Posted by: Fred ||
01/10/2012 13:00 ||
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#1
Happy Birthday/Daily Gam Shot
Sarah Shahi aka Erica in "Old School (2003)" aka Janine LoPietro in "I Don't Know How She Does It (2011)" aka Starlet in "A Lot Like Love (2005)" aka Bronwyn in "Plan B (TV 2005)" aka Candy in "The Dog Problem (2006)" aka Sana Khaliq in "Shades of Ray (2008)" aka Hattie Skunk in "The Trouble with Bliss (2011)" aka Kate Reed in "Fairly Legal (TV Series 2011)" (age 32)
#2
Love those old pictures. Mixer has two wooden handles. My grandkids love using it. Chipped ceramic or a glass bowl(looks like a bread mixing bowl). Reinforced handles on the pots.Top oven looks like it opens left to right. Cork in a bottle in the back. Proabably vinegar. Some kitchen tables were marble or that colored glass(rolling out the bread or pastery dough). I guess Sunbeam mixers weren't that common yet.
Looks like gass range and oven. These people had money and mouthes to feed. Icebox isn't showing.
OH!, theres a girl!.
A Mauritanian Salafist who once benefited from a presidential pardon is in prison once again after refusing to renounce his jihadist ideology. Perhaps this is why Hamas won't move to Mauritania...
A Mauritanian court on Tuesday (January 3rd) sent eight Salafists to prison on multiple terror charges, including recruitment.
The convicts include prominent Salafist ideologue Mohamed Salem Ould Mohamed Lemine, also known as Almajlissi, who once benefited from a presidential pardon.
The men were part of a group of 17 suspects picked up last November in a security sweep ahead of Mauritanian Army Day celebrations. The Nouakchott court ordered two other suspects placed under judicial control while the remaining seven were released.
Almajlissi was "one of the leading Jihadist-Salafist ideologues in Mauritania", according to analyst Sidi Mohamed Ould Lakhlifa. "He benefited from a presidential pardon in 2010, together with a group of 43 other defendants who were released after they took part in dialogue with a group of faqihs in co-ordination with Mauritanian authorities."
"After they were released, they even benefited from money grants in the form of gifts and loans to help re-integrate them into life. Meanwhile, Almajlissi refused to receive such assistance because he saw it as a reward for backing down on ideas he had embraced; something which he refused," the analyst added.
Abdullah Ould Mohamed Sidia, a spokesperson for a group of Salafists who benefited from the presidential pardon, said that Almajlissi refused to take part in dialogue with other prisoners, insisting on talks with scholars alone.
"Almajlissi and another group at prison had different ideas from ours, as they had extremist ideas about the takfir of others. His differences with us made him refuse to take part in dialogue with us," he added.
In addition to Almajlissi, another prominent defendant was Sidi Ould Habbot, alias Abu Obeida. He was one of the first Mauritanians to join the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) in 2004 before it changed its name to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), according to Aslam Ould Mustafa, director of the Tahalil website and a terrorism analyst.
"If the dismantlement of this cell is not part of the usual security precautions, it confirms that the terrorist threat is no longer restricted to northern Mali alone, but is now threatening Mauritania as well," Ould Mustafa added.
[An Nahar] Nigerian police and protesters clashed on Monday and three people were rubbed out as tens of thousands demonstrated nationwide over fuel price hikes and a general strike shut down the country.
The launch of what unions called an indefinite strike came at a crucial moment for Africa's most populous nation and largest oil producer, already hit by spiraling violence blamed on Islamist sect Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. Currently wearing a false nose and moustache and answering to Jama'atu Ahlus-Sunnah Lidda'Awati Wal Jihad, or Big Louie... Tensions particularly ran high in Kano, the largest city in Nigeria's north, when thousands converged on the state governor's office, prompting police to push them back as they fired tear gas and shot into the air.
Also in Kano, two vans were set ablaze and protesters tried to torch the home of central bank chief Lamido Sanusi, but police stopped them.
The office of the secretary of the state government -- its highest administrative officer -- was also set ablaze, causing serious damage.
A Red Thingy official said that so far 30 injured had been counted in Kano, including 18 with gunshot wounds. A hospital source said later that two of those shot had died.
Later on Monday, Nigerian officials announced a nighttime curfew for Kano.
"Following the sad incidents in the city today where some hoodlums hijacked a peaceful protest by labor unions, the state government hereby imposes a 14-hour curfew," Kano state information commissioner Faruk Jubril told journalists.
