Boeing is seeing a glimmer of progress in its work toward fielding laser weapons.
The defense industry giant on Monday said tests of its Laser Avenger system in December marked "the first time a combat vehicle has used a laser to shoot down a UAV," or unmanned aerial vehicle. In the testing, the Humvee-mounted Laser Avenger located and tracked three small UAVs in flight over the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico and knocked one of the drone aircraft out of the sky.
Boeing didn't go into much detail about the shoot-down. In response to a query by CNET News, it did say this much about the strike by the the kilowatt-class laser: "A hole was burned in a critical flight control element of the UAV, rendering the aircraft unflyable."
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama's enthusiasm for alternative energy is being buffeted by two political forces on opposite sides of plans to build the nation's first offshore wind farm off Cape Cod.
A leading foe of the $1 billion project is Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., an early and influential backer of Obama's presidential bid. A strong proponent is Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, a close friend of Obama and a source for some of his best campaign speech lines.
He just made Teddy mad by not getting Paterson to put Caroline into the Senate seat. I think I know how this one's going to go ...
The plan to erect 130 giant turbines across 25 miles of federal waters in Nantucket Sound poses an early test of the president's energy policy, on stark display Monday with Obama's order to re-examine whether California and other states should be allowed to have tougher auto emission standards to combat a build up of greenhouse gases and his directive for the government to get moving on new fuel-efficiency guidelines for the auto industry.
In the final days of George W. Bush's tenure, the Minerals Management Service issued a report saying the wind farm project poses no major environmental problems, clearing the way for the Obama administration to make a final decision on whether to issue a lease for the project. Reviews by the Federal Aviation Administration and the Interior Department's inspector general are still pending.
During the campaign, Obama had expressed strong support for wind power and indicated he wanted to double renewable energy production over the next three years. But deciding the fate of Cape Wind would force him to choose sides among friends and political allies. Patrick campaigned for Obama. Kennedy, despite being stricken with a brain tumor, is a critical backer of Obama's agenda, including health care reform.
Kennedy has fought the Cape Wind project for eight years, arguing it would kill birds and endanger sea life while imperiling the scenic area's tourism and fishing industries. The turbines would stand 440 feet above sea level when the tallest blades are pointing straight up. The Kennedy family's oceanside Hyannis Port, Mass., compound would have a clear view of the project to be located 4.7 miles offshore, but Kennedy says it is not why he opposes the project.
"The interests of our state have been basically submerged to a special interest developer," Kennedy has said of the project.
Patrick has championed the wind farm, embracing it as part of a push to make his state a leader in alternative energy.
"I haven't come to my conclusions for political reasons; I've come to my conclusions because I'm convinced that the future of our economy is very much connected to the development of a vibrant industry in alternative and renewable energy," Patrick said in announcing his support in 2005 as a gubernatorial candidate.
Project backers are wary of last-minute political meddling. They cite attempts in Congress over the years to derail it, including efforts by Kennedy.
"The opponents have proven to be very crafty and to embrace a scorched-earth approach to fighting this project," said Sue Reid of the Conservation Law Foundation, a conservation group supporting Cape Wind. "Of course we are going to be vigilant."
Kennedy complained there was a rush to approve the project as the Bush administration was departing--and before federal rules for offshore wind projects have been completed.
There are hundreds of proposals for wind-energy projects across the country, including more than a dozen for offshore projects. Wind energy accounts for only 1 percent of the nation's electricity. A federal report last year said wind energy could generate 20 percent by 2030, with offshore sources accounting for nearly 20 percent of that.
#2
The Kennedy family's oceanside Hyannis Port, Mass., compound would have a clear view of the project to be located 4.7 miles offshore, but Kennedy says it is not why he opposes the project. Yah, sure it is. I can smell the bullshit all the way in Cheeseland.
Two US military aircraft have crashed in northern Iraq, killing four soldiers, the US military says.
"Four coalition forces members were killed when two aircraft went down in northern Iraq at approximately 2:15 am [local time]," Major Jose Lopez said. "The cause of the incident is unknown and is under investigation." Please pray for their families and friends.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
01/26/2009
16:44 ||
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Maybe one way to fight back against the apathy, ignorance, and arrogance now dominant in the USA is to redouble direct support to military families. Can't let my total disappointment with most of the country undermine my support for those "rough men" whose activities in the night allow all of us to sleep comfortably in our beds, to borrown Orwell's fantastic phrasing.
Now that the Obama administration is reconsidering California's plan to increase the fuel economy of cars sold in the Golden State and 13 others to 35 miles per gallon by 2016, we wondered how close the automakers are to getting there.
The regulations being proposed by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) the same organization that brought to life then killed the electric car mandate in the state do not regulate fuel economy directly like the EPA does, but instead set standards on carbon dioxide emissions, which effectively does the same thing.
According to the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, it will cost carmakers approximately $3,000 per car in new technology to get the fleet average up to 35 mpg.
