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Chavez Contracted With FARC And ETA To Kill Uribe In Spain
Today's Headlines
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2 00:00 Barbara Skolaut [3] 
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Page 6: Politix
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-Lurid Crime Tales-
Al Gore Now Has Blood On His Hands From Global Warming Fear Suicide Pact
A baby girl survived three days with a bullet in her chest as she lay alone beside the dead bodies of her parents and toddler brother in Argentina, the Daily Mail reported.

Francisco Lotero, 56, and Miriam Coletti, 23, shot their 7-month-old daughter and son, 2, before killing themselves. The pair allegedly agreed to a suicide pact over fears about global warming, according to the Daily Mail.

The couple's son, Francisco, died instantly after being shot in the back, the paper reported. The baby girl, whose name has not been released, escaped the apparent murder attempt after a bullet from her dad's handgun missed her vital organs, according to The Daily Mail.

Worried neighbors alerted police three days later, after discovering the massacre. Paramedics then rushed the blood-soaked baby to a hospital. The miraculous survivor is now recovering in a hospital in the town of Goya in northern Argentina and is out of danger, according to the paper.

Police discovered an apparent suicide note by the girl's parents in which they outlined their fears over global warming.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 03/01/2010 12:59 || Comments || Link || [4 views] Top|| File under:

#1  "Done because we are too menny."

There's a death-wish in the heart of a certain strain of free-thinking anti-traditionalism, which Hardy saw as well as anyone else. The lack of reasoning remains the same, but the color of the accompanying rhetoric is variously dyed by the hue of of whatever trendy poison is seeping into the well.
Posted by: Mitch H. || 03/01/2010 16:28 Comments || Top||

#2  A perfect Darwinian award...cleaning the gene pool.

I hope these Aztlan folks in messy-co proliferate...we could send them our
goregastic hippie new agers to go with that
tomato and chili sauce.

See here, they already sit atop one of their butcher block that where these truncated
pyramids, ready to be chopped up and cooked!!!
Images deleted; broke our formatting. AoS.
Posted by: Hotspur666 || 03/01/2010 16:44 Comments || Top||

#3  The pair allegedly agreed to a suicide pact over fears about global warming, according to the Daily Mail.

Correction - that's a murder-suicide pact. I doubt very much the toddler and baby agreed to it. There must be a special place in hell for people who would murder their own children.

What is the story behind that picture Hotspur666?
Posted by: CrazyFool || 03/01/2010 17:49 Comments || Top||

#4  Would love to see the survivor sue Gore et al. Delicious.
Posted by: Iblis || 03/01/2010 18:12 Comments || Top||

#5  http://i493.photobucket.com/albums/rr296/frontdeboeuf/idiots.jpg

I saw on National Geographic once that 50,000
new age hippies went to a mexican truncated pyramid to do whatever pagan nonsense they do watching the sun rise, set or whatever.

I googled hippie + pyramid and there it was!

The Aztecs murdered 500,000 people a year to satisfy their degenerate appetites...i.e. EAT THEM.

There was a wall by that pyramid ten feet wide, ten feet tall and a mile long made of victims skulls...

Get this, most of todays Mexicans are descendant of those SAVED by conquistador Cortes yet all these
creeps are ashamed of their savior...
THERE IS NOT A SINGLE STATUE OR MEMORIAL
of the liberator Cortes in the whole of Mexico!

The way things are moving in central America,
they will soon return to cannibalism and
this is a good thing, none of them deserve
to live...bunch of bolchevik anti-american
bilge rats!!!


By the way, why the picture was erased?
Posted by: Hotspur666 || 03/01/2010 18:36 Comments || Top||

#6  hotspur: image was too large for column formatting.

next time edit the 'IMG' tag to make the size more user friendly. i dont know off hand what the 'allowed size' is but there have been 'style guides' periodically put up here about it.
Posted by: abu do you love || 03/01/2010 18:51 Comments || Top||

#7  Here's photobucket medium small image....
Hope it pass the test:

Photobucket




Photobucket




Photobucket
Posted by: Hotspur666 || 03/01/2010 19:07 Comments || Top||

#8  "Gore lied, people died."
Posted by: JohnQC || 03/01/2010 19:07 Comments || Top||

#9  How interesting that you call Mexicans anti-American as an insult, hotspur, since you comment here via a Canadian server.

