#7
Long ago, and far away, my brother was in charge of security at Ramstein, they had the sensors tripped by Rabbits one time too many and he bought air pellet rifles to wipe out the "Intruders", worked like a charm.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/10/2009 12:28 Comments ||
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Senior Army figures have expressed disquiet over the death of a British soldier killed helping to free a reporter who had been kidnapped in Afghanistan after ignoring security advice against entering a Taliban stronghold.
#1
This reporter knew what he was doing, going into a village near to where the Germans had blown up those gasoline trucks. He and his translator were looking for "civilian victims" against the war effort.
I read that when the commandos arrived, the translator stood up and yelled "Journalist!" repeatedly, and then was shot by person or persons unknown. Since the commandos knew who to look for, I suspect that he was rotten, and the commandos put a bullet in him.
[Dawn] Afghan election returns released on Tuesday put incumbent Hamid Karzai on course for a single round victory, but a UN-backed watchdog said it had found 'clear and convincing evidence of fraud' and ordered a partial recount.
The latest data from the Independent Election Commission effectively put Karzai and the Afghan election authorities on a collision course with an international community increasingly sceptical of the outcome of an election it paid for.
Officials said pursuing allegations of fraud in the poll --held last month --could postpone a final result for two to three months and keep Afghanistan in a prolonged state of limbo.
With 91.6 per cent of polling stations counted, the Independent Election Commission reported Karzai ahead with 54.1 per cent of the vote to 28.3 per cent for his main challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah.
It was the first time the commission had reported Karzai on course to exceed the 50 per cent threshold needed to win outright and avoid a second round and radically alters the calculations of Western diplomats keen to ensure a credible outcome.
The results are final only after they are certified by the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC), a separate body led by a Canadian and mainly appointed by the United Nations. For the first time, it went public with accusations of fraud.
'In the course of its investigations, the ECC has found clear and convincing evidence of fraud in a number of polling stations,' the body said in a statement.
It ordered the IEC to recount results from polling stations where one candidate received more than 95 per cent of the vote or where more votes were cast than the expected maximum of 600.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/10/2009 00:00 ||
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[Maghrebia] Officials from Mauritania's religious affairs, communications and culture ministries met Tuesday (September 8th) in Nouakchott to discuss the role of media and civil society in the fight against terrorism, ANI reported. The UNESCSO-organised event addressed raising public awareness of the "violence that hides behind religion" and accelerating social reforms to curb the spread of extremism.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/10/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Perhaps President Barry could fly in for an emergency apology.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Four Yemenis carrying hand grenades and guns who were arrested near the U.S. embassy in the capital Sanaa were passers-by and were not planning to target the building, an official said Wednesday. "The persons arrested near the American embassy ... were not intending to target it," a security source said on the ruling party website "September 26," adding they were merely passing through the area.
On their way to a squirrel hunt, no doubt. Hence the grenades.
Elk season ...
An Interior Ministry statement on Tuesday said the four, aged between 20 and 33, had hand grenades, automatic weapons and ammunition. It did not say when they were arrested. The ministry said the four were residents of a town called Damaj in the northern province of Saada, where the government is battling a revolt by Shiite Muslims of the Zaydi sect.
Many Yemeni men insist on their traditional rights to bear arms and government attempts to criminalize unlicensed weapons and the carrying of guns in public have come to nothing.
Al-Qaeda's branch in Yemen has targeted the U.S. Embassy in the past. In September 2008, gunmen backed by suicide bombers assaulted the walled compound in an attack that left 19 dead, including six attackers. Months before that, militants fired mortars at the embassy but missed, hitting a nearby school and killing one Yemeni.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/10/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Anyone who has seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail can tell you the 'passers-by' were getting for rabbit season.
Posted by: abu do you love ||
09/10/2009 13:29 Comments ||
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#2
Or fishing.
