[Dawn] Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... Chief Secretary Babar Yaqoob Fateh Mohammad has said that floods triggered by torrential rains have marooned almost 600,000 people in Naseerabad and Jaffarabad districts.
The floods have caused at least 22 deaths, destroyed crops on 24,866 acres and swept away about 4,000 houses.
Naseerabad, Jaffarabad, Sibi, Jhal Magsi and Kachi are the worst affected districts.
"Dera Allahyar, Dera Murad Jamali, Sohbatpur, Manjopur and Manjoshori are under two to six feet of water. Thousands of families are in distress," the chief secretary told news hounds at the Provincial Disaster Management Authority's office after supervising the despatch of relief goods to the affected areas.
He said the government had sought assistance from the Army and the Frontier Corps to step up the pace of relief work.
Fateh Mohammad said he had asked his counterpart in Sindh not to divert water from Jacobabad towards Balochistan because it would aggravate the problems manifold. "We are in touch with the Sindh government to avoid more losses in Balochistan."
The chief secretary called upon international organizations, the federal government and philanthropists to help the provincial administration in transportation of essential commodities to the flood-ravaged region.
He said all resources were being used to stop the spread of water-borne diseases and to meet shortage of food and drinking water.
Electricity supply to the main towns in Naseerabad and Jaffarabad districts had been restored and efforts were afoot to repair the damaged roads.
"The irrigation department's engineers are at work to plug breaches at 13 places," Balochistan's top bureaucrat said. Six army helicopters and 18 boats have been pressed in to move affected people to relief camps.
In reply to a question, he said the losses caused by floods in northern and southern Balochistan were so huge that the provincial government would not be able to cope with the disaster on its own.
He said the chief minister was coordinating the rescue operation by PDMA, the provincial government, the Army and the FC.
The Balochistan government has decided that every member of the provincial assembly will release Rs20 million out of the funds granted to him for the affected people, Fateh Mohammad added.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/17/2012 00:00 ||
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[Al Ahram] Egypt's trade deficit saw yet another surge in June, growing a whopping 49 per cent over the same month last year, latest data from Egypt's official statistics body CAPMAS showed Sunday.
The trade deficit reached LE17.6 billion in June 2012 versus LE11.9 billion a year earlier. On a monthly level, the trade deficit dropped from LE19 million in May.
A drop in exports was behind the increased deficit, the former falling 17.6 per cent in June to sit at LE14.7 billion.
The CAPMAS report attributed the exports drop to a decline in overseas demand for Egypt's petroleum products, garments, fertilisers and electrical wires.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/17/2012 00:00 ||
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#4
g(r)omgoru yes, In my opinion China has been printing so much money they are in as bad a shape as ourselves, perhaps worse. We are a consumer economy. We can turn things around much faster. That is if people have jobs and real money. The Chinese save. They don't spend. Their government spends. Not the same. Let capitalism live and our winter will pass much sooner. Get government off our backs. Should Obama return then we will have more of the same but having less of everything.
[Al Ahram] Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in their national face... 's labour ministry has ordered the closure of around 100 lingerie shops in the capital for having men on their sales staff, a newspaper said on Sunday.
Al-Eqtisadiah quoted a ministry official as saying all shops in Riyadh which violate a decree on the "feminisation and nationalisation of jobs" would be shut down. The measure aims to "provide a safe environment for working women," he said.
The ministry at the start of the year banned male assistants from working at lingerie shops, as a first step to be followed by women-only sales assistants at cosmetics outlets.
King Abdullah issued a decree in June 2011 limiting work for females at lingerie shops to Saudi women only in a bid to reduce high female unemployment in the conservative kingdom.
Unemployment among women in the oil-rich state is estimated at 30 per cent.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/17/2012 00:00 ||
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[Al Ahram] A Saudi scholar has played down an Islamic fatwa (ruling) that forbids women from logging in online without an escort.
"The law for internet usage for men and women should be the same, even if the internet has useful and harmful websites," said Sheikh Mohamed El-Aly, professor of Islamic law at Imam Mohamed Ben Saud University to Al-Youm Online, a Saudi news website, Sunday.
According to Islamic law, women are not allowed to travel without a male escort who is either her husband or a close relative she couldn't marry, including uncles, father-in-law and adult nieces.
In 2010, Sheikh Saad El-Ghamdi issued a fatwa banning women from logging in online without a chaperon sitting at her side.
