Country Store comments on Zambia's refusal of groceries containing the dread GM Corn of Death for up to 2.4 million starving people â along with a nice photo of Zambia's porky president. Okay by me. It's no skin off my fore if your people go hungry. Maybe you can send out for non-GM pizza for 2.4 million...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/03/2002 01:56 pm ||
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Try eating in, patting out vegetarian millet tortillas on old plastic bags. If you've got nothing, why sell your pride?
Meryl feels snarky today, and blames it on me. "Wudn't me. I gotta bad back."
She points to a comforting article on Soddy beggars, ponders why 50% of Soddy breeding stock women (and almost 30% of men) are illiterate — uh... lemme think! — and wonders what Soddies do when their real estate investments blow away in sandstorms. She winds up (except for a brief afterthought) with the Muslim World League (MWL) urging the Earth Summit committee studying problems of women and family "to draw benefit from the rules of ethics and morality as enshrined in Islam." Oh, cheeze! She's got the ten-guage...!
He also stressed the need to protect women from all forms of suppression, violence and sexual harassment so that they can perform their role satisfactorily in bringing up future generations.
You mean the suppression and violence that women in fundamentalist Islamic societies experience every day? Like honor killings and being forced to wear the burqa and being beaten for showing any skin or being stoned to death for "adultery" while the man goes free for lack of evidence and being forced back into a burning building because your head is uncovered? Oh, that's not considered suppression, I forgotâit's religious freedom.
Now who the hell's gonna clean those walls, Ms Yourish? Damn! Scales, gutz and fish heads, everywhere you look... Damned nice job!
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/03/2002 05:32 pm ||
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Andrea must have had breakfast with Meryl. She goes after the likes of Germaine Greer, James Carville, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, and "George Moonbat" with a rusty barbecue fork and the edge of her tongue and makes... haggis. Hey, y'know this stuff isn't as bad as y'd think...!
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/03/2002 05:44 pm ||
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A group that purports to be a new ``Secret Army of DoomMujahedeen" is claiming responsibility for attacks on U.S. troops in Arabic-language leaflets that have surfaced in eastern Afghanistan in recent days. The hitherto unknown group also vows to avenge the deaths of Afghans killed in what the United States refers to as "friendly fire" incidents in the search for Al Qaeda and Taliban. Anything new on these previously-unheard of goobers? Any additional info?
Although similar pamphlets have appeared from time to time since the United States went to war in Afghanistan, this one is unusual because it is written in Arabic. That suggests the document could have been written for the several thousand Arabs, most of them suspected Al Qaeda members, who may still be hiding in the remote mountains of the east. The authors of the rambling six-page junk mail leaflet did not refer to themselves as an offshoot of either Al Qaeda or Taliban but said their group had three goals: "To avenge the innocent martyrs of the brutal U.S. bombing of Afghanistan; to continue jihad until the last foreign soldier is expelled from Afghanistan; and to defend the (Muslim) faith and freedom to establish an Islamic order." The same old fanatical Islamist blather...
At the U.S. military headquarters in Bagram, north of the Afghan capital of Kabul, U.S. spokesman Col. Roger King said he was unaware of the group and refused to discuss threats, if any, which American forces have received. Of course he's never heard of it. It's a Secret Army of Doom. If it was a Public Army of Doom, he'd have heard of it...
The circular, which Arabic speakers said was written by someone with a good command of classical Arabic, described Afghan President Hamid Karzai as an American "slave" because of Washington's support for the urbane leader, who won an 18-month term during a meeting of Afghans held in Kabul in June. "There is no peace or stability in Afghanistan," said the leaflet, translated by The Associated Press. "Hamid Karzai is sitting in Kabul like a puppet." Last month, Karzai's Afghan bodyguards were dismissed and replaced by U.S. special forces out of concern for his safety. In a country where there are multiple Secret Armies of Doom running around, that's probably a good idea. That's why there's no peace or stability...