And, a small point but one rather relevant to the story, this occurred in Argentina, not Mexico. So far as I know the Aztecs never extended their rule quite so far south as the pampas.
Posted by: lotp || 03/01/2010 19:16 Comments || Top||

#10  The point is not Argentina but Al Gore's Global Warming.

Argentina is as far left as you can get, just like Mexico and Al's Man Caused "Warming" is today's
their religion main tenet, thus the suicide
as they see their dear China scorning their
nonsense and going full speed in industrialization.

In Canada, we LOVE global warming and would worship the sun is we thought it would
make it hotter.

Alas, last spring, summer only came at the end
of June and I had to use my float plane as ice breaker even then.

On the other hand, right now, as you're shoveling
the snow off your car, here, if it still not toasty,
let say it is balmy, WAY UP NORTH!!! Gulfstream
Warm air is curling up Labrador and whipping
back south on Hudson Bay, melting all the snow!

VIVE LE GLOBAL WARMING
(And piss on Al Gore!)
Posted by: Hotspur666 || 03/01/2010 19:58 Comments || Top||

#11  And I know all these "American" places as I flew
out of Miami as freighter the diesel Eight to all these "interesting" places for decades...("interesting" as in the Chinese curse!)


No, I did not hang by the heel off the fifth story
of the Peruvian secret police building like fellow freighters of Miami's Fine Air
but I got the general idea...
Posted by: Hotspur666 || 03/01/2010 20:07 Comments || Top||

#12  I imagine the Russians are hoping for global warming, too... not that they would likely increase their birth rate were it to happen, so they'd just end up losing warmer territory to China and the various high birthrate -stans.
Posted by: trailing wife || 03/01/2010 23:47 Comments || Top||

#13  From the Rantburg moderator manual:

Make sure images size properly. The maximum
width for most of our images is 300 pixels. Some of
our images are not sized properly (because they were
submitted at the wrong size), and so may break the
Burg. Always check preview a post after inserting an image. If
the image needs re-sizing, add the following to the
image src code –

img src="Pix/72_virgins.jpg" valign=top align=right
width=300 /

The width command tells the Burg how wide the
image should be. You can make the number
whatever looks right, but 300 is the maximum for us.


Note: the line of code that starts img src should be within angle brackets. But if I leave them in the text above, whole bits of the code disappear for reasons that are beyond my ability to understand, but probably have something to do with not letting the magic blue smoke escape.
Posted by: trailing wife || 03/01/2010 23:57 Comments || Top||


Patrons ignore man killed by Tulsa restaurant
Callous public, illiterate headline writer, a bad combination.

(They actually mean the guy was killed outside, near, or adjacent to the chicken place, and not that the restaurant was the perpetrator. At least I hope that's it.)
Police say only one person in a parking lot full of people called 911 after a man was shot to death outside a Tulsa chicken restaurant. Police and other emergency personnel responded to the call of shots fired at the Chicken Hut restaurant about 3 a.m. Sunday. They found 27-year-old Valentino Verner lying in front of the restaurant's pick-up window.
Er, I'll have whatever he didn't have.
Police Sgt. Mike Eckert says emergency workers had trouble making it through the crowd of about 100 people to try and help Verner. He says some people were stepping over Verner so they could pick up their food orders and others shoved emergency workers while going to the pick-up window.
Maybe the victim had cut in line.
Eckert says only one person, 1 of Verner's relatives, offered any information about the shooting.
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy || 03/01/2010 10:02 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  100 ppl at the Chicken Hut at 3 am. Bet that is a nice neighborhood
Posted by: chris || 03/01/2010 10:38 Comments || Top||

#2  only one person in a parking lot full of people called 911

Maybe the rest of them knew the guy.
Posted by: SteveS || 03/01/2010 12:12 Comments || Top||

#3  They were probably angry at the dead guy because he is no longer stuck in Tulsa.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 03/01/2010 13:15 Comments || Top||

#4  Just gimme my chikin and F*** the Po-Po...
Posted by: abu do you love || 03/01/2010 13:27 Comments || Top||

#5  So one 911 call is not enough?

When did journalism standards take over?

