Following a two-week deployment to Afghanistan, Sen. Mark Kirk, a U.S. Naval intelligence officer, is offering a bold proposal to save the United States money and punish a disloyal ally: Cut off all aid to Pakistan.
Furthermore, Kirk would invite Pakistans neighbor/nemesis India to take over the United States leadership role in rebuilding Afghanistan after the United States begins pulling out this year.
I think the United States should tilt toward India, Kirk said.
#2
I agree with Kirk, but Washington would have to get the cancellation cleared by Beijing, which would never happen. There are often strings attached to endless monetary extensions you know. The piper must be paid.
#3
It doesn't seem that there is a cause and effect relationship associated with the boodle we give them. They would hate us with or without the boodle. They are a failed state ruled by corruption.
[An Nahar] Somalia's disparate leaders signed Tuesday a "roadmap" for the formation of a government to replace the fragile transitional body that has failed to bring peace to the fragmented country.
"We are clearly committed to implement this roadmap, the Somali people have suffered a lot," said Somali President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed after three days of talks at a heavily-guarded conference venue in Mogadishu.
Gee, Mr. Sheik-ness sir, if there's to be all this peace, why is your conference so heavily guarded?
"We want the Somali people to be secure, to lead them to prosperity," Ahmed added.
The new political deal focuses on improving security in Mogadishu and other areas in southern Somalia, national reconciliation, a draft charter, governance and institutional reforms.
Nothing about rule of law, rights for minorities, rights for women, freedom of conscience, freedom of thought, right to keep what you've earned, clarity in the law -- in other words, nothing's going to change.
Somalia's prime minister, as well as representatives of the breakaway Puntland region, the central Galmudug region and the pro-government militia Ahlu Sunna Wal Jamaa signed the deal under U.N. auspices.
The agreement is the latest among more than a bajillion dozen attempts to resolve Somalia's more than two decade-old civil war, with the country split between rival factions and host to pirate gangs who hijack ships far across the Indian Ocean.
Constant political wrangles and a bloody Islamist insurgency have undermined Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG), which has been unable to carry out its key mandate of reconciling the country, writing a new constitution and organizing elections.
Hundreds of people are believed to be dying each day from famine exacerbated by conflict, with three-quarters of a million Somalis facing death by starvation, many of them children, the U.N. said on Monday.
Representatives of the United Nations ...an organization whose definition of human rights is interesting, to say the least... , African Union, NaN, Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... and East African peace bloc, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), also inked the agreement.
The U.N.-sponsored talks in the heavily-guarded parliament building and airport started Sunday as politicians worked to build on last month's withdrawal of al-Qaeda-linked Shebab cut-throats from the capital.
The U.S. representative to Somalia James Swann said he was "particularly pleased by the broad participation" at the conference, but also warned of challenges ahead to implement the deal.
"The roadmap gives us a set of benchmarks, some of them with tight deadlines," he said, speaking at the conclusion of the meeting. "We have to look at them closely to make sure they do indeed stay on track."
The roadmap is to be implemented over the coming year, after Sharif and the parliament speaker agreed in June to extend their terms for another year.
That was the easy part.
A critical element will be agreeing on a system of government, as Somalia is fragmented into regional -- and often rival -- administrations.
The northern Puntland and Somaliland regions declared autonomy in the 1990s. The central regions are also governed by local administrations and militia, the TFG has for years had limited control of Mogadishu, and much of southern Somalia is ruled by hardline Shebab fighters.
The Shebab were not represented in the talks, while Somaliland declined to attend because it is seeking international recognition as an independent state.
But analysts said the deal should be welcomed with cautious optimism -- noting multiple failed agreements in the past and warning that forging peace in Somalia will take far more than inking paper alone.
"The departure of the Shebab from Mogadishu has opened some kind of political space, and it would be wrong to be too dismissive of the meeting," said Sally Healy, from Britannia's Chatham House think-tank.
"At least this time it is being held on Somali soil in Mogadishu, and not like other conferences held outside. It's one and a half cheers, not three cheers."
But J. Peter Pham, senior analyst with the Washington-based Atlantic Council, warned that "discussions must be grounded in reality, not posturing, much less flights of fancy."
"Unfortunately the latter seems to be the case with the current meeting: people and agencies which have been largely absent or irrelevant in recent months are now rushing to make themselves appear important," he told AFP.
