals. Insurance will be a shadow of itself, and private doctors will be cash only.
Quite possibly there will be the return of the poor farm and the orphanage. Prisons will be limited to violent offenders and white collar criminals, whose number will jump for a while.
It will be painful, but the gains of financial stability will soon be evident. The biggest regulation in the future will be in both credit and speculation, which will remain under tight controls, and only slowly allowed to rise to a fraction of their former glory.
#20
Regulation and overblown government brought you the last depression and they're doing their best to bring you another. Things were better before the Fed.
#21
The post WWII paradigms of our economy are collapsing
American Industry is no longer..."On Parade." We're buying everything overseas. Bloody EVERYONE cannot work for the government... or sell insurance. Somebody has to actually PRODUCE something. We're not doing much of that here anymore. It frightens me.
The pastor of a Kentucky church that handles snakes in religious rites was among 10 people arrested by wildlife officers in a crackdown on the venomous snake trade.
More than 100 snakes, many of them deadly, were confiscated in the undercover sting after Thursday's arrests, said Col. Bob Milligan, director of law enforcement for Kentucky Fish and Wildlife.
Most were taken from the Middlesboro home of Gregory James Coots, including 42 copperheads, 11 timber rattlesnakes, three cottonmouth water moccasins, a western diamondback rattlesnake, two cobras and a puff adder.
Handling snakes is practiced in a handful of fundamentalist churches across Appalachia, based on the interpretation of Bible verses saying true believers can take up serpents without being harmed. The practice is illegal in most states, including Kentucky.
Coots, 36, is pastor of the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name in Middlesboro, where a Tennessee woman died after being bitten by a rattlesnake during a service in 1995. Her husband died three years later when he was bitten by a snake in northeastern Alabama.
Coots was charged Thursday with buying, selling and possessing illegal reptiles. He had no listed telephone number and couldn't be reached for comment. There was no phone listing for the church.
"It is disturbing to me that individuals would keep such dangerous wildlife in their homes and in neighborhoods where they put their families, visitors and neighbors at such high risk," Milligan said.
The snakes, plus one alligator, were turned over to the nonprofit Kentucky Reptile Zoo in Slade. Most appeared to have been captured from the wild, with some imported from Asia and Africa.
Zoo Director Jim Harrison said some of the animals would likely have become exotic pets had they not been seized.
"There's been a large trade in exotics for years," he said. "Some people are just fascinated with them."
Undercover officers purchased more than 200 illegal reptiles during the investigation, some of which were advertised for sale on Web sites. One such Web site lists copperheads for $50 each and cobras for $450.
"You can purchase anything off the Internet except common sense," Harrison said. "A venomous snake isn't a pet. You don't play with it. If you do, you're an idiot."
#2
Handling snakes is practiced in a handful of fundamentalist churches across Appalachia, based on the interpretation of Bible verses saying true believers can take up serpents without being harmed. The practice is illegal in most states, including Kentucky.
I don't know why it's illegal. It has a certain Darwinian appeal to me.
#4
They've been pissing their pants over these idiots for a couple of years now. Personally, I think the problem would have taken care of itself.
I can't believe that Kentucky's law enforcement community doesn't have more pressing issues to deal with (pot growing all through the hills). Picking the low lying fruit first I guess.
#5
There's good money in snake busts. Grab the beasts, then sell them off to licensed collectors for tens of thousands. The ASPCA is big into this racket too. If you bust pot growers you can't sell the siezed property.
#6
Let 'em have all the copperheads, rattlers and water moccasins they want. But puff adders and cobras are non-native species and it would be very bad news if they got loose.
Posted by: Abu Uluque6305 ||
07/12/2008 12:08
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#7
I truly believe they should leave these people alone. There's an enormous "illegal" problem in this nation and it ain't snakes...
#8
Way back when I was 9 or 10 a Traveling Tent Revival came to town. Turned out they were snake handlers. Me and 2 other guys wanted to see the snakes so we snuck out behind the tent and opened the cooler the snakes were in. There were snakes there all right but they were on ice so when the "Preacher" took out a snake it was cold and very lethargic. One of the guys ran home and came back with some turpemtine and poured it on the snakes. Boy-howdy were they pissed. Later on in the service when the Preacher reached in and got a snake it was still mad and bit him. Thank the Lord nobody ever found out who put the turpentine on the snakes. The Revival packed up and left the next morning.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
07/12/2008 16:20
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#9
In the early 1900's a Germany speaking preacher came from Kentucky to a Lutheran Church in Alma Nebraska. The people respected him and his family. Come spring it was time for the people to pitch in and do a spring cleaning on the church. Well, the altar rattled...rattled pretty bad...
After a quick peek inside they had an impromptu Church meeting.
They TARED AND FEATHERED the Pastor and tied him in that state to the cow catcher of the next train out of town!
Turned out the wife and kids were scared to death of him. They gave them title to the parsonage. It ended well!
#10
Snake handling has always been a scam. They force the reptiles to inhale heavy smoke before they are handled, thus leaving them lethargic while they detoxify. Still backwoods types are often bitten by the creatures. They get no sympathy from me.
I'll bet the Puff Adder is strictly for show. They are one of the most dangerous beasts on earth. Only a moron would risk passing them to another yahoo.
On the day the Colombian military freed Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other long-held hostages, the Italian Parliament passed yet another resolution demanding her release. Europe had long ago adopted this French-Colombian politician as a cause celebre. France had made her an honorary citizen of Paris, passed numerous resolutions and held many vigils.
Unfortunately, karma does not easily cross the Atlantic. Betancourt languished for six years in cruel captivity until freed in a brilliant operation conducted by the Colombian military, intelligence agencies and special forces -- an operation so well executed that the captors were overpowered without a shot being fired.
This in foreign policy establishment circles is called "hard power." In the Bush years, hard power is terribly out of fashion, seen as a mere obsession of cowboys and neocons and Rantburgers; but I repeat myself. Both in Europe and America, the sophisticates worship at the altar of "soft power" -- the use of diplomatic and moral resources to achieve one's ends.
Europe luxuriates in soft power, nowhere more than in l'affaire Betancourt in which Europe's repeated gestures of solidarity hovered somewhere between the fatuous and the destructive. Europe had been pressing the Colombian government to negotiate for the hostages. Venezuela's Hugo Chávez offered to mediate.
Of course, we know from documents captured in a daring Colombian army raid into Ecuador in March -- your standard hard-power operation duly denounced by that perfect repository of soft power, the Organization of American States -- that Chávez had been secretly funding and pulling the strings of the FARC. These negotiations would have been Chávez's opportunity to gain recognition and legitimacy for his terrorist client.
Colombia's President Álvaro Uribe, a conservative and close ally of President Bush, went instead for the hard stuff. He has for years. As a result, he has brought to its knees the longest-running and once-strongest guerrilla force on the continent by means of "an intense military campaign [that] weakened the FARC, killing seasoned commanders and prompting 1,500 fighters and urban operatives to desert" ( Washington Post). In the end, it was that campaign -- and its agent, the Colombian military -- that freed Betancourt.
She was, however, only one of the high-minded West's many causes. Solemn condemnations have been issued from every forum of soft-power fecklessness -- the European Union, the United Nations, the G-8 foreign ministers -- demanding that Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe stop butchering his opponents and step down. Before that, the cause du jour was Burma, where a vicious dictatorship allowed thousands of cyclone victims to die by denying them independently delivered foreign aid lest it weaken the junta's grip on power.
And then there is Darfur, a perennial for which myriad diplomats and foreign policy experts have devoted uncountable hours at the finest five-star hotels to deplore the genocide and urgently urge relief.
What is done to free these people? Nothing. Everyone knows it will take the hardest of hard power to remove the oppressors in Zimbabwe, Burma, Sudan and other godforsaken places where the bad guys have the guns and use them. Indeed, as the Zimbabwean opposition leader suggested (before quickly retracting) from his hideout in the Dutch embassy -- Europe specializes in providing haven for those fleeing the evil that Europe does nothing about -- the only solution is foreign intervention.
And who's going to intervene? The only country that could is the country that in the past two decades led coalitions that liberated Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Having sacrificed much blood and treasure in its latest endeavor -- the liberation of 25 million Iraqis from the most barbarous tyranny of all, and its replacement with what is beginning to emerge as the Arab world's first democracy -- and having earned near-universal condemnation for its pains, America has absolutely no appetite for such missions.
And so the innocent languish, as did Betancourt, until some local power, inexplicably under the sway of the Bush notion of hard power, gets it done -- often with the support of the American military. "Behind the rescue in a jungle clearing stood years of clandestine American work," explained The Post. "It included the deployment of elite U.S. Special Forces . . . a vast intelligence-gathering operation . . . and training programs for Colombian troops." The Washington Post? Charles must've gleaned all the grain andshoveled out the chaff in the article for his quote.
Upon her liberation, Betancourt offered profuse thanks to God and the Virgin Mary, to her supporters and the media, to France and Colombia and just about everybody else. As of this writing, none to the United States. Wha'd you expect. She's a politician, yes?
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/12/2008
06:27 ||
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#1
What about the all time classic, Tibet?
Have these people ever stopped to consider why their methods don't seem to get anything done?
Harvard researchers have discovered half a dozen new genes involved in autism that suggest the disorder strikes in a brain that can't properly form new connections.
The findings also may help explain why intense education programs do help some autistic children -- because certain genes that respond to experience weren't missing, they were just stuck in the "off" position.
"The circuits are there but you have to give it an extra push," said Dr. Gary Goldstein of the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, which wasn't involved in the gene hunt but is well-known for its autism behavioral therapy.
Continued on Page 49
#1
I wonder if there are some different genetic 'defects' that are responsible for the mind of the successful modern politician. Something that generates that inability to tell the truth (or perhaps even to know the truth) and and egotism that defines what they say as inerently being the truth. (And I am actually being partly serious about this, and not just making a snide comment.)
#3
I have a 15year old son with Azbergers. It is a "mild" condition only in comparison to full blown autism. OCD is part and parcel of the condition - as is the inate selfishness (lack of empathy) found in autistic spectrum children. They are also fond of compulsive touching - an issue frought with legal perils in our (often)over-sensitive society. There is no cure - one tries to gradualy edge the child into the mores of the societal mainstream - but this can be a glacier like process. Many of these kids, by necessity, will live in adult group homes upon reaching legal age.
#4
It depends on the depth of the Asperger's Syndrome, borgboy. Some Aspies, as they apparently call themselves, are capable of being taught the behaviours and skills -- and even too some extent empathy -- necessary to function as well as Normals, and of discovering the joys of loving and being loved. Others, sadly, are as you say, but better is still better than nothing. For full-blown autistics as well.
In my limited experience, only 20% of therapists recognize and know how to handle Asperger's. Milder cases usually get diagnosed, medicated, and therapied as ADHD, which is unhelpful. Finding a knowledgeable therapist is critical. Anti-anxiety medication and therapy helps, too, but the anxiety will persist and increase until the Asperger's is addressed. A good contact, surprisingly, is the Disability Services office at the nearest big university. They should be accustomed to what is necessary to accommodate Aspies, and will know who in the area is qualified to work with them.
For those who are curious, here is the Wikipedia article on Asperger's.
#5
In those who lack empathy, often it is effective for them to learn to affect empathy. "When they do X, then you do Y" is a good substitute, and like learning manners. Men hold open the door for women "because".
The plus side of Aspergers is that it often enhances the attention span. If this is used to study, it gives an advantage in learning. So this should be cultivated. That is, learning to ignore everything else until a subject has been mastered.
I saw a good example of this in a man with Aspergers, who spent the better part of four days intensely studying the study manual for the Microsoft Certified Engineer Exam (MSCE), one of the hardest tests around. He just refused to be distracted by anything, and did not get bored. Of course he had breaks to eat, sleep and shower, etc. But otherwise he had no distractions.
He then took the test and passed it, an amazing accomplishment, almost guaranteeing a high paying job at that time.
In support of this, a strict daily routine would also be good to cultivate. A strong element of order will in the long run make their life much easier.
A divorcee has been found guilty of plotting to murder her multi-millionaire partner after she hired an "assassin" on a website called www.Hitman.us.com. Sharon Collins, 45, a divorced mother-of-two, is said to have hatched a conspiracy with a man from the site, an Egyptian poker player who called himself Tony Luciano, to murder PJ Howard, a property tycoon worth £10 million and his two sons.
But the hitman, real name Essam Eid, tried to hatch a separate deal with Howard and his sons, telling them they had a contract out on their heads and demanding £70,000 to terminate it. The move led to the Howards reporting the incident to the police and the bizarre plot unravelling.
Yesterday Collins was found guilty of conspiring to hire a hitman at Dublin central Criminal Court and Eid of demanding money. The court heard that Collins, who has been seeing Howard for five years, came up with the plan after the tycoon, who she said frequented prostitutes and swingers clubs, made unreasonable demands on her including that she become involved in "stranger sex".
She suggested he should meet an accident but Eid suggested poisoning.
But the plot unravelled when Eid flew to Ireland in September 6 and burgled computers from the Howard family business and then offered them back for a reward. It was during these negotiations that he told them there was a contract on their heads and the police became involved. Collins and Eid were both arrested and the conspiracy uncovered.
Collins, who with Eid is due to be sentenced on Oct 8, told the court she was writing a book about the incident.
These are the never-before-seen last known photos of Sen. John McCain's Hoa Lo prison cell, images that prove that even after being cleaned up for an American historical filmmaker, the terror of the Hanoi Hilton is real. Debra Watkins, who took the pictures and video in 1993 and 1994 before this and other areas of the century-old prison were destroyed, provided them to Whispers as part of a story that appears in the Washington Whispers column. Watkins did volumes of research before traveling to Hanoi, sparked by reports the government planned to rip down most of the facility.