"Starting from tonight, people are hereby ordered to remain indoors between 6:00 pm and 8:00 am until further notice. This is to ensure maintenance of law and order."
In the southern city of Benin, protesters attacked a mosque and maimed several people, leading police to fire tear gas, police and witnesses said.
A witness said he saw police take away a man with a machete cut on his head.
Protests appeared mainly peaceful in the economic capital Lagos, the largest city in Africa's most populous nation, but a union leader accused police of shooting dead a demonstrator there.
Bonfires made of tires burned along main roads in the megalopolis as protesters marched past, with an estimated 10,000 or more converging at a designated location for a rally.
Speakers denouncing the fuel price hike in Lagos included Femi Kuti, son of late musical icon and harsh government critic Fela Kuti, while prominent rights activists also took part.
Protest leaders in Lagos were keen to avoid provoking police after authorities were accused of using excessive force against demonstrators last week and shooting dead one person.
Some people threw stones after they believed police were seeking to turn them back. Police later pulled back and calm returned.
While the main group of protesters was largely peaceful, youths on the margins of the march set bonfires and threw bottles. Some yelled "Bad Luck Jonathan," in reference to President Goodluck Jonathan ... 14th President of Nigeria. He was Governor of Bayelsa State from 9 December 2005 to 28 May 2007, and was sworn in as Vice President on 29 May 2007. Jonathan is a member of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP). He is a lover of nifty hats, which makes him easily recognizable unless someone else in the room is wearing a neat chapeau... "This is a peaceful demonstration," said Ishola Adebayo, a 38-year-old teacher who took part in the Lagos march. "They cannot break our resolve to compel government to drop this anti-people policy."
The strike was widely observed, particularly in Lagos, where the usually chaotic streets were empty apart from protesters, with shops, petrol stations and other businesses shut for the day.
Several thousand protesters also attended a rally in the capital Abuja despite massive security.
Officials said however that oil output was not affected in a country that produces around 2.4 million barrels per day.
The strike came after the government's deeply controversial move to end fuel subsidies on January 1, which caused petrol prices to more than double in a country where most of the 160 million population lives on less than $2 a day.
Transport costs have followed suit, sharply increasing the price of commuting, and further effects were feared, especially on the cost of food.
The strike comes as security forces are already under heavy pressure over spiraling violence blamed on Islamist group Boko Haram.
Recent deadly attacks on Christians have sparked fears of a wider religious conflict in a country whose population is roughly divided between a mainly Mohammedan north and predominantly Christian south.
On December 31 Jonathan declared a state of emergency in hard-hit areas, but the violence, including gun and kabooms, has only continued and spread to other locations.
Much of the country has been united in anger against the abandoning of fuel subsidies despite a strong push from Jonathan and his respected economic team to make their case for the move.
Nigerians view the subsidies as their only benefit from the nation's oil wealth and lack any real trust in government after years of deeply rooted corruption.
The House of Representatives held an emergency session on Sunday and approved a measure calling on the government to reinstate fuel subsidies to allow for further consultations on the issue.
The government however made no sign it would back down.
Economists say removing fuel subsidies is vital for the country to improve its woefully inadequate infrastructure and ease pressure on its foreign reserves.
The government says it spent more than $8 billion on subsidies in 2011.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/10/2012 00:04 ||
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[An Nahar] A pipeline being built by the United Arab Emirates to export oil from east coast terminals, avoiding the Iran-threatened Strait of Hormuz, will be operational by June, its energy minister said Monday.
"The pipeline is almost complete. It will be operational within six months ... by May or June," Mohammed bin Dhaen al-Hameli told news hounds.
Iran has threatened to close the strategic waterway at the entrance to the Gulf if the West presses ahead with a threatened embargo on its oil exports.
The Habshan-Fujairah pipeline will have the capacity to pump 1.5 million barrels per day of oil from fields in Abu Dhabi on the Gulf to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman, Hameli said.
The UAE currently produces around 2.5 million bpd. Construction of the 360 kilometre pipeline began in 2008.
Hameli brushed aside questions about other measures the UAE might take to secure oil supplies in the event that Iran carries out its threat to close of the Strait of Hormuz, saying: "Who says Hormuz is going to close?"
Posted by: Fred ||
01/10/2012 00:04 ||
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#1
Guess we know where the local Shias will be protestin' + a'revoltin' next???
