[Dawn] Military officials from Pakistain and Afghanistan have agreed to hold more high-level talks to defuse a row over a series of attacks across their mostly non-existent border, the Afghan defence ministry said Saturday.
Officials from both militaries and from the United States met Thursday in the northwest Pak city of Beautiful Downtown Peshawar to discuss a spike in tensions on the lawless border that has allegedly killed dozens of villagers in recent weeks.
Afghan and Pak delegations agreed to do what they could "to stop and prevent repetition of the attacks, and to pave the ground for further strengthening of mutual, friendly relations" said ministry front man Mohammad Zahir Azimi in a statement.
"There should be more coordination and high level talks between the authorities of the two countries to seek solutions for the present problems and future issues," he said.
".... Higher delegations will hold talks with each other in the near future." On Friday the Pakistain army said it had proposed a hotline to create one single point of contact with all Afghan cops, including the border police.
Regular meetings between commanders from both sides would also take place to diffuse tensions, along with interaction between tribal elders.
The escalating border war has inflamed tensions at a key juncture as Afghans and Americans reach out to the Taliban for peace talks.
For weeks, security forces on both sides of the unmarked border have issued claim and counter-claim over cross-border rocket and guerilla attacks that have reportedly killed dozens of residents and forced hundreds of others to flee.
Afghanistan's Caped PresidentHamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai ... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtun face on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use... has told Pakistain's army chief Ashfaq Kayani ... four star general, current Chief of Army Staff of the Mighty Pak Army. Kayani is the former Director General of ISI... the attacks must stop, while the Paks summoned the Afghan ambassador and Pak Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani ... Pakistain's erstwhile current prime minister, whose occasional feats of mental gymnastics can be awe-inspiring ... has complained back to Karzai.
For years the neighbours have traded accusations over the Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked hard boyz embedded in both countries, who criss cross the porous, unmarked border and fight security forces from both governments.
The row is exacerbated by the fact that Afghanistan disputes the 2,400-kilometre (1,500-mile) Durrand Line, the 19th century demarcation of the border that separates Pashtun families and tribes.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2011 00:00 ||
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[Bangla Daily Star] The alliance of 12 religion-based political parties enforces a countrywide 30-hour hartal ... a peculiarly Bangla combination of a general strike and a riot, used by both major political groups in lieu of actual governance ... from 6:00am today with support from the BNP-led opposition.
The alliance yesterday warned of enforcing hartal even in the month of Ramadan "if the government creates any obstacle to their 30-hour hartal".
And the government said stern action will be taken if anyone tries to disrupt law and order.
The 12-party combine led by Bangladesh Khelafat Majlish called the shutdown in protest against what it was said dropping of the words "absolute faith in Allah" from the constitution.
"We will launch tougher programmes during Ramadan if the government does not restore the "absolute faith in Allah" in the constitution," said Maulana Abdul Latif Nezami, secretary general of Islami Oikyo Jote, a component of the 12-party combine, at a presser at a city hotel.
Meanwhile, ...back at the palazzo, Count Guido had escaped from his bonds and overwhelmed this guard using the bludgeon Filomena had smuggled to him in the loaf of bread... Dhaka Metropolitan Police in a blurb yesterday urged people to refrain from destructive activities like vandalism and setting fire to vehicles in the name of hartal, and warned of tough action against those involved in such activities.
Our Barisal correspondent reports: Metropolitan Police yesterday charged baton and fired tear gas shells on pro-hartal processions in the city, leaving at least 20 people including a police constable injured.
And police tossed in the slammer around 10 pro-hartal activists.
Our Noakhali correspondent reports: Police foiled a procession in support of hartal here, and at least 25 people were maimed in the police baton charge. About 10 activists were tossed in the slammer.
A report from our Munshiganj correspondent says: Six activists of Islami Andolon Bangladesh were tossed in the slammer from a pro-hartal procession in Mawa ferry ghat area yesterday evening.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
"Remember, people, you've only got 30 hours for this hartal, so be efficient, be effective, and as always remember to have fun. Now take your mark, get set....Go, go, go!"
HARDCORE Islamists have vowed to ban booze and mixing between the sexes in new Sharia law enforcement zones across the UK. The move will see specific areas flooded with thousands of stickers saying "no gambling", "no music or concerts", "no porn or prostitution" and "no drugs or smoking".
The posters declare: "You are entering a Sharia controlled zone -- Islamic rules enforced."