She was able to find McCain's cell which she says is pictured in the above photos. The first shows an official opening the cell. You can clearly see old locks used presumably to hold leg irons and other torture implements on the inside. The second shot shows the inside of McCain's cell and the leg iron contraption Watkins believes he was tortured with. Amazingly, in her 31 hours of video she also has an interview with McCain, seen in the third photo, as she shows him her pictures of the cell he lived in solitary for two years. She recalls that he "was emotional not teary." He even laughed at some of the shots. We haven't seen these images before because while she planned to produce a film or documentary long ago, it got pushed aside as she dealt with some family illnesses. She is now offering it to cable news companies because she has heard of reports of people questioning McCains POW experience. Asked how she felt leaving the prison years ago, Watkins focused on McCain's efforts at the time to forgive and forget and open relations with Vietnam. "I don't know if I could forgive and forget," she told me. Nonetheless, it is a tourist destination now, one even McCain visited in 2000.
AP: CAMP LIBERTY, Iraq - U.S. forces may be close to unlocking the mystery of who is behind a deadly innovation in Iraqi insurgents' weapons, a "lob bomb" now being used in Baghdad to target U.S. and Iraqi combat outposts, a senior American general said Friday in an Associated Press interview.
Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, called the weapon "the greatest threat right now that we face," and he likened the shadowy group behind it to the American military's elite Delta Force. Quagmire!
The weapon is particularly worrying because it is designed to cause catastrophic damage and cannot be stopped once it has been launched, Hammond, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, said in an interview in his office at this U.S. military headquarters compound just west of the capital.
U.S. forces detained a man on Thursday who Hammond said could provide valuable insights into the group behind the bombmaking. "We think we have defined the network," he said. He would not elaborate, although other American officers said in interviews that the group is Shiite and may have links to Iran. Say it ain't so!
"We think we might have picked up a guy that could lead us could be a big lead in this," Hammond said. But before we ask, we're going to be doing a little gratuitious waterboardig.
It's not clear whether this small group is related to efforts by anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to revitalize his Mahdi Army, which had held sway in the Sadr City section of Baghdad until U.S. and Iraqi forces wrested control after seven weeks of fighting that ended in May.
Arguing against a link to such an al-Sadr initiative is the fact that the group that Hammond described has been operating since at least late 2007, although it has become more active in recent months.
The 107 mm rockets that are used in the improvised bombs which some call an airborne version of the roadside bombs that through the course of the war have been the leading killer of U.S. troops are manufactured in Iran, officials said. But some officers cautioned against assuming Iran is directly involved. Just kick 'em in the nutz already.
The weapons are launched from small trucks and are fired in multiples of four to nine rockets at a time. The detonation is sometimes triggered by a signal from a cell phone, other times by a washing machine timer.
Brig. Gen. Will Grimsley, deputy commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, said in a separate AP interview on Thursday that for lack of a better term he refers to the group as "the evil militia." He said it is small and exhibits a high degree of technical skill in assembling the weapons and executing attacks. Sounds sorta like the Iranian equivalent of the Delta Team: The Maytag Special Forces Team.
The military calls the weapon an "improvised rocket-assisted mortar," or IRAM. Why not just call it the "Improvised Rocket-Assisted Nortar" and get it over with?
Grimsley on Thursday went to the Sadr City section of eastern Baghdad to visit a joint U.S.-Iraqi military outpost that suffered an IRAM attack on April 28. The building was heavily damaged, and 15 U.S. soldiers were wounded, none seriously enough to prevent their return to duty, said Lt. Col. Steven Stover, a military spokesman.
The weapon innovation has gained relatively little public attention because it has yet to kill in large numbers.
So far, in 11 attacks, three U.S. soldiers have been killed, Stover said. The three were killed April 28 the same day as the Sadr City assault in an attack on a larger U.S. base in eastern Baghdad.
At the Sadr City base, Grimsley consulted with Lt. Col. Brian Eifler, commander of 1st Battalion, 6th Armor, 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division, inside a newly constructed combat outpost a stone's throw from the damaged one. Eifler said he is focused heavily on the IRAM threat and how to minimize it. Just muke/mook them already.
Eifler estimated that a U.S. soldier who might be in position to witness the approach of a potential IRAM-bearing vehicle would have less then two seconds to decide whether the person emerging from it has just set it for firing or is simply an innocent driver getting out to change a tire. Sounds like that anti-RPG system the Israelis developed might be in order here.
"That's a call our young soldiers have to make when potentially 200 lives are at stake," Eifler said.
Hammond said the perpetrators are so skilled that he has likened their organization to the U.S. military's secretive and elite Delta Force. He said they have demonstrated an unusual degree of military skill and cunning.
"They don't leave a forensic trail, and that just means we're going to have to work a little bit longer" to eliminate them, he said. "Of everything we've had to deal with here, this is a tough one. They're sort of the Delta Force of this enemy we face out there. They are very good" at covering their tracks, picking out targets and preserving secrecy about their membership and movements.
#1
The detonation is sometimes triggered by a signal from a cell phone, other times by a washing machine timer.
Does he mean launched? No contact fuse? Or is this some sort of air delivered mine?
#2
Any bets they are GE washing machine timers? They continue to trade with Iran, claiming it makes for good relations with innocent housewives, while our beef is only with the leadership.
#2
The Iranians are killing two birds with one stone here. The Basiij have been given both heavy weapons and extensive training in urban areas warfare. Both are applicable for civil uprisings and national defense.
I'd say the Iranians learned something from their consultants.
#1
The video was funny. I expected something else after all the maps in Rainbow 6 Vegas that were built for training and that are crawling with terrorists you know.
A strong political debate is being waged in Baghdad on the role the Shiite supreme religious authority in Najaf, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, played in negotiations between Iraq and the US on a memorandum of security.
Al Sistani insisted on including a timetable for the withdrawal of American forces.
This intervention by Al Sistani has brought to the fore the differences between the major political parties in the Iraqi government.
The Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council led by Abdul Aziz Al Hakim has accepted Al Sistani's demand for a definite timetable for the withdrawal of US forces in Iraq. But the position of the mainly Sunni Iraqi Accord Front and the Kurdish bloc was that the subject of withdrawals was not to be raised in the current negotiations, Kurdish political sources told Gulf News.
Mahmoud Othman, leader of the Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan, told Gulf News: "The Political Council for National Security, which includes the major political blocs in the country, had agreed not to press for a timetable for the withdrawal of US forces, but it seems the call by Al Sistani is the crucial one to determine the progress of the negotiations with the Americans."
In some Shiite neighbourhoods in Baghdad people have written slogans on walls reading: "Sistani is the national independence hero".
Resentment
Al Sistani's intervention has caused resentment among some political parties and the Kurds. They feel vital political decisions need to be made by political parties and not clergy.
Al Sistani's position was totally opposed to that of the Kurds who support the long-term presence of the American military.
A spokesman for Al Sistani said, however, he did not interfere with the details of the agreement such as a specific timetable. All he did was to call on the Iraqi Government to commit itself to the principle of sovereignty and national independence in any agreement with the Americans, the leader of the Shiite Islamic Council, Hamid Muala Al Saedi, told Gulf News.
Sources in Najaf told Gulf News Al Sistani told national security advisor Muwaffaq Al Rubaie when the latter visited him days ago that Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki must remember that the national independence of Iraq should be non-negotiable in Iraqi-US talks.
But Iraqi political parties opposed to Iranian influence in Iraq were angered at Al Sistani's attempt to influence the Government. They accused Iran of interfering in the Iraqi-US talks through Al Sistani.
Political researcher Amjad Hussain told Gulf News Iran has a "dangerous" denominational influence on Shiite religious authorities in Iraq.
#1
after sitting back and doing zip (which sometimes was productive in its' own way), this asshole is now the "national independence hero"?? LOL
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/12/2008 8:51
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#2
Sistani has been playing a major role all along. He has been active in all policy decisions so far coming from the dominant Shia segment of the govt. He has been trying to reach out to the American policy makers on several ocassions. It is we who ignore him at our peril.
Sistani has motives which we do not notice and we are foolish not to recognise his power within the body politic of Iraq.
He can be understood. Karbala and the Mosque there is THE senior Mosque of the Shia sect. The TRUE site, if you will, of what amounts to a sort of "Papacy" for the Shia. The Iranians are his natural competitors for Shia allegiance. Qom , in Iran, is a NOT the dominant locus of Shia religious authority. Qom and Iran are upstarts to Karbala and to the AYATOLLAH position of Sistani.
It is Sistani who is the "Pope" of Shia not anyone in Iran.
WHY ARENT WE USING HIM? WE could undermine Iran in so many ways with the manipulation of Sistani.
But can you see some hotshot American Colonel dealing with the Pope and the smoothies of the Vatican Curia? Its the same with Sistani...he is like a Pope and he is surrounded by a evolution of Shia smoothies and slicks...much like the Pope is surrounded by an oil and sugar slick circle of Cardinals. Except the Shia bunch are into knives and damnation deeper than the Cardinals are into poison and mafia-like intrigue ( it was the Barzinis all along).
Where is Colonel Michael Corleone when you need him. ( Give this job to Clemenza )
Look at Sistanis face.!! You dont get to be where he is without being both very very intelligent and very very dangerous to cross. That isnt Harry Reid you are looking at. This guy is bad news unless you are as smooth and devious as he is. He wont swerve and step aside for anybody. And that's a Turban on his head.
#5
I don't believe the story. Sistani has been "credited" with saying all kinds of things by the meida, most recently that he had encouraged 'resistance' by the JAM. Then his guys have to come out and say it is all bullshit.
It is not Sistani's style to tell the government what it has to do. Let me do some research on this article, I smell Iran's stinking hand in this report.
#6
Oh, here it is right here in the stuff that was posted:
A spokesman for Al Sistani said, however, he did not interfere with the details of the agreement such as a specific timetable. All he did was to call on the Iraqi Government to commit itself to the principle of sovereignty and national independence in any agreement with the Americans, the leader of the Shiite Islamic Council, Hamid Muala Al Saedi, told Gulf News.
Sources in Najaf told Gulf News Al Sistani told national security advisor Muwaffaq Al Rubaie when the latter visited him days ago that Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki must remember that the national independence of Iraq should be non-negotiable in Iraqi-US talks.
So what Sistani REALLY said was that Iraqi sovereignty must be respected. That sounds to be like something completely reasonable for him to say. And that is in character with what he has said in the past.
Looks like someone trying to make a tempest in a teapot.
#8
way to go al, baby. After being a p*ssy for the better part of 5 years, you open your holy pie-hole. That's after 4000 Coalition soldiers/marines have died, and countless Iraqis. You worthless p*ssy...crawl in hole and die. (not that I have an opinion)
#9
This is Iranian agitprop to discredit Sistani : he has been working behind the scenes for years, dragging the Shia politicians into agreements to make the country run for the benefit of the Iraqi people. He is effectively the Shia Pope for the majority of the Arab Shia world, and he has been trying to get the politicians to shake hands and do deals so that the reconstruction of Iraq can progress.
He is NOT an Iranian puppet, that is why the Iranians setup Tater and his Tots as the "Shia resistance". Remember, the militia that Sistani controlled was one of the first groups to get rolled into the Iraqi Army and Police, and have been among the most loyal and effective units in those forces. Only the Kurdish units have proven to be better, and the Peshmerga had 10 years of quiet training by US Special Forces and Israeli mercenaries.
#10
Thank you, crosspatch and Shieldwolf. And for your perspective, Angleton9. The Press can get so carried away when they've got a meme by the throat.
[..]
I posted some comment to that effect on Dr. Barnett's blog, and thank goodness that blog is moderated, because 10 minutes later I realized the conditions for war are indeed being met. China, and Japan have weighed in.
[..]
Last Friday, Iran delivered a letter of response to a package of incentives proposed by the six countries -- the permanent UN Security Council members Britain, France, China, Russia and the United States, as well as Germany, aimed at persuading Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities.
Liu confirmed Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi had received a letter from his Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, which said Iran was ready to hold constructive negotiations as soon as possible with the European Union and the six countries.
[..]
Last week we discussed the negotiations package offered to Iran and why the details are important. Iran appears to have accepted the negotiated package, and with that comes a condition that simply didn't get enough attention in the media.
The Foreign Office in London tonight confirmed to The Times that the major world powers would refrain from any further action against Tehran at the UN Security Council if Iran refrained from any new nuclear activity, including the installation of more centrifuges for uranium enrichment. This offer was part of an incentives package offered to Iran last month by the US, Britain, Russia, China, France and Germany.
It was part and parcel of any pre-negotiations which would be limited to six weeks to prepare for the opening of any formal negotiations, the Foreign Office spokesman said.
We see this as a built in time table, essentially a loose countdown towards war. During the "process" Israel is expected to show restraint while the six party talks attempt a diplomatic solution. We expect this six week time period of pre-negotiations will begin soon, if not already, because another important condition was met today.
#1
ION NOSI > AIR FORCE MAGZ > US NAVY- PACIFIC CHOKE POINT [Straits of Malaccas]. USN now needs to keep an eye on same.
Lest we fergit, PHILIPPINES MIL CHIEF: ARMY CANNOT PROTECT/DEFEND THE PHILIPPINES; + Manila is antipating increases in Islamist and aligned violence and terror.
#2
If everyone, presumably to include Iran, knows the strike is coming does Iran target Israel pre-emptively rather than wait and hope it's only their nuclear facilities that are destroyed?
#3
Iran targets Israel pre-emptively with what? If Iran attacks Israel it will cease to exist and the MM know it. They cannot attack Israel until they have nukes, and even then it would be a nation scale suicide bomber.
#4
Spoken like a rational western thinker NS. How certain are you that the MMs and/or Ahmadinewhackjob are rational players rather than religious zealots? If they're the latter do you suppose that might have some impact on their ability to plan effectively and recognize the likely consequences of their actions?