He was also deeply skeptical that given the government's "lackluster performance" it could hold national elections within a year.
"I would be very surprised, quite frankly, if the TFG was even able to conduct municipal elections in all sixteen districts of Mogadishu a year from now, to say nothing of across all of south central Somalia," Pham said. "Its leaders are more likely to steal any funds for such a poll -- assuming anyone is still naive enough to give them cash."
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2011 00:00 ||
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"Its leaders are more likely to steal any funds for such a poll -- assuming anyone is still naive enough to give them cash."
The roadmap will be a formula to divy up the loot.
The good news is Somaliland didn't turn up. Means they have a moreorless functional state that doesn't need to steal international aid in order for it to work.
#2
Oh, I think the Somalilanders would be happy to grab a piece of the boodle if it were free for the taking; they just don't want to be associated with the south in any way, shape or form since it harms their own chances for independence.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/07/2011 9:07 Comments ||
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[Dawn] A former senior US army officer who helped lead the hunt for Saddam Hussein believes Muammar Qadaffy ...who single-handedly turned a moderately prosperous kingdom into a dictator's fantasyland... will be caught as long as those pursuing him use local intelligence and zero in on his closest bodyguards.
Speaking before news emerged that a convoy of Libyan army vehicles had crossed into Niger carrying senior pro-Qadaffy figures, retired Lieutenant-Colonel Steve Russell said Qadaffy had traits similar to Saddam and other ego-driven autocrats that made him likely to rely on a small network of ultra-loyalists.
In hunting down Saddam in 2003 -- he was captured eight months after the fall of Storied Baghdad ...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate... , hiding in a hole near his hometown of Tikrit -- Russell relied on a mixture of local intelligence, special forces surveillance and psychological warfare to turn the local population against the deposed leader.
"We thought that if we could find the bodyguards, they may be good at protecting him, but not so good at protecting themselves. We knew that if we could find them and track them, they would probably lead us to Saddam," he said.
From June 2003, the US military thought it had a pretty good idea that Saddam was hiding in the area around Tikrit and his nearby birthplace of al-Ouja, and set about pinpointing his bodyguards, closest family and relatives in the area.
From creating a fake bad turban group to draw away Saddam's religious supporters, to putting up posters of Saddam dressed as a woman or Elvis Presley around Tikrit to make fun of him, Russell and his unit tried to agitate the local population into giving him up while goading his backers into showing themselves.
"We would get tips from locals constantly saying 'they're here, we're seeing them', referring to Saddam's bodyguards, so we knew he had to be around even if we didn't know exactly where he was," he said. "It was a matter of time."
Members of Libya's interim the National Transitional Council cited Tuareg tribal sources saying a convoy of 10 vehicles with gold and cash had crossed from Libya into Niger on Monday night.
This followed word from military sources in La Belle France and Niger that scores of Libyan army vehicles had entered Niger. It was not clear whether Qadaffy was in the convoy.
While it was possible Qadaffy was trying to escape, Russell said he thought it was more likely that he would remain in Libya, sticking close to his power base and hometown networks.
"Like Saddam, he's probably too vain and too proud to leave Libya because he identifies everything about who he is with being powerful in his own country," Russell, who is now a state senator in Oklahoma, told Rooters by telephone.
"When you've spent 40 years being accustomed to being the centre of your world, you are not prone to change."
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If he remains in Libya, Qadaffy is most likely in the north, staying where the population centres are, with a close group of ultra-loyal bodyguards at his side and within reach of his hometown of Sirte, a Mediterranean coastal city.
"You've got the coast in Libya, that's where the people are, that's where he'll be. Someone as ostentatious as Qadaffy, he's going to remain where his support is. He's not going to end up in some desert hole, even if that would be smarter," he said.
Russell said it did not matter how large Libya was -- at 1.76 million sq km it is four times the size of Iraq -- if Qadaffy was going to be found, it would be people and human intelligence that would give him up.
"The people are the terrain. You can look at a country and its vastness, but it doesn't matter. Where the people are, that's where he's going to be. They are the terrain.
"If Saddam had really wanted to disappear, he would have gone to Syria and lived out the rest of his life comfortably as a goat herder. But he didn't do that. He went home and hid ... I think that's what's going to happen to Qadaffy as well."
The critical thing -- and in Saddam's case it involved the capture of a trusted lieutenant, Mohammed Omar al-Musslit, who under US military interrogation divulged Saddam's whereabouts -- will be tracking down Qadaffy's closest bodyguards.