Explosion near fuel station in northwestern tribal region kills at least 26 people, officials say.
A suspected kaboom near a fuel station in the Jamrud area of Pakistain's northwestern Khyber tribal region has killed at least 26 people and maimed at least 40 others, regional government officials said.
"It was huge blast and caused damage to a number of vehicles at the bus terminal," Khan Zaman, a Khyber primitive from the Jamrud bazaar, around 25km west of Beautiful Downtown Peshawar, said on Tuesday.
Al Jizz's Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said it was not yet clear who was behind the bombing.
"We were told the kabooms were packed in a vehicle that was parked in the busy bazaar area of Jamrud. After the kaboom there were heavy casualties. Officials are confirming that at least 26 people were killed on the spot and another 40 were maimed."
Shakeel Khan Umarzai, a local administration official, confirmed the blast and said: "We are trying to determine the nature of the kaboom; whether it was a planted bomb or what."
The troubled Khyber tribal region serves as the main supply route for NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis.... forces in Afghanistan and is a stronghold of the Taliban in Pakistain and al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters and other gangs opposed to the government.
Fighters, particularly linked to the Taliban in Pakistain, have carried out bomb and gun attacks killing more than 4,700 people across the country since July 2007.
But there had been no major attack in Pakistain since a jacket wallah killed 46 people, targeting anti-Taliban fighters at a funeral in the northwestern district of Lower Dir on September 15.
Pakistain has for years battled gangs in the northwest and the tribal belt, with more than 3,000 soldiers killed in the battle against them.
On Monday Pak authorities recovered the bodies of 10 soldiers in an exchange of bodies with Taliban fighters following a clash two weeks ago in the tribal belt.
An official of the military's media wing said the 10 soldiers had been missing in Orakzai district since December 21 when rebels attacked a checkpoint and killed 13 others.
That exchange came four days after the corpses of 15 members of Pakistain's paramilitary Frontier Constabulary (FC) were found in the small northwestern town of Shawa, in North Wazoo tribal region near the Afghan border, almost two weeks after they were kidnapped.
[Dawn] The dead bodies of Frontier Constabulary (FC) paramilitary troops were recovered from upper Orakzai Agency ... crawling with holy men, home to Darra Adam Khel, the world's largest illegal arms bazaar. 14 distinct tribes of beturbanned primitives inhabit Orakzai agency's 1500 or so square kilometers... , DawnNews reported on Monday.
The bullet-riddled bodies of the missing 10 were found dumped in Dabori town of the tribal area.
One security official said 23 soldiers were attacked in the late-night attack by up to 100 heavily armed hard boys.
"They killed 13 soldiers and took away 10. The bodies (of the 10) were found in Dabori today," said another source on condition of anonymity.
An official of the military's media wing said they had been missing since December 21 when cut-throats attacked a checkpost.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistain grabbed credit for the killings.
Exchange of bodies
However, a poor excuse is better than no excuse at all... Rooters adds that Pak military and the Taliban sources say the bodies of 10 Pak soldiers and 10 Taliban fighters killed in the clash were exchanged through negotiation.
"The Taliban killed them (the 10 troops) and had taken away their bodies. We killed some of their people and were in possession of their bodies," a senior military official, requesting anonymity because he wasn't authorised to speak to the media, told Rooters.
"Now, through negotiation, we have exchanged bodies."
Ehsanullah Ehsan, front man for the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP) gave a similar account.
"We take responsibility for killing the 10 soldiers whose bodies have been recovered from Orakzai", Ehsanullah told Rooters from Qazi's guesthouse an undisclosed location.
"This is an exchange of bodies with them, as they killed 10 of our people and we have responded with killing 10 of their men," he said.
Five of the Taliban bodies were given back last week in the Khyber agency and five were handed over on Monday in Orakzai.
Dead bodies of fifteen other security officers were also discovered from Tank district earlier last week.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/10/2012 00:06 ||
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[VOA News] Iraqi authorities say a series of bombings in Storied Baghdad ...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate... has killed 16 people and maimed more than 40 others, many of them Shi'ite pilgrims traveling to the holy city of Karbala for an annual ritual.
In one of Monday's attacks, a car boom killed eight people in a western part of the Iraqi capital, while another car boom killed six people in the northern Shi'ite district of al-Shaab. Earlier, a roadside kaboom in southern Storied Baghdad killed two people.