#5
Quite and no. From the MMs point of view I am irrational secular zealot infidel instead of a rational tool of Allah. It is as much a mistake to assume your enemy is less rational than you as to assume that they, or you, will analyze the situation correctly.
The Iranian strategy of attacking Israel with it's Hezbollah proxy was well conceived and executed. Why would Iran choose to confront Israel directly when it has no means to do so in an effective manner? That is one among many reasons why they are developing nukes.
#6
I agree with Nimble. Persians were playing chess a very long time ago, and typically they intentionally do not speak with one voice, so part is belligerent, part is diplomatic, and part are off on some tangent.
Everything would be far easier if we could arrange for them to make an ineffectual attack when we are ready, and they are not, and against a strong part of our prepared defenses. Hopefully such an attack, if we could properly orchestrate it, would involve antagonizing neutral powers as well.
Say if one of their missile launch sites fired a series of missiles at Tel Aviv, Riyadh, Istanbul, Paris, Cairo, Baghdad, and the USS Lincoln aircraft carrier group. Without success, natch.
Unfortunate that they do not as yet have the range to target Moscow, as that would be the yummy iced topping on that cake. And their tap dance to explain that they didn't order those missiles to be fired would make funniest home videos.
#7
I wish I was as optimistic as you guys that they're just a bunch of cynical politicians squawking loudly in order to secure the maximum concessions from the West.
NS - point well taken as to the frame of reference being a necessity when considering the rationality of the actions of others, I think that's more-or-less inherent in the use of a term like 'rational' though. You asked why Iran would attack Israel when they lack an effective means to do so which question implicitly assumes the same sort of western rationality you chastised me for incorporating into my earlier statement.
When considering what, if anything, Ahmadeniwhackjob might actually do I think it's important to keep the apparent tenants of his faith in mind. It doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling to know that both he and senior members of the Iranian government are part of a doomsday cult so extreme that was banned following the Islamic Revolution.
To revisit the question of why Iran might launch the attack: doomsday cultists may be in control of a large enough chunk of Iran's military to carry out such an attack. If they feel that their tenuous grip on power is threatened they might view this as their last moment to act. Given Ahmadeniwhackjob's reported beliefs he might accept the complete destruction of Iran and could even see it as a positive if he views that sort of war & chaos as the type most likely to bring back the 12th Imam. Insane by our standards, possibly quite rational by his.
I suppose it all depends on whether a significant number of their missiles can reach Israel; what sorts of goodies they have available to load them with; and whose finger is on the button. Color me not optimistic.
#8
There's little to be optimistic about in this persian mess, but Moose's analysis seems most likely. I wonder if any missiles will be involved at all - more likely more and coordinated deadly proxy attacks. That said, I still wonder if they're so far out on the limb that some other actor will pull something which leaves them the obvious culprit - an unclaimed terror action somewhere peripheral - an embassy, military base outside the ME, etc..
Many forces seem primed for such action, and the diplomatic test will be the extent to which it can trigger internal persian civil war.
While the MSM is absurdly focussed on Iraq, Iran and Israel - and to some extent the "surge", I wonder the extent to which we've created and spread proxies through the region, even sub-proxies. We obviously have deals in newer conditions with India, the Kurds, Misc. Stans, etc., and there's very little coverage of these as little as happened.
Iran is surrounded, they know it, they know there's little they can do about it as long as the MMs are in charge, the pressure is high, and an obscure pinprick may burst it all.
Let's hope it implodes rather than explodes.
Posted by: Pearl Jeager2939 ||
07/12/2008 22:20
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BAGHDAD - Hundreds of followers of a radical Shiite cleric in Iraq have taken to the streets to protest a proposed security agreement between Iraq and the United States. If they add each weeks demonstration numbers to a cumulative total they can reach the million man protest goal in about 60 years.
The supporters of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr say the proposed deal would lead to a permanent U.S. occupation of Iraq. They held their protest Friday in the southern city of Kufa and shouted slogans such as: "No to America."
We have biometrics data on all these mooks, don't we ...
Such demonstrations have become a weekly event, usually following prayers held in local mosques on Fridays.
#3
I'm pretty sure Sadr's in Qom, getting his "instructions" from the master-manipulators there. I do wish we'd do something there while all the rats are in one cage.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/12/2008 15:21
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#1
The bought & paid for little squirrel Durbin. Just contemptible. God what a list. Durbin, Obama, Kennedy, Kerry, Clinton, Schumer, Harkin, Boxer, Feinstein, ad naseum. Jeesuus, makes you want to puke.
Somali troops have shot dead seven civilians in southern Mogadishu after accusing them of being Islamic insurgents.
A Somali aid worker affiliated to the UN World Food Programme was also shot dead in a separate incident, according to witnesses.
Witness Liban Ahmed said government soldiers killed at least seven civilians and wounded four more during an operation in Daynile neighbourhood in the capital but government commander Dahir Ali Farey insisted the dead were Islamist fighters.
Witness Abdirahman Munim said three gunmen shot dead the deputy chairman of a local aid organisation at a food distribution point eight miles outside the capital in a separate incident.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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Elements of the Lal Masjid on Friday protested after Friday prayers against the editorial position of national Daily Aaj Kal which routinely writes against religious extremism and fanaticism in the country. Raising clenched fists in front of TV cameras, the clerics condemned the editorial position of the paper, and pointed to the publication of a cartoon in Daily Aaj Kal which showed the leader of the women students of Lal Masjid, Umme Hassaan, in a burqa, "educating" female students to wage jihad and martyrdom, a position she has reiterated many times in public.
The clerics chanted slogans and warned the editor-in-chief and publisher not to "test their patience". Aamir Siddique, Naib Khateeb of Lal Masjid, addressed the protest demonstration after Friday prayers and said that their "movement" cannot be stopped by any such "propaganda". He said those responsible for the bloodshed in Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa would have to pay the price. "This is an attack on the freedom of the press," said the editor of the paper, who called upon all media bodies to rise to the occasion and be counted.
The management of the paper immediately informed the administration in Islamabad, provoking a strong reaction against the extremists from the government.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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Top|| File under: Taliban
#1
Yaddah, yaddah, yaddah. Nothing will happen until the Pak government breaks some kneecaps. When you're talking imams, mullahs, and other clerics, the best place to break THEIR kneecaps is just under their chin. Of course, something like that takes courage, which is in very short supply in Pakistan.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/12/2008 13:37
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(VOI) -- Coalition forces detained 30 suspected "terrorists" during three days of operations targeting al-Qaeda leaders, subordinates and facilitators in central and northern Iraq, according to a statement by the U.S. army.
"Coalition forces captured the alleged leader of an al-Qaeda in Iraq bombing network in the Tigris River Valley on Thursday and detained nine additional suspected terrorists. The alleged leader had moved into his position after his predecessor was killed in an operation June 4. During two operations near Tikrit, about 160 kilometers north of Baghdad, Coalition forces also discovered a machine gun, body armor and bomb-making materials," read the statement received by Aswat al-Iraq -- Voices of Iraq -- (VOI).
"Thursday near Tikrit, Coalition forces captured a wanted man believed to help foreign terrorists get into Iraq to conduct attacks for AQI. The man is suspected of forging documents for foreign terrorists and coordinating suicide operations targeting both security forces and civilians. One additional suspect was detained in the operation."
"Farther north, near Baoji, Coalition forces detained four suspected terrorists Thursday while targeting a man believed to provide shelter to foreign terrorists who come into Iraq to conduct attacks. In a nearby operation Wednesday, Coalition forces used information from an operation June 30 to capture an alleged close associate of a bombing cell leader and four additional suspects."
"Thursday in Fallujah, about 55 kilometers west of Baghdad, Coalition forces captured an alleged cell leader believed to be involved with AQI in the Southern Belts around the city. The man is suspected of manufacturing and distributing car bombs for terrorist attacks."
"Closer to the Baghdad, Coalition forces in Abu Grab detained four suspected terrorists Wednesday while targeting a car-bombing cell."
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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#1
The alleged leader had moved into his position after his predecessor was killed in an operation June 4.
We're well inside their training cycle, now. There probably isn't even anyone left who can show the next leader where the key to the executive bathroom is hidden... or even which door leads to said bathroom.
After weeks of political deadlock, Lebanon's Prime Minister announced Friday that a new 30-member cabinet had been formed, opening the door to reconciliation among fighting factions. The country, which has suffered repeated bouts of violence over the past two years, had been without a cabinet for six weeks. Aya Batrawy has more from our Middle East bureau in Cairo.
Lebanon's Prime Minister Fuad Siniora's new unity government gives 16 seats to the Western-backed parliament majority, 11 to opposition groups such as Hezbollah and three to be chosen by the Maronite Christian president.
Prime Minister Siniora expressed hope that this newly formed cabinet will bring peace among the various factions vying for power in Lebanon. "Today, through this national unity government, we have decided to manage our disputes through democratic institutions and dialogue, and not through force and intimidation," he said.
In May, after months of internal strife and violence, the Arab League brokered the layout for the newly formed Cabinet, which gave Hezbollah and its supporters in the government veto power over government decisions.
The announcement of a cabinet comes at a crucial time for Lebanon. The country was left without a president for nearly six months until former military chief General Michel Suleiman was chosen. During that time and after, violence spilled to the streets between the Muslim Sunni and Shiite and Maronite Christian communities. Over 80 people died in May alone.
There were fears that a second civil war would erupt, just eight years after the country's 15-year civil war was put to rest.
Analyst Jamil Mroueh of the Lebanese Daily Star newspaper expressed skepticism that this newly formed Cabinet will be able to revive Lebanon's economy, which was once a hub for tourism in the region, and settle deep political rifts. "I don't think that this Government is capable of doing anything about the economy or political stability if it does not set down to talk about issues in a manner that reconciles in a positive way," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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#1
I seem to recall that US Marines acted on behalf of South Leb's then Christian majority in 1958. Rod Parsley isn't the only one who wants to see that repeated.
The Bush administration on Friday rejected regulating greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, saying it would damage the U.S. economy and cause too many job losses.
In a 588-page federal notice, the Environmental Protection Agency made no finding on whether global warming poses a threat to people's health, reversing an earlier conclusion at the insistence of the White House and officially kicking any decision on a solution to the next president and Congress.
The White House on Thursday rejected EPA's conclusion three weeks earlier that the 1970 Clean Air Act can be both workable and effective for addressing global climate change. Instead, EPA said Friday that law is "ill-suited" for dealing with climate change. "If our nation is truly about serious regulating greenhouse gases, the Clean Air Act is the wrong tool for the job," EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson told reporters. "It is really at the feet of Congress."
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
They should propose a tax on puddles. Water vapour has far more atmospheric effect than airborne plantfood does.
#2
#1 They should propose a tax on puddles. Water vapour has far more atmospheric effect than airborne plantfood does. Posted by: Bright Pebbles
Right on, BP. Water vapor and solar activity, PLUS the interaction between the two, account for 90% of all climate, whether it stands still or changes. If I were a betting man, I'd put even money on average global temps taking a 1-2 degree C change over the next five years if the sun remains as quiet as it's been for the last two years. Al Gore would have a hissy-fit I'd pay money to see. Maybe he'll blow a gasket or two, and have to be put out in the pasture - about six feet down. Still, this world is full of gullible people...
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/12/2008 23:26
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The United Nations (UN) has agreed to establish an independent commission to investigate the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said on Friday.
The Pakistani request will not be referred to the UN Security Council (UNSC), since UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has the authority to appoint a commission.
Qureshi told a news conference at the UN after a meeting with Ban, "Responding positively to the issue, the secretary-general indicated that further consultation with Pakistan and others within the organisation would be required to examine the modalities and structure of a commission to determine the circumstances of, and responsibilities for, the assassination of Benazir. The objectives for the commission are to identify the culprits, perpetrators, organisers and financiers of the assassination." He explained that the secretary-general would appoint "well-respected, eminent people" to the independent commission in consultation with the Government of Pakistan.
Qureshi's announcement was later confirmed by the secretary-general's office.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
Let's see:
1) Scene hosed down and thoroughly distorted by a year's worth of vigorous public activity: Check.
2) Enough time has passed that memories are starting to fade: Check.
3) Bhutto dead: Check.
4) Time to pay off or kill key witnesses: Check.
5) Bhutto's body unavailable: Check.
6) Time for ISI to destroy any possible crime scene evidence: Check.
The swelling forces of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters in Pakistan's border region pose a grave threat to American and NATO troops in Afghanistan. They also pose a grave threat to the Pakistani people. Pakistan's Taliban militias, like their Afghan counterparts, are trying to impose their harsh medieval version of Islamic law. More than a thousand Pakistanis have been killed in terrorist attacks in the past year, mostly in the border areas where radical Islamic fighters are strongest.
Pakistan's new military and civilian leaders, caught up in their own power struggles, have been dangerously derelict in acknowledging and confronting the threat. Instead, they have deluded themselves that they can negotiate a separate peace with fanatic Taliban leaders. Bitter experience has proved that will not work.
Sending United States troops into Pakistan's border regions to try to clean out Taliban and Al Qaeda forces is also not the answer -- and would provoke even fiercer anti-American furies across Pakistan. The poorly paid, ill-trained and uncertainly loyal Frontier Corps in Pakistan is not up to the job.
Pakistan's civilian leaders and the new military commander, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, will need to commit to fighting the extremists -- for the sake of their own country's stability -- and to sending in elite units specifically trained in counterinsurgency techniques. Local tribal leaders also need to be weaned away from the Taliban. That would only happen if Islamabad and Washington back their exhortations with substantial economic assistance.
The United States has showered Pakistan with more than $7 billion in military aid over the past six years, with little of it actually being used for counterinsurgency purposes. Over the same period, Washington has provided less than $3 billion in all other forms of assistance.