911: What is the nature of your emergency?
Caller: A man has been shot!
911: I'm sorry sir, but unless we hear from a second source, we cannot respond.
Posted by: Skunky Glins**** || 03/01/2010 17:26 Comments || Top||

#6  "Would you like fries or crack with your chicken, sir?"
Posted by: Glenmore || 03/01/2010 19:34 Comments || Top||

#7 

The worse neighborhood of them all...RUSSIA!!!

Here's an interesting youtube from la Russophobe.
http://larussophobe.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/editorial-russia-is-a-nation-of-barbarians-2/

A close Putin associate drunkenly kill a pedestrian
and turn her sister into a veggie.

People walk by as if nothing happened and
the dirty bitch do not even look at her victims,
just checking her bumper...gone viral in russkia.
She then do a Teddy Kennedy and call her lawyers...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZUX2_QXR8o



For those who can read russian, it say her name in the neighboring videos
Posted by: Hotspur666 || 03/01/2010 19:41 Comments || Top||


-Short Attention Span Theater-
Today's Darwin Candidate
Authorities believe a Washington man was killed by accidentally urinating on a downed power line after a car crash.

Grays Harbor County sheriff's Deputy Dave Pimentel (PIM'-en-tel) said Monday 50-year-old Roy Messenger was not seriously hurt after he collided with a power pole Friday and called a relative to pull his car from a ditch.

However, family members found Messenger electrocuted when they arrived.

Pimentel says Messenger apparently urinated into a roadside ditch but didn't see the live wire. The urine stream likely served as a conductor, allowing the electricity to reach his body.

Pimentel says there will be an autopsy but burn marks indicated the way the electricity traveled through Messenger's body.
Posted by: Frank G || 03/01/2010 19:17 || Comments || Link || [5 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Sorry but I think this one got MythBusted. What's the difference between this and the pissing on the 3rd rail myth that they busted years ago? A urine stream is not continuous and therefore could not possibly serve as a conductor.
Posted by: Alanc || 03/01/2010 19:52 Comments || Top||

#2  tell that to Messenger's junk
Posted by: Frank G || 03/01/2010 19:59 Comments || Top||

#3  "A urine stream is not continuous and therefore could not possibly serve as a conductor."

I think it may be continuous if he had a healthy prostate and he was drinking beer. He did hit the power pole, but in his defense, he honked first.

Posted by: penguin || 03/01/2010 20:03 Comments || Top||

#4  More likely he just blundered into the live wire while stumbling around. The Mythbuster segment was pretty damned convincing on the science of "don't whiz on the electric fence".
Posted by: Mitch H. || 03/01/2010 20:45 Comments || Top||

#5  More likely he just blundered into the live wire while stumbling around

with his d*ck?
Posted by: Frank G || 03/01/2010 21:16 Comments || Top||

#6  I can sadly tell you form 1st hand experience that a stream of urine IS a conductor. I hit a cattle fence while taking a leak one night when I was in high school. I can definitely assure you that there was a conduction of electrical current.
Posted by: abu do you love || 03/01/2010 21:41 Comments || Top||

#7  I can personally testify to the "don't whiz on the electric fence thing" . Broken stream? depends on the voltage in the line he knocked down.
Posted by: notascrename || 03/01/2010 21:42 Comments || Top||


It is now going to cost you 5 bucks to talk to a human at the Mass. RMV
This is going to suck big time for the older drivers or anyone else who does not yet have internet access to do online transactions. This is taking place on top of the elimination of many RMV offices in Massachusetts. Just more inconvenience for Mass. Drivers.
BOSTON--Republican and Democratic critics, including Senate President Therese Murray, are taking aim at a new $5 fee the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles is charging customers who want to do their business with a real person.
Just out-source the whole RMV like Indiana did.
The fee that went into effect Monday will be assessed on customers who talk to an agency employee either in person or on the telephone to conduct certain transactions, including renewing driver's licenses and vehicle registrations.

The fee won't be charged for transactions completed online, by mail or over the agency's automated phone system. Also exempted will be a visit required every 10 years for an in-person license renewal.

Registrar Rachel Kaprelian says the goal is to both raise money for the cash-strapped state and discourage people from going to branches. "We're in a fiscal crisis and fees are realigning to reflect that crisis, and this is an added twist to get people to use the Internet," she said.

Lawmakers immediately vowed to eliminate the fee.

Murray said she expects there will be support for an amendment to end the fee when the Senate votes on an unrelated bill Tuesday to toughen oversight of elderly drivers and ban texting while driving.