"Women are similar to other beings, yet they are weak and emotional, which drags them towards what is against God's rule ... The internet is full with tempting things that will be very hard for the weak woman to avoid ... Thus an escort who is aware of her weak psyche, which is prone to sex and emotion, is to accompany her while being online," said Sheikh Saad El-Ghamdi in 2010.
However, if you can't say something nice about a person some juicy gossip will go well... Sheikh El-Aly has different views on women. "God blesses the Moslem woman with righteous thinking by which she distinguishes between what is good and bad for her," he told the Saudi press Sunday.
The 2010 fatwa spread widely on social media sites. Sheikh Saad Ghamadi is a Saudi who graduated from the College of Sharia of the Islamic Imam Mohamed Ben Saud University.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/17/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
According to Islamic law, women are not allowed to travel without a male escort who is either her husband or a close relative she couldn't marry, including uncles, father-in-law and adult nieces.
Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
09/17/2012 12:43 ||
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#1
Waited till after the Typhoon passed this time?
Remembering two previous attempts during the Yuan [the Sino term for the Mongols ruling China] Dynasty to invade Japan that were ended by the 'Divine Wind'.
Posted by: tipper ||
09/17/2012 12:17 ||
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#1
Nigel is the lone voice in the wilderness. So now, if he pays his fine, he legitimizes who these EUniks are. If he does not pay the fine, then can the EUniks boot him out? I noticed that there are not very many seats occupied in that august chamber.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/17/2012 14:45 Comments ||
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#2
Mr Rompuy has yet to prove that he does NOT have the charisma of a damp rag.
Which should be easy because he doesn't EVEN have the charisma of a damp rag.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
09/17/2012 16:55 Comments ||
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I'm sure Stalin would have had a blast. Shows trials, the authentic Gulag experience, firing squads at dawn.
It's a report on a communist run music festival in France.
#2
Mao and Stalin's body count dwarf Adolf and the National Socialists, but get far better press in academia as cover for a failed political construct.
This is one of my pet peeves lately. Everyone "knows" the commies are left-wing and the Nazis are right-wing. (we learned it in school!). Yeah, maybe compared to each other, but the name Nazi came from National Socialist German Workers' Party. They were into national socialism (duh!) vs the commie's international socialism. Nazis, commies, call it what you want, but it's still socialism and still a left-wing ideology.
#5
"I, on the other hand, have been striving for twenty years with a minimum of intervention and without destroying our production, to arrive at a new Socialist order in Germany which not only eliminates unemployment but also permits the worker to receive an ever greater share of the fruits of his labor.
The success of this policy of economic and social reconstruction of our people, which by systematically eliminating differences of rank and class, has a true peoples' community as the final aim of the world."
-- Adolf Hitler
Living in the grinding poverty of the Vienna slums, Hitler soon realized that a wholesome national pride could not be aroused in men who lacked the necessities of life. Hence his interest in social betterment, which ultimately brought the word 'Socialist' into the name of his party. Like William Morris, he turned to Socialism as a necessary preliminary to the dissemination of his great idea. Morris became a Socialist, bent on improving the living conditions of the English masses, in order to make them listen to his artistic gospel. Hitler became a Socialist (in his sense of the word) so that the German masses would listen to his gospel of nationalism.
-- Nicolas Fairweather, The Atlantic, March 1932
"We have backed the wrong horse in Spain. We would have done better to back the Republicans. They represent the people. We could always have converted these socialists into good National Socialists later. The people around Franco are all reactionary clerics, aristocrats, and moneybags they've nothing in common with us Nazis at all!"
-- Adolf Hitler, April 1938
#3
It reads as a chilling examination of how war changes man
No, no and no. When their comanders make them clear that some actions will make soldiers shot, when they know their comrades will loath their actions and report or even frag them then there will be few atrocities.
But when, like the Wehrmacht in Russia, high command implicitly allows rape of women, murder of civilians or prisoners, when the soldier has been told he is a an ûbermensch who can do what pleases him to untemenschen, when he nows hos comrades share these thesis and will support him then you have what the Wehrmacht (all of it not only the SS) did in Russia
And if you want to know why the Russians after massively surrendering in 1941, fought like devils at Stalingrad despite a life expectancy of mere hours it is because they had seen first hand what the Germans had done and because they were being told of articles in the German press telling of future market slaves where robust Russains would be sold for agricultural work and the prettiest girls would be sold to Hamburg's brothels. These articles were not fakes manufactured by Red Army's political comissars, they were authentic and published in publicaklly sold newspapers. When such papers are sold without scandal then don't wonder about war crimes since an Army is the mirror of the country who fields it.