"These guys identify who they are by drawing on those around them, they need to feel the importance," said Russell, the author of "We Got Him!" a book about the capture of Saddam. "As long as there are a handful of loyalists, that's where you start looking. Those families that intermarried with his family, the cabinet members he appointed. That's where he's going to be."
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2011 00:00 ||
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FUTURE CABLE TV MOVIE "THE PROUD + THE VAIN" ...
versus
* WORLD NEWS > SPOX SAYS GADDAFI PLANNING TO FIGHT BACK.
As per Gen. Douglas MacArthur, HE SHALL RETURN!?
[IIRC "MAN WITH A VENGEANCE"? Movie here].
* PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUM > OSAMA BIN LADEN WAS [originally] MADE A WANTED MAN BY GADDAFI, back in Mar16, 1998 vee arrest warrant for alleged Sirte murders as issued by the then Libyuhn Ministry of Justice, + ultimately forwarded to UN INTERPOL.
[Emirates 24/7] As the uprising grew against Moammar Qadaffy ...a proud Arab institution for 42 years... , secret reports from his vaunted intelligence service flowed back to Tripoli. Some were mundane -- how agents erased anti-regime graffiti. Others were more deadly -- a spy volunteered to poison rebel leaders' food and drink.
The reports grew more desperate as the Libyan rebellion veered into civil war: Military leaders in the western mountains were disregarding orders; troops in the city of Misrata ran out of ammunition, turning the situation into "every man for himself."
These reports and hundreds of other intelligence documents seen by The News Agency that Dare Not be Named in Tripoli trace how the tide shifted in the six-month uprising that ended Qadaffy's 42-year reign. They show how an authoritarian regime using all its means failed to quash an armed rebellion largely fueled by hatred of its tools of control.
The Arab-language documents read and photographed by an AP news hound during a visit to Tripoli's intelligence headquarters contain a mixture of military data and regime propaganda. Amid reports on rebels' movements, phone tap records and dispatches from Qadaffy's domestic agents are memos claiming that Al Qaeda was behind the rebellion and that 4,000 U.S. troops were about to invade from Egypt.
The uprising began in mid-February when security forces used deadly fire to suppress anti-government protests in the eastern city of Benghazi. The opposition responded to the fierce crackdown by taking up arms, quickly seizing a large swath of eastern Libya and establishing a temporary administration.
The conflict changed to civil war as rebel forces grew, expelling government forces from of the western city of Misrata and seizing much of the western Nafusa mountain range. It was from there that they pushed to the coast, then stormed into the capital on Aug. 21, effectively ending Qadaffy's rule.
Throughout the war, Qadaffy's security offices in Tripoli directed efforts to quash the rebellion. Among those leading the charge was intelligence chief Abdullah Al Senoussi, whose well-fortified compound received reports from around the country.
Early on, his office struggled to understand the situation in Benghazi, birthplace of the rebels' National Transitional Council.
One of the handwritten intelligence reports, written by a man who said he had "infiltrated" the rebel council, gave the names of five members, their background and the hotels they frequented. None of the material would be unfamiliar to a Benghazi resident.
The note concluded with an offer to kill the council members.
"I can carry out any suicide operation I'm given to assassinate members of the council or poison their food and water," it read.
The author is not identified. No council members have been killed by Qadaffy's regime.
Another report parroted stories spread by Libyan state media that the rebels were linked to the late Osama bin Laden ... who no longer has to waste time and energy breathing... 's Al Qaeda terrorist group, that they lacked local support, and that they carried Viagra and condoms into battle so they could rape women.
The regime took these claims to the international community, especially after NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... began bombing Libyan military targets under a U.N. mandate to protect civilians.
One document discovered was a draft letter from Qadaffy to President Barack B.O. Obama.
"It is necessary to support Libya to get rid of the gunnies of Al Qaeda before all of north Africa falls into the hands of bin Laden," it said. It is unclear if the letter was ever sent.
The documents refer to the rebels as "insurgents," ''saboteurs" ''armed gangs" and "rats."
Reports from across Libya detail the government's actions to erase opposition symbols, such as replacing rebel flags with the green banners of the Qadaffy regime or painting over rebel graffiti.
