All 300,000 public pools in the United States must install a permanent fixed elevator for the handicapped by next Tuesday, or face American Disability Act lawsuits from trial lawyers.
#2
This is going to be costly and open the door to frivolous lawsuits. An early payoff to the the trial lawyers for the money they are going to give to the 2012 Obama campaign.
Also that a lot of people (kids who tend to play on permanent elevators) are going to get hurt because the pool is often not supervised (think hotels, apartment buildings, etc...).
But hey - that would be even more $$$ for the Trial lawyers and their contribution to the Democrats. What's a little injury or permanent brain damage compared to that? (/SARC!!!!!)
#4
Not sure about this one - the public or community pools I've seen stateside typically already have proper handicap ways + accesses more than wide enuff for wheelchairs.
#5
Don't see this being an issue at all. All around my area all community pools have clear handicap ramps and I've seen lifeguards get up to go ask if they need anymore assistance. They have even taken out the normal steps or ladders to get into the pool. Just a gradual slide into the deep-end now like a concrete beach.
Posted by: Charles ||
03/14/2012 21:39
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#6
Remember it all started with 'reasonable accommodations'. Like the food police [from 'recommendations' to enforcement], it ends up being something that is dictated no matter what the cost.
In the New York Times there is an absolutely devastating attack on the culture of Goldman Sachs, by one of its senior executives. He announces that he is resigning today because he has had it with the firm's alleged practices. He criticises the way in which one of the world's largest and most important investment banks now looks after the interests of its clients.
Nato has ordered a security lockdown at its massive base in central Afghanistan after a car surged on to an airfield and burst into flames just as the US defence secretary landed for an official visit.
The incident happened as Leon Panetta touched down at Camp Bastion in Helmand province and prompted a security alert as investigators tried to establish whether he was the target of an attack.
A man was pulled from the burning car and is now being treated at a hospital on the base. Sources said the vehicle was about 100 metres from Panetta's aircraft when it crashed, and that neither he nor any members of his entourage were in any danger. However, the Nato-led International Security and Assistance Force (Isaf) must now determine whether the driver, thought to be an Afghan, was involved in a failed terrorist plot.
Though details remain sketchy, the Pentagon confirmed the vehicle involved was a pickup truck that had been stolen from a soldier in a car-jacking shortly before it drove at speed on to the runway.
"Cheez Sarge, stolen truck on the runway just as the Boss lands. Think it might be terrorists?"
"I dunno, Kowalski, I dunno."
#2
Update A British serviceman was also injured in the incident when the local employee at Camp Bastion deliberately drove the stolen vehicle into a group of soldiers undergoing training near the airfield.
The Afghan managed to get through the heavy security cordon surrounding the airfield in the middle of the base and onto the runway where the politician was arriving.
He managed to break through the perimeter surrounded by armed security and large concrete block guards.
The truck, possibly a pick-up, caught fire and crashed into a ditch on the runway close to where Mr PanettaÂ’s jet had just landed or was coming into land.
Initial military reports indicate there were no explosive devices inside the vehicle at Camp Bastion. The car was heading towards a welcoming committee for Mr Panetta when it burst into flames and the alleged perpetrator was arrested.
#3
It was the new replacement for leading Afghanistan into the future from the secret cabal somewhere in Maryland! Kabobs Rule! Army is getting new flag check it out fox news!
#6
NYT article sez it was not the truck, but the Afghan himself that was on fire: Mr. Little said that the stolen vehicle had not exploded, contrary to some earlier reports, and that Mr. Panetta had never been in danger. But he could not explain the AfghanÂ’s motive or explain why he was on fire.
Allow me to suggest that no explanation is needed beyond the volatile nature of your everyday Musselman. Spontaneous human combustion is, no doubt, a common but underreported phenomenon in regions afflicted by the Religion of Pieces.
Less than a week after a US staff sergeant allegedly massacred 16 civilians in Kandahar, American soldiers were banned from bringing guns into a talk by Mr Panetta at a base in Helmand province.
Around 200 troops who had gathered in a tent at Camp Leatherneck were told "something had come to light" and asked abruptly to file outside and lay down their automatic rifles and 9mm pistols.
"Somebody got itchy, that's all I've got to say. Somebody got itchy – we just adjust," said the sergeant who was told to clear the hall of weapons.
Major General Mark Gurganus later said he gave the order because Afghan troops attending the talk were unarmed and he wanted the policy to be consistent for all.
#8
"Major General Mark Gurganus later said he gave the order because Afghan troops attending the talk were unarmed and he wanted the policy to be consistent for all. "
#9
Sounds to me that since so many of our guys hjave been shot by their Afghan counter parts, it makes perfect sense that Pantyetta would demand our guys to disarm themselves.
Posted by: George Ebbeamp4828 ||
03/14/2012 21:21
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#10
I would think if I suspected an attack the safest place in Afghanistan would be in a tent with 200 Marines with guns.
#12
Panetta didn't order it, at least from what I reading. An itchy commander worried about PR, or an assistant to the SoD. I'd also like to point out we STILL don't know what the hell the story is regarding the soldier who did the killings. Friday News Dump edition will be informative I hope.
Posted by: Charles ||
03/14/2012 21:45
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#13
After the Fort Hood incident with just one person having a gun, now in the midst of lots of them. This qualifies as a retirement submission. Why should any marine or soldier have any trust of their superiors with an act like that.
President Barack Obama is warning Iran that the window for dealing with its nuclear program through diplomatic channels is "shrinking."
Obama says he still prefers to use diplomacy to get Iran to abandon its nuclear program. But he says diplomacy requires having somebody on the other side of the table who is taking the matter seriously.
The president says he hopes Iran understands that diplomacy is their "best bet" and the Islamic regime needs to seize that opportunity. Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes and says it is not seeking a bomb.
Obama spoke Wednesday at a White House news conference alongside British Prime Minister David Cameron.
#2
"Obama: Iran Nuclear Program Diplomacy Window Is 'Shrinking'"
I'd say the same about Bambi's b*lls - if he had any. >:-(
Posted by: Barbara ||
03/14/2012 19:15
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#3
Wait. Last week he said attacking would be a mistake and strongly preferred maximum delay. This week he implies that the attack window is expanding. WTF?
If I was advising Dinnerjacket, I'd say this means the US will aid Israel, so long as the moron in the White House gets to take credit if it's popular and successful.
Security services in Azerbaijan have incarcerated 22 people they say were hired by Iran to carry out terrorist attacks against the U.S. and Israeli embassies as well as Western-linked groups and companies. Iran will be "rejecting" the arrests and blaming them on Zionists within 24 hours. You heard read it here first.
The national security ministry said Wednesday that the 22, all Azerbaijan citizens, had been trained in Iran, its southern neighbor, by Iran's Revolutionary Guard. It did not specify when the arrests were made.
In February, Azerbaijan announced the arrest of another suspected terrorist group allegedly working for Iran's secret services, and in January it incarcerated two people accused of plotting to kill two teachers at a Jewish school in the capital, Baku.
In 2007, Azerbaijan convicted 15 people in connection with an alleged Iranian-linked spy network accused of passing intelligence on Western and Israeli activities.
Azerbaijani authorities said a Revolutionary Guard operative, Akper Pakravesh, recruited an Azeri identified as N. Kerimov while he was in Iran in 1999 and gave him the job of assembling a group of other Azerbaijanis to act as spies.
The security ministry said in its statement that Pakravesh met with members of the group in Moscow and in the Syrian capital of Damascus, ...Capital of the last overtly fascist regime in the world... providing them with financing and equipment.
Automatic assault rifles, grenades, ammunition, explosives were seized during the group's arrest, officials said.
Planned targets included diplomatic missions, the offices of a Jewish organization, the local headquarters of international oil giant BP and an American-themed fast food restaurant.
Israeli authorities have linked Iran to three other incidents -- claims that Iran denies.
Authorities in Thailand in February incarcerated a group of Iranian citizens they said were planning a kaboom on Israeli diplomats.
In the same month in New Delhi, the wife of an Israeli diplomat and three others were maimed by attackers using magnetic bombs. That same day, a similar bomb was found on the car of a driver for the Israeli Embassy in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.
Tehran denies any links to the attacks outside its borders, but accuses Israel of directing the slayings of Iranian scientists as well as other clandestine acts, such as a computer virus that targeted uranium enrichment equipment.
Azerbaijan, an oil-rich former Soviet nation of 9 million people wedged between Russia and Iran, has nurtured close relations with the United States and played an active role in Western-led counter-terrorist programs. That foreign policy has placed a strain on its ties with Iran, which hosts a sizable ethnic Azeri community.
Authorities in Baku have repeatedly insisted, however, that they will not permit use of the country for any military action against Iran.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/14/2012
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#1
I strongly suspect that Iran's overseas intelligence operations command has been deeply penetrated and is leaking like a sieve.
There hasn't been this many compromised intelligence operations since the Russians gave the Lebanese assistance to bust many of the Israeli rings in Lebanon.
... Admittedly, comparing radical feminists to Shakers is a stretch. While both tendentiously preach equality of the sexes as the primary virtue, the Shakers approached their ideal through celibacy and fruitful labor while radical feminists seem to revel in public displays of outrage whenever the media gives them occasion to sally forth from their academic sinecures.
I suppose this means that aside from the nightly news archives, radical feminists will only leave behind a legacy of endowed chairs rather than the kind that go around your dining room table. And it is primarily through such academic institutions that their poisonous philosophy continues to propagate, since transmitting anti-family values through the patriarchic hegemony of the family would entail a self contradiction. Not to mention the fact that the actual experience of motherhood tends to undermine radical feminism in predictable ways.
Perhaps this is why practitioners like Sandra Fluke seek to avoid motherhood. Source of funds aside, one can only wish her the greatest success in this objective, along with all like-minded feminists that would like to join her and the Shakers as colorful footnotes in history. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
03/14/2012
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A new deal allowing the United States and its NATO allies to use a Russian air base for transit of troops and military cargo to Afghanistan would help ensure Russia's own security, Russia's foreign minister said Wednesday.
Sergey Lavrov said a plan to permit the U.S. and other NATO nations to use the base in the city of Ulyanovsk on the Volga River will soon be considered by the Russian Cabinet. If approved, the deal could help repair Russian ties with the United States, which have become increasingly strained over Washington's missile defense plans in Europe and the Syrian crisis.
Moscow has provided the U.S. and other NATO member states with air corridors and railway routes for carrying supplies to and from Afghanistan. The new agreement would for the first time allow alliance members to set up a logistics facility for troops and cargo on Russian territory.
Lavrov strongly defended such a deal, saying the success of NATO's mission is essential for fending off the spread of terrorism and illegal drugs from Afghanistan into ex-Soviet Central Asian nations and Russia.
#3
Now that it looks like we're about to hand over Afghanistan to the Taliban, these guys decide to make nice. A day late, and a dollar short. I hope they had fun jeering from the sidelines. Because our problems are about to become their problems, given the Taliban's ambitions in Central Asia, and the likelihood that Afghanistan will become both a training ground and a funnel for jihadis and equipment into the region.
#6
Now that they've "beaten" us out of Afghanistan, they will of course turn to closer to home. Like Pakistan, or worse for Russia, Chechnya. Chechnya probably third though, since if the Jihadists get the Pakistan nukes Russia HAS to know they are vunerable.
Honestly I see Russia getting hit before us by a Jihadi nuke.
Posted by: Charles ||
03/14/2012 21:35
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SRAELI warplanes have conducted two air strikes in northern Gaza, several hours after militants fired rockets at southern Israel, the military says, despite both sides agreeing a truce.
The raids were launched after a Palestinian rocket hit a town in southern Israel, lightly injuring one person, an army spokesman said.
Palestinian security sources confirmed only one raid which struck a wood yard in northern Gaza City, setting the structure alight but without causing injuries.
But a military statement said it had targeted "two terror activity sites in the northern Gaza Strip" in response to rocket fire on southern Israel yesterday, which came just hours after Israel and Gaza militant groups had agree to observe a ceasefire.
"The targeting of these sites is in response to the rockets fired at Israel over the past day," it said. The spokesman said eight rockets had exploded in Israeli territory throughout yesterday.
Under the terms of a truce agreement which came into force early yesterday, both Israel and militants from Islamic Jihad, who were responsible for most of the rocket attacks, had agreed to hold their fire.
But there was no indication that either side saw the rocket fire, or the subsequent raids, as putting an end to the Egyptian-brokered agreement.
The fighting erupted on Friday when Israel assassinated a militant leader, prompting armed groups to launch a barrage of rockets across the border.
Israel hit back with multiple air strikes, leaving 25 people dead, most of them militants.
In a separate development, medics said a seven-year-old Baraka al-Mughrabi died today from injuries sustained in a shooting accident at a funeral of one of the people killed in the Gaza confrontations.
Family members told AFP he had been critically injured in the head during funeral in eastern Gaza City when there was gunfire in the air.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/14/2012 13:46
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#2
Interestingly, I saw this little gem in the middle of a Jerusalem Post article from the 11th:
According to Mordechai, since the beginning of the violence on Friday, 150 rockets have been fired by Palestinian terror groups, although 40 landed inside Gaza and another 37 were intercepted by the Iron Dome counter-rocket defense system.
In other words, almost a quarter of the thingies shot off by the Gazans landed in Gaza itself. No wonder they were ready to cry "Hudna!" (Crying Pax is against their religion, when unbelievers are at the receiving end.)
Iran has signalled it is unwilling to grant a request by international nuclear inspectors for unfettered access to a restricted military complex they suspect may house a chamber designed to test explosives used in atomic weapons triggers.
In its first public statement on the matter since the leader of the International Atomic Energy Agency expressed irritation last week about Iran's lack of co-operation, Iran also denied suggestions it had sought to cleanse the military complex, called Parchin, to eliminate any trace of incriminating activity.
''The site is a military site and conventional military activities are being carried out in the site,'' the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, said, according to Iranian news agencies.
