The empty beverage bottles and overturned, sand-filled skiffs littering this once-bustling shoreline are signs the heyday of Somali piracy may be over. Most of the prostitutes are gone and the luxury cars repossessed. Pirates while away their hours playing cards or catching lobsters.
"There's nothing to do here these days," said Hassan Abdi, a high school graduate who taught English in a private school before turning to piracy in 2009. "The hopes for a revitalised market are not high."
Armed guards aboard cargo ships and an international naval armada that carries out onshore raids have put a huge dent in piracy and might even be ending the scourge.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/27/2012 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
high school graduate who taught English in a private school before turning to piracy in 2009
#2
ahhh ... these boom-bust cycles in economics. they never last as long as you hope :-) i wonder if anyone in central Somalia knows the words to Auld Lang Syne??? :-)
The interesting thing is that criminal financiers in Africa figured out this decline in piracy profits really fast - and they stopped backing the Somali pirates. There is a high-level network of funding for banditry, kidnappings and extortion in Africa that operates well above the waterline where the pirates work. This "venture capital" will just flow into new enterprises somewhere else.
#4
ironic, isn't it? all these years we were figuring out ways to send in the SAS and the SEALS. But all we really needed to do was to pay the repo guys to take away the pirates' BMW's and their high-priced hookers.
The detention of hundreds of female Nigerian pilgrims heading to Mecca at Saudi Arabia's busiest airport over a rule requiring them to travel with a husband or male relative is threatening to bring a diplomatic dispute between the two nations.
Saudi authorities are holding 908 Nigerian women in poor conditions "with some needing urgent medical attention" at King Abdulaziz Airport in Jeddah and threatened to deport them, the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria said in a report submitted to Nigerian lawmakers Wednesday.
The report said female pilgrims who had landed in a smaller airport in Medina had been unaffected.
However, Fuwaiba Muhammad, a pilgrim, told an Associated Press reporter at Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport in the northern Nigerian city of Kano that she had been deported Wednesday from the Saudi Arabian city of Medina, along with dozens of others.
Uba Mana, a spokesman for the National Hajj Commission, said no pilgrim had been deported by Saudi authorities yet, but that the commission had asked for female pilgrims who did not meet the Saudi immigration officials' requirements to temporarily be brought back to Nigeria to avoid deportations.
#4
last post ... so true. the fact that these are Nigerians and women - wouldn't happen to be an accident, right? Nigerians have been trafficked as sex slaves and prostitutes for years. I guess someone at King Abd. Airport must have done their background research on Yahoo - or maybe they checked prices on Saudi Ebay??
Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the alleged filmmaker behind the video that sparked protests across the Muslim world, has been arrested in Los Angeles.
"I can confirm he's in custody, scheduled to make a court appearance as we speak, in federal court in downtown LA," Thom Mrozek of the United States Attorney's Office said, giving no further details.
The exact nature of the court appearance is unclear, because the federal court documents have been sealed. Officials have been investigating whether he may have violated probation terms for a previous offense.
#2
Probation is convinent, else they would have had to gin something up.
Posted by: Kelly ||
09/27/2012 20:12 Comments ||
Top||
#3
If his parole terms said 'no internet' and he was stupid enough to post this stupid video on the internet, I have no sympathy. I still despise the government for using it as an excuse to appease though. Why couldn't Nakoula have been bright enough to get somebody else to post it for him?
Please do remember how defiant she (Mona Eltahawy an Arab anti-Israel activist) was about protesting the fallacious charge of racism, for calling Muslims who commit acts of savagery, savages, but in this CNN interview, recalling her being violated by Egyptian soldiers in uniform, .meekly calling them .wild animals.
#4
Tell him that they need to start paying back ALL aid money, with 20% interest or hand over all their 'treasures'. Failure to pay results in the extermination of all vermin in egypt, ie them.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter says Washington and its uneasy ally must build on a mutual "desire for marriage, not a one-night stand."
Excuse me while I rinse my mouth to get rid of the taste of that ....
Was he referring to an Islamic marriage...
He offered the analogy one month after Husain Haqqani, the former Pakistani ambassador to Washington, recommended that the two countries "divorce."