Want to get a head start on helping the industry out buy purchasing a 35 mpg car? If the standards went into effect today you would have a grand total of three vehicles to choose from, and no, the MINI Cooper isn't one of them.
The Toyota Prius, Honda Civic Hybrid and Smart Fortwo are currently the only cars with an EPA combined rating of better than 35 mpg. Later this year, the Ford Fusion Hybrid and Honda Insight will join the list, but clearly the automakers are still a long way from making the cut.
Of course 35 mpg is just the beginning. The CARB proposal calls for a 43 mpg average by 2020. That narrows the list of available cars to one. Hope you like that Prius.
#5
I look forward to seeing our elected officials driving around in these type of cars too, and leading by example...
Posted by: Francis ||
01/26/2009 16:37
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#6
im not a fan of mandates, I prefer price based mechanisms.
But really, does it make sense to judge what will be available in 2020 by looking at cars that make the cut in 2009? I mean even without the mandate one expects cars to get better mileage in the future.
#7
LH, do you know what the time lag is for bringing a major new technology to market in the automotive world? 10 years ain't all that long especially when you're going broke now.
#12
This has Steve Chu's fingerprints all over it. In the Google Tech vid that's all over the 'net he clearly states that this sort of regulation has no negative impact because "everyone will just adapt because they know it's coming."
#13
if you remove all the safety features (airbags, bumpers, seatbelts), all weight-carrying capacity (two seats, no trunk), put an electric 35 mph -capable electric engine, there you go! A car nobody wants. But that's the point, isn't it? Into the bio-diesel bus, proles!
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/26/2009 19:09
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#19
BMW, Mercedes and Lexus flout the current EPA rules as it is. They get whacked with gas-guzzler taxes, they pass those along to their customers who are apparently willing to pay, and everyone is happy. Lexus isn't having problems selling cars, at least in good times, and you aren't going to see a 35 mpg Lexus anytime soon.
But GM, Ford and Chrysler can't do that because the political fallout would kill them (assuming the UAW doesn't kill them first). No way any of them can say 'screw you guys, we're making muscle cars and we'll just pass the gas guzzler tax along'.
This is law making by wish: 'oh, I wish cars would get better mileage' and presto, a new law.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/26/2009 20:29
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#20
at least it doesn't apply to...drinks ready? F-150's!
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/26/2009 20:33
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#21
Lexus is built by Toyota. Prius is built by Toyota. The Toyota fleet CAFE is fine.
#22
Poor Babys cant drive your Pickups, Suburbans, and Hummers around anymore.... I guess you'll figure out some other way to give the OPEC nations all our money
Posted by: Not A Jingoistic Ass ||
01/26/2009 22:37
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#23
Ya' got the ASS part right, #22 Jingo
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/26/2009 22:40
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#24
Obama's new Caddy gets 8MPG. Being a man of the people and all, I'm sure he'll be happy to hear your complaint, Jingoistic Ass...
Lady LAKE, Fla. It's 11 p.m. at the Bourbon Street Bar, and Roselyn's gyrating her hips to the blues band, Sue's sipping a cocktail and flirting with her new boyfriend, and Alan is scanning the crowd for cute girls.
"See those two?" a buxom blonde asks, pointing to an elegant couple at the bar. "They were caught having sex in their golf cart a few weeks ago. It happens a lot!"
Welcome to ground zero for geriatrics who are seriously getting it on.
It's a Thursday night at one of a half-dozen hot spots at the 20,000-acre Central Florida complex called The Villages, the largest gated retirement community in America and one of the most popular destinations for New Yorkers in their golden years where the female-to-male ratio runs 10 to 1.
It's a widower's paradise, and the word on the street is that there's a big black market for Viagra.
Though The Villages which spans three counties with 40,000 homes and more than 70,000 residents boasts 34 golf courses, nine country clubs, two downtown squares and a slew of restaurants and bars, getting lucky is one of the residents' primary pastimes.
#2
Fox left out the good stuff. From the NY Post...
It's a widower's paradise, and the word on the street is that there's a big black market for V1agra.
Though The Villages - which spans three counties with 40,000 homes and more than 70,000 residents - boasts 34 golf courses, nine country clubs, two downtown squares and a slew of restaurants and bars, getting lucky is one of the residents' primary pastimes.
The huge complex began growing rapidly in the mid-1990s, and reported cases of gonorrhea rocketed from 152 to 245, of syphilis rose from 17 to 33, and of chlamydia from 52 to 115 among those 55 and older in Florida from 1995 to 2005. The state's sexually transmitted disease rate among those over 65 is one of the fastest growing in the country, one report claims. In 2006, a local gynecologist reported that she treated more cases of herpes and human papillomavirus at The Villages than she did when she worked in Miami.