Ridiculing reports that Iran had tried to clean up the site, he said: ''If military nuclear activities are carried out, evidence of them can never be cleaned up, and the issue is mostly propaganda.''
Iran's unwillingness to grant the inspectors' request could complicate resumed talks announced last week between Iran and the five permanent United Nations Security Council members plus Germany over Iran's nuclear energy program, an increasing source of world tension.
#5
Wait, they refused them entry? Gee, there must be a mistake. Champ promised Bebe that this was going to work. And Champ never bluffs and is really really smart, he went to Harvard you know, and knows lotsa stuff ......
Syrian athletes could compete at the London 2012 Olympics under a neutral flag as the crippling uprising against President Basar al-Assad rages on. They can join the Taiwanese...
It is one of the "ad hoc" solutions which could be explored by the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) executive board if the Syrian unrest compromises the country's national Olympic committee.
Athletes could compete under the Olympic Flag - a scenario seen at Sydney 2000 for Olympians from East Timor, the IOC's director of relations with national Olympic committees (NOC) and Olympic solidarity Pere Miro told the Around the Rings website.
More than 7,500 people have been killed in the year-long conflict between Syrian forces and rebels, according to United Nations estimates, sparking concern about whether officials close to the regime should be allowed at the London 2012 Games.
#1
Read another that complained they have too few assets in the region to monitor the region, catching only 1/3 of known drug flights--drones, etc. tied up in ME/SAsia. One Palestinian cabbie in USVI was all excited about their growing mosque with all the converts and Muslims coming from "down island"...hop, skip, and jump to mainland by boat or with daily flights to PR and south Florida. Definitely a weak link in border security.
#2
Just think how much heroin and hashish Iranians could bring to a country like Venezuela or even Mexico either in their diplomatic pouches or openly. And you know that with a border with Afghanistan they have access to all the dope they could possible sell. And with Obama refusing to secure our border with Mexico it is coming to a street near you. Not to mention the guns.
* DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > IRAN AND HEZBOLLAH HAVE SA-24 "GRINCHES" [advanced MANPADS], vee Uncle Muammar's former arsenal back in Libyuh.
Sooner or later the USDHS + USDOD should expect to see the super-techy stuff, including NucWeaps, in the hands of MilTerrs = NGOS, Islamist or other, operat in the lower Americas.
* FREEREPUBLIC > [Rep. Peter T. King, R-NY] KING ANNOUNCES HEARING ON IRAN/HEZBOLLAH THREAT TO US HOMELAND.
IMo, the Hearing should analyze the CURREN STATE OF THE "GLOBAL JIHAD" + ISLAMIST NUCLEARIZATION,PROLIFERATION; + any Strategic threat to CONUS-NORAM + US Allies therefrom.
* E.g. TOPIX > ISRAEL + PLIGHT OF MIDDLE EAST CHRISTIANS.
Iff post-"Arab Spring" Egypt + Libyuh + now Syruh is any measure, ISLAMIST-LED "ANTI-TYRANNY/DESPOTISM" NEED NOT BE OR INFER PRO-TOLERANCE OR "NEUTRALITY" VEE NON-MUSLIM MINORITIES.
Similar precept as per GLOBAL ECON MARKETS . i.e. WHAT NEW MARKETS OR ACCESS IS THE ECON, DEBT-BURDENED US GETTING OUT FROM ALL THIS GWOT + OWG-NWO + "GLOBALISM"???
I don't see the Bammer nor GOP-DEMS telling the Teamsters, Longshoremen, etal. Organized Unions that their Members have to go to back to school to learn Robotics, Aviation Piloting-Navigation-Mechanics, Starship = SpaceShip Engineering + Astronomical Sciences, etc.???
#1
Place a radio controlled mine behind the neckk and another at the Heart, blow uy when the suspect meets with his masters,
NO MORE repeat Bombers, like the 911 hijackers.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/14/2012 13:34
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The Orlando Sanford International Airport is among the top 30 highest volume airports in the world, and now that congress has said airports can opt out of using TSA screeners, and use private screeners instead, this could result in a stampede by other major airports to escape the TSA.
For its part, the TSA is seeing an increasing number of existential threats to its existence, and so is desperately trying to come up with ways to both justify itself as a huge bureaucracy, as well as silence its critics, by whatever means possible.
#3
We've pulled out Iraq and soon out of Afghanistan. The time to start drawing down the TSA/Homeland Security troops is also at hand. If we can cut 100,000 from DoD, we certainly can cut those two agencies as well.
#5
#3 We've pulled out Iraq and soon out of Afghanistan. The time to start drawing down the TSA/Homeland Security troops is also at hand. If we can cut 100,000 from DoD, we certainly can cut those two agencies as well.
Posted by Procopius2k
No can do! A large portion of TSA employees were recruited from urban cess pools of dedicated democratic voters. Take those rich boy Allen Edmonds off and step through the screener!
#6
Low-level TSA can easily be bought--drugs and weapons have been intercepted not only in Orlando but several others in Florida. Lots of dailies to Caribbean.
HamasÂ’ weapons arsenal is growing deep and wide, sporting rockets such as the new and advanced Iranian made Fajr-3, KatyushaÂ’s/GradÂ’s, Anti-tank missiles, and Heavy Mortars. Each rocket holds its own advantage, such as the upgraded Grad rocket reaching a frightening range of 30 miles within Israel.
Image: Number of Israeli casualties by year since 2006, types of rockets (including provenance and basic specs), rocket ranges including the Fajr-3.
Over the past 6 years, Hamas rocket fire has killed 44 innocent Israeli civilians and injured a staggering 1,687.
President Obama's national health care law will cost $1.76 trillion over a decade, according to a new projection released today by the Congressional Budget Office, rather than the $940 billion forecast when it was signed into law.
Democrats employed many accounting tricks when they were pushing through the national health care legislation, the most egregious of which was to delay full implementation of the law until 2014, so it would appear cheaper under the CBO's standard ten-year budget window and, at least on paper, meet Obama's pledge that the legislation would cost "around $900 billion over 10 years." When the final CBO score came out before passage, critics noted that the true 10 year cost would be far higher than advertised once projections accounted for full implementation.
Today, the CBO released new projections from 2013 extending through 2022, and the results are as critics expected: the ten-year cost of the law's core provisions to expand health insurance coverage has now ballooned to $1.76 trillion. That's because we now have estimates for Obamacare's first nine years of full implementation, rather than the mere six when it was signed into law. Only next year will we get a true ten-year cost estimate, if the law isn't overturned by the Supreme Court or repealed by then. Given that in 2022, the last year available, the gross cost of the coverage expansions are $265 billion, we're likely looking at about $2 trillion over the first decade, or more than double what Obama advertised.
"I’ve been doing everything in our powers to do what we can to reduce these gas prices,” Energy Secretary Steven Chu told the Senate hearing on Tuesday. Sen. Lee then asked Chu: “Are you saying that you no longer share the view that we need to figure out how to boost gasoline prices in America?”
“I no longer share that view,” Sec. Chu said. Chu is chauffeured to and from work on the taxpayers’ dime.
h/t Belmont
A flag depicting an image of President Barack Obama was taken down from Lake County Democratic Party headquarters today after several veterans complained it was a "desecration."
A short confrontation at the Democratic office ended when party chairwoman Nancy Hurlbert took down the controversial flag, which had been flying under an American flag on the same flagpole.
Video at this link. It is, as reader rjschwarz notes, downright creepy.
#6
Yep, if you didn't think the dems were commies before, now you know.
Right from the old Trotsky, Lenin playbook. Create a cult of personality around a leader...The satraps around the empty suit are about one jump from the propoganda hacks that surrounded Kimmie...and I dare say Adolph?
The entire Obama campaign in 2008 was essentially a cult of personality model. No one looked at his qualifications, all the left and those in the middle dupped into voting for him looked at was the gestures and posing and messianic trappings of the campaign.
Remember the Greek temple for his acceptance speech? The Dems did Albert Speer proud with that one.
So you can take the swastika off of the red flag and put Obama's face on it. What the dems want is a totalitarian government.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
03/14/2012 10:56
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Posted by: Jan ||
03/14/2012 14:07
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#9
Nothing at all is sacrosanct with these people.
I do not respect democrats - any of them at all as they have absolutely no respect for me.
See how this is going to work from here on out?
Separating the Wheat from the Chaff.
You do not respect my individual liberty all the while voting for scumbags to turn us into some soviet style dictatorship. All the while mocking our civil institutions.
#14
The other thing is this--Obama grew up under a dictatorship, and I'm positive he was impressed with the power. THAT is his understanding of the "presidency" -- 'PRESIDENT' Suharto.
And "emergency" of great magnitude followed by a "temporary" dismissal of the Constitution, or part of it, is important in his little plan.
#15
It's a pity the Liberal Media has caused a backfire. They sensationalized one celebrity after the other. They gave Obama treatment, interviews, moved football games. He's now in that "Celebrity but I don't know why" list more than actual being a Politician or Symbol.
Posted by: Charles ||
03/14/2012 21:43
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The Russian daily Kommersant reports that at a meeting at the UN on March 12, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov to inform Iran that it has one last chance to negotiate and avoid war.
The newspaper said on March 14 that last chance will come next month when Iranian representatives attend six-nation talks, comprising Russia, China, Britain, the U.S., France, and Germany).
Kommersant reported that, during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent visit to the U.S., he told President Barack Obama that Israel expected U.S. support for an attack to cripple Iran's nuclear program. According to the daily, if this support failed to materialize, Netanyahu had let it be known that Obama could expect to lose his support from the Jewish lobby in the U.S. ahead of the country's presidential elections in November.
The article cites unnamed officials in the Russian Defense Ministry as saying Russia is already preparing for the consequences of U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran, particularly the possibility that it could unleash a wave of refugees across Iran's northern borders into the Caucasus.
Iran's parliament has begun the questioning of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over a long list of accusations including mismanaging the nation's economy and challenging the country's supreme leader.
Conservative lawmaker Ali Motahari, who is a prominent opponent of the president, posed the questions to Ahmadinejad Wednesday in an open session of the parliament broadcast live on state radio
"The Islamic world is in crisis with the publication of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses. Rushdie wants Pakistan, the stronghold of Islam, to fall. Determined to foil his plans are a trio of brothers who form a holy army to destroy Rushdie.
"Rushdie plans to drive the final nails into the coffin of Islam by opening a new chain of Casin*s and Discos, spreading contemptible vice and debauchery.
"Mustafa Qureshi, hen pecked to death by his demented wife, decides to call it a day with his day job at the Police station and induct his unemployed brothers to create a Mujahid (God's soldiers) trio whose sole aim is to seek out and destroy the despised Salman Rushdie before he manages to destroy all virtue and decency on the planet."
At various points in the movie, Rushdie's henchmen kill off various affiliated jihadis, and Rushdie dips his handkerchief into their blood so he can snort it. Among the assassination efforts includes several song and dance routines, and the "heroic" trio of assassins wearing Batman costumes.
Eventually, cornered in his stately mansion, Rushdie is confronted by the trio, who, when they finally have an opportunity to kill him, instead stand around praising Allan as flying UFO Korans appear in the sky and zap Rushdie with lightning bolt laser beams.
Somewhat dated, but the Mollison and Fischer medical experiments on the Herero of SW Africa should support this theory. It became the foundation for some of Dr. Josef Mengele's best work. Besoeker: this is far away from the WoT. I'm leaving the post stand because we have comments, but no more of this, please. AoS.
#2
That this policy would eventually be broached, as this article does, was an outcome was predicted years ago by the pro-life intellectuals. The next steps are "reasoned debate", then "calls for letigitimization" based on the fact that it was discussed in scientific journals, followed by someone doing it, getting prosecuted, taken to the Supreme Court, then "legalized" through "non-prosecution" a la Roe V. Wade. The key being "non-prosecution": as long as the cops are forbidden or not allowed to arrest you, there is no downside to crimes that profit you.
This used to be my trip-wire: adoption of this measure was evidence that the process of redress was irreparably broken. Within the last month, I took a re-look at the criteria and was obliged to revise my definition of that tripwire "downwards", meaning that the trip-wire had been crossed as far back as the Clinton Presidency, but I didn't realize it until that revision took place. However, my logistical criteria, what I required to address the perpetrators, had been previously revised upwards.
Up until now, those two criteria had not crossed, meaning I was willing to use the current process of redress. Once the revision indicated they had, I started devoting my time to closing the logistical capability gap.
#3
"After listening to these two stories, I said, "You know, this is not just sin or an excess of freedom in the old sense of doing whatever you please. This is the pursuit of a counter metaphysic. In the old order, there was a sense of right and wrong and people felt obligated to conform themselves to it to a certain degree. But now the self has become God, and in doing whatever this self wants, people are not just being free, they are consciously practicing this anti-religion which overthrows all objective right and makes the self the center of the universe."
Sorry Mr. and Mrs. Cho - we had to put your son down because we met our asian-american baby quota and our Christian baby quota. Now if he was a muslim from Pakistan...
#5
Most respectively Dr. Steve, many of us DO see this as.... "Terror." I would emplore you and your colleagues to permit us to continue monitoring and reporting on it.
#6
SR - that is a very interesting discussion on the Liberal God - Moloch (or the God of child/human sacrifice).
A linked discussion ( Liberals' new/old god: Moloch
goes a bit further.
#7
Isn't it strange how we can afford all these bullshit technological tchotchkes and whatnot, and simultaneously how everyone's always talking about how great the economy's doing, and everything... BUT... the economy's so bad we have to always give in to all these chickenshit bioethicysts about their pet peeves?
#8
 Most respectively Dr. Steve, many of us DO see this as.... "Terror." I would emplore you and your colleagues to permit us to continue monitoring and reporting on it.