The radicals will kick off their controlled zones in the London borough of Waltham Forest later this month. They also claim their hardline rules will be policed by thousands of "Sharia cops" on the streets.
Preacher Anjem Choudary has called the scheme an alternative to government attempts to combat violent extremism under the Prevent strategy.
Last night the former al-Muhajiroun and Islam4UK leader warned: "The Prevent strategy introduced by Theresa May is going to be countered in the next couple of weeks beginning in Waltham Forest where there will be a Sharia- controlled zone sticker campaign.
"This will mean this is an area where the Muslim community will not tolerate drugs, alcohol, pornography, gambling, usury, free mixing between the sexes -- the fruits if you like of Western civilisation.
"This will be a very heavy leafleting campaign aimed at both the Muslim and non-Muslim community in terms of what the Sharia means economically, socially and politically. "Waltham Forest, including Walthamstow and Leyton, will also be targeted with a march.
"We want to run the area as a Sharia-controlled zone and really to put the seeds down for an Islamic Emirate in the long term.
"We want to create an area where Muslims can live together, make transactions with each other, and interact between themselves rather than with the wider community."
The ex-lawyer added: "There are 25 areas around the country which the Government has earmarked as areas where violent extremism is a problem.
#5
I have been to pubs in Leyton and Walthamstow area and i can tell you the Islamists would be too scared to enter one without a severe beating!
EDL will be out for any march but this is just provaction/all mouth from Mr Choudary once again!
Posted by: Paul D ||
07/10/2011 10:58 Comments ||
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#6
My collection of Milwall Bricks is on Wet Dream.
Posted by: S ||
07/10/2011 11:34 Comments ||
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#7
Yob rue Britainnia!
Posted by: regular joe ||
07/10/2011 11:51 Comments ||
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#8
"We want to create an area where Muslims can live together, make transactions with each other, and interact between themselves rather than with the wider community."
A great day for multiculturalism as their long-term goals begin to bear fruit.
#9
Anjem Choudary deserves thanks. For the past decade or so he has acted as a truth squad to show what Islam really is, in contrast to the soft Islamists and the Islamic apologists.
He has explained many times on TV and in print why the Koran's verse 5:32 (... whomever kills another human... it is as if he has killed the whole world) allows killing infidels (because that is just cause). He has similarly explained why Sharia requires death to apostates, death to heretics, death to homosexuals, death to adulterers, death to blasphemers, death to those who insult the Koran, death to those who insult Mohammud and death to those who insult Islam.
He also advocates the normalistic Sharia which prohibits music.
Or course even with all this, there are still people out there who cover their ears and say, "nah, nah I can't hear you" but slowly the number who have become Islamorealists (most of the Rantburg universe for example) has increased.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
07/10/2011 14:27 Comments ||
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#10
pikestaff: since you're posting from "that stupid country" one wonders what you're doing about this trend.
#11
We want to create an area where Muslims can live together, make transactions with each other, and interact between themselves rather than with the wider community."
Created in 1947. Place called Pakistan.
Posted by: john frum ||
07/10/2011 16:06 Comments ||
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#12
Place called Pakistan.
As if anyone wants to live in that shithole.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
07/10/2011 16:36 Comments ||
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#13
#11 We want to create an area where Muslims can live together, make transactions with each other, and interact between themselves rather than with the wider community."
Created in 1947. Place called Pakistan.
Posted by john frum
kinda self-explains the dead and injured the last couple years there, hmmm?
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/10/2011 17:05 Comments ||
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Prosecutors in the U.S. are demanding that a university hand over to Britain taped interviews in which former IRA members purportedly accuse Gerry Adams of running a secret death squad.
He's always said his own hands were clean, though no one ever really believed him.
Researchers on an oral history project for Boston College obtained the testimonies from two convicted IRA terrorists between 2001 and 2006. The interviews being sought by Northern Ireland police are with Brendan Hughes, who was head of the IRA in Belfast, and Dolours Price, who took part in the 1973 Old Bailey car bombing and the unsolved killings of at least four people. Both later fell out with Adams and Sinn Fein, criticising the Northern Ireland peace process.
Because Mr. Adams was willing to make peace with the hated Prots and British.
The college says the pair only agreed to talk on condition their taped confessions remained sealed and their identities protected until after their deaths. Hughes died in 2008, but Price is still alive. Lawyers for the college claim releasing the details 'prematurely' would not only damage the peace process but break the IRA's 'code of silence' and could lead to 'punishment by death'.