This month, Senators Joseph Biden and Richard Lugar plan to introduce sensible legislation that would provide up to $15 billion in aid to Pakistan over the next 10 years for economic development, health and education. Congress should move quickly to approve the aid.
The United States also needs to work with Pakistan's new government to establish spending priorities and to ensure that any future aid is channeled in ways that would strengthen the civilian government and allow it to regain control over a military that has too often been a law unto itself and intelligence services that seem far more loyal to the extremists than their own government.
When Pakistan's prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, visits Washington later this month, President Bush should offer him strong political and economic backing in exchange for a firm commitment to support Afghanistan's embattled government and fight Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorism in Pakistan.
Washington has made a lot of policy mistakes in Pakistan -- most notably supporting Pervez Musharraf for far too long. It has forfeited most of its credibility with the Pakistani people and reinforced their belief that the fight against extremism is "Washington's war" and not also their own.
Both countries have a common and increasingly urgent interest in rolling back the power of Al Qaeda and the Taliban and working together to promote democracy and development in Pakistan. President Bush needs to persuade Pakistan's leaders of that -- and he needs to do it now, before Al Qaeda and the Taliban get any stronger.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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#1
COUNTERTERRORISM BLOG > AL QAEDA: OSAMA WANTED TO FIGHT SADDAM.
(Xinhua) -- The French government will not have new employees to succeed over 30,000 civil servants who are due to retire next year, Eric Woerth, minister for the Budget, Public Accounts and the Civil Service, said Thursday.
Some 30,000 to 32,000 positions will not be filled after old employees leave next year, which means the same number of civil servants will be slashed, Woerth told the local newspaper Les Echos. It will be an unprecedented effort made by the French government and is quite close to the staff cut goal which will hire only one person after two retirees.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Of course, then they'll have to pay 30,000 pensions. But at least they won't have to deal with the paperwork the retirees would have generated, no doubt a major savings on France's carbon footprint.
A Turkish news agency reported Friday that army troops clashed with Kurdish rebels in the southeast and that 10 of the rebels were killed.
Dogan news agency said the clashes occurred on Mount Kato, in the predominantly Kurdish province of Sirnak, which borders Iraq. The report, which could not immediately be confirmed, also said a village guard -- armed and paid by the government to help troops fight the rebels -- was killed in the violence.
The rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, have been fighting for self-rule in southeast Turkey since 1984. The fighting has killed tens of thousands of people.
The rebels abducted three German climbers on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey on Tuesday and said they would not release them until Berlin put an end to a crackdown on the guerrilla group in Germany. The German government called for the immediate and unconditional release of the kidnapped Germans.
Turkey, the U.S. and the European Union consider the PKK a terrorist organization.
Earlier in the year, Turkish war planes carried out several strikes on suspected rebel targets across the border in northern Iraq, where thousands of rebels have their main bases. In February ground troops also crossed the border for an eight-day long incursion to hunt down rebels.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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(VOI) -- Unidentified gunmen on Friday shot and killed a policeman in northern Mosul, said a police source. "Unknown gunmen killed a cop working in the Ninewa province's building in al-Qahera neighborhood in northern Mosul," the source, who preferred to remain anonymous, told Aswat al-Iraq -- Voices of Iraq (VOI). "The gunmen shot him in the head while driving his car," he explained.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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Militants will start killing a group of hostages if the government does not release several insurgent prisoners within a day, a Pakistani Taliban spokesman threatened Friday. A suspected militant leader is among those the Taliban want freed.
Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said his country does not negotiate with terrorists and will not capitulate to threats. "We will take action when it's required," he said after a speech at a think tank in Washington.
The action they'll take will look remarkably like capitualion, but don't go calling it that. Call it a spade or something.
Maulvi Umar, the Taliban spokesman, claimed the Taliban had kidnapped 29 people, most of them security forces. However, Hangu district official Haji Khan Afzal said only 16 or 17 people were being held.
Oh, well. That's different then.
Both sides have been negotiating over the captives, who Afzal said were taken in the wake of a militant siege of a local police station earlier this week in the country's volatile northwest. Officials said more than 100 militants surrounded the Doaba station to demand their associates be freed, and the siege ended after army troops showed up. But the militants have not dropped their demands. Umar insisted the government release seven militant prisoners, including a suspected top insurgent known as Rafiuddin, by 2 p.m. Saturday or the hostages would be slain. "It's our final warning," Umar said.
#2
'cause the Taliban serve the strategic interests of the Pakistani military.
Posted by: john frum ||
07/12/2008 7:25
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#3
#2: 'cause the Taliban serve the strategic interests of the Pakistani military. Posted by: john frum|| 2008-07-12 07:25
Just one more reason to remove from the world maps the "nation" known as "pakistan". There has not been a year since Pakistan was created in 1947 where there wasn't fighting of some kind going on there. Pakistan is a boil on the body politic of the world, and needs to be surgically lanced.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/12/2008 13:41
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Israeli prosecutors announced an expansion of their corruption investigation into Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Friday, saying they suspected he fraudulently billed multiple state agencies for the same flights when he was mayor and trade minister and used the extra money for personal trips and vacations.
In a statement issued after questioning Mr. Olmert for two hours, the police and the Justice Ministry said that the travel agency he used colluded in the alleged scheme by sending copies of the same bill to numerous public bodies and booking Olmert family vacations with the profits.
A Justice Ministry spokesman added that the state agencies involved in the double billing included those focused on helping soldiers, mentally disabled children, the disabled and the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem. He said Mr. Olmert would speak on their behalf during his trips and then ask them to pay for the fare.
Next week, Mr. Olmert's lawyers will cross-examine a Long Island businessman who told prosecutors in public testimony in May that he had delivered about $150,000 in cash to Mr. Olmert in envelopes over a number of years before Mr. Olmert became prime minister.
The businessman, Morris Talansky, said he never asked anything of Mr. Olmert in exchange, but the police have several letters of introduction from Mr. Olmert for Mr. Talansky to businessmen and officials of other governments that they believe amounted to a quid pro quo.
Judicial authorities said that between Mr. Talansky's envelopes and the travel agency's multiple billings, Mr. Olmert had taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in about 15 years. He served as mayor for a decade until 2003, and then as a government minister until succeeding Ariel Sharon in early 2006.
After Friday's questioning, Mr. Olmert's office issued a statement that "the earth did not shake and the sky did not fall," meaning that despite predictions leaked to the press in advance of the questioning suggesting that it would be the end of his political career, little of substance has changed. The statement said the questioning was standard and referred to business Mr. Olmert had conducted abroad while mayor and trade minister.
"Prime Minister Olmert is convinced he is innocent of any wrongdoing and firmly believes that as this investigation continues, that innocence will become apparent to all," his spokesman Mark Regev said. Mr. Olmert has promised to step down if indicted.
There have been increasingly harsh leaks from the police to the Israeli media with growing predictions that the prime minister will be forced out at any moment. For example, in a front-page analysis in Haaretz newspaper on Friday, the journalist Amir Oren predicted that after the police questioning, Mr. Olmert "will cease serving as prime minister." He added, "Olmert will not be able to recover from this interrogation."
And while Mr. Olmert is a veteran political survivor, there are signs that he may not be able to hold on as leader of the government much longer. Leaders of his Kadima Party say they have reached a deal to hold a primary in September and that the winner will immediately begin putting together a new government. Mr. Olmert would not step down until a majority coalition had been formed.
If the agreement holds, it means that Mr. Olmert has lost his internal battle to prevent the formation of a new government while he is prime minister. It is not yet clear whether Mr. Olmert will run again to lead the party in the primaries. Some of his colleagues have asserted that he has promised not to.
But the investigations and party battles have clearly taken a toll on his public standing, and even if he chooses to run he seems unlikely to prevail. A poll in the Yediot Aharonot newspaper published on Friday shows 79 percent of Kadima members wanting him to quit.
In addition, Mr. Olmert's top two lieutenants, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, have publicly urged him to step down. Ms. Livni leads in polls among Kadima members to take over Mr. Olmert's leadership of the party. Mr. Barak leads the Labor Party, which is in a coalition with Kadima.
Mr. Olmert faces this possible political demise at a time of extraordinary geopolitical challenge for Israel. The government is simultaneously negotiating with two Palestinian factions, as well as Syria. It is also grappling with what to do about Iran's nuclear ambitions, given Iran's stated wish for Israel to be forced out of existence.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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UNITED NATIONS (AFP) -- China and Russia vetoed targeted UN sanctions on Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe over his disputed re-election, prompting an angry reaction from the United States which cast doubt on Moscow's reliability as a G8 partner. The Chinese and Russian envoys joined their colleagues from South Africa, Libya and Vietnam in opposing a US draft resolution in the Security Council Friday which would have imposed an assets freeze and a travel ban on Mugabe and 13 of his cronies, as well as an arms embargo. Indonesia abstained.
It was the first double veto by Russia and China since January 2007 when they vetoed a draft resolution in the 15-member council that would have urged Myanmar to ease repression and release political prisoners.
I sense a pattern ...
Voting in favor in Friday's vote were the United States, Britain, France, Burkina Faso, Belgium, Costa Rica, Italy, Panama and Croatia.
#4
Zimbabwe has welcomed the failure of a Western-backed UN Security Council resolution to impose sanctions over its violent presidential elections, calling it a victory over racism and meddling in its affairs.
#5
Russia and China don't see anything wrong with what Bob's doing in Zimbob, since he's following THEIR template. Bob needs to wake up to a huge slab of concrete in his front yard, with the words "Mene, Mene, Tikel Uparsin" carved in it. Maybe he can get China to decipher it for him.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/12/2008 18:19
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#6
Bob needs to wake up DEAD, OP.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
07/12/2008 18:40
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(AKI) - (by Syed Saleem Shahzad) - Opium cultivation is the prime source of income for the Taliban and enables the militants to buy arms for their insurgency against the Afghan government.
But they rely on an efficient distribution system and regional experts believe that senior Afghan officials are colluding with the Taliban for their own gain.
Zaid Hamid, security expert and head of the Pakistani think-tank, BrassTacks, told Adnkronos International (AKI) that several players were involved in the game of drug trafficking and the collusion of Afghan officials was crucial. "The total drug economy of Afghanistan is estimated to be 150 billion dollars out of which only one billion dollars returns to Afghanistan," Zaid Hamid told AKI.
"The rest is laundered through the international banking system which indicates that several other players are involved in the game of drug trafficking and the receipts to the Afghan insurgency are very small."
Hamid said that Russian and Chinese anti-narcotics forces had recently told their colleagues in Pakistan that the flow of drugs from Afghanistan into their respective countries had reached a crisis. "They are facing a crisis-like situation," he told AKI. "The figures provided to Pakistan suggested the majority of the drug smuggling is taking place through northern corridors (a non Taliban area)".
"These routes linked Afghanistan to Central Asian states, Afghanistan to Russia and from the Afghan province of Badakshan to Tajikistan and to China. The third route is coming from Afghanistan to Pakistan to the UAE (United Arab Emirates) through the Arabian Sea. "With this course, the receipts of money coming back to Afghanistan is very small, according to notes given by the Russians to Pakistan."
Former Pakistani spy chief, Ret. Gen. Hamid Gul, told AKI the drug trade had been one source for fuelling the Afghan resistance against Soviet Russia.
Gul, former head of Pakistan's Inter-Services-Intelligence, was the spymaster and the main architect of the Mujahadeen's resistance to the Soviets during the late 1980s. "The real component in this economy has always been the external factors, not the local farmers and the warlords," he said.
"This account is fully documented on how the CIA was involved in the 1980s to raise the money for the Afghan resistance against the Soviets through the smuggling of drugs and of course CIA officials also raised money for themselves."
Gul was head of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence service between 1987 and 1989 and worked closely with the CIA during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
He reportedly became disillusioned with the US when it failed to follow through on Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal and called on Muslims to unite and confront the US in its war on terror after the September 11 attacks.
Various statistics confirmed the claim that several players are involved in the game of drug trafficking beside the Taliban.
Gul endorsed British media reports that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the current Afghan president was involved in the drug trade. "Everybody in Afghanistan and Pakistan knows that the powerful person in the distribution of drugs is Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Hamid Karzai," Gul told AKI.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Yeah, Karzai, our tool, has been bought out by Talibunnies. Time to cut him off. Why have the poppy fields not been flamed with napalm ? Bush/Cheney need to come up with some idiot answer. An ideal opportunity for Rice to spout another non-sensical explanation before she departs to the garbage pile of history.
#2
Hamid said that Russian and Chinese anti-narcotics forces had recently told their colleagues in Pakistan that the flow of drugs from Afghanistan into their respective countries had reached a crisis.
Just goes to show that every cloud has a silver lining.
Posted by: Abu Uluque6305 ||
07/12/2008 11:52
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US forces detained nine suspected members of the al-Qaeda in Iraq group in separate raids, an Iraqi was reported killed and eight civilians were reported injured in Iraq Friday.
The nine suspects were captured in raids in Baghdad and the northern cities of Bayji and Mosul, a US military statement said. A suspected leader of a bombing cell within the al-Qaeda in Iraq group was among the detainees.
Six civilians were wounded when a bomb that targeted a police patrol exploded in the northern province of Nineveh, a source in Nineveh police said. The source told Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency that an explosive device was placed under a vegetable cart in east of Nineveh's capital, Mosul. He added that no policemen were injured.
In the southern city of Nasiriyah, a joint US-Iraqi air operation targeting the house of a suspected member of a 'special group' trained in Iran was carried out, US military spokesman Abdel-Latif Rayan told VOI.
The joint forces shot dead a man in self-defence when he pointed a weapon at them. Two men were injured in the incident, the spokesman said.
The US military uses the term 'special groups' to refer to members of Shiite armed groups believed to be trained and armed by Iran.