Speaking at Washington's Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in his first public remarks since leaving Islamabad in July, Munter said "deeper" and "more sophisticated" ties with Pakistan would help overcome entrenched assumptions about each other's motives.
"We will be able to conceive of our American policy towards Pakistan, I hope, in a way that is broader, has more of a long-term focus, and isn't trapped by these narratives," he said.
"We don't change those narratives, but the question is, can we go around them?" Munter asked. "Can we do something else so that the question of whether or not Pakistanis are all betrayers and people who take our money and whether Americans are those people who come but then leave you -- whether that question doesn't get solved but becomes, perhaps, less relevant?"
'Face Of America'
To do so, Munter proposed greater U.S. emphasis on people-to-people contacts, business and educational ties, and public diplomacy, so that "the face of America is your neighbor, an engineer who works on a Punjab ditch" and not "the face of Raymond Davis." The former CIA contractor sparked tensions between Islamabad and Washington after fatally shooting two Pakistani men in Lahore in January 2011.
#1
Interesting anaology. And what Mr. Ambassador, does your culture and religious teaching tell us regarding a marriage between a devout Muslim and an infidel?
#5
did i read that right? let me check my coffee ... maybe someone poured in two shots of tequila?!? stuff like this makes we wonder if some Americans are worth saving :-)
#7
Quite frankly, I wish them well! Mearly anything that will stop this "body count" media driven stupidity should be applauded. The AQ have their successors identified and in training well into the next millennium.
Targeting onesies and twosies is pi**ing into the tail rotor.
#8
Pink vaginas? I have a feeling this will not go well? Maybe these womyn will get a dose of reality. Well, they are trying in this part of the world but I don't think their notions are shared in the islamic world.
If so, it was a lateral, with a side dose of memory from the previous life, inasmuchas they are in a region so primitive that there is not a D9 to be found anywhere...
#15
READS LIKE A BUCKET LIST 1993-2001 AFRICA MIDDLE EAST
THE REAL SITUATION IN KOSOVO
refugees
Pictures speak for themselves
Our thinking on the tragedy of Kosova must be well-thought out. There is a group in America which has a slavish mentality towards the U.S. government. As soon as the U.S. government does something seemingly friendly towards Muslims, this group starts issuing support statements for the U.S. government. This group's activities seriously mislead the Muslims during the tragedy of Bosnia but instead of learning a lesson, this group is again engaged in the same slavish behavior.
SITUATION ON THE GROUND IN KOSOVA
News reports agree that a large Serb military force is in Kosova carrying out genocidal actions, burning villages and uprooting the population. The Serb military action had caused massive suffering BEFORE NATO intervened. Nothing was done to pre-empt the Serb action. Now, during the NATO action, the Serb military has stepped up its actions inside Kosova. Tens of thousands of people have fled. The total number of refugees is now 500,000.
Thus the NATO action has not saved and will not save Kosova. We know how the process works from the way it went in Bosnia. After the Kosovars have been devastated and made dependent on international charity, the U.S. perhaps will be able to "stop the slaughter." The Kosovars are actually being sacrificed to give America the excuse to intervene. THE US INTERVENTION
The attack on Serbia is still very mild. Only 40 missiles have been fired (as compared to 400 fired at Iraq in one night.) I hope the U.S. continues to attack and I hope the Serbs fight back. Thus if the U.S. gets seriously involved in military conflict in Yugoslavia, the Muslim world will get some respite. The Serbs deserve punishment. Their forces are butchers and mass murderers. Perhaps they will be punished in this action and get something of what they deserve.
WHY?: THE STRATEGY BEHIND US INTERVENTION
The U.S. is getting involved owing to three important strategic reasons: 1. TO CLAIM FRIENDSHIP FOR MUSLIMS and DIVIDE ARAB FROM NON-ARAB MUSLIMS: The pro-Israeli policies of the U.S. have alarmed the Muslim world. The attacks on Iraq alienated Muslims in America and around the world. The support for tyrannical regimes like those of Algeria, Egypt and Jordan and the attack- plus-sanctions on Sudan alienated Islamic groups. Now with U.S. support for Kosova: i. Puppet U.S. regimes (like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia) will be able to tell their people that U.S. is not against Muslims. ii. The non-Arabs will feel that US hostility to Arab Musims is not proof that the U.S. is against Muslims.