"It doesn't seem quite fair," Murray said. "I like talking to people on the phone if I have a problem."

Republicans say they will also push an amendment to kill the fee.

"Consumers are being asked to pay more for less, and it's about time the RMV started making customer service its number one priority again," said Senate Minority leader Richard Tisei, R-Wakefield.

Jennifer Nassour, chairman of the Massachusetts Republican Party, called the fee a "backdoor tax."

The Boston Herald cited an RMV memorandum that appeared to coach employees about hiding the fee hike, saying it should not be singled out but included in a discussion of broader fee hikes during the past year.

Kaprelian denied any "skullduggery." She said: "There was no intent whatsoever to not be upfront about it. We want to be upfront about it, because we want people to know they have an option -- a great option," via the Internet.
Posted by: Delphi || 03/01/2010 18:05 || Comments || Link || [6 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Under most circumstances, I would pay $5 not to have to speak with any RMV employees.
Posted by: Iblis || 03/01/2010 19:11 Comments || Top||

#2  What would you expect? Afterall we have the original proto-type Obamanation as governor here.

The other thing they don't tell you is that they can force you to have to talk to them by making things more complicated or for any little thing they "claim" you made a mistake on. Wait till you see what happens when this new tax doesn't bring in the revenue expected.
Posted by: Alanc || 03/01/2010 19:57 Comments || Top||

#3  Ya got that right, Iblis. I had a friend of mine that visited East Berlin way back when and when I asked him what it was like crossing the border he said, "it's like going to the Registry".
Posted by: tu3031 || 03/01/2010 20:54 Comments || Top||

#4  Is this payable in earth cash, or do you need strips of gold press latinum?
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain || 03/01/2010 21:18 Comments || Top||

#5  In California, if you are a member of AAA, you just go down to the AAA office to get everything done. No need to ever go to the DMV. Maybe they should consider something like that.
Posted by: crosspatch || 03/01/2010 22:32 Comments || Top||

#6  In Virginia, they charge you $5 extra to renew your registration by mail.
Posted by: Eric Jablow || 03/01/2010 22:52 Comments || Top||


Britain
Tourists to Britain Could be Forced to Prove They Have Health Insurance
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 03/01/2010 00:00 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  So, if I have plenty of money, go to the UK, need medical care, and wish to pay for it out of pocket, that's a problem sufficient that I'm barred from entry?

Every time I turn around, I experience another flavor of crazy.
Posted by: no mo uro || 03/01/2010 8:46 Comments || Top||

#2  Don't bother listing DoD TRICARE as your insurance policy. No one in Europe accepts it. Germany has long had this policy with regard to Local National Employment.
Posted by: Besoeker || 03/01/2010 9:09 Comments || Top||

#3  I recognize this is actually pretty bad. But one of the favorite rhetorical tricks of stinking smelly leftoid universal health care fanatics is the old "my wife/SO/slam-piece-of-the-week had a heart attack/aneurysm/herpes outbreak/hangnail while we were vacationing in Toronto/Montreal/London/Lyons/Berlin/Havana and the hospitals and care were *exquisite*, wonderful, really! We should enslave ourselves enact it here today!"

It's usually countered by angry immigrants from those wonder-locales, if they happen to be in earshot. But the stinking freeriding leeches often seem to have had their eardrums surgically removed at the wonderhospitalen, and thus are incapable of hearing the outrage they leave in their wake.

Thus, today, I feel a little twinge of shameful joy in the thought of the stinking leeches caught out by a sort of bureaucratic karma at last.
Posted by: Mitch H. || 03/01/2010 16:38 Comments || Top||

#4  In the summer of 1976, my brother and sister and I were venturing into Great Britain, the land of our ancestors, via back-back, Brit-Rail Pass and a succession of youth hostels, and I actually did get sick (cold that turned into a horrible earache - a trip to the emergency room of a public hospital in Stirling, which wasn't all that awful, considering that it was a public hospital emergency room!) and then some kind of complication to it which necessitated a trip to a local doctor, in Lincoln. The doctor very reasonably pointed out that since I was from a country that didn't have universal public health care, he felt obliged to charge me for the office visit and treatment - a fee of $25 dollars, which we all thought was quite reasonable and perfectly logical, considering.
They must have developed another flavor of crazy in the decades since then. Pity, that.
Posted by: Sgt. Mom || 03/01/2010 18:46 Comments || Top||


Caribbean-Latin America
Global warming claims its first victims:
Posted by: tipper || 03/01/2010 21:06 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:


Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
Foreign investment in Russia down 21%
[Iran Press TV Latest] Foreign investment in Russia has slumped 21 percent in 2009 to USD 81.9 billion, the country's Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) says. In the same period, direct foreign investment in Russia fell by 41.1 percent to USD 15.9 billion, Rosstat said in a Saturday statement.