Military reinforcements arrived Friday morning in Diyala province from Baghdad to participate in an operation recently announced by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to track down gunmen, said a security source. The source did not mention when the military operation was to take place.
Last month, al-Maliki announced that 'the next stage will be in Diyala,' referring to military operations that took place in several provinces over the last few months.
Meanwhile, the US Department of Defense announced the deaths of two soldiers who were previously listed as 'missing-captured', raising the US fatalities in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003 to 4,118. Three soldiers have been killed so far in Iraq in July. 'The soldiers were part of a patrol that was ambushed south of Baghdad in May 2007,' VOI quoted the Pentagon statement as saying.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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With John McCain and Barack Obama each making a special effort to attract voters from the opposing party, the veep-stakes contest is especially interesting this cycle.
For McCain, some have speculated that he may pick Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, the Democrats' vice presidential nominee in 2000 who has since abandoned his party to become one of McCain's biggest boosters. For Obama, the Republican name most often floated is Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who is conservative on some issues but has become an outspoken opponent of the Iraq war.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
The Iraq war is a done deal. All this is political posturing.
#3
Naive children should probably not go to Iraq to posture. And if they do go, they should carefully follow all the advice and instructions of their military security escorts and not run around playing 'look at me.' AQ is gravely wounded but not dead, and would like nothing better than to embarrass the US military by killing a foolish senator or two.
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/12/2008 10:19
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#9
That will really lend gravitas to Hussein's visit. Is Weaslly Clark going ? Of course not, the Army would cut off his treacherous nuts if he showed up. IED ? IRAM ? Never know, there's accidents waiting round every corner.
#13
How about they just ignore his visit. Don't meet him at the airport. Require ID he doesn't have when he wants to get in the base.
It's not like he'll treat the military any worse if they blow him off. And if he tries maybe whisper in his ear that the Army has all the guns. That might open his eyes a little.
(VOI) -- Military reinforcements arrived on Friday morning in Diala province from Baghdad to participate in the operations recently announced by the Iraqi Premier Nouri al-Maliki to track down gunmen, said a security source. "Scores of military vehicles carrying Iraqi troops with armored vehicles, arrived today in al-Moradiya area in Baaquba on the road linking Diala to Baghdad," the source told Aswat al-Iraq -- Voices of Iraq -- (VOI) on condition of anonymity. "The reinforcements came to participate in the imminent military operations in Diala," he said. He did not mention further details.
In June 2008, the Iraqi premier Nouri al-Maliki announced "the next stage will be in Diala," referring to a military operation similar to Saulat al-Forsan (Knights Assault) in Basra and Bashaer al-Salam (Promise of Peace) in Missan.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Eight Pakistani troops and five Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers have been wounded in a cross fire on the Pak-Afghan border late on Thursday, sources in local security agencies said.
The incident took place at Angoor Adda, a village in Wana, headquarters of South Waziristan Agency. The firing began after Taliban attacked a foreign troop base in Machi-dad on the Afghan side of the border, a Pakistani intelligence official said. "The clash between militants and the ANA occurred just across the Afghan border, but some shells fired by the ANA hit the Pakistani post, which injured the soldiers," the sources said. Pakistani troops retaliated injuring at least five Afghan soldiers, the sources added.
Strong protest: Army's top spokesman has said mortar shells fired from Afghanistan wounded six Pakistani security forces along the border, and Pakistan has lodged a "strong protest" with NATO, AP reported. "This was mortar fire from the Afghan side," Abbas said. "Whether it was foreign forces or Afghan forces it's yet to be determined."
Six mortars were fired which fell close to a military post in the town of Angoor Adda in the South Waziristan tribal region, Maj Gen Athar Abbas said. Pakistani forces immediately returned fire, and "casualties were reported on the other side," he said. Asked if militants across the border could have been behind the firing, Abbas said he did not want to speculate. According to AFP, the intelligence official said, "About 60 rounds fell in Angoor Adda." "Some of them hit our post and wounded seven soldiers," he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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#1
your soldiers didn't do squat to stop the Taliban, did they? F*ck off then
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/12/2008 0:13
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#2
but some shells fired by the ANA hit the Pakistani post
Ooopsie!
Posted by: Abu Uluque6305 ||
07/12/2008 11:46
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#3
Looks like the ANA training is paying off.
Posted by: ed ||
07/12/2008 12:05
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#4
From what I have read, this event seems to have been Talibunnies firing simultaneously on both the Paks and the ANA in order to try to incite an 'event'. But our eyes in the sky were watching, and blowed up the mortar team.
#6
not so clever:
"Insurgents simultaneously fired at targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan on the evening of July 10," ISAF reported in a press release. Afghan police in Paktika province and a Pakistani military unit along the border in South Waziristan reported taking mortar fire at the same time, the US military stated. Eight Pakistani soldiers and four Afghan police were reported wounded in the initial attack.
The US military determined the origin of mortar fire to have started at two points inside Afghanistan and returned fire with artillery and a laser-guided GBU-13 bomb dropped from an F-15. The US fires were "verified to have hit the origins of insurgent fire."
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/12/2008 20:35
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A trustee of the Hussainian Iranian Imambargah in Kharadar was shot dead on Thursday night just two days after the killing of an eyewitness to the Imambargah Ali Murtaza bomb blast.
Twenty-five year old Agha Mansoor Ahmed was attacked while he was sitting with some friends at his restaurant on MA Jinnah Road in Saddar late on Thursday night.
"According to the initial investigation, this is a case of a sectarian killing," said Saddar Town Superintendent of Police Dr Ameer Sheikh.
Quoting the deceased's friends, the deputy superintendent of police (DSP) said that an armed man entered the restaurant and opened fire at Ahmed before fleeing. The DSP said that while nobody knew if there were more assailants, he was sure that the assailant had not entered the restaurant with the intention of robbery, as no nothing was stolen.
Ahmed's funeral prayers were offered at the imambargah after Friday prayers and he was laid to rest at Lyari graveyard.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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(VOI) -- Iraqi security forces arrested two wanted men, defused a bomb and seized explosives in west of Mosul, the spokesman for the Ninewa operations command said on Friday. "A force from the 2nd division of the Iraqi army in Mosul managed to arrest two wanted men during a security raid in Mafraq al-Qayara region and al-Shefaa neighborhood in west of Mosul," Brig. Khaled Abdul Sattar told Aswat al-Iraq -- Voices of Iraq (VOI). "Policemen seized two Austrian--made bombs in al-Boursa region in west of Mosul," Abdul Sattar added. "Another police force defused a bomb in al-Wehda neighborhood without casualties," he also said. Mosul, the capital city of Ninewa, lies 405 km north of Baghdad.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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(Xinhua) -- U.S. Republican Jackie Speier, in her first bill as a member of Congress, is proposing a national speed limit to save gas, it was reported on Friday. Speier sets the limit of 60 mph for freeways in urban areas and65 mph in less populated areas as a way to address rising gas prices, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
With the average price of gas at 4.10 U.S. dollars per gallon nationwide and 4.60 dollars in San Francisco, reducing driving speeds could save families hundreds of dollars a year, Speier said. "There is no need to wait for OPEC or the oil companies to help us out," Speier said. "Every driver can effect change simply by easing up on their right foot."
The bill is already stirring objections from some motorist groups, which fear it would slow traffic and increase speeding tickets and insurance premiums, the paper said.
Opponents said the law isn't necessary because drivers already have the choice of reducing their speed to save gas. "If they want to get in the right-hand lane and drive 55 mph on the highway, there is no restriction on that," said Jim Baxter, president of the National Motorists Association, a group formed in1982 to repeal national speed limits. "They are welcome to do that."
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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#1
Oh yeah. This will for sure do away with the need to drill. Why don't I think of these things sooner?
#2
Chicoms got one thing wrong. Speier is a Bay Area Babe Donk of the Pelosi genus. Also I doubt she would set the speed limit at 60 in urban areas as it is generally 55 now, iirc, though honored only in the breach.
Textile mills and other industries in Faisalabad were closed down on Friday in protest against high power and gas tariffs, forcing thousands of labourers into unemployment.
At least one million labourers have been affected with the closure of 2,600 textile and power looms and sizing units in the industrial capital of Pakistan.
Wake-up call: Textile Exporters Joint Action Committee Chairman Asim Khursheed says the closure is only the "first phase" of the protest. "Industries have been closed for five days. The protesting industrialists will meet again on July 15 and choose to close their units for an indefinite period if the government does not issue its proposed package of subsidies." He demanded that the government withdraw 31 percent increase in gas prices, assure the industrialists that it will not increase power tariffs, bring down the interest rate and again issue the research and development fund.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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#1
Reasonable strikes move against the entity that is causing something negative, that strikers can change. Textile mills?
#2
"The protesting industrialists will meet again on July 15 and choose to close their units for an indefinite period if the government does not issue its proposed package of subsidies."
*Snort*
That's a leeetle bit different from the way "strikes" are done here. Wonder if it will catch on? ;-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
07/12/2008 18:38
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(AKI) A Macedonian court sentenced on Friday seventeen ethnic Albanians for terrorism, police spokesman Ivo Kotevski told media, but but did not give any names. Kotevski said the group arrested last November was charged with "terrorism, attacks on police, hostile activities and illegal possession of arms."
Four members of the group, one from Albania and three from neighboring Kosovo, were sentenced in absentia to 15 years in jail, one man got 12 years and others, who were from Macedonia, got ten years each, Kotevski said.
Ethnic Albanians make about 25 per cent of Macedonia's two million population. They rebelled in 2001 demanding greater rights and regional autonomy. The stand-off was solved with the help of international community, but the situation has remained tense in northwestern Albanian populated areas. "At the beginning we believed it was an extremist criminal group, but after discovering a significant quantity of weapons, the prosecutors pressed charges for terrorism," Kotevski said.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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#1
Albania: the gift that keeps on giving.
Posted by: Abu Uluque6305 ||
07/12/2008 11:42
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Local Taliban on Friday destroyed three police pickets in Dandopull and Michni road areas in the Shabqadar tehsil of Charsadda district, Dawn News reported on Friday. Tehreek-e-Taliban deputy chief in Mohmand agency Qari Shakeel told the channel that Taliban would not accept the presence of police or security forces in Michni and Shabqadar areas as they are disputed areas. He said these areas were part of the Mohmand Agency and Taliban would neither accept their annexure with the settled districts of Charsadda and Peshawar nor any police or security forces' movement there. According to the channel, about 45 police and FC personnel were present at the pickets but they did not offer any resistance. Taliban also laid temporary siege to Sadoklai Police Station in Shabqadar area for half an hour but left the area after negotiations with local elders, it said.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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(VOI) -- Police forces on Thursday arrested eight wanted people and seized quantities of ammunition during raid operations conducted in Basra, a police source said. "Police forces conducted raid operations in different places of Basra,capturing eight people in a wanted list," a Basra police source told Aswat al-Iraq -- Voices of Iraq -- (VOI) on condition of anonymity. The source noted "a team from Criminal Investigation police defused three roadside bombs". "Forces also seized "Six mortar shells, one Katyusha rocket, and eight different calibre cannon shells along with three RPG7 missiles," he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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(VOI) -- Police forces defused two bombs in south and central Missan, a security source said on Friday. "Police forces defused a bomb planted in a residential neighborhood in al-Majar al-Kabier district in south of Amara," the source told Aswat al-Iraq -- Voices of Iraq (VOI) on condition of anonymity. "Joint security forces defused another bomb planted on the main road linking al-Thawra neighborhood and al-Mualameen region in central Amara during a security operation," the source added. Iraqi security forces have been launching a large-scale military campaign codenamed Bashaer al-Salam (Promise of Peace) since June 19. The operation was aimed to track down gunmen and to confiscate unlicensed weapons in Missan province.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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#1
News today that al Qaeda is now reeling even in Mosul, their last stronghold, should make us all stop and ponder. For all the talk of a worn-out military, a cruel Pentagon that treats its veterans poorly, and the general Democratic notion of our soldiers as victims of an immoral war and brutal militarism, a few thousand Americans, with vast odds against them, have nearly crushed Islamic fundamentalists, won the hearts and minds of Arab Muslims in the ancient caliphate, stabilized a constitutional government, and silenced their critics here at home and abroad. The American expeditionary army and marines in Iraq, and its commander David Petraeus, surely must be regarded as one of the most capable militaries in recent memory - all to the relative silence in our mainstream newspapers, network news, and opinion journalists.
Lal Masjid deputy cleric Amir Siddique on Friday accused the PPP-led government of toeing the policies of President Pervez Muharraf and pledged to continue the movement launched by Abdur Rashid Ghazi for enforcement of the "Islamic system".
Delivering a Friday sermon, he said the rulers were trying to impose "Jewish" policies appease their "foreign masters". He said, "The US and its cronies want to kill every Muslim who believes in jihad." Calling Musharraf the "mother of all evils", Siddique said his policies had plunged the country into darkness.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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(VOI) -- A security force raided a mosque belonging to the Sadrists, or Iraqis loyal to Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, and arrested its imam (preacher) along with 25 worshippers in Diwaniya on Friday, Sadr's office director in the province said.
"A force from the Diwaniya Emergency raided Imam Ali mosque in northwestern Diwaniya and arrested the mosque preacher Sheikh Hussein al-Karbalaie and 25 worshippers," Sayyed Ali al-Gharabi told Aswat al-Iraq -- Voices of Iraq -- (VOI). Gharabi said the raiding force assaulted the imam and the worshippers by beating and verbal abuse before arresting them without any apparent reason," he said. Police sources could not be reached immediately for clarifications on the incident. However, an official source in the Diwaniya provincial building told VOI by phone that the reason for the arrest was "excesses and insults against the government during religious sermons and occasions in Imam Ali mosque". "According to the Iraqi law, the security forces are authorized to interfere against whoever needlessly insults the government and tarnish its image," the source, who did not want his name mentioned, said, not giving details.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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(Xinhua) -- U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is likely to be the primary sponsor on a car of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing in a race due in early next month, according to a news report on Friday.