2. GREECE and TURKEY ARE BOTH MEMBERS OF NATO. Also they have historic mutual animosity. The U.S. feels that if the Kosova tragedy overflows (into Macedonia, Albania, etc.) the effects could be felt in Turkey and Greece. If the Greeks and Turks fight, the entire US position on Russia's southern flank will be eroded if not destroyed. a. Turkey is also the US/Israeli bulwark against Islam and Arab Islamic power. If Turkey is drawn into Islam owing to tragic events in the Balkhans, the entire Israeli northern flank will be bare. 3. GEOPOLTICS OF YUGOSLAVIA: For more than 5 decades, Yugoslavia has been within the Russian sphere. Geopolitically the U.S. is gaining rapidly if it can gain a foothold in the area. Already there are 30,000 U.S. troops in Bosnia. If the same happens in Kosova, the U.S. will have outflanked Russia in the Balkans. Remember that Yeltsin is a passing phenemenon. The U.S. is very concerned about possible reversal of fortunes in Russia. The time is limited for the U.S. to make is gains. Hence it is moving fast.
THE WARSAW MODEL:During the Second World War, when the tide turned against Germany, the massive Soviet armies waited patiently on the east side of the Vistula river, outside Warsaw. Inside Warsaw, under the noses of the Soviets, the Germans wiped out the Polish resistance. Once the Poles had been crushed, the Soviets moved forward and "liberated" Warsaw. Poland was a Soviet puppet for decades tilll the Afghan Jihad weakened the Soviets. This Warsaw model is well understood by the U.S. and its allies. They followed its pattern in Bosnia and are now following it in Kosova.
OUR TASK
We should spend our energies and efforts in mobilizing in getting Muslim nations to fight in Kosova. The U.S. says it is afraid to lose men on the ground. There are thousands in the Muslim world who would volunteer to go to Kosova. The governments of Muslim countries can push the U.S. to land Muslim troops in Kosova. If the U.S. does not cooperate, the facade of "caring for Muslims" will be blown.
[Dawn] LAHORE, Sept 25: Pakistain Tehrik-e-Insaaf Chief Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who ain't the sharpest bulb on the national tree... has asked the federal government to issue visas to international human rights One man's rights are another man's existential threat. activists and journalists who wanted to join his "Wazoo Peace March" scheduled for Oct 7.
"Denial of visas to international rights activists and journalists will reflect government's hypocrisy with regard to its stance against drone attacks and extremism in Waziristan," he said.
Mr Khan was speaking at a function where Pakistain Moslem League-Q's Naeem Hussain Chattha and his son Abid Hussain (from Sheikhupura) announced joining the PTI on Tuesday at the Chatthas' Gulberg residence here.
PTI leaders Shah Mehmood Wormtongue Qureshi, Jahangir Tareen, besides party workers from Sheikhupura, were also present on the occasion.
Mr Khan said it was imperative to hold the march as Pakistain was spending some Rs90 billion on `war against terrorism', besides suffering loss of lives of army men and innocent people.
"Preparations for the march are in full swing and hundreds and thousands of people from across Pakistain will reach Waziristan on Oct 7," he said. "The Mehsud tribe will provide security to the march participants," he added.
Mr Khan said the PTI was the only political party that made the bold decision to go to Waziristan and show the world that drone attacks were targeting innocent people and must be stopped forthwith.
He reminded the audience the PTI had also organised a massive public gathering in Quetta where no other party had dared to go. To a question, he said any political party that wanted to join the march would be welcomed.
Mr Khan also announced that the PTI would start party election process in two weeks' time. He said the party was purchasing modern technology and software to hold party elections in a transparent way.
Stating the PTI had a membership of over 10 million people, he hoped that more than 70 per cent of its members would poll their votes to elect the party leaders who would have a role in awarding tickets for the next general elections.
The PTI chief also reiterated his demand that the country's Rs5 billion lying in President Asif Ali Ten Percent Zardari ... husband of the late Benazir Bhutto, who has been singularly lacking in curiosity about who done her in ... 's accounts in Swiss banks should be brought back.