Its authors claimed to have carried out 21 separate attacks against the U.S. military in Afghanistan between June 1 and Aug. 31. However, few could be verified and some clearly did not take place. U.S. forces in Afghanistan have frequently come under fire from an unspecified origin. There also have been a number of bombings in Kabul recently targeting installations such as the Telecommunications Ministry and the United Nations guesthouse. A British peacekeeper was slightly hurt when a bomb exploded Sunday in west Kabul, killing two Afghans and injuring two other people. "Yeah. It was us Doomsters. We did that. We did lotsa stuff. You just don't read about it in the papers..."
"Jihad against American forces is compulsory and jihad against American puppets is also compulsory," the pamphlet said. "Jihad is in our blood! Jihad and disco is our life!"
The leaflets appeared at a time when the Taliban is reportedly attempting to regroup in northeastern Kunar province and other areas where the central government has difficulty asserting its authority. Afghans with contacts among disaffected groups say some Taliban figures, along with Al Qaeda fugitives, are trying to forge an alliance with former prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who maintained close ties to the Arabs even after he moved his headquarters to Iran during the Taliban's rule. Hekmatyar, who speaks fluent Arabic, left Iran this year after the United States demanded his expulsion. He is now believed to be hiding in Kunar, where U.S. special forces and their Afghan allies have been conducting searches and limited air strikes against suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda targets. Afghan officials have speculated that some, if not all, of the recent bombings in Kabul may have been the work of Hekmatyar's followers. "He has met Taliban leaders in Afghanistan and in Pakistan," said Qasi Amin Waqat, a former Hekmatyar deputy who split with his organization. First suspect I'd think of, too...
A security chief in Khost province of eastern Afghanistan, Sur Gul, said he had reports that Hekmatyar was trying to arrange meetings with Taliban members in the east. Earlier this summer, Hekmatyar sent a handwritten message to Pakistani newspapers condemning a missile attack by the U.S. forces against a convoy near Kabul in which he was suspected to be travelling. He vowed to fight the United States and called on all anti-American forces to unite. They always call for that. One day it might happen. They won't like what happens next. We'll be very sorry afterward.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/03/2002 11:21 am ||
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Why can't Hekmatyar have a nasty accident? Something large scale, like accidentally being in the same room as a JDAM when it goes off. Or get one of those Canadian snipers to evacuate the contents of his skull with a .50 cal rifle.
Posted by: David Gillies ||
09/03/2002 12:02 Comments ||
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Israel could commit a terrorist act in the United States and make it look like by Iraq to spur Washington into a military campaign on Baghdad, the Iraqi newspaper run by Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Uday, said Tuesday. âWith the U.S. administration having failed to find the slightest link between Iraq and the events of September 11, the Zionist entity could act by carrying out a terrorist act in the United States conforming to its desire to see Iraq attacked,â Babel paper warned. âThe Zionist entity wants to involve the United States in an insane war from which it will benefit by settling its account with the Palestinian people and imposing its hegemony on the region.â That's pretty interesting. Is this a set-up? By blaming the Zionists beforehand, are we setting the stage for something awful, so that Uday can holler, 'I toldja so'?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/03/2002 10:55 am ||
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Fifteen North Koreans jumped a wall at a German government compound Tuesday and were holed up in a school amid a surge in asylum bids by people fleeing their homeland. Also Tuesday, a South Korean official disclosed that at least 20 North Koreans were waiting in the South Korean Embassy in Beijing for Chinese permission to leave the country. The entry into the German compound, on a busy street in eastern Beijing, came a day after a third group of 12 North Koreans tried to use a ladder to climb into a diplomatic apartment complex. They were blocked by Chinese guards who beat and kicked them. Eight were detained, while the others ran away. In addition to at least 35 North Koreans in the German compound and the South Korean Embassy, activists say as many as 18 others have been detained by Chinese authorities. I understand the remaining 11 people in North Korea want to leave, too...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/03/2002 01:46 pm ||
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The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states "renew their adherence to the decision of (last March's) Arab summit in Beirut which rejected any military action against any Muslim or Arab country, including Iraq," said a statement issued by foreign ministers of the six-nation bloc at the end of a two-day meeting in this Red Sea city. "The (GCC ministerial) council urges Iraq to accept the return of UN inspectors in order to avert such (military) action." Sammy: "No." Bush: "No." Gulf States: "Hokay."