No. Rantburg is specifically about the war against the Caliphatists, and relatedly about the drug war because the Caliphatists finance themselves and entwine themselves with the sale of various drugs. There are plenty of websites on the internet which cover abortion and infanticide, the ideas of Dr. Kevorkian, and similar topics. Find them and add your stories to theirs. Or start your own blog, and add the URL to your Rantburg nym. I always check out the sites of our posters, and I've no doubt others here do, too.
We had eighty articles yesterday. It's getting to be too many to deal with, if one wants to do anything else beyond reading
Rantburg.
#9
I, for one, am grateful for the post and for the decision to let it stay, and especially for the links in the comments of SR and Crazyfool.
I acknowledge the fact that this is indeed far away from the STATED editorial policy of Rantburg, so thank the moderators for leaving it in with the comments and the links. Most illuminating.
#10
Besoeker, one of the reasons for the O Club is to have these kind of conversations. It's for any Rantburger who wants to poke his head in, not just officers -- whatever that term might mean at Rantburg.
And just to be clear: I agree with you that the story you posted is horrifying, and the mindset needs to be fought before it gains significant traction. But it still isn't anything to do with the war on terror,
#11
Thank you for all you do here at Rantburg. I will certainly comply with the rules of the site.
However, I do believe that modern liberalism/progressivism is a greater threat to our nation than al Qaeda, Russia, China, or any other terrorist group. We are losing the WOT because of soft-headed liberal ideas.
#12
Golly that was so easy and all before breakfast. Now let's take care of the old people and declare them dead at age what 50, 55, 60,...? And what about the people who speak out about the neo-bioethicists Nazis? Or the bloggers? Should be able to handle that by noon, eh?
#13
Don't forget those pesky Christians JohnQC - always doing the right thing, giving to others freely, and expecting some sort of moral values.... Perhaps we can feed them to the Lions?
And I second what SR-71 said - Liberalism, Progressivism, Multi-culturism, and the like is what is preventing us from properly addressing the WOT, AL-Q and it's allies.
#15
Most of us hold Holocaust revisionists and deniers in absolute contempt, as we should. We look askance, and also hold in contempt entire nations who turned a blind eye to Nazi attrocities perpetrated against the Jew during the 1930's and 1940's.
Will our children, history, and an angry God also hold us in contempt, for not speaking out about these horrible practices?
I will not bring it up again, but the atrocities perpetrated against the unborn and the new born in the name of personal convenience should be loudly shouted from every rooftop. They cannot speak for themselves. We are all they have. If we fail them we are surely doomed, and rightly so.
An Afghan man linked to the Taliban who was one of the largest heroin traffickers in the world was convicted Tuesday on charges of importing and distributing heroin and for narco-terrorism, federal officials said.
Officials with the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration said Haji Bagcho was convicted by a federal jury in Washington. They say he manufactured the drug in secret laboratories along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan.
According to the Justice Department, he sent heroin to more than 20 countries, including the United States, and proceeds from his heroin trafficking were then used to support high-level members of the Taliban to support their insurgency in Afghanistan.
Beginning in 2005 and continuing for five years, the DEA, in cooperation with Afghan authorities, conducted an investigation of Bagcho's organization.
With the help of cooperating witnesses, the DEA purchased heroin directly from the organization on two occasions, which Bagcho understood was destined for the United States, according to a Justice Department news release.
Investigators also conducted several searches of residences belonging to Bagcho and his associates, recovering evidence of drug trafficking.
During one search, ledgers belonging to the defendant were found. One ledger, cataloguing Bagcho's activities during 2006, reflected heroin transactions worth more than $250 million, according to Bagcho's ledger.
IAF aircraft struck two centers of terrorist activity in northern Gaza on Tuesday night, according to a statement by the IDF Spokesperson.
The statement said that direct hits were identified at the targets, and added that the airstrike comes in response to high trajectory fire into Israeli territory.
Despite reports that Egypt had brokered a ceasefire between Israel and the Gaza-based terror groups, which went into effect late Monday night, terrorists continued to fire rockets and missiles into Israel throughout the day on Tuesday.
One person was lightly injured on Tuesday evening after being hit in the hand by flying glass when a rocket hit Netivot. 11 people suffered shock. The attack came just hours after a pair of rockets slammed into the Ashkelon beaches. No physical injuries were reported in that attack.
During the four days of hostilities, terror groups fired more than 200 rockets at Israeli civilians, while the IAF responded by targeting the cells firing the rockets -- killing 27 Gazans, of whom 25 were terrorists.
stanley fish writing for a NYTimes campaign blog
Rather than relaxing or soft-pedaling your convictions about what is right and wrong, stay with them, and treat people you see as morally different differently. Condemn Limbaugh and say that Schultz and Maher may have gone a bit too far but that they're basically O.K. If you do that you will not be displaying a double standard; you will be affirming a single standard, and moreover it will be a moral one because you will be going with what you think is good rather than what you think is fair. "Fair" is a weak virtue; it is not even a virtue at all because it insists on a withdrawal from moral judgment.
I know the objections to what I have said here. It amounts to an apology for identity politics. It elevates tribal obligations over the universal obligations we owe to each other as citizens. It licenses differential and discriminatory treatment on the basis of contested points of view. It substitutes for the rule "don't do it to them if you don't want it done to you" the rule "be sure to do it to them first and more effectively." It implies finally that might makes right. I can live with that.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
03/14/2012
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I'd be happy to meet with the author and carry this to it's logical conclusion for him.
#2
STFU NYT. There is nothing at all moral about the owner, the paper, or the staff. Just a bunch of yentas preaching for their dear leader.
Ant-Semites and people who just plan cannot do math.
Your paper is unable to ascertain basic FACTS or even consider common sense. The editors are either blind or stupid.
Only scumbags would convert their whole paper to back the group of leftists that brought the most pain and suffering to the world in the 20'th century.
What would be fair? an expose of how you backed Mussolini, Pol Pot, North Vietnam, Hitler, and sat quiet while they shoved 12 million people into ovens.
NYT, you may cram your staff's "Morals" up your ass you pitiable dung assed creatures. You have no Virtue.
Keep masturbating to this dumb ass you backed for POTUS. You are still not going to make it through my firewall.
#4
Stanley Fish is only incidentally a blogger at the NYT and occasional contributor to the WSJ.
He is primarily an academic in legal theory and literature who managed, among other things, to utterly gut the English department at Duke when he was chair there. He has been an influential voice in favor of campus (and other) speech codes, embraces identity politics in all extreme forms and was described by Camille Paglia as a "totalitarian Tinkerbell".
Fish currently teaches law at Florida International University,
#5
...you will be affirming a single standard, and moreover it will be a moral one because you will be going with what you think is good rather than what you think is fair.
So, according to this guy, if somebody thinks it'd be a good idea to open up Stanley Fish's pompous assed head with a baseball bat, he'd have to be OK with that? Right?
#6
The truth is they don't care about the double-standard. They want to attack their ideological foes and any weapon will do. We all know it, its been the facts on the ground for decades. Hopefully Joe Sixpack knows it as well now.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
03/14/2012 15:46
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It substitutes for the rule "don't do it to them if you don't want it done to you" the rule "be sure to do it to them first and more effectively." It implies finally that might makes right. I can live with that.
Wow. The left really is going all-in for tyranny, aren't they?
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
03/14/2012 15:47
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Yep, till they find themselves lined up before the ditch. Then they'll be screaming about 'rights' they've denied others. Then the 'might makes right' argument takes a real bad turn. Having the 'It's ok as long as we do it' rammed through everyone's head, it'll be a little too late.
#12
It has been said, and I think it is correct, that the news media in America is dying for one primary reason: the public wants to read news written by objective reporters; they do not want to read about journalist's opinions pieces that so corrupt the news that it is no longer news.
If you want a newspaper to succeed, fire the journalists and hire reporters. If the reporters don't report what happens, fire them and get new ones. If it is too boring for college educated people to do this, then fire them and hire high school educated people to do this.
The editor needs to be college educated to edit, and to make sure the reporters don't make very ignorant mistakes. But even he doesn't need to be a journalist.
#13
Yep, till they find themselves lined up before the ditch.
I live for that day.
Posted by: Secret Asian Man ||
03/14/2012 19:31
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Fish currently teaches law at Florida International University.
lotp, I thought you made that up. Turns out FIU has an actual law school, which moved up 19 spots in U.S. News and World ReportÂ’s rankings, from 132 to 113. So they went from a half-assed third-tier school to a ho-hum third-tier school.
Admits 20% of everyone who applies. Out-of-state tuition: $30k/year. I.e., they're happy to fleece unwitting students whose chances of getting a job doing something other than debt collection, ambulance chasing, or running an OccuPooper protest are zip. Excuse my snobbery, but it's not a real law school and they'll never be real lawyers.
For a map, click here. For a map of Nuevo Leon state, click here. For a map of Monterrey, click here.
By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com
Six unidentified suspects were shot and killed by an Mexican Army patrol Monday night in Los Herrera municipality in Nuevo Leon state, according to Mexican news accounts.
Four men and two women were killed in the incident. Reports are unclear as to if the suspects fired on the army patrol first, but news reports make it clear shots were exchanged.
The suspects were travelling aboard a Chevrolet Aveo and a Honda sedan along Los Herrera-Cerralvo when they encountered the army patrol.
Agents with the Nuevo Leon Agencia Estatal de Investigaciones (AEI) said that several assault rifles and quantities of ammunition were found in the vehicles, along with quantities of drugs, which type was not disclosed in reports.
It was also disclosed that the dead were probably part of one of the Tamaulipas drug gangs, though the report did not elaborate.
Los Herrera is about 75 kilometers due east of Monterrey, astride a road linking Mexican Federal Highway 40 with Federal Highway 54 in Cerralvo.
Three other shootings took place Monday and Tuesday, including one Escobedo municipal traffic police agent shot dead.
A headquarters for the Nuevo Leon state Agencia Estatal de Investigaciones (AEI) was attacked by armed suspects early Tuesday morning in Montemorelos municipality.
The building on Bulevar Capitan Alonso de Leon was damaged on the outside, but no one was hurt. Five AEI agents were on duty at the facility at the time of the attack.
Mexican Army units and Nuevo Leon state police agents were dispatched to patrol the area.
An unidentified man was shot and critically wounded, and a woman was wounded in a shooting attack in south Monterrey Monday night. The male victim was out walking with his unidentified pregnant wife near the intersection of calles Paseo del Norte and Paseo Cumbre in Formerrey 45 colony, when several armed suspects shot him. Another woman, Maria Magdalena Martinez Sanchez, 30, was hit in the leg, presumably by stray rounds. Several 9mm spent shell casings were found at the scene.
An unidentified Escobedo transit police agent was shot to death in Escobedo Tuesday evening. The shooting took place at 1740 hrs near the intersection of avenidas Monterrey and Las Torres in Nueva Esperanza colony.
Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com.
[An Nahar] Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... chief Nabil al-Arabi on Tuesday called for an international probe into "crimes" committed against civilians in Syria, particularly in the flashpoint provinces of Homs and Idlib.
"Media reports about the horrible pictures concerning crimes committed against innocent civilians in Homs and Idlib and other parts of Syria can be described as crimes against humanity," Arabi said in a statement.
"There must be an international, independent probe to reveal the truth about what is happening and identify those responsible for these crimes and refer them to justice," he added.
Arabi stressed that no one "can remain silent about this, from a humanitarian and ethical" point of view.
He also urged the Syrian government "to cooperate" with any international probe and "to punish" the perpetrators.
On Monday, the Syrian opposition denounced the "massacre" of 47 women and kiddies in the flashpoint central city of Homs and activists posted videos online that showed graphic images of charred bodies and children with mutilated and bloodied faces.
Syrian state television ... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
also aired gruesome footage showing homes with white walls splattered with blood, bodies of women and kiddies piled on top of each other, and several men, with bullet wounds to the head, lying facing down in a disused building, their hands tied behind their backs.
The grisly murders in Syria's third-largest city Homs came less than two weeks after regime troops stormed its rebellious Baba Amr neighborhood, following a month-long bombardment in which activists say 700 people were killed.
There have been also mounting reports of casualties in the northwestern province of Idlib where the Syrian army has since March 9 carried out an offensive in the mountainous region near the Turkish border.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[Dawn] Provincial Information Minister of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... (KP) Iftikhar Hussain on Tuesday said that rise in the recent terrorism activities in the region is due to the internal conflicts between the hard boys, DawnNews reported.
The KP minister was addressing the oath-taking ceremony of khyber union of journalists in Beautiful Downtown Peshawar.
He said that the talks between the US and the Taliban have created confusion among the hard boys.
'The government is ready for all kinds of talks but the beturbanned goons are not supportive of it rather they have continued their ill-intended activities to gain importance.' he added
He said that according to the new policy operation would be conducted in the tribal areas as well as settled areas.
Hussain said that if Pakistain, Afghanistan and US collectively address the issue and come up with a joint strategy, only then extremism could be eliminated from this region.
Posted by: Fred ||
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JERUSALEM — Two Israeli naval vessels passed through Egypt’s Suez Canal on Tuesday, headed from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, Israeli and Egyptian sources said.
“It was routine, they were on their way to Eilat” where Israel has its Red Sea naval base, an Israeli security source told AFP on condition of anonymity.
A source at the Canal Authority named the vessels as the Lahav and the Yafo, without giving their size or type.
The INS Lahav ('Blade') is a Sa'ar 5-class corvette, about 1,200 tons. It has anti-ship and anti-air missiles, and surface-launch torpedo tubes. Yafo ('Jaffa') is a Sa'ar 4.5-class missile boat, about 490 tons, re-built from an old Sa'ar 4-class boat with more modern technology. It has anti-ship and anti-air missiles, and a 76 mm gun.
Israel dispatched two missile boats to the Red Sea last August after Iran deployed a submarine and a warship there on what it called a patrol mission.
The Israeli military said at the time that its own naval deployment was “part of a routine exercise.”