Authorities say the attacks appeared to target Shi'ites heading south through Storied Baghdad on the way to Karbala for the observance of Arbaeen, the end of a 40-day mourning period for a revered Shi'ite figure, Imam Hussein.
Insurgents attacked Iraqi Shi'ites last Thursday in a wave of bombings that killed at least 72 people in Storied Baghdad and the southern city of Nasiriyah.
The escalation of violence against Iraq's majority Shi'ites coincides with a political crisis in the country's Shi'ite-led unity government, which has seen its main Sunni-backed faction, Iraqiya, boycott the Cabinet.
Iraqiya accuses Shi'ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ... Prime Minister of Iraq and the secretary-general of the Islamic Dawa Party.... of monopolizing power in Shi'ite hands. It also objects to a government arrest warrant for Iraq's Sunni Vice President, Tarek al-Hashemi, a member of Iraqiya.
Mr. Maliki has ordered Hashemi's arrest on charges of running a death squad, an allegation the vice president denies. The Iraqi prime minister issued the arrest order last month, as U.S. troops completed a pullout from Iraq, ending an eight-year military presence.
Hashemi decamped to northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region to avoid arrest. In an interview with VOA's Kurdish service on Monday, Hashemi said he is ready to stand trial in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, ... a thick stew of Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, and probably Antarcticans, all of them mutually hostile most of the time... where he believes he can have a fair hearing. Kirkuk is located outside of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Hashemi said he refuses to accept the government's demand to stand trial in Storied Baghdad because he believes politicians will manipulate the proceedings there.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/10/2012 00:06 ||
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#1
Situation normal, they're back to slaughtering each other for the most vaporous of reasons.
Syrian President Assad has blamed a foreign conspiracy for trying to undermine Syrian stability in a rare public speech.
In his first public remarks for months, he said, "Regional and international sides have tried to destabilise the country."
He added that the "external conspiracy is clear to everybody", as protests continue against his rule.
Criticising the Arab League - which suspended Syria in November and imposed sanctions - Mr Assad said: "We were surprised Arabs did not stand with Syria".
He said Arab countries that opposed Syria were under outside pressure which was undermining their sovereignty. But, he added, Syria would not "close its doors" to an Arab solution as long as "it respects Syria's sovereignty".
Mr Assad described the events of the past 10 months as regretful and said they had been a real test for Syria. However he ruled out instant reform in response to the unrest.
He said, "We should link what happened before the crisis and post crisis and then embark on reform... We shouldn't build our reforms on this crisis."
Thanx to Claire Berlinski on Facebook...
[Hurriyet Daily News] Two Turkish villagers crossing illegally into Iran have allegedly been shot by Iranian soldiers, daily Radikal reported on its website today.
Mustafa Özkaplan and his cousin Murat Özkaplan reportedly crossed into Iran today at around 2:30 a.m. to smuggle fuel back into Turkey. The pair was allegedly fired upon by Iranian soldiers near the border.
The two men called their village and were picked up by an ambulance from the border and taken to Van Training Hospital. Mustafa Özkaplan was reported to be at death's door.
An investigation has been launched into the incident.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/10/2012 00:06 ||
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[An Nahar] Syrian security forces on Monday killed 21 people across the country, 13 of them in the flashpoint central province of Homs, activists said.
The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said regime troops killed eighteen civilians and three army defectors, "nine of them under torture."
Thirteen people were killed in Homs, five in the northwestern province of Idlib, one in the Damascus ...Capital of the last remaining Baathist regime in the world... suburb of Douma, one in the central province of Hama and another in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour, the LCC said.
Activists said regime troops fired on protesters Monday in the city of Homs as 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... observers toured the area to see whether Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Supressor of the Damascenes... 's government is abiding by its pledge to halt the 10-month-old crackdown on dissent.
In the capital Damascus, thousands held prayers for those killed since the uprising began in March. Christian and Moslem religious leaders attended the service, and throngs packed the city's Holy Cross church, its yards and a nearby street.
"Enough killings in our beloved Syria," the country's top Sunni clergyman, Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddine Hassoun, told the crowd at the prayer service. His son was rubbed out in October.
The 165 foreign monitors are supposed to be ensuring that Syria complies with the vaporous Arab League plan stipulating the regime stop killing protesters, remove heavy weaponry, such as tanks, from all cities, free all political prisoners and allow in human rights One man's rights are another man's existential threat. organizations and foreign journalists. Syria agreed to the plan on Dec. 19.