Russia's largest investor countries last year were Cyprus, followed by the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Britain, the statistics service said.
Cyprus .. money laundering; Luxembourg .. money laundering; ...
Foreign investors withdrew billions of dollars from Russia following the global financial downturn which hit the country hard.

Meanwhile, Russia's ministry of economic development believes that the country, which saw its economy contracted by 7.9 percent in 2009, will return to growth and a 3.1-percent increase in gross domestic product in 2010.
Posted by: Fred || 03/01/2010 00:00 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Cyprus money is neither foreign nor laundered. In the early days of the post-Soviet era, every Russian company that issued any kind of public securities needed a Cyprus entity to clear trades because of the weaknesses in Russian securities legislation.

The main laundering destinations for illicit Russian activity are Switzerland and Dubai.
Posted by: lex || 03/01/2010 10:04 Comments || Top||

#2  Luxembourg has had a discreet banking system in place for decades and is geared toward 'offshore accounts'. A law supposedly aimed at combating money laundering was enacted in 1992.

Doesn't mean that money going to Russia hasn't been.. recycled.

And lex is right - Dubai's a gray-market area for money transactions
Posted by: Pappy || 03/01/2010 15:39 Comments || Top||

#3  2009 was a big year for screwing foreign investors in russia (BP comes to mind)

Cause, meet effect.
Posted by: flash91 || 03/01/2010 15:54 Comments || Top||

#4  Dubai's mafiya central for more than just money-laundering. It was AQ Khan's stomping grounds, and the main transit point for organized crime east of the Elbe
Posted by: lex || 03/01/2010 20:06 Comments || Top||

#5  "Foreign investment in Russia down 21%"

I'm looking for my nanoviolin, really....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 03/01/2010 21:07 Comments || Top||


China-Japan-Koreas
Call to end China citizen registration system
Posted by: tipper || 03/01/2010 05:57 || Comments || Link || [4 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Ooo-wee. Does this open a can of worms. China's biggest problems right now all generally devolve from its regional and local governments, who totally blow off the central government.

On top of that, they have a vast internal migration of hundreds of millions of people for work, and a natural demographic shift from rural farming communities to the cities, that is turning their cities into immense homeless camps.

I can't imagine how bad someone's karma would have to be to end up in charge of a mess like that.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 03/01/2010 9:26 Comments || Top||


Economy
Times ARE tough: Spider-Man gets fired
Posted by: tipper || 03/01/2010 15:45 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1 
Even a résumé that boasts of saving the city from Doctor Octopus and sparkling references from the likes of Captain America can't keep Spider-Man off the unemployment line.

The wall-crawler's hard-luck alter ego, Peter Parker, will get canned by boss J. Jonah Jameson and join the country's out-of-work millions in a storyline that starts in this Wednesday's "Amazing Spider-Man" No. 623.

"He couldn't have lost his job at a worse time," said "Spider-Man" editor Steve Wacker.

"He's going to struggle with unemployment and trying to save the city while he can barely afford to keep a roof over his head," Wacker said.
Posted by: Parabellum || 03/01/2010 16:07 Comments || Top||

#2  Mr. Peter Parker,

In all my years as a director of human resources here at LexCorp, I have never seen a more promising candidate for any one of a number of jobs we have available in our advanced physics research & development branch.

You graduated with honors from Empire State University, even studying under Dr. Otto Gunther Octavius, before his unfortunate accident. Under any other circumstance, any major research corporation would be foolish indeed to miss an opportunity to employ you, starting with at least a six figure salary.

However, after even a brief meeting with you, I have concluded that you have perhaps the worst interview skills I have ever observed.

To start with, in future you need to pay far more attention to your personal hygiene. After you left our meeting, I had to have my office cleaned because of some foul smelling sticky substance which you deposited on everything you touched.