Phone taps were common and sometimes detailed rebel capabilities and movements. One paper cited 30 calls intercepted in one week. Other records contained GPS coordinates of the callers.
The reports also showed how the regime was quick to believe its own disinformation. In one conversation log, an Egyptian man said 4,000 U.S. troops were in Cairo, waiting to enter Libya by land.
"Four thousand, some of them commandos," the Egyptian said. "It's unbelievable."
There were signs of paranoia. In one log, a man with a Gulf Arab accent advised that Qadaffy, his sons and associates "use their cellphone for no more than three minutes," out of fear that they, too, were being intercepted.
In April and May, bleak reports flowed back from the front lines. A report marked "secret" on the situation in the Nafusa mountains laid out a new military strategy while blasting commanders for failing to follow instructions.
"Not paying attention to them in the past did not succeed in ending the actions of armed gangs," it said. "Instead, they have grown stronger (in weapons and numbers)."
Another report detailed information about rebel bases and tactics, but added that government troops were hindered by "their ignorance of the landscape there."
Bad news also came from Misrata, where rebels pushed government troops from the city in late April after weeks of fierce street battles that killed hundreds of people.
A May 5 report depicted chaos in the ranks, saying soldiers often ran out of ammunition before reaching the battlefield, leading many to be killed or captured.
"The rest decamped randomly in all directions," the report said, citing the "lack of leaders for members of the armed forces on site (every man for himself)."
Later reports suggested threats inside Tripoli from regime opponents. One envelope contained two handwritten letters, threatening to kill security forces.
"We will take mercy on no one, regardless of his position, and will kill anyone manning a checkpoint," one read. Next to a hand-drawn rebel flag, red ink declared, "You have been warned."
Others suggested a security collapse in the capital as rebel forces moved closer.
One letter from the Investigation and Surveillance Office pleaded with Al Senoussi to intervene at the station, which "has become an office of alcohol, prostitution and theft of property of those tossed in the calaboose."
In the next four pages, the officer accused his boss of getting drunk on the job, stealing money from prisoners and seizing cars to give to his guards, sons and favorite hookers.
He said his superior drugged an Egyptian woman and tried to rape her before an aide intervened, and later "sentenced" three of his officers to death.
"This order caused some confusion among those in the office," he noted.
NATO bombed many of Qadaffy's security offices, and rebels stormed the rest after seizing the capital last month.
The International Criminal Court ... where Milosevich died of old age before being convicted ... has issued arrest warrants for Qadaffy, his son Seif Al Islam, and Al Senoussi, accusing them of killing civilians to try to crush the uprising. All three remain on the lam.
A ragged band of mountain rebels now handles security at Al Senoussi's compound, parking their truck under the intelligence services' motto: "The weapons are in the people's hands."
Inside, the fighters lounge in chairs and casually flip through the hundreds of documents strewn on the floor.
Among them is an order from Al Senoussi that wasn't carried out before he decamped.
"In the crucial last moments, get rid of the contents of the administration and its secret documents by burning or destroying them," it said.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2011 00:00 ||
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[Tripoli Post] In its first gathering on Tuesday after the fall of the Al Qadaffy ...Custodian of Wheelus AFB for 42 long years... regime, the Libyan Business Society announced in a statement that Libyan businessmen are doing all they can to bring the capital back to its best times by means of hard work.
The tripolipost.com correspondent at the meeting quoted the businessmen saying that the best times for Tripoli were before the coming to power of Muammar Al Qadaffy in September 1969. Since then, day by day, the Libyan capital has rapidly gone downhill only to reach its worst conditions after 42 years of Al Qadaffy government.
The more than 200 people who attended the gathering at the offices of the Tripoli Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture in downtown Tripoli, congratulated each other for the victory over Al Qadaffy's despicable dictatorship and for the liberation of the capital from his forces on August 20.
In their speeches, leading businessmen and women, who stayed clean from the corrupt business practices of the Al Qadaffy era, they stressed the need for building a new business community based on hard work and transparency and abiding by the law. They also promised to work hard to build a new developed prosperous country where democracy and freedom can flourish.
The participants stressed that now is the time to start building a clean, honest, transparent private sector that throws away the corruption and backwardness that characterised business dealings under Al Qadaffy's regime.
They called for hard work and the respect of clean business practices by all, and strongly condemned the era of dictatorship and the Al Qadaffy regime which, during its four decades destroyed the private sector in Libya and corrupted many elements.