"I get offers for sex all the time," brags Dave, 70, who, like others who spoke about their sexually active set, asked that his real name not be used, "especially by women in their 70s. They say, 'Are you busy tonight? I'll show you a good time.' "
One overly charming lady-killer known as "Mr. Midnight" boasted of one of his conquests last year: "Absolutely beautiful. I've had her a few times. She comes over, takes a shower, jumps in bed, and then gets dressed and leaves. She's simply the best."
His story was told by Andrew Blechman, author of "Leisureville," about communities like The Villages.
"There is lots of romance around here," said Jean, a 63-year-old retired teacher. "But most of the men want a one-night meaningful relationship."
Her friend Louise agrees. "A lot of the men down here are cheaper than heck," she says, "and a lot of the women are extremely brazen. Some girls will go into the parking lot with a man and come back a half-hour later like nothing happened!"
"We've had some of those complaints," said a laughing Lt. Laurie Davis of the Lady Lake Police Department, ticking off other offenses, like drunken driving in golf carts, illegal drug use, and bar fights.
"Whatever you know about 20-year-olds, it's the same with seniors," said Roselyn Shelley, 68, a divorced former dancer.
Sue Rice, a blonde who will only admit to being over 60 but who looks to be about 80 and dances like she's 14, has hooked up with Larry Tucker, an ex-banker about a decade her junior.
Tucker sports a gold charm around his neck that reads, "Bankers do it with interest."
"Feel this," Rice says, bouncing up from her bar stool and pinching her slim waist. "My body is the same as it was in high school! He can't keep up with me!"
According to Alan, a swarthy 62-year-old, there's a thriving black market for little blue V1agra pills.
"I did it once," he said. "I paid 12 bucks for a single pill."
Local cops just try to keep up. "You see two 70-year-olds with canes fighting over a woman and you think, 'Oh, jeez,' " Lt. Davis said.
#3
They don't have to worry about pregnancies or the children, they don't have to get to the office, and quite a few are more or less senile. Now they just want to have the fun they want when they want it... and it's only going to get worse when the Baby Boomers join in. Perhaps they should have big bowls full of condoms instead of peppermints at these hot spots.
#6
Sue Rice, a blonde who will only admit to being over 60 but who looks to be about 80 and dances like she's 14, has hooked up with Larry Tucker, an ex-banker about a decade her junior.
Little Larry Tucker was a banker that could really pucker..........
#8
There was a sad story last year about a couple at a nursing home; he was 85, she was 75, both had dementia, and the two fell for each other. The nurses had to keep them from doing things in public, and when his son visited him and walke din on the two of them, he was so angry he forced the nurses to keep the couple apart.
The two went into a deep depression and soon died. I believe I saw that on Glenn's site.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
01/26/2009 19:18
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Tucker sports a gold charm around his neck that reads, "Bankers do it with interest."
Delhi: A day before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh got admitted into AIIMS for his heart-bypass, he signed a document delegating the vital Nuclear Command Authority powers to External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee. Besides, the PM appointed Mukherjee as the Finance Minister till he is fully recovered to take the charge back.
Contrary to reports, the so-called nuclear button was handed over to Pranab as soon as the decision to go for surgery was taken by the PM. However, the decision to put Mukherjee as head of Finance was taken after discussions with Congress President Sonia Gandhi.
Posted by: john frum ||
01/26/2009
14:48 ||
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#1
Meanwhile in Delhi...
Posted by: john frum ||
01/26/2009 16:21
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During a panel talk at New Yorks Asia Society on January 21, Professor Ashutosh Varshney of Brown University claimed that some right wing forces in the US and India were interested in seeing Pakistan break up and that they imagined that somehow India would be able to neuter the nukes and prevent them from getting into unfriendly hands, something he considered highly risky and likely to lead to catastrophe. During the same event former Pakistani diplomat Munir Akram claimed that any war between India and Pakistan would escalate uncontrollably and go nuclear quite quickly.
At this moment, they are both right. The India-Pakistan nuclear stand-off is stalemated to Pakistans advantage, in that they can launch (or allow) terror attacks such as the November 2008 one on Mumbai and India can do essentially nothing in response. The unmistakable smugness of the former Pakistani diplomat made this evident. However, this situation will not last forever. India is now seeking way to neutralize the majority of Pakistans nuclear weapons and within a decade or perhaps a little longer they may come up with a solution.
In 2006 India began testing a missile defense version of its Prithvi medium-range ballistic missile. This test is just one sign that New Delhi is seeking to develop a multi-layer complex that can defend against Pakistans nuclear missiles. Due to its liquid-fueled first stage, the Prithvi Air Defense (PAD) is certainly not an ideal system, but it is both available and locally made. The Indian military is comfortable enough with this weapons effectiveness to make it their main battlefield ballistic missile for both conventional and nuclear applications.