I would also recommend discarding your neo-Nazi red and black underwear in favor of plain white. While we here at LexCorp are open minded about some things, Nazism is not one of them.

So unfortunately, at this time, we are unable to offer you employment. However, I am enclosing a free copy of the best selling "What Color Is Your Parachute?", which I strongly recommend you read and learn from, before seeking employment elsewhere.

Yours sincerely,
Dave Mxyzptlk, Jr.
Human Resources Branch
LexCorp
Posted by: Anonymoose || 03/01/2010 16:23 Comments || Top||

#3  That's what he gets for voting for Obama.
Posted by: penguin || 03/01/2010 16:41 Comments || Top||

#4  Anonymoose, wouldn't his underwear be red and blue? Also how would anyone know? Is Peter wearing his pants so baggy these days that the underwear shows? To an interview no less? And no mention of the snarky comments he habitually makes? That isn't gonna go over well in an interview I imagine.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 03/01/2010 17:04 Comments || Top||

#5  Lets consider some of his options. I haven't read the series in some time so I may be rusty on the latest but:

(1) He could sell his photos elsewhere. Perhaps Time Magazine, Newsweek, Life or one of the wire services.
(2) He could talk to some of his superhero friends he's made over the years and arrange to take their photos if Spiderman photos to get him enough money anymore.
(3) He could sell the secret of his web fluid. Yes this might make his life tougher but I imagine he'd be very wealthy, forever.
(4) If people don't hate him this week he could arrange for public appearances. Snooky gets $5000, politicians get up to a million. I imagine he'd be somewhere in between. No speech but the tricks he could do would wow the room.
(5) He could do work as a bounty hunter picking up those on the lam and doing it legally.
(6) He could sell his memoirs. The tale of some of his adventures, minus his secret identity would have to be a best seller. Make the check out to cash.
(7) He could return to his roots and fight in a cage match or something.
(8) He could sell a book of his photos.
I don't think they have much imagination if they think being unemployed by J. Jonah Jameson would really be much of a setback for a Superhero.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 03/01/2010 17:13 Comments || Top||


Europe
Fears of stand-off with military grow amid new Turkish arrests
TURKEY'S Islamic government was yesterday facing a potential new stand-off with the country's staunchly secular military.

A retired general charged over an alleged plot to unseat the government last night said "the struggle had now started" , a thinly veiled threat that the army may once again intervene in Turkish politics.

General Cetin Dogan was speaking through his lawyer after he was jailed on remand, along with another general. A former head of Turkey's First Army -- and widely tipped to become the nation's most powerful serviceman -- Dogan was charged late on Friday.

Police spent much of last week rounding up military officers over allegations of a coup planned back in 2003. New detentions on Friday brought the total number of officers in custody to 33.

"When Dogan learned he was to be charged he said 'the fight has started now'," the general's lawyer, Celal Ulgen, said. He added there was no concrete evidence against Dogan and prosecutors went to great lengths to have him charged.

The other high-ranking official to be charged was Lieutenant-General Engin Alan, a former special forces commander who led a successful operation to capture the country's most wanted man, Kurdish separatist leader Abdullah Ocalan, and bring him back to Turkey in 1999.

Turkish markets, weakened by five days of tension since a first wave of arrests on Monday, had begun to recover on Friday on hopes that the likelihood of a confrontation between the government, in power since 2002, and the secularist military was receding with the release of three other retired generals.

But reports police had detained 17 more serving military officers and one retired officer sparked renewed selling and fresh concern over a possible standoff.

"The second wave of arrests will have raised the tensions," said Istanbul-based analyst Gareth Jenkins, ahead of news of the retired generals' arrest. "Should the pair be charged and held on remand this could up the stakes."

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's AK Party, which denies accusations it has a secret Islamist agenda, is banking on an economic recovery to win over voters ahead of an election due early next year.
Posted by: Fred || 03/01/2010 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


India-Pakistan
India to conduct fourth test of BMD interceptor missile
In less than two weeks, India will test its Ballistic Missile Defence shield again, by launching an interceptor missile to kill an incoming “enemy' ballistic missile mid-flight.

This is the fourth time that the Defence Research and Development Organisation will be testing its interceptor missile.