"All criminals in Pak jails have not plundered Rs5 billion. What if, they demand that they too should be released because the Pak law was not arresting Zardari for plundering nation's Rs5 billion," he commented.
Welcoming the newcomers, Mr Khan said the Chatthas joined the party because of its culture of transparency and integrity.
"Those, who are leaving the PTI are probably frustrated by party's transparent policies of electing leaders and awarding tickets for the next elections," he said.
Earlier, Abid Chattha said he and his father had been staunch Moslem Leaguers but "Now both factions of the PML (N and Q) have become right and left hands of the Pakistain People's Party".
Mr Chattha said the present government had failed on all fronts -- political, economic and social and gave nothing to the nation but "scandals, crisis and destruction".
[Dawn] TAXILA, Sept 25: A joint investigation team (JIT) probing August 16 attacks on Minhas Airbase at Kamra, picked up two persons here on Tuesday.
Local police sources said that the JIT with the support of law enforcement agencies picked up two persons identified as Allah Ditta and Babar, close relatives of the criminal mastermind of Minhas Airbase attack, Faisal Shahzad, who was killed by the security forces.
Police sources said that JIT found Rs20 million in an account of Shahzad and some of the transactions also took place between him and both the men, which led to their arrest.
After their arrest both the suspects were shifted to a detention facility for further investigation. Police sources said that 32-year-old Faisal Shahzad, a resident of Mohallah Majawar Taxila, remained associated with Jihadi outfits and participated in the Afghan war. He was on bail in a terrorism case, the sources added. Two brothers of the accused were also picked up by the JIT soon after the incident.
Pakistan is developing non-strategic or tactical nuclear weapons to check the asymmetry with India in conventional capabilities, noted nuclear expert Hans M Kristensen of Federation of American Scientists said.
Kristensen and his partner Robert Norris have just published a report identifying Pakistan and China as among the five nuclear powers which either have, or are developing non-strategic nuclear weapons.
The other three countries identified are Russia, US and France. "On Pakistan, the picture is clearer in the sense that it is developing the Nasr that it claims has nuclear capability," Kristensen told TOI.
* WORLD MILITARY FORUM > RUSSIAN MILITARY WEBSITE: CHINA HAS DEPLOYED 2000-KM RANGE DF-21C ANTI-CARRIER [ASBMS/ANBMS] MEDIUM BALLISTIC MISSLES CAPABLE OF REACHING THE DISPUTED DIAOYUTAI ISLANDS.
Again, the focus of US Politicos + MSM-Net has mainly been on Iran's INDIGENOUS = SELF-DEVELOPED TESTING + MANUFACTURE OF NUCWEAPS, NOT COVERT TRANSFER OF SAME TO IRAN BY THIRD-PARTY, ANTI-US GOVTS-STATES.
Iran's desired "Japan/Egypt" nuclear model = until such time that Iran openly has its own strategic and tactical nuke arsenal, for the time being it must depend on Nuke-armed foreign partners, Muslim or other, to deter or defend from US-Allied air attack andor ground invasion.
#4
if it all goes to hell like it will how long before nuke sites are over run in Pakistan worth more than anything else in the entire area bets any one?
About once a month, the Central Intelligence Agency sends a fax to a general at Pakistan's intelligence service outlining broad areas where the US intends to conduct strikes with drone aircraft, the Wall Street Journal quoted US officials as saying.
The Pakistanis, who in public oppose the programme, don't respond.
On this basis, plus the fact that Pakistan continues to clear airspace in the targeted areas, the US government concludes it has tacit consent to conduct strikes within the borders of a sovereign nation, according to officials familiar with the programme.
Representatives of the White House's National Security Council and CIA declined to discuss Pakistani consent, saying such information was classified. In public speeches, Obama administration officials have portrayed the US's use of drones to kill wanted terrorists around the world as being on firm legal ground. In those speeches, officials stopped short of directly discussing the CIA's drone programme in Pakistan because the operations are covert.
#1
Aka DOCTINE OF LACHES, i.e. the US believes it has Pakistan's consent by the latter's failure, intentional or negligent, to formally/officially disapprove of the proposed strike lists.