Abulrahman Al-Shatter, journalist and the man who established the Libyan businessmen council many years ago, said in a speech that, "all those who played a role in corrupting the business community in Libya during the Al Qadaffy years should be thrown out of any business organizations."
He called on these elements to save the Libyan people and themselves the time, effort and embarrassment by staying away from the new Libya.
At the end of the reception, some businessmen clashed with those who had been in control of the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture during the former regime. The majority of the attendees voiced their opposition against one of the businessman from the past and did not even allow him to speak.
All agreed that Muammar Al Qadaffy destroyed the private sector in Libya, and when he claimed he wanted to introduce economic reforms he made sure that they never get implemented.
Meanwhile, ...back at the fist fight, Jake ducked another roundhouse, then parried with his left, then with his right, finally with his chin... the streets of Tripoli are being cleaned from garbage; as of Monday, the water system is almost back to normal and electricity is once again becoming available to the city. Soon it will be reaching its pre-revolution levels.
The Al Fatah Towers, the base of The Tripoli Post in the capital, that will presumably change its name, to Freedom perhaps, and that was so busy pre-revolution, is almost empty now. Very few people are using it right now. But soon, hopefully, it will again become a hub of activity.
Rebels are guarding the towers, that serves as an office building and a shopping arcade. Office or shop owners needing to get back to their shops to resume activity, are requested by these guards to write down anything found missing from the premises or damaged caused.
All the shops on the ground floor were looted or damaged during the conflict. That is why security is so tight. The management of the Towers are making sure that for the time being, only those who work there or their visitors are allowed to enter.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2011 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] Moammar Qadaffy ...who single-handedly turned a moderately prosperous kingdom into a dictator's fantasyland... is in top health and planning his country's defense, his front man said, as new regime fighters voiced concern over civilians trapped in the besieged town of Bani Walid.
While anti-Qadaffy fighters were poised to strike at the loyalist oasis town at the slightest hint of provocation, Qadaffy's front man Moussa Ibrahim insisted that the toppled leader was busy planning to re-take his country.
Qadaffy is "in excellent health and planning and organizing Libya's defense," Ibrahim told Syria's Arrai television channel on Monday.
"We are still powerful," he said, adding that the sons of the runaway dictator "had assumed their role in the defense of and sacrifice for" their country. He however did not name them.
Pledging "a fight to the death or until victory," Ibrahim, who is thought to be in Bani Walid, said: "We will fight and resist for Libya and for all Arabs."
Branding the new rulers "NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis.... agents," he accused them of "committing crimes, above all rape, murder and looting."
He said: "Libya will never fall and the worthy tribes are defending and will continue to defend each of the free town and recapture those that have been raped."
But despite the brave show of face, a Nigerien government source said prominent regime officials had decamped across the border.
They included Qadaffy's internal security chief Mansour Daw, who was earlier reported to be in Bani Walid with at least two of the fallen strongman's sons.
Kamal Hodeisa, a Libyan defense ministry official, told Agence La Belle France Presse in Tripoli that anti-Qadaffy fighters would "move if there is an act of aggression by Qadaffy's forces against our rebels inside Bani Walid or if they attack civilians.
"There is debate among rebels whether to go forward or to stay but I think in the end they will respect the deadline," he said, referring to a truce until September 10 to try to negotiate the surrender of the last Qadaffy strongholds.
Abdullah Kenshil, the chief negotiator for Libya's new government, said civilians were being held hostage in the center of the town, in administrative buildings and in five or six nearby villages.
"Qadaffy's soldiers have also closed the gates of the town and are not letting families leave," he said. "That worries us, we don't want to kill civilians in the attack."
Negotiations for the surrender of Bani Walid, southeast of Tripoli, broke down late Sunday but there was little movement on that front on Monday despite concerns that local families could be held as human shields.
Operational commander Abdulrazzak Naduri told journalists at Shishan, north of Bani Walid, that the National Transitional Council does not "want any more bloodshed."
Local officials said most senior figures had decamped with Qadaffy's most prominent son, Seif al-Islam, who according to Naduri left a few days before for Sabha, further south, that is still in the hands of regime loyalists.
Two other sons of Qadaffy, Saadi and Mutassim, were also reported to be in Bani Walid and it is suspected that the strongman himself crossed through the oasis town although it is unclear when.