Since they themselves hand that punishment out to others they should understand that it could boomerang. The heart (urp!) bleeds...
But Northern Ireland police want the tapes now, convinced they hold crucial clues to at least nine unsolved murders as well as kidnappings in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
Some of the testimony from Hughes has already been used in a book and TV programme.
But turning it over to the police is somehow different...
In his interview, he spoke about serving alongside Adams and claimed the Sinn Fein leader was involved in the 1972 murder of Jean McConville, a mother of ten from Belfast. Adams has denied being involved in the killing, claiming Hughes was 'not well' at the time he gave the interview.
Adams, president of Sinn Fein, has always denied being an IRA member, let alone heading a unit which carried out some of its most brutal acts.
But it makes sense that he couldn't lead Sinn Fein without having been blooded at some point along the way.
Retired politician Milos Zeman, Czech prime minister in 1998-2002, faces a criminal complaint over the statements on Islam he made in June at an international conference on Europe.
"The enemy is the anti-civilisation spreading from North Africa to Indonesia. Two billion people live in it and it is financed partly from oil sales and partly from drug sales," Czech news servers quoted Zeman as saying about Islam at the recent conference.
Zeman said Thursday Muslims believe in the Koran like Nazis believed in racial supremacy and anti-semitism and communists in class struggle and dictatorship of the proletariat.
He said Islam is far more aggressive and intolerant than present Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism and other world religions.
He added that the Koran includes passages calling for the subjugation, enslavement and even elimination of non-believers.
#1
The multi-culturalism loving political establishment went after Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and after three years broke their teeth on him. But part of the lesson is the attack itself, so now they're trying it on Milos Zeman who doesn't have the legal speech protection of being a sitting politician. However, unlike Holland, the Czech Republic only became free of totalitarian Soviet tyranny in the '90s, so they haven't the same habit of self-delusion.
This interactive map is based on documents amassed by reporter Dan Freedman for his story Smuggled Guns: the Bigger the Better, which ran May 29 in the Houston Chronicle.
Freedman surveyed 44 gun trafficking cases involving 165 defendants in U.S. jurisdictions along the border. From U.S. court documents, Freedman extracted a list of 1,600 guns by brand name. All were weapons purchased in the Southwest for transit to Mexico and that nation's violent drug cartels. Most of the weapons were either sent to Mexico or intercepted en route.
The map, prepared by reporter-researcher Will Tucker, breaks down each purchase documented in the court indictments and criminal complaints and, if known, shows where in Mexico the weapons ended up. With the ATF's Operation Fast and Furious now in the headlines, Texas on the Potomac is pleased to present the survey data in an interactive format that allows readers to view and comment. Deserving of the credit:
This presentation was done by Will Tucker, interning for the Houston Chronicle Washington, D.C. bureau. A rising junior at the University of Alabama, Will works as the Assistant Managing Editor at the UA student newspaper, the Crimson White, and is majoring in international relations.
The Obama administration is suspending and, in some cases, canceling hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to the Pakistani military, in a move to chasten Pakistan for expelling American military trainers and to press its army to fight militants more effectively.
Coupled with a statement from the top American military officer last week linking Pakistans military spy agency to the recent murder of a Pakistani journalist, the halting or withdrawal of military equipment and other aid to Pakistan illustrates the depth of the debate inside the Obama administration over how to change the behavior of one of its key counterterrorism partners.
Altogether, about $800 million in military aid and equipment, or over one-third of the more than $2 billion in annual American security assistance to Pakistan, could be affected, three senior United States officials said.
This aid includes about $300 million to reimburse Pakistan for some of the costs of deploying more than 100,000 soldiers along the Afghan border to combat terrorism, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars in training assistance and military hardware, according to half a dozen Congressional, Pentagon and other administration officials who were granted anonymity to discuss the politically delicate matter.
Some of the curtailed aid is equipment that the United States wants to send but Pakistan now refuses to accept, like rifles, ammunition, body armor and bomb-disposal gear that were withdrawn or held up after Pakistan ordered more than 100 Army Special Forces trainers to leave the country in recent weeks.
Some is equipment, such as radios, night-vision goggles and helicopter spare parts, which cannot be set up, certified or used for training because Pakistan has denied visas to the American personnel needed to operate the equipment, two senior Pentagon officials said.
#1
Good: that's $400 million less that we have to borrow from the Chinese. Now the Chinese will give directly to the Pakis w/out return of principle or interest but with that special kinda friendship the Pakis are known for.