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/03/2002 02:21 pm ||
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Iranian Interior Minister Abdolvahed Musavi-Lari called on Pakistan to do more to prevent fugitive al-Qaeda fighters from entering Iran. "Musavi-Lari demanded that Pakistan cooperate more to prevent al-Qaeda members from entering Iranian territory" during talks with his visiting Pakistani counterpart Moinuddin Haider, Iranian state radio said. The Iranian interior minister added that the neighbours had formed a committee to deal with "problems at the border". Formed a committee, did they? That always works. Our worries are over...
For his part Haider insisted that Pakistan was doing all within its power to stop fugitive fighters crossing the border, the radio said. "But, y'know, these guys are armed and dangerous..."
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/03/2002 02:25 pm ||
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The World Council of Churches (WCC) has expressed "concern and alarm" over U.S. threats to strike Iraq in the name of overthrowing the present Iraqi government, and called on the United States to cease military threats against Baghdad. In a statement released late Monday, September 2, the Geneva-based WCC also urged U.S. allies "to resist pressures to join in pre-emptive military strikes against a sovereign state under the pretext of the 'war on terrorism'." The WCC said the "most effective ways of combating terrorism are to be found in building a more just world order in which the rights and dignity of all human beings are upheld and affirmed". It's worked like a charm so far, hasn't it? The World Council of Churches Nobody Goes To is a very predictable, very tiresome organization. If it ever approved of anything the U.S. did, its disapproval in one instance could be taken a bit more seriously.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/03/2002 10:11 am ||
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If I remember correctly, WCC used to be a Soviet front organisation during the Cold War.Check out the book "The Mitrokhin Archive" by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, the former KGB chief archivist.
The largest annual gathering of American Muslims began Friday with prayers for victims of Sept. 11 and for Muslims who have been harassed since the attacks. Muhammad Nur Abdullah, president of the Islamic Society of North America, said in his opening address that Islam condemns violence and that Muslims, like others in the United States, want the terrorists to be punished. Good idea. They should say so now and then...
"We're for justice," said Abdullah, a St. Louis imam, standing on a stage flanked by U.S. flags. "This is our country. American Muslims, we care for the betterment of this country and for every human being." Khadija Abdullah of Los Angeles read a prayer she wrote for those who died in the suicide strikes, thanking God for the efforts of the rescue workers and for the "comfort and courage" victims gave their families in their final phone calls. She also urged Muslims to "answer scapegoating and hatred" with love. Instead of waving fists and shouting "Death to infidels"?
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based front for the Islamic Brotherhood advocacy group, has received 2,000 reports of harassment of Muslims since Sept. 11. What was the baseline? How many were they receiving prior to 9-11? I'd be surprised if it's gone up by much...
The National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom, a coalition of groups including the National Lawyers Guild and the American Muslim Council, have scheduled a rally starting at noon Sunday at Freedom Plaza. Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Don't forget your turbans.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/03/2002 10:11 am ||
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Muslim militants beheaded a ruling party official in Held Kashmir, while one person was injured as they fired at an election rally. Ghulam Hassan, a local leader of the ruling National Conference (NC), was abducted overnight from his house in the village of Ayhtmulla, 60 kilometres north of Srinagar. âWe have found his headless body,â the spokesman said. âThe search has been launched to find the missing head.â They kept it for a souvenir, no doubt...