But Daw and some 10 others were on Monday in the northern Niger town of Agadez, having been brought across the border by a top Tuareg leader allied to Qadaffy, Tuareg sources said.
No festivities were reported on Monday in Qadaffy's hometown of Sirte or the southern oases of Sabha and Al-Jufra.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2011 00:00 ||
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Working on the business plan for his bike shop, I bet.
[Yemen Post] Just as the Libyan fighters who successfully managed to force Colonel Qadaffy ...who single-handedly turned a moderately prosperous kingdom into a dictator's fantasyland... out of power after 4 long decades, rummage through piles of classified documents, letters between Colonel Qadaffy and Hussein al-Ahmar were allegedly unveiled, linking the latter to a plot against the Kingdom of Soddy Arabia.
According to some, Sheikh Faris Menna and Sheikh Hussein would have received funds from the Libyan regime, against promises that they would try to destabilize Soddy Arabia by way of arms.
Hussein al-Ahmar upon such accusations, immediately issued a statement stressing that there was no truth to the allegations and that there was neither any proof to support it. He also said that unless the press retracted its previous statements he would be forced to sue his detractors for defamation.
"Please don't hurt me!"
In his statement the Sheikh expressed his greatest regards and respect towards the Kingdom of Soddy Arabia, as the country always had been the greatest ally in the region for Yemen.
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Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta has authorized raising the force-protection level for military installations mainly in the United States, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said today.
The commander of U.S. Northern Command Commander, Army Gen. Charles H. Jacoby Jr., requested the action in recent days in advance of the 10th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland, he added.
Little said Panetta and Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reviewed the request.
This is not in response to any specific or credible threat surrounding the 10th anniversary of 9/11, Little told reporters, but we believe it is prudent and precautionary to take such a step.
Its no secret that al-Qaida has focused on holidays and milestone events in the past, Little added, noting that the 10th anniversary of 9/11 was mentioned in documents seized at the Abbottabad compound in Pakistan where Osama bin Laden was killed in May.
Navy Capt. John Kirby, director of media operations, said the Defense Department does not discuss specific force-protection levels but that the level would be raised at installations throughout the continental United States, including the Pentagon.
The action, he said, takes effect today and goes through the anniversary, and it is in keeping with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitanos Sept. 2 statement on the anniversary of the attacks.
While there is no specific or credible intelligence that al-Qaida or its affiliates are plotting attacks in the United States to coincide with the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, Napolitano said, we remain at a heightened state of vigilance, and security measures are in place to detect and prevent plots against the United States, should they emerge.
The four levels of force protection applied to every American military installation are alpha, bravo, charlie and delta, according to Northcom.
Alpha is the lowest level and Delta is the highest.
Northcom sets the minimum force-protection condition level for installations in the continental United States because it is the unified combatant command whose geographic area of responsibility is North America.
Other combatant commands, such as U.S. European Command, set force protection condition levels for American military installations in their areas of responsibility.
Individual facility and installation commanders can increase local force protection levels but must adhere at least to the minimum level set by Northcom.
The raised force protection level, Little said, is a reflection of al Qaidas continued interest in milestone and anniversary events, and is prudent.
[Dawn] The Supreme Court ordered the Sindh police chief on Monday to take indiscriminate and across-the-board action against criminals to improve the security situation in Bloody Karachi.
Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, who heads a five-judge special bench hearing a suo motu case on murders in the city, also asked Inspector General of Police Wajid Ali Durrani to take in his team competent officers and those who had been removed for political reasons.
"It's time for you to deliver or you will be held responsible," he told the IG. "We are supporting you and backing you. Rest assured you are short of time. We can sit here for a long time."
The CJ said the bench wanted to conclude the case by Friday and asked Mr Durrani to disclose further details of placed in durance vile criminals and submit DVDs containing footages of torture cells available at an international video-sharing website.
The IG submitted a progress report and said one of the three suspects placed in durance vile had confessed to having killed five people.
He said 421 raids had been carried out in different parts of city, adding that he had assigned a task force to arrest all those who had been named in a joint investigation team's (JIT) report which had been sent to investigating officers.
Advocate Iftikhar Gillani, former federal law minister and counsel for the Awami National Party, said the army could be deployed under Article 147 of the Constitution to maintain law and order in the city. When the court asked why
law-enforcement agencies, including police and Rangers, were not being used, the counsel said the civilian government was capable of handling the situation but it lacked the will to deal with the problem.