Dynamite is cheaper, though.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
09/10/2009 15:33 Comments ||
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The mother and sister of wanted terrorist Adnan Mohammed Ali Al-Sayigh have said that he wants to return to the Kingdom and hand himself in to the authorities. "Adnan wants to return and hand himself in, but the terrorists he's with have told him that as soon as he comes back he'll be killed," Al-Sayigh's mother told Okaz Wednesday.
Al-Sayigh, who is number 55 on the Ministry of Interior's list of wanted terrorists, reportedly spoke to his wife and children last month from a mobile telephone in Yemen, the second communication he has made since entering the country at the beginning of the year along with 10 other Saudis who had returned to the Kingdom from Guantanamo detention center.
Saeed Al-Shehri, the second man in Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, is widely believed to be the driving force behind the plan to group up in Yemen and announce the targeting of the Kingdom's interests from beyond the border, a move that resulted in the ministry announcing in February its list of 85 persons wanted in connection with terrorist activities.
A sister of Al-Sayigh, however, has accused his wife's brother Othman Ahmed Othman Aal Ameera Al-Ghamdi of leading him to Yemen. Othman Al-Ghamdi is number 85 on the wanted list.
What is it with the Al-Ghamdis? Their name is a by-word for trouble.
Speaking to Okaz, Umm Sultan, who is several years older than her brother, said Al-Ghamdi and Adnan entered Yemen together, abandoning their car in the mountainous Saudi-side of the border in Faifa. "After my brother came back from Guantanamo due to all the efforts of the Ministry of Interior, he got married to Al-Ghamdi's sister, when she was no more than 20 years old," Al-Sayigh's sister said. "They had a child, Osama, and when she was pregnant with their second Othman convinced Adnan to go to the south, and then on to Yemen."
A few days late her son Sultan -- Adnan's nephew -- was sent a text message from a Yemeni mobile telephone telling him to go and pick up a car parked in Faifa.
"I told Sultan not to go but he ignored me and went to Taif and then on to Faifa to get his uncle's car, and he was later detained in Dhahba for security reasons," Umm Sultan said. "But I'm thankful he was stopped in the Kingdom instead of being exposed to dangers in Yemen or Iraq or Afghanistan."
Umm Sultan said her brother wouldn't reveal his whereabouts precisely, and that she also appealed to his conscience and told him that his wife might divorce him and remarry, leaving their two children to the care of their grandmother. "It was then that he broke into tears and asked to speak to them," she said. "And he decided he wanted to return and hand himself in. The people he was with, though, told him he would be killed as soon as he came back."
Mansour Al-Turki, Ministry of Interior, speaking to Okaz newspaper, said that the "door remained open for any of those wanted in connection with security issues to return, whether they're in Yemen or anywhere else."
Posted by: Fred ||
09/10/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
No need to go to all the trouble. Just send us his head in a box, please.
Sixty per cent of Britons want the UK military to withdraw from or reduce its presence in Afghanistan, according to an international poll released today which showed that the British are the most hostile in western Europe to their troops' presence in Afghanistan.
That's because their troops are shouldering considerably more than their share of the work, compared to the rest of Western Europe.
A separate British survey showed that a similar figure believed UK troops should never have been deployed in Afghanistan or Iraq. The survey of opinion in 13 countries conducted annually by the German Marshall Fund of the United States found that 41% of Britons wanted troops pulled out of Afghanistan while a further 19% wanted a reduction in troop numbers. All 13 countries polled, including the US, have troops in Afghanistan. The British hostility to the presence there was almost matched by Germany and exceeded in the EU only by Poland, Bulgaria and Romania, according to the Transatlantic Trends survey.
In a week that has seen the Afghan war intrude for the first time into Germany's election campaign because of the civilian casualties from a German-ordered air strike, three out of four Germans did not believe the western effort would stabilise Afghanistan. Four out of five polled across Europe rejected Barack Obama's pleas for greater troop contributions from Nato allies in Europe for Afghanistan.