However, Caliphornia hasn't yet slid into the ocean, no matter how hard it's tried... the crackdown has not stopped and opposition activists say around 450 people have been killed by the regime since observers began work on Dec. 21.
The U.N. estimated several weeks ago that more than 5,000 people have been killed in political violence since March. Since that report, opposition activists say hundreds more have died.
On Sunday, the Arab League repeated its demand for the Syrian government to immediately stop all bloodshed.
It was not immediately clear whether the foreign observers witnessed the regime forces opening fire in the Khaldiyeh neighborhood of Homs. Several people were reported maimed.
Majd Amer, an activist in Homs, said the shooting started after thousands of protesters surrounded a group of observers, urging them to go to Khaldiyeh, where anti-regime protesters are known to be active. The observers' Syrian escorts wanted to take them to the nearby Abbassiyah neighborhood, where many regime supporters live, he said.
"Sporadic shooting was heard for a few seconds," Amer said.
The opposition has accused Syria of trying to mislead the activists by showing them areas where regime support is strong.
Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi said Sunday observers will continue their month-long mission in Syria, despite claims by activists that the mission is giving cover to Assad's crackdown on protesters and delaying further action against the regime in forums such as the U.N. Security Council.
In Cairo, Adnan al-Khudeir, head of the operations room that the monitors report to, said more observers will head to Syria in the coming days and the delegation should reach 200. He said the mission then will expand its work in Syria to reach the eastern province of Deir al-Zour and predominantly Kurdish areas to the northeast.
The government says that the turmoil in Syria is not an uprising but the work of snuffies and foreign-backed armed gangs. Activists and other observers deny that.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/10/2012 00:06 ||
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[An Nahar] The U.N. atomic agency said Monday that Iran is now enriching uranium at a new site in a hard-to-bomb mountain bunker, in a move set to stoke Western suspicions further that Tehran wants nuclear weapons.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that Iran's enriching uranium to 20 percent at the Fordo site was "a further escalation of their ongoing violations with regard to their nuclear obligations."
The Islamic republic admitted the existence of the previously secret facility in 2009 and earlier ineffective International Atomic Energy Agency reports had said that Iranian scientists were preparing to begin operating the facility's centrifuges.
Iran, which insists its nuclear program is for exclusively peaceful purposes, has repeatedly said it will not abandon uranium enrichment despite four rounds of U.N. Security Council resolutions calling on Tehran to desist.
While nuclear energy plants need fuel enriched to 3.5 percent, Iran says the 20-percent enriched uranium is necessary for its Tehran research reactor to make isotopes to treat cancers.
Western powers, however, reject this, believing Iran has been researching ways to develop and deliver nuclear weapons, and has piled on sanction after sanction to try to halt the work.
IAEA spokeswoman Gill Tudor said that all nuclear material "remains under the Agency's containment and surveillance" at Fordo.
But the fear is if Iran decided to expel IAEA inspectors and enrich uranium to weapons-grade purity of 90 percent, the all-but-impregnable Fordo would enable them to produce enough fissile material in a short space of time.
"This clearly represents an escalation," Mark Hibbs from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think-tank told Agence La Belle France Presse.
"Israel, which has already warned Iran that it could take military action against installations is very very worried by this facility ... We are moving into dangerous territory," Hibbs said.
"At a time when the international community is asking Iran to provide assurances of the peaceful nature of its program, this is a provocative act which further undermines Iran's claims that its program is entirely civilian in nature," British Foreign Secretary William Hague said.
Germany said that "the international community's concern that the Iranian nuclear program is serving military purposes is growing."
Experts point out that the process of obtaining 20 percent enriched uranium represents most of the work needed to get the uranium enriched to the level of 90 percent or above required for atomic weapons.
The Fordo news "is worrisome because 20 percent is so close to being weapons-usable and because there is absolutely no civilian need for it now," Mark Fitzpatrick from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said.
"It brings them closer to being able to quickly produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon," the London-based analyst told AFP.
Fordo, a reinforced facility sunk deep under a mountain 150 kilometers southwest of Tehran, is designed to be difficult if not impossible target to bomb.
Enriching uranium is one of three main areas needed to develop a nuclear arsenal. Iran would also need to make the enriched uranium weapons-ready in a warhead and manufacture a missile to carry it to target.