One person was injured when suspected militants opened fire at an NC election rally in the village of Sheikhpora, 40 kilometres west of Srinagar. NC supporters of Mustafa Kamal, the brother of Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, were travelling in cars decorated with red party flags when the attack happened. Somehow the jihadi groups have managed to convince themselves that Kashmiris are just aching to live in a land where people's heads are chopped off for disagreeing with them. Personally, I think the Indians should keep all the heads they find lying around for a year, just pickle them. Then hold the plebiscite they should have held years ago and make sure they put the heads on display at every whistle stop and voting station in Jammu and Kashmir.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/03/2002 10:11 am ||
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Six men sentenced to have their necks stretched death for the tribal court-mandated gang rape of a woman to punish her family asked an appeals court Tuesday to overturn the convictions. The six were convicted last weekend and sentenced to hang in the June 22 case. Defense lawyer Malik Salim said he filed an appeal with the Multan branch of the regional High Court asking that the verdicts be set aside because the judge's decision, rendered shortly after midnight Sunday, "is not maintainable according to the law and facts of the case." "Cuz, ummm... Cuz it's not."
"All of the accused should have been acquitted," Salim told reporters without elaboration. "We will challenge this decision." The court will decide later whether to hear arguments or simply reject the appeal.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/03/2002 01:52 pm ||
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Well, not the entire Pak army...
Hundreds of Pakistani soldiers were sent to a remote region of northwest Pakistan on Monday after tribesmen offered refuge to six suspected al-Qaida men, authorities said. ... But a whole bunch, you betcha...
The government was negotiating with the tribesmen to hand over the men, officials said on condition of anonymity. The soldiers had virtually surrounded the village of a few hundred people. The nationalities of the six men were not released, but they were believed to be from a Middle Eastern country. Oh, wotta surprise that is. I wonder if they were Muslims, too?
They were stopped before Monday near a paramilitary checkpoint, about 100 miles southwest of Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, the officials said. It wasn't immediately known whether the six fugitives were still in Jani Khiel village, but government officials were meeting elders to demand they hand the men over for interrogation. So far they have refused. "Nope, nope. You can't have 'em..." The beturbanned, inbred rustics of Pakistan's ignorant, disease-ridden deeply conservative tribal area are is believed to harbor most remaining remnants of al-Qaida who have fled the U.S.-led coalition's offensives in Afghanistan. ... since civilized people want nothing to do with them.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/03/2002 02:16 pm ||
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Lebanese and Palestinian refugee officials denied Tuesday a report in the Israeli daily Haâaretz that Syria permitted more than 150 al-Qaida activists to enter the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Helweh in southern Lebanon. âThis is a matter of lies peddled by Israel and the United States. There are no al-Qaida members in Lebanon,â Information Minister Ghazi Aradi said. "Lies! All lies! There is no al-Qaeda! It's all a Zionist plot...!"
The local chief of Fatah movement in Ain El-Helweh also categorically rejected the Haâaretz report. There âare no members of Al-Qaida in the Palestinian camps in Lebanon,â Munir Maqdah said. âThe Israelis peddle these lies to take away attention from their failure to subdue the Intifada,â he added. "They ain't al-Qaeda. They're just nuts."
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/03/2002 01:55 pm ||
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In a "black day for human rights," the Israeli Supreme Court gave the go-ahead Tuesday, September 3, for the expulsion to the Gaza Strip of two relatives of West Bank resistance activists. "This set a dangerous precedent, and the whole world should understand the bad situation for human rights in Israel," said chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat. It's a "human right" to support terrorist bombings?
Citing lack of evidence, the nine-member bench of the court did not, however, approve the expulsion of a third relative that an Israeli military tribunal sought to evict. The tribunal said it found the three guilty of knowing about planned retaliatory attacks against Israel. The decision allows the army to go ahead with the expulsion of Kifah and Intissar Adjuri, the brother and sister of Ali Adjuri, a local West Bank chief of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Ali Adjuri, assassinated by Israeli soldiers August 6 near the West Bank town of Jenin, was accused of organizing a martyr bombing in Tel Aviv on July 17. The judges decided that Intissar Adjuri had "directly helped her brother by sewing the belt containing the explosives which he used in the attack," although Intissar had earlier pleaded in a military court that she did not know how to sew. So what'd she do, knit it? Or crochet it? Maybe an hour's work with a hot glue gun? Same thing in the end result...