The military had no comment on TuesdayÂ’s crossing, which came to the backdrop of an international standoff over IranÂ’s nuclear programme, which much of the world believes is geared toward developing atomic weapons.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/14/2012
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Iran would definitely want to bottle up the Suez prior to hostilities. I wish the USN would start disappearing Iranian submarines, as in "just gone".
The rather silly James Bond movie, "The Spy Who Loved Me" got me thinking about how the USN could actually pull off an enemy submarine "disappearance", to make it look like an accident at sea. The Hunt For Red October reinforced this concept. If you combine elements of the two, there might be some real possibilities.
First, take out their propellers, while at the same time anchoring them so they cannot surface when they blow their tanks. Both of these things could be done with a heavy anchored fishing net.
Kill the crew with odorless poison gas, then tow the boat out of its patrol lane over an ocean trench, and surface it for a surface ship to harvest anything of value. Then seal it up nice and tight, and send it down to meet Davy Jones far past crush depth.
MOSCOW: Russia has no intention of curtailing military cooperation with Syria despite calls from the West to stop arming President Bashar AssadÂ’s regime, a senior Russian government official said Tuesday.
Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said Russia will abide by existing contracts to deliver weapons to Syria despite AssadÂ’s yearlong crackdown on the opposition, during which the UN says over 7,500 people have been killed.
“Russia enjoys good and strong military technical cooperation with Syria, and we see no reason today to reconsider it,” Antonov told reporters.
Russia has shielded Syria, its last ally in the Arab world, from UN sanctions over the Assad regimeÂ’s bloody suppression of an uprising against his government. Moscow has been a steadfast ally of Syria since Soviet times, when it was led by the current presidentÂ’s father, Hafez Assad, and has long supplied Damascus with aircraft, missiles, tanks and other heavy weapons.
The Syrian port of Tartus is now the only naval base Russia has outside the former Soviet Union. A Russian navy squadron made a call there in January in what was seen by many as a show of support for Assad. Also in January, a Russian ship allegedly carrying tons of munitions made a dash for Syria after telling officials in EU member Cyprus, where it had made an unexpected stop, that it was heading for Turkey. Turkish officials said the ship had instead charted course for Tartus.
Antonov said Russia’s supply of weapons to Syria is in line with international law and will continue. “Russian-Syrian military cooperation is perfectly legitimate,” he said.
“The only thing that worries us today is the security of our citizens,” Antonov said in a reference to Russian military personnel in Syria that are training the Syrians in the use of weapons supplied by Russia. He declined to say how many of them are currently stationed in Syria.
“It’s part of our contractual obligations,” said Antonov, who oversees military technical cooperation with foreign countries. “When we supply weapons, we have to provide training.”
Antonov dismissed allegations that Russia has sent special forces officers to assist government forces.
“There are no (Russian) special forces with rifles and grenade launchers running around,” he said.
They're carrying semi-automatics and MANPADs, of course...
Moscow insists it will block any UN resolution that could pave the way for a replay of what happened in Libya, where NATO action helped oust Muammar Qaddafi. Russian diplomats have dismissed Western hopes for a shift in Moscow’s stance on Syria after Putin’s election victory as “wishful thinking.”
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/14/2012
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Russia has an enormous stake in Assad survival.
Besides large military contracts worth billions, the Syrian owe Russia despite writeoffs a significant foreign debt that Russia will probably never get if Assad falls. On top of that Russia has significant investments in Syria.
#2
And why should they stop? Germany sells tanks to Saudi Arabia's sharia state. The U.S. sells to Egypt despite Muslim Brotherhood political domination.
What's the rational distinction for us to get on our high horses about Russian sales to Syria?
Posted by: American Delight ||
03/14/2012 12:27
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Syrian owe Russia despite writeoffs a significant foreign debt that Russia will probably never get if Assad falls.
Wll Russia really get anything if Assad stays in power, BernardZ?
[An Nahar] International credit ratings agency Moody's downgraded euro member Cyprus to junk status Tuesday on heightened concerns over its banking sector's exposure to Greece.
The agency cut its rating on Cyprus by one notch to Ba1 and assigned a negative outlook, meaning that further downgrades are possible.
Moody's is the second agency to push the island nation's credit rating to junk after Standard & Poor's in January. Fitch rates Cyprus a notch above junk.
The downgrades have effectively shut Cyprus out of the international markets, prompting it to seek a €2.5 billion ($3.3 billion) low-interest loan from Russia to meet its financing needs for this year.
Moody's said that apart from their significant Greek government bold holdings, Cypriot banks' woes are compounded by their large Greek loan portfolios. It said those stresses on the banking system combined with weak private sector confidence and adverse external conditions will constrain the island's growth potential in the next few years and add to the fiscal challenges facing the government.
"Although the government seems well positioned to achieve significant progress this year, unfavorable economic conditions present implementation risks in 2013 and beyond," Moody's said.
The agency said that although Cypriot banks are looking to bolster their capital buffers through private sector investment, there is a "very material risk" that the government will have to step in to cover a likely shortfall that could amount to 5-10 percent of the island's gross domestic product. That could, in turn, deepen the island's debt load.
Cyprus Finance Minister Kikis Kazamias called the downgrade "unfair" because ratings agencies are factoring into their assessments possible losses that Cyprus may incur as a result of its banks' Greek exposure several years down the road.
Posted by: Fred ||
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U.S. copyright law allows for massive damages -- $150,000 per infringement -- which leads many people to settle copyright cases, rather than risk a massive payout. But if someone does defend himself, the law allows the prevailing party in an infringement case to be awarded its legal fees and costs, even if it were the defendant.
Righthaven initially won and settled dozens of cases as defendants paid a few thousand dollars each to make the cases go away. But the firm, which has ceased filing new suits, has never prevailed in a case that was defended in court.
[Dawn] Syria's embattled Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators... issued a decree on Tuesday setting May 7 as the date for parliamentary elections that were delayed last year, the state news agency SANA reported.
The vote is part of a raft of reforms announced by Assad in a bid to calm a year-long uprising against his regime that began with democracy protests.
Assad's announcement comes as peace envoy Kofi Annan ...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo... said he was awaiting a response from the Syrian leader on "concrete proposals" which he had submitted to him in two rounds of talks in Damascus ...Capital of the last overtly fascist regime in the world... at the weekend.
"I am expecting to hear from Syrian authorities today since I left some concrete proposals for them to consider," the UN-Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... envoy told news hounds in Ankara after a meeting with the Syrian opposition.
"Once I receive their answer we will know how to react."The elections would be the third time a legislative vote has taken place in Syria since Assad came to power in 2000.
The last parliamentary poll in 2007 saw the National Progressive Front, a coalition led by Assad's Baath Party, seize, as expected, the majority of the 250 seats in the assembly.
The May 7 vote was originally set to take place in September but was delayed to allow Assad to carry out reforms in the face of the revolt threatening his regime.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[An Nahar] U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ... sometimes described as America's Blond Eminence and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as Another William Jennings Bryan ... on Tuesday vowed to press ahead with support for democracy promotion groups, saying that they play a critical role despite a crackdown in Egypt.
Clinton, addressing U.S. ambassadors from around the world who are back in Washington for a group conference, said that civil society groups are vital to encouraging U.S. goals such as advancing democracy and women's participation.
"When people feel safe and empowered to pursue their legitimate aspirations, they are more likely to reject extremism and to invest in their own societies," Clinton said.
Clinton noted that a number of governments, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, are curbing such groups and "challenging the propriety of American support for civil society organizations."
"I need each of you -- and especially those of you operating in restrictive environments -- to communicate our commitment to working with and supporting individuals and groups that represent not only what we believe are our values, but universal values: freedoms and human rights ...which often include carefully measured allowances of freedom at the convenience of the state... ," she told the diplomats.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
So, they are state sponsored agents. Nice going there Secty Clinton.
For a map, click here. For a map of Tamaulipas state, click here. Updating story
By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com
Updating with new information
The Mexican Secretaria de Defensa Nacional (SEDENA) confirmed a total of six drug cartel operatives have been killed in several shootouts in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas on Tuesday afternoon, according to Mexican news reports.
Previous reports put the death toll at between 10 and 15 with many more wounded.
Shootings have been reported in western neighborhoods of the border city since mid morning. Around noon, several units of the Mexican Army and Naval Infantry forces moved into the area and sealed off eastern and northern approaches, presumably to prevent criminal shooters from escaping the military cordon. The fighting stopped around 1500 hrs.
Reports also say that several more cartel shooters were wounded in the fighting.
The main location of at least one of the firefights was reportedly neighborhoods between Reservas Territoriales and Aquiles Serdan colonies along Avenida Lincon, which was apparently a running gunfight between cartel shooters and Mexican military forces. Some firefights were contained in an area of seven kilometers..
Reports say that citizens saw several individuals lying dead in the streets. An unconfirmed report said that one of the scenes of shootings was a McDonald's restaurant near the intersection of calles Venezuela and Cesar Lopez de Lara.
An unofficial report also said that one Mexican soldier died in the fighting.
Los Zetas practically own the Nuevo Laredo river crossing, so it is presumed the six dead were Los Zetas operatives.
Reports also say that two unidentified local leaders of Los Zetas in Nuevo Laredo have been shot, but those are unconfirmed reports. The number two man in the Los Zetas criminal gang is Michael Trevino, AKA Z40, who controls the Nuevo Laredo crossing.
Los Zetas have in the past in other locations fought Mexican security forces whenever one of their leaders has been threatened with capture, tactics to include road blocks created through carjacking. Those tactics were used extensively last Friday in Jalisco state, when elements of the Mexican Army captured two top leaders of the Jalsico Nuevo Generacion drug cartel. To read the Rantburg.com report on the Guadalajara roadblocks, click here.
Local government officials as well as US consulate officials in Nuevo Laredo have warned residents via Twitter accounts to stay clear of the zones.
Later reports say that simultaneous armed confrontations between Mexican security forces and drug cartel shooters have taken place in Ciudad Miguel Aleman and Piedra Negras, Coahuila, all river crossing cities generally considered to be Los Zetas territories.
Los Zetas have suffered losses in the last week, including 12 operatives killed in a firefight and pursuit with Mexican Army units in Ciudad Miguel Aleman in Tamaulipas. To read the Rantburg.com report on the Ciudad Miguel Aleman pursuit and firefight, click here. Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and political news for Rantburg.com
[An Nahar] At least 48 persons were reported killed in violence across Syria on Tuesday, including 25 members of the security forces, as a pro-government daily said the regime had captured the rebel city of Idlib.
"Twelve members of the security services who headed for the town of Dael to carry out arrests were killed ... when their vehicle was ambushed by a group of armed deserters," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The attack in the southern region of Daraa was the second bushwhack the same day on the military, which has led a year-long crackdown on dissent that activists say has cost more than 8,500 lives.
As the regime battles to mop up resistance, Syria's Al-Watan newspaper said government forces had recaptured the rebel stronghold of Idlib city in the northwest, following what activists said were three days of heavy shelling.
"A major operation launched three days ago in Idlib ... ended in record time with army units wrapping up search operations during which dozens of gunnies and runaways were killed," the daily said.
Activists acknowledged the army had deployed in the city but said they faced pockets of resistance by rebel fighters.
"The army has taken up positions at main intersections but one cannot say that it controls the whole city as it has avoided deploying in some neighborhoods," said Milad Fadl, a krazed killer reached by Agence La Belle France Presse in Beirut.
The Observatory said the army had shelled several districts of Idlib, leaving an unknown number of casualties and with festivities taking place in pockets of resistance.
There were fears that Idlib could meet the same fate as the Baba Amr rebel neighborhood in the central city of Homs that suffered a month-long blitz by government forces before its capture on March 1.
The Observatory said that elsewhere in Idlib province, located near the Turkish border, at least 10 Syrian soldiers were killed in a pre-dawn rebel attack on an army checkpoint in the town of Maaret al-Numan.
Seven civilians, including a 14-year-old youth, were killed in Maaret al-Numan, the Britannia-based group said, adding that army troops bumped off six of them in a car transporting maimed people.
The group, whose reports could not be verified due to government curbs on foreign media, also said eight non-combatants were killed in and around the city of Homs, including a woman in Tal Kalakh, near the Lebanese border.
An army colonel and major died in Aleppo ...For centuries, Aleppo was Greater Syria's largest city and the Ottoman Empire's third, after Constantinople and Cairo. Although relatively close to Damascus in distance, Aleppans regard Damascenes as country cousins... province, while three deserters were killed in festivities with regular troops in Abadani, just north of the capital, and four civilians in Damascus ...Capital of the last overtly fascist regime in the world... province.
One civilian and a member of the security forces were killed in the northern province of Aleppo after fierce festivities between security forces and armed rebel groups in the town of Aazaz.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[Haaretz] Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan severely criticized Israel's recent Arclight airstrikes against targets in the Gazoo Strip, saying in a speech on Tuesday that the attacks represented a "massacre" of the coastal enclave's residents.
Nearly 200 rockets have went kaboom! in Israeli territory since the latest round of violence between Israel and Gazoo broke out on Friday and until the Israel Defense Forces and Gazoobeturbanned goons agreed to cease fire that went into effect early Tuesday.
Responding to rocket fire, the Israel Air Force carried out 37 Arclight airstrikes in the Gazoo Strip, 19 strikes targeted rocket-launchers and 18 targeted weapons warehouses in response to rocket attacks.
Twenty-six Paleostinians were killed as a result of IAF strikes on Gazoo. Out of these 22 were beturbanned goons and 4 were civilians who were in the area of IAF strikes, but were not involved in the rocket fire.
Addressing Israeli strikes against Gazoobeturbanned goons in a speech to Turkish parliament on Tuesday, Erdogan urged Israel to "stop the brutal attack against Paleostinians and stop the massacre and bloodshed."
The Turkish PM then referred to the Israeli strikes as "state terror," saying that the Turkish people must "remember that Gazooks are our brothers, and will always remain so."