Even if they give missile defense a big budget and a high priority, it will be many years before India has a moderately effective, indigenous missile defense shield. The claim last year by the head of the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) that they will have a multi-layered system ready in 2010 is taken with a grain of salt by observers both inside and outside the subcontinent. However, unless the geopolitical situation radically changes, there is no doubt that India will continue work on the systems for the foreseeable future.
If they wanted to they could buy systems from the US, Israel, or Russia, and they have already bought themselves a pair of Israeli Green Pine radars originally designed for the Arrow ABM system. If they were ready to spend the money they could combine, for example, the US PAC 3 version of the Patriot with the Israeli Arrow and have an effective but limited defense system within a fairly short timeframe. While the US may have blocked India from buying the Israeli system in the past, this no longer would be the case.
What is more likely, though, is that they will continue to build up their own technology while procuring a few items from overseas and entering into collaborative development programs with carefully selected foreign firms. The hard part may not be the interceptors themselves but building up the network of sensors and command and control systems needed to make the whole thing credible.
One requirement will be for some sort of space based early warning system to supplement the powerful long-range radars they will have to deploy both in the air and in the western Himalaya mountains. India is lucky in that it does have a few good places where it could place radars that, if they were powerful enough, could cover most of the possible launch sites. But they will still need satellites to cover the whole of Pakistan and to provide a secure and unambiguous warning of a launch event.
India could, if they wanted to, gain access to the US DSP (Defense Support Program) and SBIRS (Space Based Infra Red System) information the same way that NATO, Israel, Japan, and South Korea all have this data available to one degree or another. However, given the history of the subcontinent, and the shaky basis on which the new US-India relationship rests, the government may not be willing to put its trust in Washingtons goodwill.
They may choose to build their own heat detecting satellites. The IRS (Indian Remote Sensing) and Cartosat series of remote sensing spacecraft have given India some of the expertise required to build an equivalent of the DSP. Such a system does not have to be as heavy or as sophisticated as the US one; it could, in fact, consist of a larger number of small satellites in low Earth orbit. This would certainly be expensive by Indian standards and would take at least as long to develop and deploy as the indigenous interceptor missiles themselves.
Another factor that will add to the expense of this project is the fact that India is a big country and will need a fairly large number of long-range and short-range BMD missiles. The better that they can do in the boost phase the better off they will be, but there are few signs that they, or anyone else except the US, are seriously looking at this capability.
As long as India vigorously pursues this capability it will put Pakistan into the same kind of dilemma that faced the Soviet Union after President Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) program in March 1983. Islamabad has neither the resources nor the technology to compete with India in this field. Indian missile defense will not, by itself, prevent a Pakistani loose nuke situation, but it will reduce the value of their atomic stockpile.
They also lack the resources to build up a very large and diverse force of reliable, sophisticated, nuclear-tipped missiles that could overwhelm an effective Indian defense system. If they tried to build such a force they would either have to weaken their already limited conventional defense forces or spend themselves into economic oblivion. Indias robust and growing economy is a strategic asset that is slowly but surely making itself felt in the military balance between the two subcontinental rivals.
Posted by: john frum ||
01/26/2009
14:42 ||
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More than half-a-century ago, two of Pakistans most eminent judges drew this bleak lesson from a wave of violence that had led the country into the first of its many experiences of martial law: As long as we rely upon the hammer when a file is needed and press Islam into service to solve situations it was never intended to solve, wrote Justice Muhammad Munir and Justice Mohammad Rustam Kayani, frustration and disappointment must dog our steps.
Pakistans establishment didnt listen then and does not seem to be listening now. Ever since the Lashkar-e-Taibas attack on Mumbai, commentators have been struggling to explain just why Pakistan appears so reluctant to act decisively against the perpetrators. Some have focussed on the Lashkars patronage by the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate; others on the Pakistani militarys hopes of weakening President Asif Ali Zardari. All these explanations have merit but miss a critical element: the slow transformation of the Pakistani state itself into an instrument of the jihadist agenda.
Last month, as tensions between India and Pakistan escalated, Pakistans Federal Minister for Religious Affairs, Sahibzada Noor-ul-Haq Qadri, called a clerical convention to discuss the issue. In their fatwa, the clerics dismissed the charge that the Mumbai attacks were authored in Pakistan, and instead called on their government to unveil Indian conspiracies against Pakistan. The fatwa, issued on behalf of the Tahaffuz-e-Namoos-e-Risalat Mahaz the Front for the Protection of the Prophets Honour made it obligatory on all Pakistani citizens to wage jihad against India should war break out.
Earlier, ISI Directorate chief Lieutenant-General Shuja Pasha hailed jihadist leaders Baitullah Mehsud and Mullah Fazlullah, whose depredations have claimed the lives of thousands of Pakistanis, as true patriots for offering to fight India.