Posted by: regular joe ||
07/10/2011 8:25 Comments ||
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#2
Defer it all and cut off their trading privileges. Let them try exporting to the Chinese. As long as the west continues to feed the jihad, Pakistan will produce more jihadis.
#4
"Altogether, about US$800.0Milyuhn in military aid + assistance ..." > Yokay, I'll bite, some Net Artics claim that the real figure comes out to well over US$900.0Milyuhn???
So, iff correct, IMO the MAHA-RUSHIE QUESTIONNE' OF THE DAY IS WHERE IS THE OTHER US$100.0Milyuhn-plus going to or coming from???
* ION WAFF > US WEAPONS [+ $$$] IN AFGHANISTAN + PAKISTAN FUELING MILITANTS. US M-4 combat weapons allegedly being sold on the black market, wid many ending up being used by the Burqua Boyz in combat agz US-NATO forces in Bajaur, Mohmand, + Khyber provinces.
* DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > PAKISTAN ARMY SAYS NYT REPORT [alleging Pak ISI protection, sheltering of OBL] IS A "DIRECT ATTACK:, agz Pak Intel + Security Agencies.
[An Nahar] The Hizbullah Anti-Terrorism Act is still under discussion by the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs and is likely to be adopted in the fall, congressional sources told As Safir daily Saturday.
U.S. Congressman Howard Berman has introduced the HATA that sets rigorous requirements for the provision of foreign assistance to Leb during periods when Hizbullah is part of the majority governing coalition.
The cosponsors of HATA include three Congressmen of Lebanese origin -Darrell Issa, Charles Boustany, and Nick Rahall.
Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is seeking to introduce stronger wordings in the Act but without making major amendments to it, the congressional sources told As Safir.
However, if you can't say something nice about a person some juicy gossip will go well... the legislation is likely to be approved after the summer vacation of Congress that lasts from August 8 till September 5, they said.
The report came amid growing concern in the U.S. over Hizbullah's influence in Latin America and its implications on U.S. Homeland security.
The Committee on Homeland Security's Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence held a hearing on the issue on Thursday.
Roger Noriega from the American Enterprise Institute said in his remarks that Hizbullah acts as a proxy for Iran, specifically, of the Qods Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. "These determined and deadly enemies of the United States have made substantial progress in the last six years to expand their influence and operations in Latin America."
"Hizbullah operatives have provided weapons and explosives training to drug trafficking organizations that operate along the U.S. border with Mexico and have sought to radicalize Mohammedan populations in several Mexican cities," he said.
Noriega expected to see the Shiite party presence in Latin America become more active and deadly in the coming years.
Researcher at The International Assessment and Strategy Center Douglas Farah said that in addition to its growing presence in Latin America, Hizbullah has a smuggling network in West Africa to move contraband diamonds and other commodities.
It is now involved in the trafficking of cocaine from Latin America to Europe, he said.
Melani Cammett, who is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of Middle East Studies Program at Brown University, said during the hearing that the Special Tribunal for Leb "continues to destabilize Lebanese politics, with Hizbullah declaring its firm opposition to the proceedings and attempting to undermine the investigation's credibility, particularly after prosecutors announced the indictments of four Hizbullah members."
She said, however, that there is no evidence that the Shiite party aims to launch global operations, as carried out by Sunni jihad boy groups such as al-Qaeda.
"To the contrary, the organization has explicitly and repeatedly condemned the indiscriminate, large-scale acts of violence perpetrated by Sunni jihad boys," Cammett added.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
It will be intereting to see what happens after the House passes this bill. Will the Senate go along, and will the Obama
White House obey or ignore, doing exactly as they intended all along?
Pakistan has called on the United States to share information about Ayman al-Zawahri after Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said he believed that Osama bin Laden's successor was in Pakistan.
During his first trip to Kabul on Saturday as Pentagon chief, Panetta said he thought that Zawahri was living in Pakistan's tribal region on the Afghan border.
Pakistan's military said its troops were carrying out "intense operations" against al Qaeda and its associates as well as "terrorist leadership" and other high value targets.
"We expect U.S. intelligence establishment to share available information and actionable intelligence regarding Al Zawahri and other HVTs with us, enabling Pakistan Army to carry out targeted operations," said a military spokesman.
Panetta said the strategic defeat of al Qaeda was within reach if the United States could kill or capture up to 20 remaining leaders of the core group and its affiliates.