A report from the IAEA in November, the agency's hardest-hitting to date, included evidence that Western powers said confirmed Iranian efforts in these other two areas, stoking speculation of a possible Israeli air strike.
The United States, the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... and other allies have sought to tighten the screw since the report -- which Iran dismissed as "baseless" -- by targeting Tehran's crucial oil sector and its central bank.
Tensions have also been stoked by Iran showing off what it said was a CIA drone it captured using cyber warfare, while in October Washington alleged Iranian involvement in a suspected plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.
Iran, where a judge on Monday reportedly sentenced to death a U.S.-Iranian former Marine for "membership of the CIA", has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for 20 percent of the world's oil.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ...current SecDef, previously Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Panetta served as President Bill Clinton's White House Chief of Staff from 1994 to 1997 and was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993.... warned on Sunday that any such move would cross a "red line" and "we would take action and reopen the strait."
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Tehran will not bow to sanctions, in comments broadcast on state television ... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
on Monday.
"While the Iranian people have traveled the road to success and see the signs of new victories to come, the (Western) oppressor is trying to frighten the Iranian people and officials by brandishing the threat of sanctions," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/10/2012 00:05 ||
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[An Nahar] The opposition Syrian National Council denounced Monday an 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... report on its observer mission to the country as a "step backwards" in the bid to end unrest and called on the U.N. to take over.
"The council considers the report on the work of the observers a step backwards in the efforts by the League, and does not reflect the reality seen by the observers on the ground," the SNC said in a statement received by Agence La Belle France Presse.
The SNC expressed disappointment at the "slowness and reluctance of the vaporous Arab League in implementing the Arab plan, which clearly states the need for the military to return to their barracks, release all detainees, authorize peaceful demonstrations and give access to observers and journalists."
The opposition group urged the League to "immediately begin talks with the U.N. Secretary General to propose the Arab plan at the level of the U.N. Security Council for adoption by member states ... and prevent procrastination."
It called for "the protection of civilians by all legitimate means in the context of international humanitarian law, including the establishment of safety and no-fly zones."
A team of Arab League monitors has been in Syria since December 26, trying to assess whether Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Oppressor of the Syrians and the Lebs... 's regime is complying with a peace accord aimed at ending its deadly crackdown on dissent.
Critics say it has been completely outmaneuvered by the government and has failed to make any progress towards stemming the crackdown. They have called for the mission to pull out.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/10/2012 00:05 ||
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[An Nahar] The opposition Moslem Brüderbund accused 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... of seeking to "cover up the crimes" of the Syrian regime, after the pan-Arab organization decided to extend its observer mission.
"It is clear that the observer mission in Syria seeks to cover up the crimes of the Syrian regime by giving it the time and opportunity to kill our people and break their will," Brotherhood front man Zuhair Salem said.
He charged in a statement received on Monday that the vaporous Arab League mission had failed "to raise the responsibility of the regime for the deaths of thousands of Syrians, among them hundreds of children."
The mission had "put the executioner and the victim on an equal footing, drawing a parallel between the official killing machine with its tanks, cannons and rockets ... with individual acts of self-defense."
But Salem vowed that anti-regime protesters, undeterred, would "advance on the path to the liberation of the country."
At a meeting in Cairo on Sunday, an Arab ministerial committee gave their widely criticized observer mission to Syria the green light to carry on and pledged to boost the number of monitors.
The committee "decided to give Arab League observers the necessary time to continue their mission according to the protocol," which states a one-month term.
The ministers also agreed to increase the number of observers and said they may seek "technical assistance from the United Nations ...the Oyster Bay money pit... " in the face of 10 months of unrest in Syria that has cost thousands of lives.
The committee urged Damascus ...Capital of the last overtly fascist regime in the world... "to fully and immediately implement its commitments" under the Arab plan, calling on all parties "to immediately stop all forms of violence."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/10/2012 00:04 ||
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#1
The mission had "put the executioner and the victim on an equal footing, drawing a parallel between the official killing machine with its tanks, cannons and rockets ... with individual acts of self-defense."
Kind of has a point.
Posted by: Mike Ramsey ||
01/10/2012 17:33 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.
A Mauritanian Salafist who once benefited from a presidential pardon is in prison once again after refusing to renounce his jihadist ideology.
Goodluck Jonathan
Orakzai Agency
Nouri al-Maliki
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