Mr Gillani said there was no ethnic strife in Bloody Karachi and innocent citizens were being targeted. He said everyone knew who were involved in murders and the JIT report contained all relevant facts.
He said the credibility of the report on murders in Bloody Karachi could not be challenged because it had been prepared by seven agencies. "The report identifies which political party is involved in the violence."
Mr Gillani said the statement of Ajmal Pahari, a suspected hit man, before the JIT clearly showed that he got training in India for making Bloody Karachi a separate state.
He said the situation could be brought under control and elements behind the violence identified in the light of Pahari's admission. He rejected the IG's claim that murders were the result of ethnic divide and said the word "ethnic" was introduced by a political party which came into existence in 1986.
Mr Gillani said drugs, land and bhatta (extortion) mafias were involved in murders, adding that statements of former Sindh home minister Zulfikar Mirza could not be ignored. He said the May 12, 2007, carnage in Bloody Karachi could not be ignored and the elements involved in it were also behind the recent spree of murders.
The chief justice asked the counsel why was Mr Mirza making disclosures now and why had he remained silent for eight years.
Mr Gillani said the army should be called under Article 147 so that administrative powers remained with the provincial government, rather than under Article 245 which deprived the political set-up of such powers.
He said the involvement of "Indian agents" in murders could not be ruled out because certain killers had been trained in Indian camps.
He requested the court to summon Zulfikar Mirza and investigate the allegations he had levelled against 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..
At the last hearing, the bench which includes Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali, Justice Sarmad Jalal Osmany, Justice Amir Hani Mohammedan and Justice Ghulam Rabbani had ordered the Sindh police chief to submit after Eid holidays a report on FIRs registered over the past month.
On Monday, Advocate Abdul Mujeeb Pirzada, the counsel for the Sindh Bachao Committee, alleged that the government was deliberately not pursuing cases of murders. He said the government was more interested in talks in London to appease its coalition partner.
He said land grabbers' groups backed by allies of the government were occupying state land and there was no protection for the common man. He said threats and fear were forcing people to leave the country and causing a flight of capital.
The court adjourned the hearing till Tuesday.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2011 00:00 ||
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Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, is working to rebuild its military infrastructure in the West Bank, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) warned Wednesday, revealing that in recent months it had placed in long-term storage dozens of Hamas terrorist suspects who belonged to 13 different terror cells operating in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
The cells were planning a number of plots including the abduction of an IDF soldier and a suicide kaboom in Jerusalem two weeks ago, which was thwarted by the Shin Bet and Israel police with the arrest of the jacket wallah and the seizure of the bomb he was intended to detonate.
TEHRAN Irans total area is larger than previously thought by some 14 percent, Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi was quoted by the website of state television as saying Monday. The actual area of Iran is 1,873,959 square kilometers (723,539 square miles), Vahidi said, adding: The area given so far for Iran was lower, and now this new figure should be used.
Hey! They said there would be no math!
Most international documents and atlases, especially the geography text books used in Iranian schools, give 1,648,195 square kilometers (636,371 square miles) as the area of Iran. Vahidi, speaking at the unveiling of new mapping software designed by the Iranian military, did not explain how this sudden gain of 225,764 square kilometers (87,167 square miles) in Iranian territory was calculated.
I could guess. More importantly, so could Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE and Oman...
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/07/2011 11:48 ||
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#1
Look for the Defense Minister to soon steal this idea...
[An Nahar] Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... chief Nabil al-Arabi will propose that Syrian President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators. Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor... hold elections in three years and immediately halt a crackdown on dissent when he visits Damascus ...The City of Jasmin is the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It has not always been inhabited by the same set of fascisti... Wednesday, according to a copy of the proposals seen by Agence La Belle France Presse.
Arabi, who was tasked by Arab foreign ministers with relaying the 13-point document, will also ask Assad to free political prisoners and compensate those maimed in more than five months of almost daily anti-regime protests.
The proposal, agreed at an Arab foreign ministers' meeting last month in Cairo, calls for a "clear declaration of principles by President Bashir al-Assad specifying commitment to reforms he made in past speeches."
It said Assad should declare his "commitment to making the transition towards a pluralistic government and use his powers to speed up reforms and announce multi-candidate elections ... for 2014, when his mandate ends."
It also demands an immediate halt to the Syrian government's crackdown on anti-regime protests.