Much of the ongoing debate rests on the proposition that Pakistans institutional relationship with political Islam was forged by General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, in the context of anti-Soviet Union jihad in Afghanistan. In fact, the problem is older and more fundamental. Ever since the birth of the Pakistani state, Islamists and secular democrats became locked in an irreducible ideological war for its soul. Each important battle, tragically, the religious right won.
In 1951, the Majlis-e-Ahrar, a group of clerics who had ceded from the Indian National Congress two decades earlier, initiated an agitation calling for members of the heterodox Ahmadiyya sect to be declared non-Muslims. It also demanded the removal of Pakistans Foreign Minister, Chaudhuri Zafarullah Khan, an Ahmadiyya. In the view of its mullahs, Pakistan was an Islamic state and in an Islamic state, the minorities could not enjoy equal rights.
Factional politics helped the anti-Ahmadiyya movement gather momentum. Punjab Chief Minister Mumtaz Muhammad Khan Daulatana had for long used the services of the mullahs, as well as Maulana Abul Ala Maududis Jamaat-e-Islami, to keep public attention focussed on religious issues. Daulatana thus covered up his inability to address the provinces economic problems. For their part, the clerics regained ground lost through their opposition to the creation of Pakistan, and pushed for its new constitution to decree into existence an Islamic state.
Punjabs Inspector-General of Police, Qurban Ali Khan a man who, as chief of Pakistans Intelligence Bureau, laid the foundations of the ISIs overt war against India repeatedly warned against allowing the anti-Ahmadiyya movement to gather momentum. Daulatana, however, refused to act even after attacks against the Ahmadiyya adherents and mosques began to escalate from 1951. Even Prime Minister Khwaja Nazim-ud-Din found his religious sentiments outraged by the Ahmadiyya literature he was shown during his discussions with the Ahrar clerics. Khwaja Nazim-ud-Din is a devoutly religious man and since he did not straight away reject the demands, he must have been impressed by their plausibility, Justices Munir and Kayani observed.
Despite the extensive efforts to bribe and inveigle the anti-Ahmadiyya movement into easing off, matters eventually came to a head. In March 1953, Pakistans Prime Minister was compelled to reject the Ahrar demands, leading to massive violence. Punjab declared local martial law. As Justices Munir and Kayani noted, the Islamist cause by this time had developed a broad base of support. Had this not been the case, they noted, Muslim Leaguers whose own government was in office would not have risen against it; [the] sense of loyalty and public duty would not have departed from public officials who went about howling against their own Government and officers; respect for property and human life would not have disappeared in the common man.
If there is one thing that has been conclusively demonstrated in this inquiry, Justices Munir and Kayani concluded, it is that provided you can persuade the masses to believe that something they are asked to do is religiously right or enjoined by religion, you can set them to any course of action, regardless of all considerations of discipline, loyalty, decency, morality or civic sense.
It was a lesson that key leaders of the movement to transform Pakistan into an Islamic state like the Jamaat-e-Islamis Maududi learned well. The failure of the Pakistani state to act against the rising tide of religious neo-conservatism aided their cause.
By the time the 1956 Constitution came into being, scholar Hassan Abbas has argued, the religious forces of the country had consolidated their position quite considerably. Among other things, the communist-inspired military coup attempt in 1951 had inclined the government of the day to view the religious parties with a certain detached, if not benign, neutrality. Maududi sentenced to death by a military court for his role in the Punjab Disturbances succeeded in securing the commutation of his sentence to life, and continued to wield enormous political influence. Pakistan, its 1956 Constitution decreed, would henceforth be called an Islamic Republic; the new Constitution also had a clause mandating that no law repugnant to the Koran and the Hadith could be passed.
General Ayub Khan, who took power in a palace coup two weeks after President Iskandar Mirza declared martial law in October 1958, initially attempted to reverse the tide. He renamed the country the Republic of Pakistan, removing the word Islamic; in 1961, he introduced a Family Law Ordinance that considerably strengthened the position of women; later, there were attempts to modernise madrasa education. However, Ayub Khan also set up an Advisory Council on Islamic Ideology, thus institutionalising the role of clerics in the affairs of state and launched a war in Jammu and Kashmir that was cast as a jihad.
Maududi greeted Pakistans next military ruler General Yahya Khan an officer whose hard-drinking, womanising ways were even then public knowledge as a champion of Islam. Yahya Khan did little for the Jamaats project in Pakistan but did use its Razakar irregulars to unleash a campaign of terror in what is now Bangladesh. Yahya Khans use of Jamaat-e-Islami irregulars in Bangladesh built on similar experiments in Jammu and Kashmir and prepared the ground for Pakistans use of jihadists as an instrument of state policy a decade later.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who became President and then Prime Minister in the wake of Yahya Khans post-1971 war humiliation, followed much the same trajectory. His Constitution declared Islam the state religion, and committed it to teaching religion in schools. Bhutto also set up a Council on Islamic Ideology, along the lines of the body instituted by Ayub Khan, to bring secular laws into line with the Shariah.
Islamist clerics, Bhutto hoped, would not ask for more but they did. By 1974, Bhutto who had alienated his peasant and working class constituency by this time was facing a new anti-Ahmadiyya movement led by the Jamaat-e-Islamis student wing, the Islamic Jamaat-e-Tulba. Bhutto at first sought to contain the agitation by arresting some 834 of the protesters and their leaders. Later, though, he caved in and declared the Ahmadiyya sect outside the pale of Islam. It did nothing, though, to prevent the near-inevitable outcome: the army leveraged the chaos to assert itself, and Zia-ul-Haq was installed as Pakistans third military ruler.
Pakistans establishment understands the agenda of the Lashkar, and groups like it but sees their actions as an asset, not a threat. In a recent article, Pakistani journalist Khalid Hassan recalled a colleague questioning President Pervez Musharraf on his decision not to act against the Lashkar and the Jaish-e-Mohammad. They are not doing anything in Pakistan, Hassan recalls General Musharraf explaining, they are doing jihad outside.
President Zardaris government, many had hoped, would dismantle the Pakistan that Zia-ul-Haq built a Pakistan based on the dual primacy of the military and the mullah, resting on the pillars of religious chauvinism and hatred for India. If President Zardaris handling of the fallout from the Mumbai carnage is any indication, the forces he represents have neither the will nor the resources to reverse history. Islamabad, post-Mumbai, isnt in denial. It is simply driven by the reflexes imprinted by the history which gave birth to it.
Posted by: john frum ||
01/26/2009
14:35 ||
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#1
Muslims readily admit that Islam is a totalitarian system. There CANNOT be separation of mosque and state in an authentic islamic state. For those who are unaware: the quran is the constitution of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. That is what they export when they do things like fund 95% of America's Sunni mosques.
#2
Why am I not surprised that Rantburg's representative of the Pashtun fanciers club of British Columbia is less than enamored of a post describing how militant Islam persecutes Christians and seeks to eradicate the very physical evidence of two thousand years of Christian presence?
Former US President Jimmy Carter said in an interview to NBC that a one-state solution would be a disaster for Israel, and the two-state solution, that everyone supports, is right.
Carter continued to say there is no way to make peace without Hamas' involvement, and that, as someone who has had two opportunities to meet with Hamas heads, he felt the organization could be trusted. Carter added that Hamas was willing to accept any Fateh agreement with Israel that would be approved by a referendum.
#6
here he is 30+ years later, still trying to make up to Iran for daring to violate their territorial integrity.... probably believes he's doing penance.. putz
#8
the two-state solution, that everyone supports
Where do they dream up this crap? Iran and Hamas have always insisted on the one-state solution with the Jews going back to where they came from (i.e., after the Romans dispersed them).
#9
See what you've got to look forward to, Barry. Some senile Georgia peanut farmer trying to make foreign policy behind your back. Zbiggy's probably on the phone to him right now...
#24
Mr. Carter just enjoyed a fawning interview with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. Did you know that 70% of Palestinians just want to live peacefully with Israel?
The United States has deducted 55 million dollars out of the 156 million dollars bill sent by Pakistan for rendering its military services to fight against Taliban and Al-Qaeda in volatile bordering tribal areas adjacent to war-torn Afghanistan. Shaukat Tarin, a financial adviser in the prime minister's office, said the US had "changed the format" for money released under the Coalition Support Fund (CSF) for Islamabad, resulting in a "massive" deduction.
Pakistan, a key US ally in the fight terrorism, has mobilized its more than 100,000 troops in tribal areas to contain Islamic militants launching cross-border attacks on international forces in Afghanistan, and bills US for the expenditure.
The cut in its reimbursements is a setback to the civilian government led by President Asif Ali Zardari, widower of assassinated former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto.
Tarin said Islamabad had taken the matter of the deducted money with Washington.
Pakistan joined the US-led international alliance against terrorism after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, with Islamabad getting some 297 million dollars every year since 2003, in the form of Foreign Military Grants to quell the Taliban militancy.
But the authorities in Washington have said repeatedly that Islamabad was not doing enough to control Islamic insurgency in its ungoverned tribal region.
The new US government, led by President Barack Obama, has vowed to focus more on Pakistan in its policy to defeat Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. In its efforts, the new administration would link Pakistan's aid with the security in the border region in Afghanistan, the White House said in a policy statement last week.
Pakistan, which has recently avoided default by obtaining a 7.6 billion dollar loan package from the IMF, is relying heavily on US to revive its economy.
The US has so far provided between 10 and 11 billion dollars of aid for social development as well as in form of military aid. But Pakistan says it has suffered financial losses many times more than it has collectively received aid from American and its western allies after becoming front line state in the ongoing war against terrorism.
#2
And each time they kill 10 1001000 2000 militants, we should shake our heads and say, "nope, nope, not enough, gotta do more to release the funds, nope, nope ..."