Erdogan also referred to the ongoing crisis in Syria, saying that "the window of opportunity was closing following the massacres taking place daily in the country," adding, however, that Turkey "was making every possible effort to prevent further escalation in Syria."
The Turkish PM's comments came after, earlier Tuesday, Israel's Counter Terrorism Bureau warned Israelis against traveling to Turkey, over information regarding the intent of terror groups to perpetrate an attack against Israeli or Jewish targets in the coming days.
Also on Tuesday, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations ...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks... Ron Prosor released a letter to UN Secretary General the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon ... of whom it can be said to his credit that he is not Kofi Annan... , urging the Security Council to condemn rocket attacks by Gazoobeturbanned goons against Israel.
In the missive, the Israeli envoy bemoaned what he called the UN's lack of response to the recent round of violence, saying that the "Security Council has uttered zero words of condemnation of these attacks."
"There is something wrong with this equation," he added, saying it was "time for the Security Council to speak with one voice against the terrorism that continues to flow from Gazoo."
Posted by: Fred ||
03/14/2012
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#1
The thought occurs to me: victory, to the Muslim mind, and more particularly to the Arab mind, is the only way to demonstrate that one's cause has Allah'a approval and is therefore right. The honourable prime minister of Turkey, an Islamicist of the first water, has staked a lot on driving out his former best friend, the dishonourable president of Syria. What will Mr. Erdogan think of himself, and what will others think of him, should Mr. Assad be proved to have Allah's approval? Successful massacres complete with women's cries and enemies fleeing before him would seem to be a pretty clear sign, after all.
Come to think of it, that must be why Muslims favour the strong horse -- it's the only guidepost that enables them to thread between the Devil of following the wrong school of thought and being therefore in Allah's eyes apostate and headed for hell in the world to come and the the deep blue sea of being crushed between powerful and violent men in this world.
[Dawn] In North Wazoo, gunnies on Tuesday rubbed out the top government official in the town of Mir Ali, Azmat Jamal, after barging into his office, Pak security officials said.
"Five gunnies managed to enter inside his office and opened fire on him, he was taken to hospital where he died," one official told AFP.
"Attackers also hurled hand grenade before fleeing the scene," a second official told AFP.
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[An Nahar] President Nicolas Sarkozy ...23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. Sarkozy is married to singer-songwriter Carla Bruni, who has a really nice birthday suit... pulled ahead of his Socialist rival for the first time in La Belle France's election race Tuesday according to a poll conducted after the right-winger took a strident anti-EU turn.
The survey forecast Sarkozy would lead in the first round but still lose out to Francois Hollande in the second, but it was a symbolic boost for the leader who had consistently trailed his rival for the past five months.
"It's true that it's better when things are going well," Sarkozy told news hounds when asked about the poll.
"Nothing is settled, nothing is finished. I campaigned before, I will campaign after ... let each say what he will do for the next five years and the French will decide," he said.
Sarkozy's spokeswoman claimed there was "panic" among the Socialists after the Ifop poll said the president would win 28.5 percent of the vote in the first round in April, against 27 percent for Hollande.
Hollande, who has never held a ministerial post and whose ex-partner Segolene Royal lost to Sarkozy in 2007, is still on course to win the second round in May with 54.5 percent against Sarkozy's 45.5 percent, the poll said.
"It's a turning point... but a nuanced turning point," Frederic Dabi of Ifop told Agence La Belle France Presse.
Socialist former minister Jack Lang played down the survey's importance, deeming it "abnormal" that an incumbent be as low in the polls as is Sarkozy.
"Let's not get taken in or too excited by this or that poll," he said.
The survey of 1,638 people was carried out by telephone, shortly after tens of thousands of Sarkozy supporters turned up in a Gay Paree suburb on Sunday for his biggest campaign rally so far.
Sarkozy's UMP party had billed that meeting as a key part of their bid to turn the tables on Hollande.
The president, who had initially campaigned as the self-styled savior of Europe's single currency, thrilled the cheering crowd with a surprise new Eurosceptic stance.
In a tub-thumping speech, he threatened to pull La Belle France out of Europe's 26-nation passport-free travel zone unless the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... does more to keep out undocumented Democrats.
And he demanded the EU adopt measures to fight cheap imports, warning that La Belle France might otherwise pass a unilateral "Buy French" law.
The left was quick to attack what they saw as a populist stunt, with Hollande's team accusing Sarkozy of behaving like a Eurosceptic British prime minister.
Hollande's campaign manager Pierre Moscovici said the new poll results were nothing for his team to worry about.
"This poll must be taken with cool heads," he said.
"Nothing is settled, we can see that the outgoing president is ready to do a lot to keep power, in particular with a lot of lies ... and with temptations that could be perilous for the building of Europe."
Marine Le Pen, the leader of the anti-immigrant, anti-EU National Front, meanwhile secured the backing of enough local government officials to run in the two-round presidential election, her party said Tuesday.
All French presidential candidates must have the signed endorsement of 500 elected local mayors and officials -- of which there are around 42,000 in La Belle France -- by a March 16 deadline.
Although polls consistently put Le Pen in third place in the presidential race, there was speculation that few mayors or regional councilors wanted to take the political risk of associating themselves with her campaign.
Her father Jean-Marie Le Pen has repeatedly claimed in the past that he was struggling to garner the signatures necessary to stand for the presidency, but was able to do so at every presidential election since 1988.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/14/2012
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Declare war on Portugal, you're a sure in, Niki.
It is a chilling image that will go around the world - police taking aim at a woman in a hijab after a tip-off claiming she could have a bomb in her bag. It is not known if the holdall contained an explosive or not but officers were not taking any chances.
It seems the common people of England are willing to be suspicious of someone dressed in Muslim religious garb, and are willing to say something about it.
The incident is on-going eight hours after it started at the seafront in Saltburn, Teesside, today. Army bomb disposal experts are believed to be on site.
Cleveland Police have not yet confirmed the exact nature of the incident but said it was sparked after 'information' they received about the woman's conduct. They said the area has been cordoned off and they are concerned about the welfare of a woman.
Eyewitnesses reported seeing a white woman wearing a dress with a veil sitting on a bench surrounded by armed police, who were alerted shortly after 11am. At 6.40pm, negotiations with her were still taking place.
Residents in Saltburn say they believe it is a woman local to the area.
A bomb disposal team have are also at the scene and a police helicopter has been scrambled. It is understood that a bag is being examined by bomb disposal experts and at one point the woman was face down on the ground as officers covered her with their weapons.
A cordon is in place and Saltburn bank has been shut to traffic.
Some locals claimed the woman had been to a hardware store in the town earlier in the day and purchased items. One, who did not want to be named, said: 'She doesn't say a lot, she's always walking around wearing a white hijab, she's white, My friend tried to say hello to her once, she just snapped at him. We heard she went to M and M DIY Home Improvement hardware store, trying to buy things to make a bomb apparently.'
Sales assistants at the store would not confirm that the woman had been to the shop, however a shopkeeper next door said she had been in the store earlier in the day.
Update 7:20 pm local time (same link):
According to police the 40-year-old woman was detained under the Mental Health Act.
#1
If there was nothing to see it wouldn't have taken 8 hours. She was either being less than totally honest in her dealings with the police or there was something there. Perhaps not a bomb but something she didn't want found.
On the other side of things I'm amazed Cair hasn't adopted a plan to encourage these sort of things. Get enough Hijabs walking around acting suspicious with bags and you either (a) dull the population into accepting that until eventually they are no longer called in and one can take a bag bomb wherever needed (b) you get wonderful news coverage of the facists disarming innocent Mulsims because of their relgion. The result would be the same as police were told to back off and then bag bombs could circulate unimpeded.
WASHINGTON — The United States said Tuesday that unless Sri Lanka’s government reconciles with minority Tamils and addresses allegations of war crimes it risks renewed conflict.
Because it's incumbent on the winners of a brutal civil war to make nice with the bloodthirsty losers...
The U.S. has introduced a draft resolution at the discredited U.N. Human Rights Council, increasing international pressure on Sri Lanka to conduct an independent investigation. The council in Geneva is expected to vote next week on the resolution that stops short of demanding an outside probe, but has angered Sri Lanka, which claims it could stir separatism.
They'd be correct. I'm sure there are a few remnants of the Tigers who would be happy to restart the fighting.
Robert Blake, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, said that accountability and reconciliation was in Sri Lanka’s best interests, so “they really can achieve peace and security and not sow anger in their own community that could give rise to new violence.”
Accountability for the Tigers would be a useful experience. The Tamil people could then see how they were led astray. Reconciliation by the Tamil people would be helpful -- they could for example pledge to be Sri Lankan citizens and drop demands for a separate state.
“Experience in many civil conflicts around the world has shown that countries that don’t take adequate measures to address reconciliation and accountability frequently experience a regeneration of the insurgency that they faced,” he told The Associated Press. “We could see very much that similar situation in Sri Lanka.”
Quiet diplomacy is more likely to get the Sinhalese to take some steps at reconciliation. Rubbing their faces in a UNHCR resolution simply won't work; it's the whole loss-of-face issue common to Asia.
The resolution calls on Sri Lanka to investigate allegations of human rights abuses by both the government troops and Tamil Tiger rebels in the final months of the quarter-century war, and implement recommendations of its own reconciliation panel. A U.N panel of experts reported in 2011 that tens of thousands of people may have been killed, largely through shell fire by the government troops.
Sri LankaÂ’s government, which has defended its conduct of the war as protecting Tamil civilians, has organized a series of protests against the resolution, calling it interference in its affairs.
In Colombo on Tuesday, Housing Minister Wimal Weerawansa called for a boycott of U.S. products. He told a protest meeting that the resolution amounts to calling for the revival of the Tamil Tigers.
Eileen Donahoe, U.S. ambassador to the Human Rights Council, said Sri Lanka had reacted “very negatively” to the resolution and has fought it “tooth and nail” but she expected it to pass.
“We had intended it in a fairly cooperative spirit,” she said. “We were very forward leaning in our effort to reach out to the Sri Lankans.”
Then shut up and do your work behind the scenes. This is way too public.
She said an earlier version of the resolution had sought an action plan from Sri Lanka by June, but as tabled now, the resolution calls for the U.N. Human Rights Commissioner to report to the council a year from now on the steps Sri Lanka has taken.
Blake said the resolution would not be weakened further.
Despite the strain on U.S.-Sri Lanka relations, Donahoe said Colombo was keeping open its channels of communication with Washington, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has invited Sri Lanka Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris for talks in Washington in April.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/14/2012
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Man, the left is still sore their side lost, aren't they? Remember when Sri Lanka was on Rantburg every day? It's disappeared because there's no more terrorism there.
#3
"Experience in many civil conflicts around the world has shown that countries that don't take adequate measures to address reconciliation and accountability frequently experience a regeneration of the insurgency that they faced,"
How about just a 'with malice toward none' press release?
#4
I think the left's model of a fractured society of separate sniveling whiney assed minorities and ethnic groups squabbling amoungst themselves so that the oligarchy can manipulate them or divert their attention from the gross misguided and corrupt leadership.
I find it funny there was no mention of the horrendous and ghastly brutality of the Tamils toward the other ethnic groups in Sri Lanka and India. Remember the Tigers assassinated Ghandi junior when he was running for the Presidency of India.
Screw the tigers and a separate state for any of them. Ethnicity and little ghettoes full of unemployed, disgruntled and volatile ethnic groups that refuse to mainstream in the society as a whole are the source of most of our socila problems here and most everywhere else in the world. When a strong government drives a boot up the ass of the sniveling ethnic groups and makes them get along, society as a whole and the individual ethnic groups are better off.
Name one ethnic group, that is better off now, having their own little enclave, than they were when they were forced to function in an overall society.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
03/14/2012 10:48
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Robert E. Lee's noble act at Appomattox.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
03/14/2012 12:09
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Name one ethnic group, that is better off now, having their own little enclave, than they were when they were forced to function in an overall society
Israel. But that's a special case, and the Jews were generally good citizens to begin with, not violent rebels.
#7
>>>Name one ethnic group, that is better off now, having their own little enclave, than they were when they were forced to function in an overall society.
Posted by Bill Clinton
Estonia; much better off. But having more than one independence day is a headache.
Heh-heh-heh.... :-D
Righthaven, a copyright-troll law firm that failed in its attempt to make money for newspapers by suing readers for sharing stories online, was dealt a death blow on Tuesday by a federal judge who ordered the Las Vegas company to forfeit "all of" its intellectual property and other "intangible property" to settle its debts.
"The copyright registrations to more than 275 works are in Righthaven's name, can be transferred by this court, and can then be auctioned," the judge ruled.
Stephens Media will likely have to take them off its own website -- or license them from the future owner -- if it doesn't buy the rights back itself. Yee-ouch! Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of @#$%^&*#.
Posted by: Barbara ||
03/14/2012
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They haven't paid fines or complied with other judicial orders. Time to throw the owners in jail for contempt.
BUENOS AIRES — China has poured billions of dollars into Venezuela's oil sector to expand its claim over the country's massive oil reserves. But Beijing is getting relatively little for its investments, and Chinese officials are increasingly frustrated with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, according to energy analysts and former managers of the state oil company, Petroleum of Venezuela, or PDVSA as it's known by its Spanish acronym.
Sucks to do business with incompetent communists, eh Mr. Ho?
Mr. Chavez, who is battling a life-threatening recurrence of cancer, said his goal is to send 1 million barrels of oil a day to China, which has given Venezuela more than $30 billion in loans and promised billions of dollars more in energy investments by 2016.
PDVSA claims to send 410,000 barrels a day to Chinese markets, the bulk of which is used to pay back the loans.
Already this year, PDVSA has announced that Citic Group Corp., China's largest state-owned investment company, will acquire a 10 percent stake in the Petropiar heavy-crude project held with PDVSA and U.S.-based Chevron Corp. It also said that the China Development Bank will spend $4 billion to help boost production in a joint venture with China National Petroleum Corp., or CNPC.