At the August 27 meeting, the Arab ministers had called for an end the bloodshed "before it is too late" and for "respecting the right of the Syrian people to live in security and respecting their legitimate aspirations for political and social reforms."
More than 2,200 people have been killed in Syria since the almost daily mass protests began, according to the United Nations ...an international organization whose stated aims of facilitating interational security involves making sure that nobody with live ammo is offended unless it's a civilized country... . Assad's regime says it is fighting foreign-backed "armed terrorist gangs."
The proposal also calls on Assad's minority Alawite-led government "to immediately end" the crackdown on protesters in order "to spare Syria from sliding into sectarian strife or providing justification for foreign intervention."
The initiative also calls on Assad to "separate the military from political and civil life" and for the start of "serious political contacts between the president and representatives of the Syrian opposition."
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2011 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] The al-Mustaqbal ... the Future Movement, political party led by Saad Hariri... parliamentary bloc on Tuesday called on the Free Patriotic Movement Despite its name a Christian party allied with Hizbullah, neither free nor particularly patriotic... to "disavow" retired Brig. Gen. Fayez Karam, who was sentenced Saturday by the Military Court to two years in jail on charges of spying for Israel. "The verdict issued against Fayez Karam requires the FPM to quickly disavow him due to his high treason," the bloc said.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2011 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] U.N. Secretary-General the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon ... of whom it can be said to his credit that he is not Kofi Annan... urged the world community on Tuesday to take action on the situation in Syria.
While Ban stopped short of calling for military intervention, he delivered some of his strongest statements yet condemning the violence he says Syrian President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators. Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor... is perpetrating against his people. Ban said it is time for U.N. member nations to unite and take "coherent measures."
I s'pose that would be better than incoherent measures...
Ban, who was in New Zealand attending a meeting of Pacific leaders, told news hounds that the aspirations of the Syrian people should be heeded and respected.
He said Assad needs to take "immediate and bold and decisive measures before it's too late." He later amended that to say "It's already too late, in fact. It's already too late. If it takes more and more days, then more people will be killed."
The U.N. puts the corpse count in Syria at 2,200 since an uprising began there five months ago.
Ban has tried for months to resolve the situation using diplomatic means. A U.N. humanitarian assessment team visited Syria two weeks ago. Activists said that soon after the team left the city of Homs, Syrian security forces killed at least seven people there.
It has proved nearly impossible to verify events on the ground because Syria has banned international media and severely restricted local coverage.
After the assessment team left, the U.N.'s top human rights ...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions... body voted overwhelmingly to demand that Syria end its crackdown and cooperate with an international probe into possible crimes against humanity.
Ban said he last spoke to Assad on Aug. 17 to express alarm about reports of security forces using excessive force against civilians.
In an email, Ban's front man Martin Nesirky said he was not aware of Ban having any immediate plans to speak again with Assad. Nesirky added that "the secretary-general has consistently said he would do his utmost to reach out to try to stop the violence."
Ban did not say whether he personally favored military action at this point.
"It's not for the secretary-general to talk about any specific measures, including this military measure," he said. "It's the member states who should be able to give a mandate on any specific measures."
He expressed frustration that U.N. members have not been able to reach agreement on what needs to be done about the Syrian situation.
One group that is touting a plan for Assad to leave is the Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing...
Under the plan, Assad would immediately cease all military operations, release all political prisoners, begin a dialogue and announce his intention to form a national unity government and hold pluralistic presidential elections by the end of his term in 2014.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
He expressed frustration that U.N. members have not been able to reach agreement on what needs to be done about the Syrian situation.
Yeah, good luck with that. If you look at a list of the member nations of the UN, you see that roughly half of them are run by villains, thugs and miscreants of various stripes. To paraphrase Pastor Niemoller:
"When they came for the rat-bag dictators, I said nothing because... hey, wait! I am a rat-bag dictator. No way do I want a part of this. I could be next."
#4
There are lots of coherent measures. The easiest and fastest one can be done in whatever the flight time of an MX missile is to the target area, ie Syria.
But then this is the UN and we ALL know they don't want real answers, they want people to give them money so they can "study" the problem, in their hotel room, with hookers, small children and lots and lots of drugs.
Posted by: Silentbrick - Halliburton Lost Drill Bit Division ||
09/07/2011 20:45 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
International Criminal Court
Qadaffy
President-for-Life Bashir 
the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon