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/26/2009 13:55
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Much to the dismay of Pakistani transportation companies, the U.S. has begun getting supplies via Russian and Central Asian railroads. The inability of the Pakistanis to quickly deal with Taliban and bandit attacks on truck traffic crossing the Afghan border, led NATO and U.S. commanders to order setting up the other routes. So now Pakistan has lost its monopoly on this lucrative business, and many government officials are not happy about it.
Seems like the only way to get them off their asses is to hit them in the wallet.
#7
Considering the number (and high cost) of bribes that had to be handed out in order to move a shipment through Pakistan, it's probably more cost effective going through Russia and Central Asia, even if they still have to pay 'incentives'.
#8
CHINESE MIL FORUM > MUMBAI MYSTERY: THE US GRAND DESIGN ON PAKISTAN AND INDIA [ + CHINA]. MUMBAI as a US Covert Op and marks the beginning of a possible series of POST-MUMBAI NEW US-LED COVOPS AGZ ASIA - TWO RETIRED KGB COLONELS believe the USA = NEW OBAMA ADMIN is prepping for a MAJOR POLICY SHIFT ON PAKISTAN, + FOR OTHER "BIG/MAJOR" REGIONAL [destabilization]OPERATIONS.
* PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUM > INDIA AS PART OF A "GREATER WEST" + RUSSIA STOPS THE US ROAD IN AFGHANISTAN [c/o Asia Times] + SIKHS HELPING KASHMIRI FREEDOM FIGHTERS?
ALso on PDF > THE NAXAL INSURGENCY IN INDIA/MAOISTS ESCALATING RECRUITMENT OF FEMALES AND YOUNG MINORS [ "Blanks" = easily impressionable] FOR TERRORISM [circa 30% or 15,000 of 50,000 are females and actively participate in insurgent violence/actions agz Civilians + Police forces]???; + A NAXALITE
[ + Maoist] CORRIDOR? Maoist-Naxalite
"Corridor/March to the Sea" dividing most of Eastern India = insurgent troubled regions.
Read, SEA/GULF OF INDIA = CHINA [OTH Chin = PLA influence in TIBET, MYANMAR, BANGLA + SRI LANKA].
POsters - it rmains doubtful iff Paki can unilaterally + successfully eliminate internal STRONGLY-HELD TALIBAN BASTIONS WIDOUT OUTSIDE MILITARY ASSISTANCE.
#9
CHINESE MIL FORUM > MUMBAI MYSTERY: THE US GRAND DESIGN ON PAKISTAN AND INDIA [ + CHINA]. MUMBAI as a US Covert Op and marks the beginning of a possible series of POST-MUMBAI NEW US-LED COVOPS AGZ ASIA - TWO RETIRED KGB COLONELS believe the USA = NEW OBAMA ADMIN is prepping for a MAJOR POLICY SHIFT ON PAKISTAN, + FOR OTHER "BIG/MAJOR" REGIONAL [destabilization]OPERATIONS.
* PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUM > INDIA AS PART OF A "GREATER WEST" + RUSSIA STOPS THE US ROAD IN AFGHANISTAN [c/o Asia Times] + SIKHS HELPING KASHMIRI FREEDOM FIGHTERS?
ALso on PDF > THE NAXAL INSURGENCY IN INDIA/MAOISTS ESCALATING RECRUITMENT OF FEMALES AND YOUNG MINORS [ "Blanks" = easily impressionable] FOR TERRORISM [circa 30% or 15,000 of 50,000 are females and actively participate in insurgent violence/actions agz Civilians + Police forces]???; + A NAXALITE
[ + Maoist] CORRIDOR? Maoist-Naxalite
"Corridor/March to the Sea" dividing most of Eastern India = insurgent troubled regions.
Read, SEA/GULF OF INDIA = CHINA [OTH Chin = PLA influence in TIBET, MYANMAR, BANGLA + SRI LANKA].
POsters - it rmains doubtful iff Paki can unilaterally + successfully eliminate internal STRONGLY-HELD TALIBAN BASTIONS WIDOUT OUTSIDE MILITARY ASSISTANCE.
Hamas has launched a probe which is expected to be extremely critical of the failures of its military wing during the recent Gaza offensive, the respected Jane's Defence Weekly magazine said Monday.
Hamas does after-action reports?
Citing an unnamed top Hamas military commander, Jane's said a full report due soon would be critical of almost every decision taken by battlefield commanders during the 22-day assault, which ended last week.
The source quoted by Jane's added that cowardly Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal and his followers had effectively pushed for a conflict that it was not ready for.
Why would that bother Khaled, he's safely in Damascus ...
The report will highlight the losses of interior minister Said Siam and around 50 of Hamas's top explosives experts as among the most significant.
Hamas's military wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, and intelligence department have admitted shortcomings in how they responded to Israeli attacks, Jane's added, which Palestinian officials say killed over 1,300 people.