The report by the CNN affiliated Sports Illustrated said that Obama''s campaign was in talks with BAM Racing to sponsor its No. 49 Sprint Cup car for the Pocono race in Pennsylvania on Aug. 3 but details could only be made public several days later.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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Posted by: Steve White ||
07/12/2008 12:10
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#8
what better match than the "Halo'd One" and the Illuminati?
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/12/2008 12:13
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#9
The driver will be Lug Nuggy Nut.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
07/12/2008 12:31
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#10
The Saturday Chicago Sun-Times says he is not going to support a car. As the official house organ of the Obama/Daley/Rezko organizations they may even be right.
JOLIET, Ill. - NASCAR's BAM Racing team is in discussions with Barack Obama's presidential campaign about a potential sponsorship deal in the Sprint Cup series later this year. I hope they leave out the feaux-presidential seal. Is Emeril involved? Doesn't he have the copywrite on BAM!?
Team spokesman Rhett Vandiver told The Associated Press on Friday that the team has made a sponsorship proposal to the Democratic presidential hopeful's campaign, and has made similar proposals to the campaign of Republican John McCain and at least one third-party candidate. They'd have to use a Model T for McCain.
Sports Illustrated first reported the proposal on its Web site, saying Obama's campaign is in talks with BAM, a part-time operation that hasn't raced in recent weeks, to sponsor its No. 49 car in the Aug. 3 race at Pocono. Jeebus! Redneck Yankees!"
I don't know how far along the discussions are," Vandiver told AP.
Asked about the talks, Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Penski Psaki said, "We get a lot of good ideas every day, but there are no such agreements in place at this time." I'm not so sure this qualifies as a "good idea".
Should the deal come together, it is believed to be the first time a presidential campaign has sponsored a car in NASCAR's top series - and a fairly bold move within a sport whose competitors spend all year turning left on the track but tend to lean to the right politically. Left on the track and Right politically! HAHAHA this guy's a riot!
But the campaign's choice of drivers and car brands might turn out to be a little bit sticky politically.
The car, a Cadillac Toyota, would be driven by veteran Lug Nuggey Nut Ken Schrader.
According to the Federal Election Commission's Web site, Schrader gave $1,000 to the campaign of North Carolina Republican congressman Robin Hayes in June 2004, and a total of $2,500 in 2003 and 2004 to the failed Virginia congressional campaign of Republican Kevin Triplett, a former NASCAR official. It's gonna be hard to find a driver whose a Democrat.
Also according to the FEC, Mrs. Ann Schrader of Concord, N.C. and Ken Schrader Racing donated a total of $2,000 to President Bush's campaign in May 2004 and $900 to the North Carolina Republican Executive Committee in August 2004. What the hell's that got to do with Racin'?
NASCAR has been playing an increasing role in politics, as so-called "NASCAR dads" were considered a key constituency in recent elections. NASCAR hasn't. The people who like NASCAR have consistantly voted Conservative. Back when NASCAR first started the Conservatives were Democrats.
A Cup series car carried a George W. Bush logo in 2004 but wasn't officially associated with the campaign. And Democratic presidential hopeful Bob Graham sponsored a truck in the Craftsman Truck Series in 2003.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
07/12/2008
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#1
Only guy that could help O is the King and he's stone cold Republican. Maybe if Leroy Yarlborough was still kicking, but he died in the bughouse if I recalls correctly.
#2
IIRC, the 49 was the "Little Debbies'" car before. Now it can be the "Little Barry's". Go ahead, tool, waste your money. The NASCAR set is the gun-clinging and bible-clinging rabble that you already put down. They're on to you and your h8tr wife
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/12/2008 8:57
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#3
nope, from ESPN:
"BAM team spokesman Rhett Vandiver told The Associated Press on Friday that the team made a sponsorship proposal to the Democratic presidential hopeful's campaign, and has made similar proposals to the campaign of Republican John McCain and at least one third-party candidate.
Late Friday, the Obama campaign said there would be no sponsorship."
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/12/2008 9:52
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#4
NASCAR has been playing an increasing role in politics, as so-called "NASCAR dads" were considered a key constituency in recent elections.
Another "racist" term which is totally incompatible with disadvantaged, matriarchal societies.
A female soldier who once fought off a suspected Iraqi insurgent has won a place in the final of Miss England. Katrina Hodge, 21, will participate in the contest in July, having already won the Miss Tunbridge Wells crown.
L/Cpl Hodge was nicknamed Combat Barbie in 2005 after being given a bravery commendation for saving the lives of members of her regiment in Iraq. They were held at gunpoint when their vehicle overturned but L/Cpl Hodge punched the gunman and took his rifles.
She said: "I was in complete shock at first. The force of the accident caused our vehicle to roll over three times and threw us off guard.
"As I came round, the Iraqi suspect was standing over us with the rifles. I knew if I didn't act fast then our lives would be in danger. I punched him and the force startled him enough for me to retrieve the rifles from him."
Miss Hodge, a military clerk with The Adjutant General's Corps, will go on to appear at Miss World 2008 if she wins the English title. "I was delighted to have been selected for the Miss England final and it is a great honour," she added. "Being a part-time model and a serving soldier is certainly a world apart. I want to use this competition to highlight the work that the Army are doing and what they have done for this country."
She is currently serving at Frimley Park Hospital in Camberley and will take part in the Miss England national finals on Friday.
#4
Wow, what a walking recruiting poster THAT is! Just tell all potential recruits their name will be entered into a drawing for a date with Katrina. Britain may have to double the size of its military... Too bad Harry's stuck in the Navy at the moment.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/12/2008 15:01
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#5
And the money quote from the Weekly World News article:
SEXY soldier Katrina Hodge shows the weapons of mass distraction which make her a Miss England semi-finalist.
Heh
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
07/12/2008 19:30
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(VOI) -- Six civilians were wounded on Friday in a bomb blast in eastern Mosul, said a police source. "An improvised explosive device went off targeting a police vehicle patrol in al-Jamassa region in eastern Mosul, injuring six civilians," the source told Aswat al-Iraq -- Voices of Iraq (VOI) on condition of anonymity "The bomb was placed under a vegetable cart," the source, added, noting that the explosion left no casualties among the policemen. "The wounded were rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment," he also said, adding none more details.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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Zimbabwe is saying that international sanctions against the ruling government could lead to civil war.
Automatic weapons trumps negotiations every time.
The U.N. Security Council will meet again Friday to consider a draft resolution that includes financial and travel restrictions against President Robert Mugabe and 13 others for violence leading up to last month's presidential vote. Zimbabwe said in a letter to the United Nations that the sanctions could lead to the removal of the effective government of the country and bring a civil war.
President Mugabe says he won another term as president last month, in a one-candidate run-off election after opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew. The opposition said state-sponsored violence had killed more than 100 people before the election.
Members of Zimbabwe's ruling and opposition parties Friday completed a second day of negotiations in Pretoria, South Africa. A team from Mr. Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change met with members of the ruling party to lay down conditions for talks. More talks are expected, although no dates have been announced. Tsvangirai is demanding an end to violence against his political supporters, the release of political prisoners, and a mediator to be appointed alongside South African President Thabo Mbeki.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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#1
How would civil war hurt the UN? I don't get it.
(VOI) -- A total of 23 persons were arrested during operations launched by the Iraqi forces in separate areas in southern Baghdad, the official spokesman for the Baghdad's operations command said on Friday. "Forces from the 17th division of the Iraqi army arrested six wanted men and 17 suspected gunmen during security operations in al-Yousifiya, al-Mahmoudiya and al-Rashied areas in southern Baghdad," General Qassem Atta told Aswat al-Iraq -- Voices of Iraq (VOI). "Two weapons caches were found and one bomb was defused during the operation," he noted, without giving further details.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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#1
Lotsa bad men being arrested all over by Iraqi forces. Bad news for Barry. Maybe he should have the MSM find out if the Iraqis are using panties on the detainees. That would be a good story.
The United States Friday warned Sudan against retaliating against U.N. peacekeepers, foreign diplomats or others for expected genocide charges against the country's president, Omar al-Bashir. Action by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against the Sudanese leader is expected Monday.
With the expectation that the ICC chief prosecutor will seek an arrest warrant against the Sudanese leader Monday, the Bush administration is making clear that it expects Sudan to uphold its international obligations for the safety of diplomats and other foreigners in that country.
Sudan's U.N. ambassador has insisted publicly that Khartoum will not retaliate against U.N. peacekeepers for what would be an unprecedented ICC action against a sitting world leader.
But U.S. officials are deeply concerned about an attack by unidentified gunmen earlier this week in Darfur that killed seven U.N. troops, and warnings by Sudan that action against Mr. al-Bashir would have grave repercussions.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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(Xinhua) -- U.S. President George W. Bush called for Congress on Friday to approve oil drilling in offshore waters and in the Alaskan wildlife refuge to push American through "tough economic times."
Bush said at a meeting at the Energy Department that one option to deal with skyrocketing oil price is to tap the vast potential crude oil reserves on offshore waters and in Alaska as well as in the western part of the country. He noted that technological development has made it possible to recover the oil while protecting the environment.
The president urged the Democrats-dominant Congress to address the issue before they begin a recession in August. "They have a responsibility to explain to their constituents why we should not be drilling for more oil here in America to take the pressure off of gasoline prices," he said.
The U.S. economy suffers from gasoline prices hike that has reached over 4 U.S. dollars a gallon (3.785 liter), and U.S. Congress and the White House are stressing different ways to ease the oil crisis. "Crude oil prices are up and one reason crude oil prices are up is because demand is outstripping supply," the president said.
On the other hand, Democrats in the House of Representatives are trying to pass an energy package as early as next week aiming at increasing domestic oil production, also as a way to counter Republicans' charges that they are anti-drilling. Let's be clear: Democrats support increasing the domestic production of petroleum and other energy resources," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters on Wednesday.
Not Nancy Pelosi ...
He said the legislation would speed up development of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, and reimpose a ban on foreign export of Alaskan oil.
Earlier this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi renewed her request to President Bush for more government-held oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to be released onto the market to check prices, which has been always resisted by the president. "Right now the president has 700 million barrels of oil. He can release a small percent of it, less than 10 percent of it; have immediate impact on the price at the pump now, within 10 days, not within 10 years," Pelosi said.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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#1
OK George, show some cojones and make the first move: Remove the EXECUTIVE ORDER that bans it. Put the blame squarely in the Democrat's hands.
Why haven't you done it already George? All it takes a a signature.
#2
"Right now the president has 700 million barrels of oil. He can release a small percent of it, less than 10 percent of it; have immediate impact on the price at the pump now, within 10 days, not within 10 years," Pelosi said.
I had no idea that this was somehow gating Dems voting for drilling offshore and in Anwar.
#8
"Right now the president has 700 million barrels of oil. He can release a small percent of it, less than 10 percent of it; have immediate impact on the price at the pump now, within 10 days, not within 10 years," Pelosi said.
That's why not releasing it will have the desired effect in November as you're feeling the hate of obstructing access to the source of the stuff for over 30 years. It's for military emergencies not your political emergency. Since its been all about power for you, and you don't give a crap about the nation's economy or welfare, just votes from the usual suspects, as they say - feel the power. George has no reason to accommodate you. He's not up for reelection. He'd better get an incredible deal from you and yours before he'll do anything after your games for two years. Oh, and if he's learned anything from his father's experience with Donk promises, you'd better deliver first, no IOUs. Enjoy.
#9
Actually the US does need a civilian oil reserve. The oil companies used to keep several weeks supply on hand but not anymore. It lowers their costs and they can also take advantage of much wilder price rises that a large inventory would dampen.
Posted by: ed ||
07/12/2008 12:02
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#10
I'm salivating over the prospect of all the great fishing spots up and down the coast that will result from these platforms.
Cost of gas be damned - I want the improved fishing!
Posted by: no mo uro ||
07/12/2008 15:23
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#11
A substantial portion of the current price of oil is speculation. The prospect of large quantities of oil coming on-line in the next few years, would cause current oil prices to drop.
#12
Sorry, drilling will NOT help. Ever. There is no reason we can't move our economy off of oil completely. Sure it will be expensive and painful in the short term, but the long run will be worth it.
#13
There'll be nothing left of the American economy in the long run if we continue on our current anti-oil path for a few more years. The Democrats are on the verge of making people yearn for the good old days of the 1970s.
#14
Drilling WILL help. How does increasing domestic production and increasing supply and keepign the money here instead of in Venezuela and Saudi Arabia and Mexico NOT work?
Care to explain that?
30 years of Democrat obstructianism says your absolutism is simply dumbassery and denial.
#15
"There is no reason we can't move our economy off of oil completely. "
Really? How many things made of plastic or synthetic fibers are you touching right now? How many painted or dyed surfaces can you see from where you are sitting.
69% of our oil consumption is for transportation. We can not convert that to electric because
1. we don't have the generation capacity or the distribution capacity. It would require doubling our power plants and power lines. The grid would melt if everyone plugged in their cars.
2. Have you ever seen an electric airplane that can carry any appreciable amount of passengers and freight?
No, we CANT get our economy off oil. It would require eliminating the aircraft industry for one that and that is only the beginning. That is the kind of crap that "pie in the sky" ninnies say without really thinking it through.
Painful? Yeah, eliminating all airlines, the Air Force, and all US aircraft manufacturers and their supplies would indeed be painful. And insane.
United Nations officials say the International Criminal Court may seek an arrest warrant Monday for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in connection with war crimes in the Darfur region. The court says chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo will submit evidence Monday alleging crimes committed in the region over the last five years. President al-Bashir is among several top Sudanese government officials that could be named in the case.