Pakistain's President Asif Ali Ten Percent Zardari ... husband of the late Benazir Bhutto, who has been singularly lacking in curiosity about who done her in ... declared Tuesday before 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... that his country had suffered enough in its fight against jihad boy terror and should not be asked to do more.
"No country and no people have suffered more in the epic struggle against terrorism than Pakistain," he insisted.
"To those who say we have not done enough, I say in all humility: Please do not insult the memory of our dead, and the pain of our living. Do not ask of my people what no one has ever asked of any other peoples," he said.
"Do not demonise the innocent women and kiddies of Pakistain. And please, stop this refrain to 'do more'."
Beginning his address to the UN General Assembly with a denunciation of the recent American-made movie trailer and French cartoons that insulted the Mohammedan prophet Mohammed, he demanded that such material be banned worldwide.
Then, speaking next to a photograph of his late wife - Pak politician Benazir Bhutto ... 11th Prime Minister of Pakistain in two non-consecutive terms from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996. She was the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founder of the Pakistain People's Party, who was murdered at the instigation of General Ayub Khan. She was murdered in her turn by person or persons unknown while campaigning in late 2007. Suspects include, to note just a few, Baitullah Mehsud, General Pervez Musharraf, the ISI, al-Qaeda in Pakistain, and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who shows remarkably little curiosity about who done her in... , who was murdered by Islamic snuffies - he set about defending the Pak people's record in the war on violent extremism.
Zardari said regular US drone strikes against targets in his country made his task of selling the fight against terror to his people harder, as did the massive increase in Afghan drug exports since the US-led invasion.
"There are a lot of questions that are asked of Pakistain these days," he said, his voice rising as he warmed to his theme.
"I am not here to answer questions about Pakistain. The people of Pakistain have already answered them. The politicians of Pakistain have answered them. The soldiers of Pakistain have answered them," he declared.
"We have lost over 7,000 Pak soldiers and coppers, and over 37,000 civilians," he added. "And I need not remind my friends here today, that I bear a personal scar."
Pakistain has long been seen as a safe haven for myriad Islamist gangs, whether Taliban fighting along the Afghan border, domestic bully boyz or Kashmiri Mohammedans bent on capturing Indian-held territory.
Suspicions that the government and military were turning a blind eye to some groups came to a head in May last year when US commandos launched a raid deep into Pak territory and killed Al-Qaeda kingpin the late Osama bin Laden ... who is currently warming his feet by the fire with Hitler and Himmler... But Zardari stoutly defended his government's record, insisting Pakistain's problems stemmed from decades of military rule, when Pakistain was left to cope with an influx of Afghan refugees and the West courted its dictators.
"I remember the red carpet that was rolled out for all the dictators," he said. "These dictators and their regimes are responsible for suffocating and throttling Pakistain, Pakistain's institutions and Pak democracy.
"I remember the jailing of Pakistain's elected leaders. I remember the 12 years I myself spent in prison. And I remember the billions provided by the international community to support those dictatorships," he said.
"My country's social fabric, its very character has been altered. Our condition today is a product of dictatorships."
Zardari's government has often been accused in the West of not doing enough to fight armed extremism, and since bin Laden was found - in a garrison town near the capital - some in Washington have called for aid to be cut.
#2
He;s right - there guys are way too busy. They're already trying to maintain the Haqqani network while pretanding to their exposing it, secretly mapping all the US airbases that are flying drones, building briefcase nukes that they can smuggle into New Delhi, and developing new computer viruses to wreck the world's computers. Sheesh ... they need a few days vacation over there :-)
After failing last year to win recognition of full statehood at the United Nations ...where theory meets practice and practice loses... , President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... returns to New York on Thursday to ask the General Assembly for a less ambitious status upgrade.
This time around, he looks certain to get his way, but the resolution he plans won't bring independence any nearer. It will also anger the United States and Israel, which is likely to retaliate with painful economic countermeasures.
So why is he doing it?
The fact that Abbas believes the best way forward for the Paleostinian cause lies in diplomatic gestures thousands of miles from home underscores the dearth of decent ideas to end 64 years of unresolved conflict.
"The Paleostinians don't have strategy, nor do the Israelis or even the Americans," said Aaron David Miller, a former senior State Department adviser on the Middle East grinding of the peace processor, now at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.