The Chinese bank and the Venezuelan government also have agreed to renew a $6 billion bilateral investment fund, of which $2 billion will help boost PDVSA production.
But Tom O'Donnell, an oil analyst who teaches at the New School University and writes an oil-industry blog, the Global Barrel, said the payoffs of China's loans amount to a "consolation prize."
He said China's goal is not to get oil for loans, but to have its own national oil companies contract for major oil-production projects in Venezuela's Orinoco Tar Sands, the largest single known petroleum reserve in the world, with 513 billion barrels of heavy crude oil.
"The Chinese have not gotten the kind of preferential access they want [to the tar sands], and my sources tell me they are extremely unhappy," said Mr. O'Donnell.
In 2010, CNPC signed a deal to help Venezuela develop a major Orinoco oil field known as Junin 4, which includes the construction of a facility to convert heavy oil to a lighter crude that could be shipped to a refinery in Guangdong, China.
"Although the contract was signed in December 2010, not one barrel of oil has yet been produced, much less upgraded," said Gustavo Coronel, a former PDVSA board member.
But don't worry, Hugo's spent the money...
"So far, nothing much seems to be happening, except for the arrival of a large group of Chinese staff to the CNPC's Caracas office," he added, referring to the Venezuelan capital, Caracas.
"Apart from money, there seems to be little that China can offer Venezuela in the oil industry," he said, adding that a "culture gap will make working with China very difficult for Venezuelan oil people, who were mostly trained in the U.S."
Plus China doesn't have the technical know-how, so all they have are hands and cash.
Erica Downs, a former energy analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency now with the Brookings Institution in Washington, said the Junin-4 project could be key to China's future in Venezuela.
"If all that happens, China will be in a position to take substantial volumes of Venezuelan oil," she said. "The problem is that the project hasn't gotten off the ground."
Ms. Downs said Venezuela is far from living up to Mr. Chavez's export goals for Beijing and that PDVSA's claims of sending 410,000 barrels a day do not match Chinese customs data, which show 322,000 barrels per day of crude and fuel oil imported from Venezuela last year.
"Although Venezuela's oil exports to China have grown along with the volume of oil-backed loans extended by China Development Bank to Caracas, the delivered volumes still fall short of Chavez's goal of eventually shipping 1 million barrels per day to China," she said.
Critics of the loans say Mr. Chavez is using the so-called "China fund" as his personal piggy bank.
The Chinese also seem to be increasingly wary. Internal PDVSA documents released by a Venezuelan congressman show that the Chinese balked at a $110 billion loan request by Mr. Chavez in 2010, after PDVSA officials failed to account fully for where the money would go.
The Chinese are now pressing PDVSA to let them list some of their investments in the Orinoco region on the Hong Kong exchange, a move analysts say would increase transparency and accountability in PDVSA's spending.
"Development of the Orinoco oil belt is only slowly taking place because most of the companies — excluding Chevron, Repsol and China National Offshore Oil Corp. — either do not have the cash or the technology," said Oliver L. Campbell, a former finance coordinator at PDVSA.
Unlike light and sweet crude from Saudi Arabia, oil from Orinoco is tarlike. It is laced with metals and sits beneath deep jungles. Getting to the oil field means building roads, electrical-power grids and other major infrastructure. Once the oil is extracted from the ground, it is technically difficult to process.
"One of the major problems is that there are very few refineries outside the Gulf of Mexico that can handle Venezuelan crude," said Jorge Pinon, a former president of Amoco Oil Latin America.
Years ago, U.S. companies such as Shell and Exxon invested heavily in U.S. Gulf Coast refineries capable of processing heavy crude after they saw that the world's supplies of sweet crude were diminishing, Mr. Pinon said.
"The Chinese don't have that kind of capacity," he said.
But they are looking to get it by investing in oil infrastructure off Venezuela's Caribbean coast. CNPC, for example, has extended a line of credit to Cuba to upgrade a Soviet-built facility jointly owned by Venezuela and Cuba.
The company PetroChina also has taken over Saudi Aramco's lease on a massive oil-storage facility at the strategically located Statia terminal on the Dutch Caribbean island of St. Eustatius. PetroChina also has tried to buy an oil refinery on the island of Aruba owned by Texas-based Valero Energy Corp., according to news reports.
Luis Giusti, a former president of PDVSA, said the Chinese market becomes even more relevant for Venezuela in the face of a projected resurgence of domestic production in the United States, which currently buys about 45 percent of all Venezuelan crude exports.
"The U.S. Energy Information Agency has estimated that the U.S. could reach a production of 20 million barrels per day by 2035, coming from shale oil in North Dakota, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Montana and others," he said in an email. "This would force exports from South America to look for other markets."
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/14/2012
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Oh, this is a great one. Investment goes in but nothing comes out. It's like the Chinese know what it's like to invest in China.
The real reason China does this is because it has no better alternatives. The rest of the world has everything locked up, and Venezuela is one of the few places with a friendly dictator willing to do business.
#4
The Chinese get screwed, and Venezuela keeps the money and produces nothing? Boy howdy, that isn't likely to last. Do you seriously think the skinflint Mandarins are going to just let this pass. Man, look for bank trnasfers by hackers in Guangzhou PLA unit to start bringing the money back out of the private bank accounts all across Venezuela, plus, nasty accidents and not so subtle injuries. The history of lending by the Chinese is not full of Wesern style shoulder shrugs. Cultures don't change that much, and the Chinese are still just klike they were, just more technologically capable and with a very thin coat of civilized behavior painted on for show. Think I'm wrong, see how the west fares in Chinese courts about anything.
[An Nahar] Syria condemned on Tuesday Israeli air raids on the Gazoo Strip that killed 25 Paleostinians, calling on world powers to act urgently to put an end to them.
Syria "roundly condemns Israeli aggression against the Paleostinian people and urges the international community to undertake urgent steps to put an end to these activities and to sanction those responsible," said a foreign ministry statement.
The ministry also reiterated "Syria's support for the people of Gazoo."
The statement came nearly 24 hours after an Egyptian-brokered deal came into force under which Israel and Islamic Jihad ...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the liquidation of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah... , responsible for most of the rocket and mortar fire that drew Israeli retaliation, agreed to hold their fire.
The violence began on Friday with Israel's liquidation of the head of the radical Popular Resistance Committees (PRC).
That prompted forces of Evil to fire hundreds of rockets and mortar rounds into southern Israel, wounding people and prompting the closure of schools.
Israel responded with dozens of air strikes, targeting forces of Evil and weapons facilities.
Paleostinian medics put the total corpse count late on Monday at 25, with more than 80 hurt.
Of those killed, 19 were forces of Evil and six were civilians, including two minors.
Posted by: Fred ||
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[An Nahar] Kinda makes you wonder how those weapons got into Ein el-Hellhole, dunnit?
The army intelligence tossed in the slammer on Tuesday two people and seized weapons and ammunition from vehicles near the Ein el-Hellhole Paleostinian refugee camp, the National News Agency reported.
NNA said a pickup loaded with ammunition was seized at the camp's entrance near the southern city of Sidon while the occupants of a Mercedes carrying a DShK Soviet-era machinegun were tossed in the slammer as they were going out of the shantytown.
NNA said the army seized the DShK machinegun and tossed in the slammer two men identified with their initials as M.M.A. and A.Z.
The two suspects were taken to a military base for questioning, the agency added.
The seizure came in light of the army intelligence's arrest of an bully boy network that was allegedly planning to carry out attacks on the military school in al-Fayyadiyeh and an army base in Hamat.
The ringleader has been identified as Abu Mohammed Toufiq Taha, the head of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades at Ein el-Hilweh, who is on the run.
It was not clear if the two arrests are linked.
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[An Nahar] The suspected arsonist behind a deadly fire at a Brussels mosque said Tuesday he set the Shiite place of worship ablaze to scare the community he blames for the violence in Syria, officials said.
Belgium's Mohammedan community was in shock a day after the attack that left a holy man dead.
The suspect, a self-described Mohammedan in his mid-30s, told Sherlocks he sought to "scare" the Shiite community as it was allegedly responsible for Syria's crackdown on dissent, the public prosecutor's office said.
Under questioning the man said "he was shocked by the pictures of what was going on in Syria and wanted to do something to scare members of the community which was responsible" for the violence, front man Jean-Marc Meilleur told the press.
The suspect, who presented himself as a Sunni Mohammedan, was charged with arson resulting in death and remanded in jug. The fact that the attack late Monday was based on religious beliefs is an aggravating factor, said Meilleur.
The man told Sherlocks he had acted alone and decided to carry out the attack two weeks ago but had had no intention to kill.
If not nabbed he would have surrendered to the police, he also told the authorities.
As Sherlocks interrogated him, members of Belgium's Shiite and Sunni communities met to ensure calm after the arson attack, which also left two other people injured.
Interior Minister Joelle Milquet suggested inter-religious strife may be to blame after the man stormed into the Rida mosque with an axe, a knife and fuel, shouting about the conflict in Syria.
"It appears to be a problem between Sunnis and Shiites," Milquet told RTBF broadcaster.
"Belgium will not tolerate this type of act and the importing of this type of conflict on its territory," she said, adding that the government would take "all necessary measures" in coming days to prevent attacks.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Belgium's Mohammedan community was in shock, and demanded to be immediately sent back home to Turkey, along with 300 tonnes of stuffing.
#3
"If not nabbed he would have surrendered to the police". Which will not sound as convincing once he is in the dock and typically claims temporary insanity.
WASHINGTON — An Iranian whose release reportedly had been sought by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is undergoing deportation proceedings after serving a five year prison sentence for arms smuggling, a US official said Tuesday.
Amir Hossein Ardebili, who was arrested in October 2007 in the Republic of Georgia and extradited to the United States in 2008, was released in February. He was then turned over to the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for removal, according to a US official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Ardebili was released from prison for deportation from the United States because he had completed serving his criminal sentence and has no legal immigration status in this country,” the official added.
His charges originally came from a three-year international undercover investigation that “exposed Adrebili’s role as a prolific arms acquisitions agent for the government of Iran,” according to a court document.
“During this investigation, Ardebili negotiated the purchase and illegal export of a number of military components,” it said.
Ardebili was sentenced in 2009 to five years in US prison, taking into account the two years already he had served in custody.
Ahmadinejad earlier asked Washington to release eight Iranian nationals who he said were “illegally detained in the United States,” among them was Ardebili, according to Iranian media.
The United States has rejected prisoner exchanges between the two countries, amid high tension over TehranÂ’s suspect nuclear program.
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[Yemen Post] A massive car booming blew up on Tuesday at a checkpoint in the southeastern province of al-Byatha, killing at least three soldiers and wounding 8 others.
A jacket wallah believed to be linked to Ansar al-Sharia ...a Yemeni Islamist militia which claims it is not part of al-Qaeda, even though it works about the same and for the same ends... , an al-Qaeda offshoot in Yemen, drove his car, which was laden with explosives, to a military checkpoint in the central Bytha city, some 170km southeast the Yemeni capital of Sana'a, a security source told Yemen Post on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press.
The attack left at least 3 soldiers and the bomber killed , and 8 others maimed, said the security source.
The security source blamed AQAP for the attack, arguing it's the only network that targets army and security troops in the country.
AQAP has not grabbed credit for the attack so far.
The attack comes two days after the Air Force launched Arclight airstrikes on the hard boyz whereabouts, leaving at least 45 killed and dozens others maimed.
Al-Bytha was taken over by the bully boy group early this year, but it has pulled out its militias when the government stroke a deal with them, releasing hundreds of their prisoners at security jails.
Al-Qaeda stepped up its attacks on the military posts and personnel in south Yemen, probably taking an advantage of the current security situation.
Last week, the transnational terror network surprisingly stormed a military post in the southern war-torn province of Abyan, killing at least 200 soldiers, wounding dozens others, and seizing a huge amount of weapons.
The newly-elected Yemeni President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi vowed to eradicate the AQAP from the southern provinces of the country.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/14/2012
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[An Nahar] Russia said Tuesday it will press Syria to accept international monitors who could observe the implementation of a "simultaneous" ceasefire between government troops and rebels.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia was discussing the proposal with both the Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... countries and at the United Nations ...boodling on the grand scale... , where the Security Council debated the crisis on Monday.
"The objective is for both sides to understand that there is an independent observer watching how they meet demands -- and we are definitely going to be making such demands -- for an immediate ceasefire," he said.
"This must be simultaneous. We must not have a situation in which the government is required to leave the cities and villages while the gangs are not made to do the same.
"This is unrealistic, not because we want the bloodshed to continue, but because the unilateral withdrawal of government forces is completely unrealistic," Lavrov told news hounds.
"The Syrian authorities will not go for that, whether we like it or not."
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[Dawn] Former PPP MPA Aslam Midhiana, who was nominated in a torture case of 60-year-old teacher Nafees Khan Lodhi, surrendered himself to police on Tuesday, DawnNews reported.
Speaking to DawnNews, Pakistain People's Party (PPP) MPA Wasim Afzal said that Midhiana has voluntarily surrendered himself to the police from his house.
Police inspector Saqlain Shah, who jugged the suspect, said that Midhiana has been kept in Chohang Police station and will be moved to Midh Ranjha area of Sargodha later.
Lodhi had alleged that he was tortured by the former PPP MPA and his men at a bazaar in Sargodha.
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[Dawn] Pak Sherlocks and lawyers are travelling to India this week to gather evidence for the prosecution of seven suspects linked to the Mumbai attacks of 2008, when 166 people were killed.
The visit is the first of its kind, and comes after Pakistain indicted seven alleged conspirators in 2009 but has since said it needs to gather more evidence in India before proceeding further.
New Delhi says Pakistain's attempts at prosecution have been a "facade" and insists it has already handed over enough evidence to convict the accused.