In addition, the court said Kifah had provided his sibling with a hide-out and acted as a look-out while the explosives were being transported. Sounds an awful lot like aiding and abetting...
But the judges ruled there was insufficient evidence to confirm the complicity of Abdel Nasser Assidi in the attack by his brother, a member of Hamas wanted by Israeli security forces for a July 16 bus ambush near an illegal Jewish settlement in the West Bank. Now they can go cheer for the Killer Korps in Gaza. My sympathy meter hasn't budged. Knitting him a dynamite belt, indeed...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/03/2002 10:11 am ||
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Abu Nidal, the once-feared terrorist mastermind who died in Baghdad last month under mysterious circumstances, was given a quiet burial in the Iraqi capital, his organization said Tuesday. Iraqi intelligence handed over Abu Nidal's body Thursday to one of his relatives in Baghdad, the Fatah-Revolutionary Council group said in a statement. Abu Nidal, 65, was buried the same day "in the presence of a handful of his family members, and the participation of an Iraqi intelligence officer to make sure he was buried," the group said. The statement said Abu Nidal had wanted to be buried in the West Bank town of Nablus "but several Arab and Zionist intelligence agencies prevented that." Put a rock on his grave or something, just to make sure...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/03/2002 01:54 pm ||
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Al Qaeda and the Taliban have quietly shipped large quantities of gold out of Pakistan to Sudan in recent weeks, transiting through the United Arab Emirates and Iran, according to European, Pakistani and U.S. investigators. Several shipments of boxes of gold, usually disguised as other products, were taken by small boat from Karachi to either Iran or Dubai, and from there mixed with other goods and flown by chartered airplanes to Khartoum. Although it is not clear how much gold has been moved, the quantity was significant and was an important indicator that the al Qaeda network and members of Afghanistan's deposed Taliban militia still had access to large financial reserves. Also that they don't trust leaving it in Pakland...
European and U.S. intelligence officials said the movement of gold also highlighted three significant developments in the war on terrorism: the growing role of Iranian intelligence units allied with the country's hard-line clerics in protecting and aiding al Qaeda; the potential reemergence of Sudan as a financial center for the organization; and the ability of the terrorist group to generate new sources of revenue despite the global crackdown on its finances. I'm not too sure about that last. If this is gold they looted before leaving town in the dead of night, they could still be living on fat...
The sources said Sudan may have been chosen because Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born al Qaeda leader, and other members of the network are familiar with the country and retain business contacts there. They said traditional havens for al Qaeda money on the Arabian peninsula such as Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates were under intense international scrutiny, while transactions in Sudan could more easily pass unnoticed. Sudan is also in a state of flux lately, with the government either signing a peace agreement with the rebels or going back to full-time war with them â they haven't figured it yet. That presents glowing opportunities for Islamists, especially when they're experienced in Pak's NWFP. President Omar is also cleaning house, distancing himself from some pushy Islamists and presenting a more civilized front to the rest of the world; there is all that oil money that could come pouring in, if they could just get a little stability going. House cleanings make a government stronger in the long run, but that takes awhile to kick in. So an al-Qaeda presence doesn't necessarily equate to a presence that's approved by the Sudan government. But it is going to equate to an autonomous enclave somewhere in Sudan, probably with the protection of one of the head cheeses, as we see in Indonesia with the vice president making kissy face with the local turbans.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
09/03/2002 11:35 am ||
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"Large quantities of gold" require large quantities of guards. Those guards will be focused around someone the Al Qaeda trusts -- which in that world usually means family.
I'm not saying the gold will be easy to track down, but we could have much, much fun letting local crooks, tribal warlords, gangs, military commanders, etc. know that such-and-such an individual might be well-worth knocking over...
Posted by: Patrick Phillips ||
09/03/2002 14:10 Comments ||
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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.