"The strategy is getting by and trying to prevent a blow-up. But one day there will be a blow-up and ... sadly, the situation is going to get worse before it gets worse."
In an indication of how things could degenerate, thousands of Paleostinians this month attacked their own security forces in the cities of Hebron and Nablus in the occupied West Bank in a protest over the high cost of living.
The Paleostinian Authority scrambled to defuse the crisis, rolling back tax hikes, while Israel looked on in alarm, aware that tensions are growing after years of stalemate in official peace-making.
There have been no direct talks since 2010, when the Paleostinians refused to resume negotiations unless Israel suspended settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which they say is killing off all chances of them ever creating a coherent state.
UN Secretary-General the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon ... of whom it can be said to his credit that he is not Kofi Annan... said Tuesday the so-called two-state solution was the only sustainable option for peace, but that the continued growth of Israeli settlements meant that "the door may be closing, for good".
Collapse
In 2011, when Abbas bid for full UN statehood, there was excitement in the West Bank. Posters trumpeting the drive hung from lampposts and a giant wooden chair was erected in the city of Ramallah to symbolize the UN seat the Paleostinians wanted.
Predictably, the request wilted in the face of fierce US opposition, and the chair collapsed during a winter storm.
Twelve months on, there is no repeat of last year's eager anticipation as Abbas readies his more modest bid to raise the Paleostinians' UN status from "observer entity" to "observer state" - the same rank as that granted to the Vatican.
"We deserve to become a fully recognized state, not this halfway step. We don't understand what it means or what it will achieve," said Manal Hassan, 26, a part-time school teacher in Ramallah, reflecting widespread apathy across the West Bank.
In fact, the revised UN push could make life much more uncomfortable for the Israelis, even if it won't bring any immediate change to the situation on the ground.
Being registered as a state rather than an entity means the Paleostinians will be able to join bodies such as the International Criminal Court ... where Milosevich died of old age before being convicted ... and file a raft of complaints against Israel for its continued occupation.
"This will help level the playing field," veteran Paleostinian negotiator Saeb Erekat ...negotiated the Oslo Accords with Israel. He has been chief Paleostinian negotiator since 1995. He is currently negotiating with Israel to establish a de jure Paleostinian state... told Rooters last week.
He said the change would be voted on before the end of the year. The US has no veto in the General Assembly, where some 120 of the 193 member nations have already recognized Paleostine as a state.
The Israelis have already signaled their concern.
"I don't pretend this is good for us, but it will be worse for them," Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor told news hounds in Jerusalem on Monday. "This is an easy and a wrong way out."
Israeli officials have indicated in private that one likely reprisal would be to hold back tax revenues the Jewish state collects on behalf of the Paleostinians, which account for around two-thirds of their overall revenues.
Pro-Israeli politicians in Congress froze some $200 million of badly needed aid for the Paleostinians in retaliation for last year's UN drive, and are likely to up the pressure once more.
Economy in trouble
Both states will have to calibrate their reaction carefully.
The World Bank and International Monetary Fund issued grim reports this month on the state of the Paleostinian economy, warning of social upheaval unless foreign funding increases and Israel eases long-standing curbs on development.
Indeed, Israel has moved this month to prop up the West Bank economy, hastening the transfer of funds to the PA and offering 5,000 more permits to allow Paleostinians to work in Israel, where wages are higher than in their own territories.
Israel believes the path to statehood lies through direct talks and says unilateral moves are in violation of the 1993 Oslo accords, which were intended to path the way to a "final status agreement" within five years.
The Paleostinians say rampant settlement building has all but destroyed their chances of creating a coherent state.
Abbas instructed his political allies this month to examine the possibility of scrapping Oslo and renouncing their partial control over the West Bank, effectively handing all the territory back to Israel and upping the cost of the occupation.
Analysts rule out such a drastic step, but say the fact that he is raising it shows how the options are narrowing for Abbas, who has long since lost control of Gazoo to the Islamist bully boy group Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason,, and whose own electoral mandate expired in 2009.
"The leadership has been unable to deliver to the public on anything," said Ghassan Khatib, former front man for PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad ...Fayyad's political agenda holds that neither violence nor peaceful negotiations have brought the Paleostinians any closer to an independent state. The alternative to both, violent negotiations, doesn't seem to be working too well, either... and now a lecturer in contemporary Arab studies at Birzeit University.