Oh, but we couldn't possibly capture and interrogate any of them because that might put Obama in an awkward political position.
He said these terrorist leaders were living in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and in North Africa.
#1
"We expect U.S. intelligence establishment to share available information and actionable intelligence regarding Al Zawahri and other HVTs with us, enabling Pakistan Army to warn them to get their butts outta here carry out targeted operations," said a military spokesman.
FTFY.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
07/10/2011 9:40 Comments ||
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#2
Pakistan has an amazing ability to instantly catch those jihadis who act against Paki interests, like Taliban #2 Mullah Baradar when he began peace negations that cut out Pakistan. Yet they can't jihadis who live in Pakistan's finest mansions and hotels and who happen to be surrounded by thousands of Pakistan's finest troops.
#3
Al Qaeda in Pakistan is pretty much a spent force. While important to wipe out, this round of the jihad against Dar al Harb will not end until the active jihadi groups are degraded and demoralized enough that they go into hiding for a generation or more. At the moment the key targets are the affiliates who are actively pursuing terror attacks: AQ in the Arabian Peninsula, AQ in the Maghreb, the various groups making up the Taliban in Afghanistan, ditto the Taliban in Pakistan, Lashkar-i-Taiba, [put your favorite here]...
#6
Unfortunately, as per ARAB-MUSLIM HISTORY, even iff the US-Allies did succeed in finally whacking Ayman + most or all of the remaining
"Core", Affiliate Qaeda Leaders, in a best-case scenario IMO it would mean only a temporary lull before the resumption of violent Regional, Global Jihad under new Leaders or major Groups, to include non-Qaeda.
As I argued or inferred times before, 1990's NET + pre, post-9-11 > the nature of the Terror = MilTerr threat, espec as per Nuke-WMD proliferation to same, is such that the US, etal. may have to conquer the World even iff Amers don't want to, just for the sake(s) of Personal, Societal, National, + Geopol-World Security.
[Dawn] Alleging that the PPP, the MQM and the ANP are involved in murders in Bloody Karachi, Pakistain Tehrik-i-Insaaf chairman Imran Khan ... who isn't your heaviest-duty thinker, maybe not even among the top five... says the bloodletting can be checked only if the state stops protecting the criminals.
Demanding immediate resignation of the rulers, he prescribes midterm polls as the only solution to the problems facing the country.
Speaking at a presser here on Friday, he said the main reason behind the murder spree in the port city was that the government itself was protecting the criminals.
This protection, he said, could be in the form of defamed NRO or patronisation of the hit mans.
He claimed that criminal elements in the PPP, the MQM and the ANP, and not Taliban, were involved in the Bloody Karachi violence.
The PTI chief said if the three parties wanted peace in the port city, they should shunt out these elements from their ranks and hand them over to the law-enforcement agencies instead of providing them cover.
Mr Khan alleged that Interior Minister Rehman Malik Pak politician, current Interior Minister under the Gilani administration. Malik is a former Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) intelligence officer who rose to head the FIA during Benazir Bhutto's second tenure. He later joined the Pak Peoples Party and was chief security officer to Bhutto. Malik was tossed from his FIA job in 1998 after documenting the breath-taking corruption of the Sharif family. By unhappy coincidence Näwaz Shärif became PM at just that moment and Malik moved to London one step ahead of the button men. visited Bloody Karachi after each incident only to strike a deal among these parties.
He said as the government had failed on all fronts, it should step down to make room for midterm polls which, he said, were the only solution to the current issues.
He announced that second "remove the government, save the country" public meeting would be held in Faisalabad on July 24.
Responding to a query about joining the proposed grand alliance of the opposition, he said "the grand alliance is in fact a grand fraud."
Explaining, he said (PML-N chief) Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Müslim League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... had deceived them twice and they were not ready to be hoodwinked for the third time in the name of grand alliance.
The PTI chairman said those who had been enjoying power (with the support of the PPP) were now out to cheat the masses through the proposed anti-government alliance.
He said the PML-N had been supporting the PPP government in the name of democracy and even today it was overlooking the injustices, including gas loadshedding being done to Punjab, only to take its turn in power.
Mr Khan said Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif was keeping 20 portfolios and was not ready to tolerate honest officers like DIG Zulfiqar Cheema for they were a hurdle in rigging of by-polls.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2011 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
"Imran blames violence on PPP, MQM and ANP"
imran is blaming violence on the Alphabet? Who knew?
Do you ever get the impression that Paki politics is like the sex-life of insects.? ( you dont really want to know).
Posted by: de Medici ||
07/10/2011 8:33 Comments ||
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#2
Perhaps it's our different backgrounds, Mr. de Medici, but I find the behavioural instincts that insects have evolved to reproduce less horrifying than some of the things that men deliberately do to one another.
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/10/2011 12:08 Comments ||
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#6
Oops. us=up
PMIF
Frank, on the presumption that your offering is a picture, thanks but no thanks.
Posted by: Barbara ||
07/10/2011 13:24 Comments ||
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#7
Trailing Wife, you are absolutely correct about human behavior. Its predictable with exactly what we are. You think it cant get any worse and then you look in the mirror and see yourself and you know what you are capable of. And there is no place to go and you cant escape yourself either. And the older you get the better you know yourself.
maybe one man in ten can kill another man. Maybe six in a hundred can be trained to do it. But there is also that one man in a hundred sooner or later who likes it. And once you find out who that man is, its too late.
You know what eventually happens? The whole Company knows who it is and both Platoons use him...they do....like a cheap vacuum cleaner. They work a system to herd all the work to him. They catch the prey and then they look at him and send him to finish the job. They find and fix the enemy in place...and then send that one man to complete the work.
And he does it. One in the kitchen through the side window.
Two in the living room with a grenade. Two more in the back bedroom with another grenade and then mopup. And the last one running for the top of the stairs. Nobody left upstairs. Then you start isolating the next house, all systematic....
Of a hundred men maybe six do 85% of the kills. And one man likes it.
Eventually the Sniper recruiter comes around and introduces himself and asks you to come visit their unit this evening. And you go. They send you to school if you reup. And there is a serious bonus too. What are you going to do as a Civilian? Work in the garden on Saturday and do Monday to Friday 9 to 5 selling Linoleum or Insurance? Or "police work" and wear a tie?
Or Walmart supervising the pallets at the warehouse, busy busy busy?
You will never be any good for anything but what you do and everybody knows what that is. You can see it in their faces.
Posted by: de Medici ||
07/10/2011 18:32 Comments ||
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#8
BS de Medici. I've known snipers and they don't fit your description and I doubt the recruiting targets do either. Some may fit your description, but not all. Which is the majority? I doubt yours. There just aren't ass many psychos as you.
[Dawn] At the rehabilitation center for former gunnies in Pakistain's Swat ...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat... valley, the psychiatrist speaks for the young man sitting opposite him in silence. "It was terrible. He was unable to escape. The fear is so strong. Still the fear is so strong."
Hundreds of miles away in Lahore, capital of Punjab province, a retired army officer recalls another young man who attacked him while he prayed -- his "absolutely expressionless face" as he crouched down robot-like to reload his gun.
Both youths had been sucked into an increasingly fierce campaign of gun and kabooms by Islamist gunnies on military and civilian targets across Pakistain.
But there the similarity stops.
One is now being "de-radicalised" in the rehabilitation center in Swat, the northern region which only two years ago was overrun by the Pak Taliban and has since been cleared after a massive military operation.
He will be taught that Islam does not permit violence against the state and that suicide kaboom is "haram" or forbidden.
The other had attacked the minority Ahmadi sect, declared non-Mohammedan by the state and subject to frequent attacks in Punjab, where many of them live.
Though he was placed in durance vile after being overpowered by the retired army officer, survivors said many of their neighbors celebrated his act of violence with the distribution of sweets.
The different responses to the two are symptomatic of Pakistain's compartmentalised approach on counter-terrorism and counter-extremism.
In some parts of the country -- like Swat -- violent Islamists are crushed and their beliefs confronted.
In others -- like Punjab, the heartland province far more important to the stability of Pakistain than the more talked-about tribal areas bordering Afghanistan -- they are tolerated while their ideology of religious extremism flourishes.
Swat is the Pakistain army's success story. After Talibs imposed a brutal regime of beheadings and killings, the army sent in troops to clear them out and restore order.
This week it held an international seminar on de-radicalisation in the main town Mingora and organised tours of its rehabilitation centers to demonstrate its commitment to fighting terrorism.
The turbaned men who brought fear to Swat have been replaced by boys playing cricket in the cool before dusk; women are back out in the streets, some even showing their faces under casually draped headscarves, peace is enforced by a heavy military presence.
Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani ... four star general, current Chief of Army Staff of the Mighty Pak Army. Kayani is the former Director General of ISI... -- a man whose position in Pakistain was demonstrated by the alacrity at which the audience at the seminar rose to its feet when he entered the hall -- insisted in a rare public speech on the need to fight the "political, psychological or religious" trends which lead to radicalism.
At the rehabilitation center, a large brick building with high walls and barbed wire set between craggy grassy hills in the Swat countryside, an officer explained that several hundred prisoners had been selected for "the removal of radical thoughts."
The young man sitting with the psychiatrist -- he cannot be named for his own safety -- was a construction worker who ended up with the Taliban and is now being counseled in the hope he can return to a normal life. He still suffers from post-traumatic stress from the violence he witnessed.
In another rehabilitation center, this one for juveniles aged 12-17, boys dressed in green and white striped shirts, brown trousers and black shoes are given classes about Pakistain.
The setting is softer here -- the boys have neat bunk beds with covers of blue floral print on pale brown, a living room with television and table tennis, a computer room, a small library including a collection of English-language novels.
Some of them were used by the Taliban for menial chores -- you have to rise one step up the hierarchy to become a jacket wallah, to be injected with drugs and dispatched to kill.
The Swat story has less gentle sides -- in the thousands of hard-core prisoners who visitors are not taken to see, in reports, denied by the army, of extra-judicial executions.
Local people say they fear that the Taliban might yet return to an area mired in poverty and hit anew by devastating floods last year. But at least in terms of trend, Swat is a success.
Permissive Culture of Violence Punjab, having never known the extreme violence seen in Swat and with nothing to shock it into action, is going in the opposite direction.
Last year, more than 80 people were killed in Lahore at two mosques of the Ahmadi sect. The retired military officer -- he too did not want to be named -- and others who survived speak of neighbors distributing sweets in the streets of Lahore.
Only a few -- mainly in the liberal English media -- spoke out strongly to condemn the attacks.
This year Punjab's provincial governor Salman Taseer was assassinated at a cosmopolitan shopping center in Islamabad for questioning the country's blasphemy laws -- legal provisions often used to justify violence against Ahmadis and other minorities. His murderer was celebrated as a hero.
The same Pak state which is challenging radicalism in Swat has been unable to respond to a similar ideology in Punjab -- for the country's divided politicians, the religious right is a powerful force to be either courted or avoided as an enemy.
Western diplomats and many Pak analysts often express concern about a society which is becoming more permissive about settling religious and political differences through violence, and about a state which is unable to impose the rule of law even in its sleepy capital Islamabad.
Punjab-based cut-thoat groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba, blamed by India and the United States for the November 2008 attack on Mumbai which killed 166 people, are banned but have yet to be disarmed and dismantled.
The army says it does not want to tackle all cut-thoat groups at once for fear of driving them into a dangerous coalition, or splintering them into fragments it can no longer contain.
But since these groups were once nurtured by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency to fight India, many suspect the army of deliberately retaining these groups as insurance against Pakistain's bigger neighbor, a charge it denies.
The result is widespread confusion in the public about exactly what the state and the army are trying to achieve on counter-terrorism and counter-extremism.
"I was quite mystified to note," wrote columnist Kamran Shafi in Dawn newspaper, "that the very army that considers the gunnies its strategic assets is de-programming young gun-hung tough guys programmed by its own assets in the first place. How does this work, please?"
Shadows From Swat
At the seminar on de-radicalisation, participants reeled off a list of reforms that needed to happen in Swat -- prison and judicial reform, economic development, and education.
Many of these factors could be applied to the whole country. Yet at the seminar, nobody explained how the programme of de-radicalisation begun in Swat was meant to be replicated in a much more complex and larger place like Punjab.
Nobody asked how a confused and divided people were meant to distinguish between Pakistain's experience of Islam, politicised by the army as a unifying force, and subsequently by both the religious right and the Taliban to varying degrees.
Kayani promised the army was committed to taking "stern action against all terrorist groups" and called for the people of the country to rally behind the military.
"Pakistain Army being a national army, derives its strength from the people of Pakistain and is answerable to the people and their representatives in the parliament," he said.
Nobody questioned that either. The seminar was concluded by an officer who spoke of unanimous consensus in how right the military's approach to de-radicalisation was.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
MEMRI
You could just call the organiser a Nazi, but I suppose "Godwin's Law" would come into play. Will just have to settle for psychopath Sociopath, not psychopath. There's a difference.