Sudan's ambassador to the UN, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, says Khartoum will continue its policy of not cooperating with the ICC, no matter who is named as a suspect: "For us," he said, "It does not exist. We are not part of it; we are not party to the Rome Statute. So like the US, which is not a member, we are not a member."
He also warned that the ICC's actions could undermine the peace process in Darfur. He said the move could bring about serious repercussions: "All options are open for our reaction to this revelation, and indeed [ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo] is playing with fire. The UN has a very constructive engagement with Sudan; they are dealing on various tracks [with regard to] the peace process and humanitarian.... The ICC is going to spoil all these things and bring us back to square one and put the security of the entire population in jeopardy. He is opening the gates of fire for the whole country and this should be stopped without any delay."
When asked if the move would endanger UN peacekeepers in Sudan, Ambassador Abdalmahmood said, "The Sudan government is careful to its commitment. The UN also promised to guard against any threat to this commitment. The UN should also play a role in safeguarding this cooperation and partnership. The Sudanese government is not at all hostile to the United Nations. [The UN staff and peacekeepers] are the guests of the entire country but if there are any threats to security and stability of the country we are all in one boat. The entire country would suffer, not just one group here and there.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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Top|| File under: Govt of Sudan
#1
Muslims only join the UN in preparation for its takeover by the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Western Civilization gets nothing from the UN, and their NYC properties should be turned into condos.
Bashir is about to be indicted for genocide. His people don't want that. They say it'll start a "fire."
Isn't there one already going on? How many burnt-out villages? Crops? Livestock? PEOPLE?
Those at the U.N. seem more concerned about the reprisals Sudan may take against peacekeepers and providers of humanitarian aid than about thwarting this obscene regime.
Granted, we should be concerned about the safety of those people. But I get the drift it is being used, by some in the U.N., as a reason NOT to indict Bashir, as a reason NOT to take stronger actions to enforce the peace by those same peacekeepers.
So...because the regime might get more violent, we should allow our indictment against Bashir to be dropped, and let the violence continue there?
And isn't that PRECISELY what terrorism seeks to accomplish? Since terrorism, and the threat of yet more bestial violence WORKS, many think we should not oppose it.
Do we really mean it when we say "never again" about genocide? I doubt it.
Does anyone REALLY think that any genocidal regime will EVER stop what it is doing, by peaceful means? By conciliation? By negotition and diplomacy? When has THAT ever happened?
Genocidal regimes and dictators are such because they use force against their own people. They only understand force. They feel contempt at any non-violent approach to solving problems. And because they only understand force, it is force which is the ONLY way of getting rid of them. Unless they die of natural causes, internal coups, revolution on a massive scale, etc. But they NEVER voluntarily give up power, or stop slaughtering.
Darfur will continue. Until it is FORCED to stop. In truth, the ones most qualified to do a regime change there are other Islamic States. So why aren't they railing at Sudan and threatening regime change? Because they do NOT truly disapprove of the genocide. Which makes THEIR attitudes a subject in dire need of DEEP investigation. But that's another matter.
The indifference of the Arab/Muslim world leaves dealing with Sudan to the non-Islamic nations.
The genocide-beset people of Darfur will WELCOME the indictment, fully knowing the further danger it'll put themselves into. We need know no more than that to indict that evil man. For YEARS now, these victims have been BEGGING for the U.S. to intervene militarily, and end this horror.
Bosnia's genocide got the intervention it needed. Meanwhile, for many years before and several years since, the Sudanese first genocide was going strong. And it was a far WORSE genocide than Bosnia. Nothing was done. We defended Muslims who were being genocided, but the Muslim world has no interest in returning the favor for the black people of Sudan. To them, genocide against Muslims is evil; genocide BY Muslims is dandy.
Normally, I'm a dove. But where genocide is concerned, I hold entirely different views. Simply because it's necessary, and humane, to do so. There is no excuse for war - ordinarily. Genocide is one of the VERY FEW legitimate reasons.
Genocide, tolerated ANYWHERE, toward ANYONE, always spawns more genocides.
If we'd acted against Sudan in the '80's or '90's, perhaps Rwanda, Bosnia, Zimbabwe, Myanmar and N. Korea would never have become humanitarian horrors. The success of the Sudan genocide emboldened the others.
And remember this, too: If Bashir's indictment gets thwarted because of those fears of reprisals on peacekeepers, it'll be a green light for them to proceed in Darfur full blast. It means they know they'll never have to pay for their crimes. And why? Because they are able to intimidate the rest of the world. Those who seek to fight terrorism can, themselves, be terrorized.
Of COURSE, the regime will step up violence, particularly against the "foreigners" there who are trying to prevent janjaweed attacks, protecting refugee settlements, and who are providing vital humanitarian aid. But that should be expected - and planned for. It should NOT be used as an excuse to stop going after this regime full blast.
Sudan is bestial and supremely violent, supremely contemptuous of human life within its own borders. Because they'll likely extend that contempt to peacekeepers "on the ground" people are fearful of indicting Bashir. So if those fearful people get what they want, so does Bashir. Makes one wonder what "standing up against genocide" means to those fearful people.
Throwing the baby out with the bathwater, however, seems to be highly favored by many in the U.N. Let terrorism win, then, because that is what they seek to do, even if they think they are seeking peace.
Genocide can never be stopped, or even thwarted, by peaceful means. Period.
Posted by: Holly B. ||
07/12/2008 22:22
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A Lashkar-e-Islam (LI) commander said on Friday that LI chief Mangal Bagh has given his consent to a jirga's peace agreement with the government and said the LI would abide by all the terms and conditions.
"We will however continue our activities against criminal elements in Bara," the commander quoted the LI chief as telling the jirga.
Locals said the 18-member jirga of the Afridi tribes called on Mangal Bagh in Tirah Valley and briefed him about their agreement formed with the government on Wednesday.
JUI-F jirga: A separate jirga of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F) also met the LI chief in Tirah on Friday evening and discussed with him an end to the ongoing fighting between Ansarul Islam (AI) and his outfit in the remote valley.
The JUI-F had constituted a jirga three days ago to meet aggrieved parties in all the tribal agencies and discuss the restoration of peace and stability in the area. JUI-F's provincial general secretary Shujaul Mulk is leading the jirga. JUI-F information secretary Haji Jalil Jan told Daily Times that the jirga would meet AI chief Qazi Mahboob on Saturday.
Jan said the jirga members would leave for Aurakzai Agency on Saturday evening and reach Hangu district on Sunday morning.
There shall be a grand jirga in Hangu on Sunday where the JUI-F delegation will present its report on its meetings with the LI and AI chiefs and its peace plan for the rest of the tribal agencies, said Jan.
According to locals, around 50 activists from the LI and AI have been killed and scores of others injured in clashes between the two militant outfits in Tirah Valley over the past 20 days.
25 LI militants freed: Also on Friday, the Khyber Agency political administration freed 25 more LI militants from Central Jail, Peshawar, officials told Daily Times.
The number of those freed from captivity after the agreement between Afridi tribes and political administration has now reached 33.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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Top|| File under: Lashkar-e-Islami
#7
She was a great, sexy comic actress. Worked on all the Hope and Crosby movies. She was type-cast as a sexy actress. Which means: she got a lot of work.
The U.S. government says it will not take charge of the nation's two largest mortgage finance firms as their stock prices plunge in further signs of trouble for America's housing market.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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France has denied citizenship to a veiled Moroccan woman on the grounds that her "radical" practice of Islam is incompatible with basic French values such as equality of the sexes, a legal ruling showed on Friday. Le Monde newspaper said it was the first time a Muslim applicant had been rejected for reasons to do with personal religious practice. "She has adopted a radical practice of her religion, incompatible with essential values of the French community, particularly the principle of equality of the sexes," said a ruling by the Council of State handed down last month and sent to Reuters on Friday to confirm a report in Le Monde. Married to a French national, the woman arrived in France in 2000, speaks good French and has three children born in France.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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Top|| File under:
#1
good, now "get out"
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/12/2008 0:08
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#2
OK, the lab version works---now get it into mass production.
(Xinhua) -- Lebanon finally formed a 30-member national unity government on Friday following a five-week political deadlock over key portfolios.
The new cabinet consists 16 ministers of the Western-backed ruling majority, 11 allied with the Shiite Hezbollah-led opposition and the rest three named by President Michel Suleiman. Following is the lineup of the new cabinet:
Prime Minister: Fouad Seniora
Deputy Prime Minister: Issam Abou Jamra
Defense Minister: Elias Murr
Foreign Minister: Fawzi Saloukh
Interior Minister: Ziad Baroud
Finance Minister: Muhammad Shatah
State Minister: Yousef Takla
State Minister: Khaled Kabbani
State Minister: Wael Abo Faour
State Minister: Nasib Lahoud
State Minister: Ali Qanso
State Minister: Jean Ogassapian
Justice Minister: Ibrahim Najjar
Administration Development Minister: Ibrahim Shamseddine
Public Works and Transportation Minister: Ghazi Ariedy
Telecommunications Minister: Gebran Bassil
Economy and Trade Minister: Muhammad Safadi
Information Minister: Tareq Mitri
Culture Minister: Tamam Salam
Minister of Refugee Affairs: Raymond Audi
Environment Minister: Antoine Karam
Youth and Sports Minister: Talal Arslan
Industry Minister: Ghazi Zoayter
Education Minister: Bahia Hariri
Agriculture Minister: Elias Skaf
Health Minister: Mohammad Khalifa
Energy Minister: Alan Toborian
Labor Minister: Mohammad Fneish
Minister for Social Affairs: Mario Aoun
Tourism Minister: Antoine Karam
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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#1
This list would be a lot more meaningful if we knew which group each person there was loyal to. I doubt more than a half-dozen are actually loyal to LEBANON.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/12/2008 15:24
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#2
if we knew which group each person there was loyal to
Each of the 30 is loyal to himself - just like politicians everywhere.
(Xinhua) -- The parliament of the northern Belgian region of Flanders approved the Lisbon Treaty on Thursday, making Belgium the 22nd European Union (EU) member state to complete the ratification process of the EU treaty.
The Flemish parliament is the last of Belgium's seven assemblies which need to clear the treaty. It was uncertain for a time whether the treaty would be approved before the summer recess, as some of the parliamentary parties were demanding amendments.
But an agreement was reached and the treaty was approved. Belgian King Albert II now need to sign it before it is fully ratified by Belgium.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso congratulated Belgium on its decision. "This is a strong signal of how important it is that all member states are heard during the ratification process," he said in a statement.
The Lisbon Treaty replaces the EU constitution treaty, which was rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005. The treaty can not enter into force unless all EU member states approve it.
The Lisbon Treaty was rejected by Irish voters several weeks ago, but EU leaders have been calling for a continuation of the ratification process in other EU countries.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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(VOI) - Iraqi army troops on Thursday arrested 20 wanted individuals during raid operations conducted in Babel, a military source said. "The Iraqi army 31st Brigade conducted a round-up operation in Yusufiya district Babel, capturing 20 individuals who were on a wanted list," a military source, who requested anonymity told Aswat al Iraq - Voices of Iraq - (VOI). "Forces seized weapons, ammunition stockpiles, and roadside bombs stashed in a barrel," the source noted. "The operation was based on intelligence tips-off," he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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#1
Interogation has been hampered due to language barriers...?
SRINAGAR - Jammu and Kashmir was placed under governor's rule from Thursday night, days after Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad resigned without facing a floor test as directed by Governor Narendra Nath Vohra.
Since Jammu and Kashmir has its own Constitution, the governor, late on Thursday night issued a proclamation exercising powers vested in him. He assumed, with immediate effect, all functions of the government in the state and all powers exercisable by anybody or authority in the state other than the powers in or exercisable by the high court. He also dissolved the state legislative assembly.
A Raj Bhavan spokesperson said, After the acceptance of resignations of the Chief Minister Azad and his Council of Ministers, the governor initiated a consultative process and met leaders of various political parties and groups in the assembly.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/12/2008
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(Xinhua) -- Istanbul Governor Muammer Guler said on Friday that Wednesday's attack on the U.S. Consulate General in the Turkish city of Istanbul was "undoubtedly a suicide attack."
Guler said that "the fourth person, who brought the terrorists to the U.S. Consulate General, has been found. This person's interrogation continued till morning hours." "Based on this interrogation, we may detain other people," Guler was quoted as saying by the semi-official Anatolia news agency.
Four terrorists attacked the U.S. Consulate General in Istanbul with pistols and shotguns on Wednesday.
A white car carrying the four people came to the scene of attack and three of the assailants got out of the car and fired at police officer standing sentry in front of the U.S. Consulate General.
An armed clash erupted as the police officer together with two others patrolling in the neighborhood responded to the fire. Three assailants who got out of the car were killed. One policeman died in the scene while two others were undergoing treatment due to injuries in hospital.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Turkey
#1
Given the Turkish military's response to these kinds of things, it most undoubtedly is a suicide attack. The suicide will just be somewhat delayed.
Talks have succeeded between the Tehreek-e-Taliban and political authorities in Jamrud tehsil, defusing tension in the area, Dawn News reported on Friday. The channel quoted official sources as saying that the talks were held in the Malagori area of the Jamrud tehsil, adding that the Tehreek-e-Taliban said that it would not challenge the writ of the government and would maintain peace in the area. Separately, a temporary ceasefire was announced on Friday between the Lashkar-e-Islam (LI) and the Ansarul Islam in Tirah Valley.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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Top|| File under: Taliban
Unmanned United States drones armed with missiles have stepped up patrols over villages along the Pak-Afghan border, hunting for Taliban and Al Qaeda militants and fraying nerves below.
Pashtun villagers living on the frontier call them 'buzzers', and the aircraft have increasingly taken to the skies, causing sleepless nights and occasionally raining down death. "We're sick of these drones, they're driving us crazy," said Sher Shah, a government official in South Waziristan's Wana. "They fly so low at night we can't sleep!"