While the incoming missile will lift off from the Integrated Test Range at Balasore in Orissa, the interceptor will blast off from the launch complex on the Wheeler Island, off Damra village, said V.K. Saraswat, Scientific Advisor to the Defence Minister.

A variant of the Prithvi missile will mimic the enemy's ballistic missile trajectory. An Advanced Air Defence (AAD) missile will confront and kill it, in endo-atmosphere, at an altitude of less than 20 km. The launch window is between March 10 and 15. The Prithvi is a single stage, surface-to-surface missile that uses liquid fuel. The AAD is a single stage anti-ballistic missile that uses solid fuel. It is 7.5 metres long.

The DRDO scored three successes in a row when its interceptor missile tests conducted on November 27, 2006, December 6, 2007, and March 6, 2009, were on the target.
Posted by: john frum || 03/01/2010 17:03 || Comments || Link || [6 views] Top|| File under:

#1  The US had better keep up the R & D or we'll be buying the next generation missile defense system from India ...
Posted by: Steve White || 03/01/2010 18:19 Comments || Top||


Pakistan hockey team blasted for losing to India
Posted by: ryuge || 03/01/2010 06:33 || Comments || Link || [7 views] Top|| File under:

#1  They play hockey in Pakistan? Whoda thunk it?
Posted by: Mike || 03/01/2010 8:36 Comments || Top||

#2  When they get home, the headline could take on an entire new meaning.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 03/01/2010 8:39 Comments || Top||

#3  FIeld hockey, Mike. The two nations are the powers in that sport.
Posted by: Eric Jablow || 03/01/2010 9:09 Comments || Top||

#4  As if their national sovereignty and manhoods depended on winning.
Posted by: gorb || 03/01/2010 9:50 Comments || Top||

#5  They play hockey in Pakistan? Whoda thunk it?

Field hockey. It is played on a grass surface, players run instead of skate and have no body armor so charges like in ice hokey are forbidden (you could say that it is to ice hockey what soccer is to rugby or to football). Afaik, India and Pakistan trust the World champion titles.
Posted by: JFM || 03/01/2010 9:54 Comments || Top||

#6  When they get home, the headline could take on an entire new meaning.

The funny thing si that lately hockey and cricket pakistanese teams, ie THE two sports were Pakistan is a world power and thus sources of national pride, have been increasingly politicized or more exactly religiocized with players of religious minorities alongside with unobservant Muslims being excluded of the team . Rationale was that a 100% dyed in the wool Muslim team would please Allan and he would handle victory to Pakista,.
Posted by: JFM || 03/01/2010 10:04 Comments || Top||

#7  I guess Allan likes Pakistain as much as the rest of us
Posted by: chris || 03/01/2010 10:40 Comments || Top||

#8  Someone needs to take up the slack since the S. Hussein clan is no longer torturing olympic athletes...
Posted by: M. Murcek || 03/01/2010 12:32 Comments || Top||

#9  They play hockey in Pakistan? Whoda thunk it?

I'm a big fan of the Karachi Maple Leafs.
Posted by: Fred || 03/01/2010 13:11 Comments || Top||

#10  The recent Pakistani cricket captain converted from christian to muslim 3 or 4 years ago. It didn't help them, they still got thumped by Australia this summer, losing every game.

Hockey is perhaps the oldest organized sport. Popularity grew during the Middle Ages until so many people were playing field hockey that the game was banned in England because it kept people from training in archery, which was at that time the foundation of the country’s defense.


Posted by: phil_b || 03/01/2010 14:09 Comments || Top||

#11  I guess Allan likes Pakistain as much as the rest of us

Given the sorry state of the Muslim world, Allan apparently has it in for his people. I really think he is Loki in disguise. Suckers!
Posted by: SteveS || 03/01/2010 15:12 Comments || Top||

#12  Toque/Turban...no diff
Posted by: Frank G || 03/01/2010 15:50 Comments || Top||


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
In multilingual Lebanon, Arabic falls behind
[Al Arabiya Latest] Lebanon, a tiny, vibrant Mediterranean country, prides itself on its polyglot society but for the country's youths native Arabic is not very "cool."

"Hi, kifak? Ca Va?" -- or "Hi, how are you doing? Okay?" -- is a typical multi-linguistic Lebanese greeting so popular it now appears on bumper stickers and tee-shirts sold around the world.