About the massive rapes perpetrated by the Red Army in Germany it was not merely vengeance: "Krasnaia Sviezda" the Red Army's journal was running articles inviting soldiers to "break the racial pride of the German woman". Again it was no accident and again it was not "war changes man". It is some armies who change man, not war
(1) Former soldier Heinrich Boll, writes in "Portrait of a group with Dame", about a column of Soviet POWs marched without food and water, a five years old girl is sent by her parents tries to bring them some. No warnings, no tries to restrain her, no attempts to frighten her, no nothing: Bang, Bang, Bang. Five years old dead.
#4
My mother-in-law is a survivor of the holocaust. She lived in Poland. Her father and mother and four of her siblings were murdered. The children who were murdered were but children--not even teens. Similarly for my father-in-law, he lost his mother and father and others in his family. They were shuttled around to various concentration camps during the war until they were liberated by American soldiers. She still keeps in touch with one of these soldiers and feels a deep debt of gratitude to the Americans.
My background is Catholic and Irish and I never had much knowledge of the holocaust except through newsreels as a kid. However, I can remember being shocked as a kid upon seeing newsreels of showing bodies of people in concentration camps stacked like so much cord wood while others ended up as ashes in huge ovens.
I wouldn't expect much better from the islamists than the Nazis.
#5
You should Google the English translation of the speech Hitler made to the German nation when he declared war on America publicly 12/11/1941, even though he declared war on America privately on 9/11 of that year.
He lied through his teeth almost as bad as Obama lies now. Only Hitler was, at that time, 8 years after being in power, much more militant in his speeches than Obama is at the moment.
Posted by: Dino Prince of the Poles3605 ||
09/17/2012 23:14 Comments ||
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#3
Win win, either they get denounced publicly, the Dems take a hit by association, or both. Good for the country and a perfect conclusion to the Occupy outbreak.
Occupy Wall Street protesters celebrated the movement's anniversary on Monday by clogging intersections in the city's financial district, marching to the beat of drums that were a familiar refrain last year.
Protesters roamed around the lower Manhattan financial district all morning in groups of a few dozen each, from one intersection to another and back again, chanting loudly about the ills of Wall Street. In total, there were a few hundred protesters scattered throughout the city. More than 100 of them were arrested by midafternoon, mostly on disorderly conduct charges.
[France 24] Scientists in Japan have created a microscopically thin film that can coat individual teeth to prevent decay or to make them appear whiter, the chief researcher said.
The "tooth patch" is a hard-wearing and ultra-flexible material made from hydroxyapatite, the main mineral in tooth enamel, that could also mean an end to sensitive teeth.
"This is the world's first flexible apatite sheet, which we hope to use to protect teeth or repair damaged enamel," said Shigeki Hontsu, professor at Kinki University's Faculty of Biology-Oriented Science and Technology in western Japan.
"Dentists used to think an all-apatite sheet was just a dream, but we are aiming to create artificial enamel," the outermost layer of a tooth, he said earlier this month.
Researchers can create film just 0.004 millimetres (0.00016 inches) thick by firing lasers at compressed blocks of hydroxyapatite in a vacuum to make individual particles pop out.
These particles fall onto a block of salt which is heated to crystallise them, before the salt stand is dissolved in water.
The film is scooped up onto filter paper and dried, after which it is robust enough to be picked up by a pair of tweezers.
"The moment you put it on a tooth surface, it becomes invisible. You can barely see it if you examine it under a light," Hontsu told AFP by telephone.
The sheet has a number of minute holes that allow liquid and air to escape from underneath to prevent their forming bubbles when it is applied onto a tooth.
One problem is that it takes almost one day for the film to adhere firmly to the tooth's surface, said Hontsu.
The film is currently transparent but it is possible to make it white for use in cosmetic dentistry.
Researchers are experimenting on disused human teeth at the moment but the team will soon move to tests with animals, Hontsu said, adding he was also trying it on his own teeth.
Five years or more would be needed before the film could be used in practical dental treatment such as covering exposed dentin -- the sensitive layer underneath enamel -- but it could be used cosmetically within three years, Hontsu said.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/17/2012 00:00 ||
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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.