The Predators, capable of carrying two anti-tank Hellfire missiles, can remain aloft for up 24 hours -- providing the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with a wealth of intelligence beamed live from its hi-tech cameras. They have struck several times in northwest Pakistan this year, killing dozens of suspected militants.
Sometimes villagers can spot the drones -- a tiny speck in the sky -- and even fire at them with rifles. At other times the drones are too high to see, but you know they're there from the distinctive and incessant buzz given off by their rear-mounted propeller engines. The buzzing often gets louder at night as the drones patrol at lower altitudes in the darkness, villagers say.
Residents of Bajaur, another militant-plagued region on the Afghan border, said drones flew overhead all night on Thursday. "The sky is not safe, the earth is not safe, where should we go?" asked Jabbar Shah, a resident of Inayat Kalay village, about 10 kilometres from the border. "We don't know when they will strike and who they will hit. It's very worrying," he said.
Jabbar doesn't understand cause and effect yet ...
The Tribal Areas became a sanctuary for Al Qaeda and Taliban militants fleeing from Afghanistan after US-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001. Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden is also believed to be hiding on the mountainous border.
According to analysts, the Predator activity -- which Pakistan does not officially allow -- is a sign of growing US frustration with Pakistan's inability to tackle the militants. Some US politicians, including presidential candidate Barack Obama, have even suggested that the United States should attack Al Qaeda inside Pakistan without Pakistani approval.
Pakistan, which has been trying to negotiate peace with the militants, has ruled out allowing foreign troops on its soil.
For the time being, at least, it looks as if the United States will rely on its drones, and people on the border will continue living in fear.
Malik Khairdin, a tribal elder in Wana, said he had stopped letting too many cars park outside his house or allowing guests to stay because that might be spotted by the drones. "We fear we might be hit on suspicion of being Al Qaeda," Reuters quoted him as saying.
On Friday, tribesmen staged a protest by convening a jirga against the unusual increase in drone flights over South Waziristan and its adjoining areas, Online reported. Tribal leader Malik Nur Zada informed the jirga that the tribesmen were greatly disturbed by the spy planes due to the noise.
Addressing the jirga, Political Agent Fazal Rabbi Khan assured the tribesmen that their problems would soon be sorted out, adding that several developmental projects were progressing in the area.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/12/2008
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#1
heh..."they're driving us crazy"
make that "crazier"
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/12/2008 0:18
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#2
perhaps the Taliban Air Force could take action? Mahmoud in a lawnchair with 75 helium balloons and an AK
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/12/2008 0:20
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More in this article including: WANA: Eleven people including nine security personnel were injured during US air strike in Angoor Ada area near Wana. According to sources, US jets carried out bombardment in Angoor Ada area on Thursday night. Nine security officials and two civilians were injured whereas four vehicles were destroyed in the airstrike. The injured were shifted to Wana hospital.
A private TV channel reported that at least nine people, seven of them soldiers, were injured overnight in a mortar attack in a Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan, a security official said Friday. A market and a Frontier Corps camp in the Angoor Ada area of South Waziristan came under attack from across the border, following an assault by Taliban insurgents on a camp of US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan. Many mortars were fired from across the border, which hit a market and the Frontier Corps camp, injuring two civilians and seven soldiers, a local security official told AFP on condition of anonymity. According to a private TV channel, the rockets and shells were fired by US forces from Machidad camp which was attacked by Taliban. After the attack carried out by Taliban on Machi-dad camp, allied forces fired more than sixty shells on Pakistan's soil.
Ten mortar shells have also been fired from the Afghanistan side, which landed in Angor Adda, Baghar and Mousa Naka, the locals said.
According to the local people, rockets are being fired on daily basis in Pakistani area, which created sense of harassment among the inhabitants and started migration to safer areas.
..
It was further learned that the native tribal masses held a local jirga that was attended by 30 tribal notables who register protest in the traditional way by beating drums with specific tune and while addressing the Jirga Malik Nur Zada a tribal notable informed that the tribal masses were severely disturbed with spying planes flights due to their heavy noise.
any way a speaker on a predator could play those drum licks?
US gets ready for ‘hot pursuit’
Hafiz Sanaullah
PESHAWAR: Perhaps Pakistanis are taking it light but Washington means it. Nobody knows whose fault it is behind the spill over of the US war on terror from the bordering Afghanistan to the tribal areas of Pakistan. The Washington-Islamabad-Kabul troika must be blamed for its failure in coordination at least. Several past attempts against terrorism resulted in split because of lack of confidence coupled with suspicion against each other. The US is suspicious of Pakistan. Washington believes its more calls went unheard by Islamabad. Why not more calls for Karzai? one wonders. Kabul is playing blame game. Karzai has thrown the entire dirt on Islamabad bothering little about his own responsibility. Pakistan is feeling uneasy amidst its sacrifices as frontline ally, doing more than more without recognition. Karzai thinks it is he to rule Kabul and Pakistan to fight militants. Pakistan says Karzai should act on its own side of the border and let Pakistan do so on its side of the border. Once little mouth became louder mouth when Karzai declared Afghan forces would enter into the tribal areas of Pakistan and themselves pick Baitullah Mehsood and Maulana Fazlullah and others. Pakistanis raised their eyebrows over such a statement from a person who was provided bread and butter with shelter for over twenty years in a country whom Karzai declared his second home. But some Pakistanis believe and rightly believe it was not Karzai. It was his master's voice.
Of late, a threat came from Americans. The hot pursuit chorus voices, calling for operation against the militants inside the tribal areas, are growing day by day. Three US congressmen revealed that American commandos are ready to raid the tribal belt in hot pursuit. President Bush has gone too far. He gave the line to the next US president saying that Pakistan would be a challenge for him and not Iraq and Afghanistan. The increase in the strength of American marines to 40,000 is nowadays talk of the day since Afghanistan based NATO forces chief expressed inability to fight against Taliban with the existing strength of force. Pakistan opted for and initiated dialogue with the militants which the US and west opposed. Pakistan says talks are on with those Taliban who are willing for peace accord. Protagonists of dialogue believe the militants would be binding under the accord to desist from attacks. The US and west say talks would refresh the militants for more attacks on their interest. Pakistan gave second thought to dialogue and planned to carry out operation to wipe out the militants from their hideouts. But the missile attack by the US drone in Mohmand tribal agency on June 11 killing 11 Pakistani security personnel and eight civilians raised the morale of the militants for strengthening the backing of the masses. Pakistan described this attack as cowardly. The US regretted but not apologized. However, Washington assured such attack would not be repeated. The US does not seem to be serious. Its drones' intrusion into the space territory of tribal areas has become daily routine, panicking the tribesmen in the tribal belt. The US led forces advanced and concentration on the Pakistani tribal border must be embarrassing the newly elected democratic govt. Just on the night between Thursday and Friday, a Pakistani check post came under mortar shelling attack in Zaira Laita in Angur Adda, 25 kilometer west of Wana, headquarters of South Waziristan, wounding eight Pakistani security personnel. Moreover, 10 mortar shells were fired on the mountains inside Pakistan from Barmal area of Afghanistan and these mortar shells burst with a big bang in Angur Adda, Baghar and Musa Neka creating great panic in these three areas. Unilateral US action inside Pakistan would, no doubt, inflame the Pakistanis at the public level both in settled and tribal areas and trigger retaliatory attacks.
Amidst blame game of Karzai and US threats, NWFP remained in the grip of militancy. The uncertain situation of insecurity was so escalated that even Peshawar, the provincial capital was threatened to be occupied by the militants. The kidnapping of 16 Christians from the heart of Peshawar worked. Islamabad initiated military operation, and blew over two dozens hideouts of Mangal Bagh, chief of Lashkar-e-Islam in Bara. His house was turned into debris. He and his volunteers quietly slipped into deep remote and inaccessible valley of Tirah. A tribal jirga intervened and made Mangal Bagh binding to accept the government terms.
This followed Hangu operation at the pattern of Bara operation. The troubled Doaba was occupied by the militants as they besieged the police station to free their over half a dozen militants including their commander. However, the military cleared the area from the militants.
The US must give Islamabad free hand to initiate tackling with the militants in its own way. It should also ask the same to Kabul and keep Karzai's mouth shut against Pakistan. Islamabad know that the moment suicide bomb explosion shook the Indian Embassy in Kabul, it was Karzai who phoned the Indian prime minister holding Pakistan responsible for it even before letting the dust to settle. It was another matter that India evaded blaming Islamabad. Pakistan denied involvement and White House supported.
Analysts say the US should refrain from physically entering into Pakistan in hot pursuit and leave it to Islamabad to clear the mess. The US is in haste which won't work.
#12
They don't like the noise of a Predator drone, eh? Time to send across 10 B-52s loaded to the max with 500lb bombs. Fly the BUFFS at 45,000 feet, with TOT of 2AM. Let them start dropping bombs from the south, working north until bombs have been dropped on the entire NWFP. I don't believe there'll be much complaining about "mere" drones ever again. However, in case there is, rinse and repeat three or four nights in a row.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/12/2008 14:56
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#13
I'll get you my pretty, and your little taliban too!
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.
HANOI, Vietnam, July 11 (AP) Five people, including three children, died in central Vietnam when 30-year-old unexploded ordnance left behind from the Vietnam War exploded, police and state media reported Friday. Three boys, aged 12 to 14, were killed in an explosion Thursday in the Hai Lang district of Quang Tri province, said a district police officer. The boys discovered four unexploded bombs in bushes and the explosives went off when they examined them, he said. 
CHITTAGONG, Bangladesh, July 11 (AFP) Four members of one family were trampled to death early Friday after a herd of wild elephants strayed into a remote village in southeastern Bangladesh, police said. The incident happened in Banderbon district, around 140 kilometres south of the port city Chittagong, the area's deputy police chief Syed Tariqul Hasan told AFP. 
Sudan formally asked the Arab League on Saturday to hold an emergency meeting of foreign ministers after reports the International Criminal Court's (ICC) prosecutor may seek the arrest of Sudan's president. A senior European diplomat said on Friday the ICC's prosecutor would likely seek President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's arrest in a new Darfur war crimes case he will open on Monday.
A divorcee has been found guilty of plotting to murder her multi-millionaire partner after she hired an "assassin" on a website called www.Hitman.us.com. Sharon Collins, 45, a divorced mother-of-two, is said to have hatched a conspiracy with a man from the site, an Egyptian poker player who called himself Tony Luciano, to murder PJ Howard, a property tycoon worth £10 million and his two sons.
A strong political debate is being waged in Baghdad on the role the Shiite supreme religious authority in Najaf, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, played in negotiations between Iraq and the US on a memorandum of security.
BAGHDAD - Hundreds of followers of a radical Shiite cleric in Iraq have taken to the streets to protest a proposed security agreement between Iraq and the United States. 
Somali troops have shot dead seven civilians in southern Mogadishu after accusing them of being Islamic insurgents.
After weeks of political deadlock, Lebanon's Prime Minister announced Friday that a new 30-member cabinet had been formed, opening the door to reconciliation among fighting factions. The country, which has suffered repeated bouts of violence over the past two years, had been without a cabinet for six weeks. Aya Batrawy has more from our Middle East bureau in Cairo.
The Bush administration on Friday rejected regulating greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, saying it would damage the U.S. economy and cause too many job losses.
Militants will start killing a group of hostages if the government does not release several insurgent prisoners within a day, a Pakistani Taliban spokesman threatened Friday. A suspected militant leader is among those the Taliban want freed.
Israeli prosecutors announced an expansion of their corruption investigation into Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Friday, saying they suspected he fraudulently billed multiple state agencies for the same flights when he was mayor and trade minister and used the extra money for personal trips and vacations.
After Friday's questioning, Mr. Olmert's office issued a statement that "the earth did not shake and the sky did not fall," meaning that despite predictions leaked to the press in advance of the questioning suggesting that it would be the end of his political career, little of substance has changed. The statement said the questioning was standard and referred to business Mr. Olmert had conducted abroad while mayor and trade minister.
With John McCain and Barack Obama each making a special effort to attract voters from the opposing party, the veep-stakes contest is especially interesting this cycle.
(Xinhua) -- U.S. Republican Jackie Speier, in her first bill as a member of Congress, is proposing a national speed limit to save gas, it was reported on Friday. Speier sets the limit of 60 mph for freeways in urban areas and65 mph in less populated areas as a way to address rising gas prices, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. 
A female soldier who once fought off a suspected Iraqi insurgent has won a place in the final of Miss England. Katrina Hodge, 21, will participate in the contest in July, having already won the Miss Tunbridge Wells crown.
Zimbabwe is saying that international sanctions against the ruling government could lead to civil war.
The United States Friday warned Sudan against retaliating against U.N. peacekeepers, foreign diplomats or others for expected genocide charges against the country's president, Omar al-Bashir. Action by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against the Sudanese leader is expected Monday. 
(Xinhua) -- U.S. President George W. Bush called for Congress on Friday to approve oil drilling in offshore waters and in the Alaskan wildlife refuge to push American through "tough economic times." 
A Lashkar-e-Islam (LI) commander said on Friday that LI chief Mangal Bagh has given his consent to a jirga's peace agreement with the government and said the LI would abide by all the terms and conditions. 
(Xinhua) -- The parliament of the northern Belgian region of Flanders approved the Lisbon Treaty on Thursday, making Belgium the 22nd European Union (EU) member state to complete the ratification process of the EU treaty. 
(Xinhua) -- Istanbul Governor Muammer Guler said on Friday that Wednesday's attack on the U.S. Consulate General in the Turkish city of Istanbul was "undoubtedly a suicide attack." 
Unmanned United States drones armed with missiles have stepped up patrols over villages along the Pak-Afghan border, hunting for Taliban and Al Qaeda militants and fraying nerves below. 