The survey's results, contrasting British and European gloom on Afghanistan with a more optimistic and interventionist attitude from the Americans, came in the middle of a worsening crisis that prompted Gordon Brown, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France to issue a joint call for a major international conference by the end of the year.
In a letter to Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, the European leaders hinted at drafting plans for a partial retreat. They called for agreement on "new benchmarks and timelines" and "to set our expectations of ownership and the clear view to hand over responsibility step by step to the Afghans, wherever possible".
In a separate British poll by the National Army Museum on attitudes towards the armed forces, 53% of those questioned disagreed with the decision to deploy British troops to Afghanistan, while 25% said they agreed..
The Tory leader, David Cameron, has meanwhile apparently cast doubt on the Afghanistan elections, blaming "naked" irregularities in the poll. In private remarks picked up by a BBC camera crew, he was heard to say that disparities between the number of votes cast and the number of people who voted "could not be right". The comments, made to shadow foreign secretary William Hague, are likely to be interpreted as opening a further gulf between himself and the prime minister on the elections.
Cameron was recorded as saying yesterday: "The things that seem to have happened are so naked ... you just saw the number of votes and the number of people who actually turned up at polling stations. It just could not possibly be right."
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/10/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Why do I get the feeling Gordon Brown is saving 'our' withdrawal till near election time.
As an ex Royal Marine , Im mortified that bleak pictures get painted by politicians for their own short term gains. its a war for God's sake , against the most vile and violent humans in existence
I have fought along side various nations at some point or another under the guise of multi national support and have met and lost so many dear friends , not to the enemy but to the bureaucrats in office pandering to sensitivities of a mixed bunch of short sighted halfwits or worse deranged lunatics .
The days of the UK being strong are long gone , drowned in waves upon waves of apathy , vindictiveness and manipulation .
Lest we ever forget : Per Mare Per Terram
Anyway, just pointing out the blindingly obvious .. rant over
Posted by: Oscar ||
09/10/2009 3:56 Comments ||
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#3
The British have long shouldered considerably more than their share of the world's work than their European neighbors. What is changing is that the British are becoming less exceptional and more European. The world will be lead by those who wish to lead it. We should consider the British example carefully.
#5
Britons' views of the war are shaped by the media. The BBC is a pernicious left-wing propaganda with a virtual monopoly over TV and radio news and expecially political debate. It has done all it can to create a narrative of hopelessness, imminent defeat and to undermine the legitimacy of the conflict in the eyes of the British public. Just as the US media got Barack Obama elected, the BBC in the UK uses its tremendous leverage and lack of opposition to shape the views of the British public.
BBC delenda est - only when it has gone, or it is forced to compete on a level playing field, will the British public stop being subjected to its defeatist (and pro-EU) drum beat.
[Kyodo: Korea] North Korea on Wednesday marked the 61st anniversary of its founding with an increase in foreign visitors and the country"s famous ""Arirang"" mass games bringing a festive mood to the capital Pyongyang. Kim Yong Nam, North Korea"s No. 2 leader and president of the Presidium of the Supreme People"s Assembly, and other senior officials, as well as foreign diplomatic missions in Pyongyang celebrated the anniversary at an evening concert at the People"s Palace of Culture.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/10/2009 00:00 ||
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When former U.S. President Bill Clinton took off from Pyongyang in early August after winning the freedom of two American journalists, he left 40,000-50,000 North Korean children and juveniles despondent.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had prepared a special performance of the "Arirang" mass calisthenics show for Clinton, which was to be attended by an audience of 100,000 Pyongyang residents, North Korean sources say. Kim reportedly asked Clinton three times to watch the show, but the former president changed the subject each time.
On the day, the 40,000-50,000 children and juveniles were standing by in the sultry heat because nobody knew when instructions would be given to perform. According to one North Korean source, a special order had been given a week before Clinton's visit to Pyongyang. Under the order, the children should be on standby for the "no. 1 event," i.e. a performance attended by Kim.