English and French often replace the local dialect in conversation, especially among the urban youth, and one organization has launched a campaign to preserve Arabic in Lebanon.

"Arabic is still very much alive as a language, but young people are moving farther and farther away from it," said Suzanne Talhouk, who heads the organization "Fael Ummer" (Imperative) which is running the campaign.

"Some of our youngsters are incapable of writing correctly in Arabic, and many university students we interviewed were not even able to recite the alphabet," Talhouk told AFP.

Urban youths are often unable to hold a conversation in one language, causing amusement but also irking those around them with such home-grown expressions as the popular farewell: "Yalla, bye."

"At my school it's more cool to speak French. Arabic is looked down upon," said high school student Nathalie.
Posted by: Fred || 03/01/2010 00:00 || Comments || Link || [6 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Any step away from Arabic is a step towards civilization. Bravo to all who forsake that language.
Posted by: Ebburt Sinatra4615 || 03/01/2010 21:54 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Culture Wars
CBS seeks Anderson Cooper as head teabagger (er...anchor)
Network News at a Crossroads
Who has the stake and the mallet?
ABC News is making no secret about what is behind the sweeping staff cuts it now faces: raw survival instinct.

"I just looked out at the next five years and was concerned that we could not sustain doing what we were doing," said David Westin, the president of ABC News, as he explained the decision last week to jettison up to 400 staff members, a quarter of the news staff, in the coming months.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: logi_cal || 03/01/2010 13:50 || Comments || Link || [5 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I guess firing Mr. Cooper's degenerate a** is out of the question?
Yeah, I find the epithet for Tea Partier that Mr. Cooper first "popularized" to be just about as insulting as the other word, and for quite a while, I went around in various threads pointing that out ... but eh - at least when someone uses it now, I know they have nothing to say that I am interested in. They have just demonstrated they are bone-ignorant and a bigot to boot, so why should I waste pixels and my time responding?
ABC, CBS and MSNBC - spiraling toward irrelevance, even as we speak...
Posted by: Sgt. Mom || 03/01/2010 19:01 Comments || Top||

#2  Anderson Cooper has had more balls to the chin than Yogi Berra. The irony of him pushing the teabagger phrase is sweeeet
Posted by: Frank G || 03/01/2010 19:21 Comments || Top||

#3  One of these days someone in one of the alphabet channels will figure out its cheaper to outsource the operation to a bi-lingual crew at Univision.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 03/01/2010 20:58 Comments || Top||

#4 
I'm still debating about an appropriate, derogatory, subtly-explicit term to use for progressives when the opportunity presents itself.

Suggestions?


I generally refer to them as 'Douchebags'
Posted by: abu do you love || 03/01/2010 21:56 Comments || Top||


Judge Grants Asylum to German Home Schoolers
Posted by: tipper || 03/01/2010 06:10 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Hallo Duetschland, Senden Sie mehr Christlichen bitte.
Posted by: Besoeker || 03/01/2010 8:07 Comments || Top||

#2  Gut!
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 03/01/2010 18:55 Comments || Top||



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Two weeks of WOT
Mon 2010-03-01
  Chavez Contracted With FARC And ETA To Kill Uribe In Spain
Sun 2010-02-28
  Spain says ETA chief arrested in France
Sat 2010-02-27
  US, Afghan forces clear last parts of Marjah
Fri 2010-02-26
  Droukdel ally banged in Algeria
Thu 2010-02-25
  Qari Mohammad Zafar titzup
Wed 2010-02-24
  Iran grounds plane with Rigi holding US-issued passport
Tue 2010-02-23
  Another Taliban Big Turban Nabbed in Pakistain
Mon 2010-02-22
  Mali frees al-Qaeda members ahead of French hostage deadline
Sun 2010-02-21
  Abu Sayyaf commander Albader Parad banged in Philippines raid
Sat 2010-02-20
  Senior Qaeda military commander killed in Predator strike
Fri 2010-02-19
  Afghan Taliban chiefs arrested in Pakistani sweeps
Thu 2010-02-18
  MILF rejects Philippines autonomy offer
Wed 2010-02-17
  Mullah Omar issues 'Victory Declaration'
Tue 2010-02-16
  Secret Joint Raid Captures Mullah Barader in Karachi
Mon 2010-02-15
  Two al-Qaeda members arrested after clash with Mauritanian security services


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