The eight-strong commission of prosecutors, defence lawyers and a court official will travel to India Wednesday to take statements from witnesses and cross-examine them, senior public prosecutor Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali told AFP.
Pakistain had wanted Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, who is the sole surviving gunman from the attacks and has been sentenced to death in India, to testify, but he has not been included among the interviewees requested by the panel.
"The commission will record the statements of Sherlocks, statements of the doctors who conducted autopsies and the statement of lady magistrate who recorded Ajmal Kasab's confessional statement in Mumbai," Ali said.
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[Dawn] A woman told a judicial magistrate on Monday that she embraced Islam without any coercion and got married of her own free will.
Dr Lata Kumari, who was allegedly kidnapped within the remit of the Defence cop shoppe on Feb 2 this year, recorded her statement before Judicial Magistrate (south) Hatim Aziz Solangi under Section 164 of the criminal procedure code.
She testified that her former name was Lata Kumari but after embracing Islam she changed her name to Hafsa.
She stated that she married Nadir Baig, an engineer, of her own accord under Islamic laws.
She said that the case lodged against her husband regarding her kidnapping was baseless.
The magistrate recorded her statement in the presence of her husband, who is a suspect in the case.
Earlier in the day, when the investigation officer produced the woman in court, a lawyer appeared and, claiming to be her counsel, requested the court to defer the matter.
But in the meantime, another lawyer, who was standing for the suspect, approached the court and claimed that he was also the counsel for the woman and prayed to the court to record her statement.
The court recorded the testimony after completing legal formalities when the woman said that the second lawyer was representing her.
The court also directed Mr Baig to cooperate with the police after the investigation officer complained that the suspect neither turned up nor extended cooperation in the investigation after getting interim pre-arrest bail from a sessions court.
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[Dawn] Belgium's Moslem community was in shock Tuesday after a man set fire to a Shia mosque in Brussels, leaving the imam dead in an act some linked to tensions between Shias and Sunnis.
As Sherlocks sought to determine whether late Monday's arson attack was an isolated incident or a deliberate assault on the Shia community, Interior Minister Joelle Milquet suggested inter-religious strife may be to blame.
"This person went in (the mosque) hurling statements linked to the Syrian conflict. It appears to be a problem between Sunnis and Shias," Milquet said, adding that Sherlocks still had to confirm the motive.
"Belgium will not tolerate this type of act and the importing of this type of conflict on its territory," she said, adding that the government would take "all necessary measures" in coming days to prevent attacks.
The area around the Brussels mosque, one of four Shia centres of worship in the city's overwhelming majority Sunni Moslem community, has a large immigrant Moslem population.
The suspect told police he was a Moslem born in 1978, but authorities were not immediately able to confirm his identity because he lacked ID papers.
Azzedine Laghmich, an official at the mosque, told AFP the attacker was "a Salafist," who sprayed petrol inside the mosque before setting it alight and shouting Sunni slogans on his way out --cries related to the conflict in Syria.
"All the eyewitness accounts said so," Laghmich added.
Isabelle Praile, another bigwig in Belgium's organised Moslem community, said the mosque "had already been placed under police protection several years ago," citing threats from members of the ultra-conservative Salafist movement.
More than 100 men gathered near the Rida mosque after the fire, shouting Shia slogans behind a police tape as some prayed and others hugged or cried over the death of imam Abdallah Dadou, a 46-year-old father of four.
The imam died of smoke inhalation and a second person was slightly injured after the man, who wielded a knife and an axe, set fire to the place with fuel.
"I brought my eight-year-old son here with me so that he can see blind hate, what it can do," said Ismael Ben Mohammad, 40.
The mayor of the city's Anderlecht ward, Gaetan Van Goidsenhoven, appealed for calm at an overnight presser, saying it was "not only necessary to live side-by-side, but also to allow justice and the police to do their work."
The imam was described by worshipper Abdel Adouzeyneb, a 39-year-old real estate agent, as "a person who was loved by everybody --he was open, well integrated, smiling and happy."
Prosecutor Jean-Marc Meilleur said the arson suspect was jugged by police after people inside locked him inside the mosque.
"At the moment, there is only one suspect," Meilleur said early Tuesday, adding that it was too soon to know whether it was a one-man attack or a wider plot.
The last time a holy man was targeted in Brussels was in 1989 when Saudi-born Abdullah Muhammad al-Ahdal was rubbed out.
He served as imam in the Grand Mosque of Brussels and was killed on March of that year by an armed man inside the mosque.
His killing was claimed by a small pro-Iranian group in Leb who accused him of being too moderate and of having rejected the death fatwa slapped on writer Salman Rushdie.
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#1
FINALY, Imams get targeted.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/14/2012 13:29
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[An Nahar] Syria has planted landmines near its borders with Leb and Turkey, along routes used by refugees fleeing the strife-torn country, Human Rights Watch ... dedicated to bitching about human rights violations around the world... (HRW) charged on Tuesday.
"The Syrian regime is trying to prevent people from going in and from fleeing the country," said Nadim Houry, deputy director of the group's Middle East and North Africa division.
"And they are doing it in a way that is going to be lethal because these roads are used by people fleeing and also to evacuate the maimed."
The New York-based watchdog published the accounts of witnesses and deminers who claimed that the Syrian army has been placing landmines for months, and reported resulting civilian casualties.
Houry said the latest casualty was on March 5, when a young Syrian man crossing back into Syria from Turkey stepped on a landmine and lost his right leg.
HRW also quoted a 15-year-old boy from Tal Kalakh who lost a leg in February as he was trying to help a maimed family friend fleeing the Baba Amr rebel stronghold in central Homs cross into northern Leb.
"We were sure that no landmines were planted in the area filled with thorn bushes," he said.
"I was less than 50-60 meters away from crossing the border when the landmine went kaboom!."
Steve Goose, arms division director at HRW, said it was "unconscionable" for countries to continue using the deadly weapons.
"There is absolutely no justification for the use of these indiscriminate weapons by any country, anywhere, for any purpose," he said.
Syria, which along with Leb is not signatory to the international Mine Ban Treaty, first began laying mines along its border with Leb in November, HRW said.
It is last believed to have used anti-personnel mines during the 1982 conflict with Israel and Leb. Its stockpile of landmines consists mainly of Soviet/Russian-manufactured mines, HRW said.
Human Rights Watch urged the Syrian regime to stop planting landmines which, it warned, would continue to maim people for years to come.
"The threat is not just in the now, it's also a danger for the future", Houry told Agence La Belle France Presse.
According to the United Nations ...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks... , more than 8,000 people have been killed in Syria, the majority of them civilians, in a brutal crackdown on an anti-regime revolt that erupted a year ago.
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#1
HRW is actually on the side of the angels on this one. Rare, but it happens.
Posted by: Mike ||
03/14/2012 12:25
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Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Birthday/Daily Gam Shot
Grace Park aka Kono Kalakaua in "Hawaii Five-0 (TV Series 2012)" aka Akani Cuesta in "The Cleaner (TV Series 2008–2009)" aka Lt. Sharon 'Boomer' Valerii in "Battlestar Galactica (TV Series 2004–2009)" aka Shannon Ng in "Edgemont (TV Series 2000–2005)" (age 38)
[Dawn] Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani ... Pakistain's erstwhile current prime minister, whose occasional feats of mental gymnastics can be awe-inspiring ... on Tuesday said that Pakistain was committed to support the Afghan- led and Afghan-owned grinding of the peace processor in Afghanistan.
He said Pakistain wanted to see brotherly and neighbourly Afghanistan as an independent, peaceful and prosperous country, as it was also in the best interest of Pakistain.
The prime minister was talking to German Defence Minister Dr Thomas de Maiziere, who called on him here at the PM House and exchanged views on defence cooperation and military collaboration, war on terror and regional and international issues.
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#1
Looks like Peace in Pakland comes first ...
* PAKISTAN DEFENCE FORUM > PAKISTAN TO NO LONGER PERMIT DRONE MISSIONS | PAKISTAN TELLS WHITE HOUSE TO STOP DRONE MISSIONS AFTER DISPUTES FRAY MISSION.
Greatest threat to IRAN is not a Israeli or US air strike, but Afghan or AFPAK instability???
* TOPIX > LOCAL AFGHANS [CONUS = WA State] CALL MASSACRE "THIRD STRIKE" AGZ US TROOPS.
Baseball versus Teeball???
US-based Afghan-Americans say US Troops urinating of dead Taliban Soldiers + Quran burning, + now deadly Khandahar shooting incident by US JSOC Trooper making it hard for US to win Afghan, Muslim Hearts-n-Minds.
U.S. President Barack Obama plans to visit the Demilitarized Zone during his time in Korea attending the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, it was reported on Sunday. South Korea and the U.S. are discussing what message to deliver to North Korea during Obama's visit, a diplomatic source said Sunday.
Maybe he'll bow to Pudgy...
"Obama could make a speech expressing the concerns of the international community about North Korea and the U.S.' determination to keep the alliance with South Korea strong," the source added.
Obama is also considering visiting Camp Bonifas, a U.S. Army base in the DMZ. It will be Obama's first visit to the otherwise uninhabited buffer zone between the two Koreas.
The White House apparently wants to affirm the alliance with Seoul and impress on the regime of new North Korean leader Suet Face Kim Jong-un that it must give up its nuclear arms program. The two allies discussed details of the DMZ trip when Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan visited Washington recently.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/14/2012
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#1
First the retiring USS ENTERPRISE, now POTUS Bammer to stopover on Guam???
#11
Every step ZChamp makes is coreographed for the news cycle and to try and keep him looking Presidential. Since everyone sees the thrice a day campaign stops for a speech and three fund raisers, they need to make it look like he's doing something. Since he is getting killed even in the MSM by the gas prices, poof, the brave commander in chief staring at barber wire and skinny NORKS, gee how inspiring.
#12
Make sure somebody tells him to take the lens caps off the binoculars when he does the "Leader of the Free World Surveys the Most Militarized Place on Earth" photo op.
And don't forget the bomber jacket...
[Dawn] Interior Minister Rehman Malik Pak politician, current Interior Minister under the Gilani administration. Malik is a former Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) intelligence officer who rose to head the FIA during Benazir Bhutto's second tenure. He later joined the Pak Peoples Party and was chief security officer to Bhutto. Malik was tossed from his FIA job in 1998 after documenting the breath-taking corruption of the Sharif family. By unhappy coincidence Nawaz Sharif became PM at just that moment and Malik moved to London one step ahead of the button men. on Tuesday said a legal procedure was being followed to arrest General Pervez Perv Musharraf ... former dictator of Pakistain, who was less dictatorial and corrupt than any Pak civilian government to date ... for his alleged involvement in the liquidation of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto ... 11th Prime Minister of Pakistain in two non-consecutive terms from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996. She was the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founder of the Pakistain People's Party, who was murdered at the instigation of General Ayub Khan. She was murdered in her turn by person or persons unknown while campaigning in late 2007. Suspects include, to note just a few, Baitullah Mehsud, General Pervez Musharraf, the ISI, al-Qaeda in Pakistain, and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who shows remarkably little curiosity about who done her in... .
Talking to media persons after chairing a meeting on law and order in the Federal Capital, he said the government had communicated the court orders to the Interpol which would issue red warrants for Musharraf's arrest.
Rehman Malik said the entire nation wanted the elimination of terrorism from the country. He said that he had invited the Taliban for peace negotiations with the government and prove themselves Paks by giving up violence.
"I urge the Taliban to join us in pursuit of durable peace instead of violence for future generations in the country," he said, asking them to surrender arms and give up terrorism for the larger national interest.
"I hope the Taliban will realize the situation and give up terrorism for the sake of FATA people, as development process is continuing in the area," he said.
Replying to a question about the Asghar Khan case, Rehman Malik said he would not speak on the issue as the matter was subjudice.
"Let the former Chief of Army Staff, General (r) Mirza Aslam Baig and former ISI Chief, Lt. Gen (r) Asad Durrani defend their case and prove their innocence in the court," he said.
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[Haaretz] Gazooforces of Evil fired a Grad-type Katyusha rocket toward the western Negev on Tuesday, despite a Egypt-mediated cease fire between Israel and jihad boy groups that went into effect earlier in the day.
The rocket struck a residential area if the town of Netivot, with one person lightly maimed. Eleven people were treated for shock.
Despite a ceasefire agreement reached late Monday night, the Kayusha attack on Netivot wasn't the only launch on Tuesday, with seven rockets and five mortar shells fired toward southern Israel. They went kaboom! in open areas and there were no reported casualties.
All in all, nearly 200 rockets have went kaboom! in Israeli territory since the latest round of violence between Israel and Gazoo broke out on Friday and until the Israel Defense Forces and Gazooforces of Evil agreed to cease fire.
Responding to rocket fire, the Israel Air Force carried out 37 Arclight airstrikes in the Gazoo Strip, 19 strikes targeted rocket-launchers and 18 targeted weapons warehouses in response to rocket attacks.
Twenty-six Paleostinians were killed as a result of IAF strikes on Gazoo. Out of these 22 were forces of Evil and 4 were civilians who were in the area of IAF strikes, but were not involved in the rocket fire.
Earlier Tuesday, IDF officials announced that, following the ceasefire, 207,000 schoolchildren in communities 7-40 kilometers from Gazoo would be returning to their studies on Wednesday, for the first time since the beginning of the week.
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[An Nahar] Tunisia's Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali said on Tuesday that Syria's Bashir al-Assad would not be welcome in his country, after the Tunisian president offered the Syrian leader asylum in Tunis.
"I respect our head of state but I do not want to see Assad in our country. And if I were to encounter him, I would put him in front of a court and hand him over to the Syrian people," Jebali told the website of German news weekly Der Spiegel.
Tunisia's President Moncef Marzouki has said the north African country would be prepared to grant Assad refuge if it helped bring peace to Syria after nearly a year of violence.
"If we want to stop the killing, the only way is to have a solution like the Yemeni solution: that the president leaves power and that he has safe haven, somewhere to go," Marzouki told BBC World News last week.