Khatib even doubts whether Abbas will deliver in the United Nations, believing that he might pull back before a vote to give more space to whoever wins the US presidential election in November to contrive a final diplomatic push with the Israelis.
Western diplomats in Israel agree that Abbas is under huge external pressure to shun a UN resolution, and say time is running out.
"We are concerned that if he pushes forward with this, then the United States will simply walk away from the issue," one senior diplomat said. "Without direct talks, our assessment is the two-state solution could be dead within 18 months."
#2
It is hard not to look at these things with a Western mindset (hey, WestCiv is my peeps!), but it seems like catastrophic failure, in the Arab mind, is almost better than success. Success is over, done with and on to the next thing, but failure you can bitch about for centuries.
[Jerusalem Post] Paleostinian Authority President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... on Monday told Jewish leaders that his UN speech would address showing greater sensitivity to Jewish claims to Israel.
Whatever that means.
Meeting Monday evening with about 10 Jewish leaders, Abbas also endorsed Alan Dershowitz's formula for returning to talks with Israel, participants said.
The meeting was under the auspices of the Center for Middle East Peace. Top Jewish organizational leaders declined, reportedly at the request of the office of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who has discouraged Jewish meetings with Abbas until he gives up demanding a settlement freeze as a precondition for returning to talks.
Among those who did attend were Dershowitz, the Harvard legal scholar and a leading defender of Israel; Robert Wexler, the CMEP director and a top Jewish surrogate for President B.O.; and Peter Joseph, who heads the Israel Policy Forum.
Egypt opposes foreign military intervention to stop the civil war in Syria and prefers an inclusive, negotiated settlement, Egypt's new Islamist president, Mohamed Mursi, said on Wednesday.
"Egypt is committed to pursue the sincere efforts it has been exerting to put an end to the catastrophe in Syria within an Arab, regional and international framework," Mursi said in his first speech to the U.N. General Assembly.
Such a solution should be "one that preserves the unity of this brotherly state, involves all factions of the Syrian people without racial, religious or sectarian discrimination and spares Syria the dangers of foreign military intervention that we oppose," he said.
Mursi's comments contrasted with those of Qatari leader Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, who called on Arab countries on Tuesday to bypass the U.N. Security Council and intervene directly to stop the bloodshed in Syria.
Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon demanded international action to stop the war in Syria, telling a somber gathering of world leaders Tuesday that the 18-month conflict had become "a regional calamity with global ramifications."
In sharp contrast to the U.N. chief, President Barack Obama pledged U.S. support for Syrians trying to oust President Bashar Assad -- "a dictator who massacres his own people."
Opening the U.N. General Assembly's annual ministerial meeting, Ban said in his state of the world speech that he was sounding the alarm about widespread insecurity, inequality and intolerance in many countries.
#1
Not surprisingly, Moon and Obama are both wrong. The best course of action for the west is to stay out of it entirely! I may have missed something, but I don't recall having read of a single Mohammedan being involved in our Civil War.
An StG 44 would fetch a lot of money in the collectors market, yet are most often found in the hands of dirt poor militiamen (and women) in Africa and the Middle East. One was recently photographed in the hands of a Syrian rebel. US Army also found Sturmgewehrs in Iraq, complete with ammunition headstamped 1944 and 45. Click the "and women" link for a ammo quartermaster's nightmare.
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.
The detention of hundreds of female Nigerian pilgrims heading to Mecca at Saudi Arabia's busiest airport over a rule requiring them to travel with a husband or male relative is threatening to bring a diplomatic dispute between the two nations.
Wazoo
Mehmood 
President Asif Ali 
[Dawn] TAXILA, Sept 25: A joint investigation team (JIT) probing August 16 attacks on Minhas Airbase at Kamra, picked up two persons here on Tuesday. 
About once a month, the Central Intelligence Agency sends a fax to a general at Pakistan's intelligence service outlining broad areas where the US intends to conduct strikes with drone aircraft, the Wall Street Journal quoted US officials as saying. 
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon
International Criminal Court
[Jerusalem Post] Paleostinian Authority President 