But when the show was canceled on Aug. 5, all of the young performers were ordered to go home. A North Korean official visiting China said the regime "launched a massive propaganda campaign over Clinton's visit, but after the mass game was canceled, they abruptly changed their tune and started putting out propaganda that you shouldn't trust Americans."
Any performance attended by Kim is a special event. After he watched an "Arirang" performance with former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in October 2000, Kim gave plentiful gifts to all performers. Producers and senior administrative officials were decorated with special medals and promotions.
North Korea started the mass shows in the 1970s and began performing them regularly and using them for political purposes in the 1980s, when Kim Jong-il rose to power. One former senior North Korean official said, "Kim Jong-il seems to have some disease so he has to show off his power and bolster his confidence by watching a mass gymnastic show performed by tens of thousands of children and juveniles."
The mass show was renamed "Arirang" in 2002. It is a one-hour-and-20-minute extravaganza in which some 100,000 youngsters often move in perfect unison. The fifth "Arirang" show's opening ceremony was staged on Aug. 10, according to the official Korean Central Broadcasting, after being canceled on Aug. 5.
The 100,000 students in Pyongyang are mobilized for training in extremely harsh conditions, having to skip classes for six months a year. There have been international charges of child abuse, but North Korea remains undeterred. Amid food shortages and UN sanctions, the conditions for the performers this year are reportedly especially difficult.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/10/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
"Kim reportedly asked Clinton three times to watch the show, but the former president changed the subject each time."
"Say Kim, forget the kids, where's the strippers?"
#5
Clinton did the right thing by lowering the profile of his presence. Kim Jong-Il would have liked nothing better than to be able to publicize himself and Clinton at a huge public event of this sort.
[Al Arabiya Latest] The extreme-right Danish People's Party, a key government ally, launched a media campaign Wednesday against the building of mosques, after Copenhagen city council approved the country's first.
Full page advertisements published in several daily papers claimed that part of the funds for the new mosque would come from "the terror regime in Iran", while a second mosque planned for the capital would be financed by Saudi Arabia.
The ads also contained a picture of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul with a photo montage of two swords on the dome.
The party, whose votes in parliament are essential for the survival of the center-right government, linked its campaign to the municipal elections on November 17.
The new Copenhagen mosque, approved by the city council late last month, will be built by the city's Shiite Muslim community on the site of a former factory.
A 24-metre high blue dome will cover the 2,000-square-metre place of worship flanked by two 32-metre-high minarets in northwest Copenhagen.
But no calls to prayer will blare from the towers in order not to disturb the surrounding working-class neighborhood.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/10/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Why not negotiate some reciprocity? If Saudi Arabia wants to finance a mosque in Copenhagen they should in turn allow a church to be built in their country. (Fat chance of that though.)
[Dawn] The Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) has postponed its decision to pull out of the coalition after government assurances to carry out Islamic legislation in accordance with recommendations of the Council of Islamic Ideology.
JUI-F Chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman had warned the government that his party might pull out of the ruling coalition if the government does not revise its policies by September.
President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani in a recent meeting assured the JUI-F chief that the government would carry out Islamic legislation in light of the recommendation of the CII.
After the government assurances, the JUI-F has postponed its decision to part ways with the coalition and summoned a meeting of its Central Executive Council after Eid to review the situation, sources added.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/10/2009 00:00 ||
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#2
Ramadan is over Sep 19 and there is a new moon Sep18-20.
Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
09/10/2009 16:50 Comments ||
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#3
Let us pray, ladies and gentlemen, each to our own understanding of the supreme being, that whatever is in the works, it works out well... even if it's only to mess with Iranian nerves.
Ma'an -- Al-Qassam brigades the military wing affiliated to Hamas said Wednesday that the reply to any Israeli attacks won't be by words but will be by bullets and shells.
Qassam spokesman Abu Obeida said in a statement posted at Al-Qassam site:"the enemy just understands the language of force and we only have the choice of resistance against them and if anyone thinks that there is another choice not the resistance that is totally unacceptable."