#2
Well, the so-called "pigs" just outsmarted you and your flotilla. I can see why you are pi$$ed off. The "pig" demonstrated that you were just raging incompetent fools. Hence your rage, boy. They got into your OODA loop.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
07/10/2011 19:05 Comments ||
Top||
[An Nahar] Primary data obtained by the Central Criminal Investigations Bureau indicates that the four suspects mentioned in the indictment in the probe into ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's liquidation are not in Leb.
The four suspects have left Leb, informed sources told the Central News Agency on Saturday, adding however that one of them might be killed.
They said that the international investigation commission has requested "accurate information about the departure of some Lebanese from and into Beirut and the list of arrivals and departures at Beirut international airport and at the border crossings."
Sources said that the criminal Sherlocks didn't rule out the possibility that the four suspects are still in Leb.
"They are carrying out discreet raids on some places they (the suspects) might have taken refuge ... without excluding any area in Leb," the sources stressed.
Meanwhile, ...back at the buffalo wallow, Tex and his new-found Indian friend were preparing a little surprise for the bandidos... the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) issued an international memo against the names indicted in the ex-premier's liquidation which included premeditated murder of Hariri and the use of large quantities of explosives.
Arrouwad website reported that the Interpol publicized the memo to all countries including requests to detain and arrest the named persons pending their transfer to the Special Tribunal for Leb headquarters at The Hague.
The memo includes the names of 21 people, the website said.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under: Hezbollah
#1
Well it's not like they didn't have enough lead time...
Iran said on Saturday it test-fired two long-range missiles into the Indian Ocean
A big place, so it was hard for the Mad Mullahs to miss...
earlier this year, the first time it has fired missiles into that sea, according to state television.
"In the month of Bahman (Jan 21-Feb 19) two missiles with a range of 1,900 km (1,180 miles) were fired from Semnan province(in northern Iran) into the mouth of the Indian Ocean," Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the Revolutionary Guards' aerospace division, told a news conference some of which was shown on television.
Iran usually tests its missiles in extensive deserts in the heart of the country, so the firing into the Indian Ocean is an unusual move, aimed to prove Tehran's longstanding claims it can hit targets beyond its borders.
"Great news, Your Mullah-ness! We've successfully hit the Indian Ocean!"
"Excellent, Mahmoud. West or East Indian Ocean?"
"We'll know that in a day or two."
Television showed a missile being fired but the announcer did not specify if the pictures were of the Indian Ocean test-firing. No pictures were shown of a target being hit at sea.
The announcement came after a 10-day military exercise by the elite Guards that was designed to deter Iran's enemies by showing Iran is ready and able to hit back at U.S. bases in the Middle East and at Israel.
* PEOPLE'S DAILY FORUM > [IRGC] IRAN TO TARGET US AIRCRAFT CARRIERS IFF ATTACKED.
* TOPIX > IRAN: US AIRCRAFT CARRIERS ARE MOVING TARGETS.
Iff + when any US-Iran war de facto breaks out, IMO given its budding LRBM, Nuke arsenals Iran for the time being is most likely to hold back + allow the US = US-Allies to mil invade.
As per the 1980's Iran-Iraq War, Iran will prob engage in a Regional "WAR OF THE SCUDS", or other LRBM variants, selectively striking at US-NATO, Israeli targets while keeping the majority of any early-design but reliable Nuke-WMD Warheads for "defensive" use agz large enemy ground forces + Coastal, Gulf elements. IRAN'S PRIMARY WEAPONS WILL BE REGIONAL LIMITED/SELECTIVE NUCLEAR? WAR, + MOST ESPEC INTERNAT "PROXY WAR" I.E. REGIONAL, GLOBAL NUCLEAR TERRORISM.
The above will change iff no war occurs + time moves forward beyond 2015 or 2020, whereupon Iran will likely switch from the geopol = strategic "defensive" over to "offensive" as its MilNuke, etc. techs improves.
Besides domestic unrest + the Shia-Iran-vs-Sunni-Saudis struggle for ideo control of Islam + the desired future OWG Caliphate, Iran's only other worry would be a sudden collapse of BFF NORTH KOREA = Kimmie + Clearly-Grass-is-Beef Boyz in NE Asia.
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.
[Dawn] Military officials from Pakistain and Afghanistan have agreed to hold more high-level talks to defuse a row over a series of attacks across their 
Nawaz Sharif
Punjab