Jebali, who was due to visit German Chancellor Angela Merkel ...current chancellor of Germany. She was educated in East Germany when is was still run by commies, but in 1989 got involved with the growing democracy movement when the Berlin Wall fell. Merkel is sometimes referred to by Germans as Mom... on Wednesday, also said in his interview that outside military intervention would be "pure madness."
"It would pour more oil onto the fire and give Assad the excuse, which he is urgently seeking, to deploy his military even more forcefully," he said, in remarks published in German.
Nevertheless, he stressed: "We cannot and will not accept that a regime is systematically murdering its people ... whoever continues to deliver weapons to the Assad regime is helping the killing of the Syrian people."
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03/14/2012
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[An Nahar] Five al-Qaeda snuffies were killed in an air strike on their car in Yemen's Bayda province on Tuesday, a security official said, after unrest there earlier in the day left five people dead. "A fighter jet raided a car carrying five al-Qaeda jihad boys," said the official. "All five were killed." A tribal chief confirmed the raid.
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Kyrgyzstan is willing to participate in sending goods to Afghanistan even after the expiration in 2014 of term of the contract on the Transit Center of antiterrorist coalition forces at the Manas airport, Secretary of the Kyrgyz Defense Council Busurmankul Tabaldiev said on Tuesday during talks in Bishkek with U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta , RIA Novosti reported.
The U.S. air base, renamed as the Transit Center, was established at the Manas International Airport in Bishkek in December 2001, and today it involves about 1,200 soldiers. The base is an important part of the NATO Operation Enduring Freedom - Afghanistan. The agreement on deployment of the U.S. air base in Kyrgyzstan is valid until 2014. Kyrgyz President Atambaev has repeatedly said that the country under no circumstances will extend the stay of foreign troops in its civilian airport.
"We must work together to solve the issue of the Transit Center's future. We are willing after 2014 to assist the U.S. government, but taking into account interests of the country, opinion of the people and security. It is important that we are able to find a solution before the end of this year, and it makes no sense to pull with this," Tabaldiev said.
The head of the Kyrgyz Defense Council emphasized that "the threats and challenges, including those emanating from Afghanistan," are the main threats to the security of Kyrgyzstan.
"In this respect, Kyrgyzstan is interested to assist fully international efforts to stabilize the situation in this country. Kyrgyzstan is willing to continue sending the goods (to this country) after 2014. However, from June, 2014 there should be no military facilities and soldiers in Manas, it is a civilian airport," said Tabaldiev.
He noted the government has "serious intentions" for the construction of civil hub (the point of transfer of passengers) at the Manas international airport and "in this direction work has already begun". I would like to note that the U.S. position on this issue is not clear for us".
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/14/2012
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#1
Meanwhile ...
* BHARAT RAKSHAK > IRAN, INDIA TO BUILD INTERNATIONAL NORTH-SOUTH CORRIDOR, into the CAR which Perts say could facilitate India's rise toward new Superpower status.
Indjuh is also repor looking for similar originating from the CAR.
IIRC 1990's MSM-NET = twas a proposal to build an elongated interconnecting bridge between the Arabian Peninsula + southern Iran???
* SAME > RESOLVE BALOCH ISSUE OR PAKISTAN WILL [could] DISINTEGRATE, SAYS PARLIAMENT.
[Dawn] Police claimed to have foiled an attempt to carry out a kaboom at a cattle market in Chamkani area of Beautiful Downtown Peshawar on Monday.
They said that police took an abandoned motorcar into custody and recovered 40 kilograms of explosives, detonator, remote control and other items from its cavities.
They said that the personnel of Bomb Disposal Unit defused the explosives. They said that investigations were underway and a case against unidentified Death Eaters was registered at Chamkani cop shoppe.
Meanwhile, ...back at the chili cook-off, Chuck and Manuel's rivalry was entering a new and more dangerous phase... the corpse count of Badhber suicide kaboom reached to 17 as another injured identified as Naveed succumbed to his wounds in Lady Reading Hospital on Monday.
An official said that senior coppers headed by SSP Umer Riaz were busy in investigating the incident.
He said that it was a challenge for police to ascertain as to where from the jacket wallah reached the graveyard and how he carried out the blast unnoticed.
Meanwhile, ...back at the laboratory the fumes had dispersed, to reveal an ominous sight... political administration of Frontier Region of Lakki Marwat launched a crackdown on Bettanni rustics on Monday after the expiry of deadline, set for safe recovery of four kidnapped officials.
Three officials of Sustainable Plains Development Programme (SPDP) identified as Jehanzeb, Kachkol Khan and Awal Khan, residents of Mardan, along with a Levies soldier Naser Khan were kidnapped from FR Lakki on the night between Wednesday and Thursday.
"The officials had gone to the tribal area to inspect the works of SPDP and set up forest nurseries there," official sources said.
They said that political administration held a jirga with the elders of Bettanni tribe with a clear message to get the kidnapped officials released within four days or face action.
"The tribal elders failed to play their role in securing release of the kidnapped officials within the stipulate time," they said, adding that failure of tribal elders forced authorities to initiate action under the collective responsibility clause of Frontier Crimes Regulation.
They said that more than 36 tribal elders were set to sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, in a pestilential prison with a life-long lock besides sealing their business centres in Tajori town.
"The authorities also impounded six vehicles of the tribe," they added.
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[Dawn] Three Pak police in the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti have been found guilty of sexual abuse and ordered tossed in the clink, the UN said Tuesday.
The three police were at the center of one of two new sexual abuse investigations involving UN police in the Caribbean nation announced in January.
UN front man Martin Nesirky said a court-martial had been held by the Pak military in Haiti and the three had been found guilty, ordered tossed in the clink and repatriated.
"A senior Pak official visited Haiti on March 8 and 9 to meet with Haitian authorities and informed them that three individuals were found guilty of sexual exploitation and abuse through a court martial proceeding undertaken in accordance with the national laws of Pakistain," Nesirky told a press briefing.
The three will be imprisoned and given a dishonorable discharge on their return to Pakistain, the UN mission in Haiti, MINUSTAH, was told, according to the front man. Details of the prison term were not immediately known.
"The guilty parties have been repatriated and the United Nations ...an organization whose definition of human rights is interesting, to say the least... is further liaising with the Pak authorities to examine the formal details of the procedures and to ensure a followup," Nesirky added.
The three Pak police were based at a UN camp in the city of Gonaives. The UN said in January that it was also investigating allegations against UN police in the capital, Port-au-Prince. Details of that case have not been released.
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The U.S. and South Korea plan to deploy a high-powered American surveillance aircraft to watch North Korea during the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul on March 26-27. The E-8C J-STARS is capable of tracking hundreds of vehicles, military installations and missiles simultaneously within a 200 to 500 km area. "By flying over the demilitarized zone, the aircraft can get a clear picture of North Korean troop movements around Pyongyang and Wonsan and even beyond," a military source said.
While AWACS surveillance planes monitor aircraft and other airborne targets, the J-STARS handles targets on the ground. It can stay airborne for up to 11 hours at a time and monitor an area about five times the size of the Korean Peninsula for eight hours.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/14/2012
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#1
Perhaps the JSTARS is watching the wrong country at the moment ...
To wit,
* TOPIX > [HuffPo] PAUL HEROUX: THE POTENTIAL NUCLEAR HAZARD [major?] WE AREN'T TALKING ABOUT -PAKISTAN.
'Tis a superficially secular, covertly pro-Islamist, nuke-armed Country wid lots of simmerring anti-American sentimentalities.
[Dawn] The girl who has become embroiled in a conversion controversy was on Monday sent to a state-run shelter by the Sindh High Court with the direction to its administration not to allow her parents or the man who claims to be her husband to meet her till March 26 when she will be produced before the Supreme Court.
A single bench headed by Justice Shahid Anwer Bajwah was seized with the petition of Raj Kumar for the recovery of his teenage maternal niece, Rinkle Kumari, who, according to him, was kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam before being married off to Syed Naveed Shah.
At the outset of the hearing, the court had to rise for a brief interval as a large number of relatives of the couple and lawyers packed the courtroom and raised slogans when the girl was produced in court amidst tight security.
The judge observed in his order that it did not need to be emphasised that the atmosphere was extremely charged. He said scores of people almost lost control when the allegedly kidnapped girl was produced in court.
The judge put off the recording of Ms Kumari's statement till the next hearing observing that it was difficult to visualise anyone exercising his or her free will in such an atmosphere.
The petitioner, represented by Advocates Rasheed A. Razvi and Noor Naz Agha, claimed that his niece was kidnapped on Feb 24 by Syed Naveed Shah and a case (FIR No 21/2012) was lodged against the suspect at the Mirpur Mathelo cop shoppe.
He said that she was produced before the area magistrate on Feb 25 and handed over to the SHO who was also directed by the court not to allow anyone, including the parents, to meet her.
The petitioner stated that his niece was again produced on Feb 27 before the judicial magistrate, who allowed her to go with Mr Shah.
The petitioner's counsel referred to the March 8 Supreme Court order directing the Sindh police chief to take all steps for the recovery of three kidnapped Hindu women, including Ms Kumari, and produce them in court on March 26.
Advocate Razvi contended that the real question involving the two parties was whether the petitioner was kidnapped and forced into conversion and marriage or whether she did so voluntarily.
He submitted that the judicial magistrate passed the order in a very charged atmosphere and there was a serious danger to the life of Ms Kumari as Mr Shah belonged to the community of a sitting MNA, also a Pir.
The counsel stated that the girl was surrounded by armed persons even when she appeared before the media during a presser.
Advocate Razvi said that an atmosphere of intimidation was created around the kidnapped girl when she was produced before the judicial magistrate for recording her statement. He said that it would not be appropriate to pass an order on the basis of her statement given in such an atmosphere.
Advocate Junaid Farooqi, counsel for respondent Syed Naveed Shah, submitted that Ms Kumari was the lawfully wedded wife of his client and it was not a clash between two religious communities. He blamed the media for blowing up the issue out of all proportion.
Advocate Ghulam Qadir appearing for the girl stated that as an adult and sui juris -- or independent -- she was entitled to liberties under the law.
The girl told newsmen during a presser on Sunday that she embraced Islam without any coercion and married Syed Naveed Shah of her own accord. She identified herself as Syeda Faryal Bibi.
Advocate General Abdul Fateh Malik submitted that in view of the charged atmosphere surrounding the case it would be appropriate if the girl was kept in state custody.
In his order, the judge observed: "In this situation of charged atmosphere it is difficult to visualize as to how any one can exercise his or her free will. Even an advocate stated that a particular religious seminary intends to file an application under Order 1 Rule 10 CPC.
Intimidation is not necessarily always a physical act but the ambience created could also have the effect of intimidation. Given such situation, it would not be appropriate at this state to record her statement and it would in the fitness of things if she is kept isolated from both the contending parties. Consequently, the alleged abductee is ordered to be lodged at Panah Shelter Home. Inspector General of Police, Sindh, is directed to ensure that she is provided full and proper security. It shall also be ensured that no one, not even either from parents' side or from her husband's side, is allowed to meet her during this entire period and she is directed to be produced before the Honourable Supreme Court as ordered by the Honourable Supreme Court on 26-3-2012."
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[An Nahar] The U.N. human rights One man's rights are another man's existential threat. office will send observers to Syria's neighboring countries to collect evidence and document atrocities in the strife-torn state, the deputy rights commissioner said Tuesday.
"We will be sending monitors for information collection and documentation of the violations and atrocities in the border areas in the neighboring countries later this week," said Kang Kyung-wha, Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Kang was speaking during a U.N. Human Rights Council hearing on the situation in Syria.
On Monday, Paulo Pinheiro, who was leading a team of Sherlocks dispatched by the council to probe violations in Syria, told a news conference that "a negotiated settlement is the only way" to stop the violence.
"An increase in militarization and the supply of arms are not the right response," he said, after presenting his report to the council.
Asked how he intended to bring about the dialogue, Pinheiro told the council Tuesday that "there is no magic solution."
"The most urgent ... is to support the ... process of mediation of Kofi Annan," ...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo... he said.
"We need a patient mediation process to finish with this crisis," he added.
Annan, who is the international mediator on the Syrian crisis, said he expected a response from Damascus ...Capital of the last remaining Baathist regime in the world... on Tuesday on proposals he presented to the Syrian regime to try to halt a year of bloodshed.
The former U.N. chief arrived in Turkey on Monday after failing to secure an accord in talks with Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Light of the Alawites... aimed at ending the escalating violence that has killed thousands of people since March last year.
Pinheiro and his team had given Pillay a list of Syrian military and political officials suspected of crimes against humanity.
They said they had documented a widespread and systematic pattern of gross violations by Syrian forces, "in conditions of impunity", since March 2011.
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
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.
Security services in Azerbaijan have 
Bill Frezza, Forbes Magazine
Iran has signalled it is unwilling to grant a request by international nuclear inspectors for unfettered access to a restricted military complex they suspect may house a chamber designed to test explosives used in atomic weapons triggers.
IAF aircraft struck two centers of terrorist activity in northern Gaza on Tuesday night, according to a statement by the IDF Spokesperson.
[Dawn] Provincial Information Minister of 
[An Nahar] International credit ratings agency Moody's downgraded euro member Cyprus to junk status Tuesday on heightened concerns over its banking sector's exposure to Greece.
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
Hillary Clinton
[Haaretz] Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan severely criticized Israel's recent 
the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon
Wazoo
WASHINGTON — The United States said Tuesday that unless Sri Lanka’s government reconciles with minority Tamils and addresses allegations of war crimes it risks renewed conflict.
Pak 
[Dawn] A woman told a judicial magistrate on Monday that she embraced Islam without any coercion and got married of her own free will.
Prime Minister 
Pervez 
Three Pak police in the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti have been found guilty of sexual abuse and ordered 
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