The statement was posted following the announcement of two clashes with Israeli troops by armed groups in Gaza, who said forces invaded the Strip and provoked the violence. No injuries were reported and Israeli military spokespeople said they had no reports of attacks. Later Wednesday a young man was admitted to hospital and medics confirmed he was shot by Israeli fire.
Abu Obeida said the Israeli incursions came in the framework of planned attacks. Adding:"the Israeli security forces increase their state of alert especially at the borders with the Gaza Strip, they fear from the trees' leaves and the sands and the air. They have a phobia called Gaza and they fear our shelling and so they target the fishermen in the Gaza Sea and kill them. Our nation gets used to such attacks."
He added:"the occupation will never be able to discover our plans and means of attacks because we are the ones to create our ways of resistance."
Abu Obeida stressed:"the Israeli threatens won't stop us, because we have the right in our land and we will do everything to gain our rights and have a victorious end."
Posted by: Fred ||
09/10/2009 00:00 ||
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Ma'an - Senior Islamic Jihad leader Muhammad Al-Hindi warned Palestinians against the suggestion of Palestinian caretaker Prime Minister Salam Fayyad that a Palestinian state be declared in two years.
"What is being talked about is not a state," Al-Hindi warned during a meeting with journalists in Gaza on Tuesday, stressing the plan's lack of information over refugees. There is also "nothing on Jerusalem" or the issue of settlements in the West Bank. "The project of the state is a huge deception," he said.
The Islamic Jihad leader warned Palestinians that they must not be dragged into "elusive misleading solutions," noting unity was essential to confront plans against them. He blamed Palestinian division and Arab weakness for what he called the "many illusions" in the "misleading" issues of the Palestinian situation.
Al-Hindi recommended "a national reference [body] should be built so sides can agree to common principals" adding that "any talk about elections without an agreement is meaningless." Because it was the previous elections which caused the division, Al-Hindi noted that new elections without firm agreements holding them in place "will create divisions."
He then added, "the alternative to any agreement is the agreement itself."
Posted by: Fred ||
09/10/2009 00:00 ||
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[Al Arabiya Latest] U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon Wednesday denounced Israel's plans to build new Jewish settler homes in the occupied territories as "contrary to international law" as he urged Tel Aviv to end all such activity.
Ban "noted with deep concern" an Israeli decision on Monday to approve further construction in settlements in the occupied territory, a statement issued by his office said.
"Such actions and all settlement activity are contrary to international law and the roadmap," it said, referring to the international plan for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"The Secretary-General urges Israel to respond positively to the important efforts under way to create the conditions for effective Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and reiterates his call on Israel to stop all settlement activity, including natural growth, and dismantle all outposts erected since March 2001 in the occupied Palestinian territory," the statement stressed.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/10/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
The international law in question being "Jews don't own anything---not even their lives. They just take care of staff until some human shall desire it."
[Iran Press TV Latest] Iran's defeated presidential candidate-turned opposition leader has urged his supporters not to be provoked by the arrest of two top aides to the opposition figures.
Alireza Beheshti, Mir-Hossein Mousavi's top adviser, and Morteza Alviri, an aide to Mehdi Karroubi, another defeated presidential hopeful in the June 12 election, were arrested on Tuesday.
Mousavi, in a statement issued on Wednesday, lamented the move by the authorities, but asked his supporters to remain calm and vigilant.
"Maintain your calm and awareness. The latest series of developments will leave nothing but damages to your opponents, just like the other blind moves [they made]," Mousavi said. "Be careful so they cannot provoke you and destroy your home and country when they wipe out themselves."
"It is clear that your attempts to return calm to the society are not going to be met with a wise response. The days ahead are truly dangerous," he added.
"Detaining people like Beheshti is a sign of more horrendous incidents [to come]."
Posted by: Fred ||
09/10/2009 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.
Sixty per cent of Britons want the UK military to withdraw from or reduce its presence in Afghanistan, according to an international poll released today which showed that the British are the most hostile in western Europe to their troops' presence in Afghanistan.