The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said last week that it lost only 48 fighters during Israel's Operation Cast Lead, although Israel has reported killing more than 500 Hamas members.
Maybe the unaccounted Ezzedines just quit paying their dues ...
Heavy criticism has been levelled at Ezzedine al-Qassam commanders who unilaterally declared an end to the truce with Israel on December 19, even though conflict preparations such as building a new safe communications network were incomplete, Jane's said. The investigation will also reportedly look at why fighters were unable to achieve many of their defensive aims.
London-based Jane's highlighted the failure to defend the Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood and the weak response to Israeli naval forces.
The news came as European Union (EU) aid commissioner Louis Michel toured war-torn Gaza, labelling conditions "abominable" and saying that its "terrorist" Hamas rulers bear responsibility for the fighting.
1. Tough to shoot Jooooos while hiding under your bed.
2. Unlike the locals, Joooooos shoot back.
3. Shooting at feet tough habit to break.
4. Wasted lots of ammo at weddings and funerals.
5. Tough to aim weapon while dressed in wife's burkha.
#4
The report will highlight the losses of interior minister Said Siam and around 50 of Hamas's top explosives experts as among the most significant.
They dont call these things Post Mortem reports for nuthin.
#5
1. The rank and file figured that, since all the big boys were hiding out, that was the best thing to do.
2. The Gaza/Egypt tunnels are not properly reinforced, and collapse on the dummies hiding in them when Israel bombs them.
3. "Spray and pray" doesn't work as well as trained targeting.
4. Israel figured out that Hamass was more interested in fighting Fatalh than fighting the Jooooos, and set them up.
5. You can't control ANYTHING unless you control the air.
6. The average Israeli has about ten times the training as the average Hamass troop, and they learn to use live ammo during training.
7. Hamass will not learn from its mistakes.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
01/26/2009 16:28
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#6
1) The Joooosss eventually get sick and tired of being rocketed.
2) When they do they will come and kick your ass
3) Hiding in another country and yelling "Go get 'em guys" does not constitute leadership.
4) Neither crapping your pants while crouching behind the women and kids.
#2
You want to restore the credit flow - restore integrity.
You fire the regulators who sat-by an did nothing to enforce margin and backing for trades because they were compromised just like Arthur Anderson was by Enron [familiarity breads contempt of the system].
You fire the regulators who put imagined paper growth over the integrity of the system if that meant a down turn in the markets.
You prosecute politicians who used their influence and friends to undermine sound fiscal practices for non-fiscal social programs.
Until you address these key failures, you can keep printing and pumping paper into the markets and they'll respond like a dead frog leg to an electric stimulus. You'll get twitches but no life in the creature.
#4
At some point you also have to address the unidirectional growth of government spending and the regulatory state. There are limits, if we've not reached them we will in a few yeas.
Going green was a cause she could really sink her teeth into.
The frantic passenger who bit a veteran driver's arm was upset that his bus wasn't a hybrid, he said Thursday. "She came on the bus, and she said she waited more than an hour for a hybrid," said MTA driver Peter Williams, 42. "I said, 'I'm not in control of what bus is assigned to me.'"
Williams, a dad of two who is in the Navy Reserves, plans to take a little time off after Wednesday's bizarre attack on an uptown M104 bus.
The woman, Shelia Bolar, 49, started hollering at Williams soon after she boarded the Broadway bus on the upper West Side. When her rant was done, she she grabbed his arm.
"Miss, don't touch me while I'm operating the bus," Williams warned Bolar.
At W. 79th St., Williams let passengers off and gestured to a dispatcher he called for help. "That's when she bit me. ... I couldn't believe it."
Bolar chomped through a jacket, a sweater and a thick shirt, causing a bruise and swelling but not breaking skin. "She bit through all that," said Williams, still shocked.
And then she fled - but cops nabbed her blocks away. Bolar, who faces assault charges was held without bail, pending a psychiatric exam.
Williams was released from St. Luke's Hospital and plans to return to work soon. "I hope it doesn't happen again," he said.
Police in Nigeria are holding a goat on suspicion of attempted armed robbery. Vigilantes took the black and white beast to the police saying it was an armed robber who had used black magic to transform himself into a goat to escape arrest after trying to steal a Mazda 323.
"The group of vigilante men came to report that while they were on patrol they saw some hoodlums attempting to rob a car. They pursued them. However one of them escaped while the other turned into a goat," Kwara state police spokesman Tunde Mohammed told Reuters by telephone.
"We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody. We cannot base our information on something mystical. It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat," he said.
Belief in witchcraft is widespread in parts of Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation. Residents came to the police station to see the goat, photographed in one national newspaper on its knees next to a pile of straw.
Further to this important story:
Police reform activists have condemned the "arrest", saying it highlights the low education levels of many Nigerian police officers. Nigeria's Vanguard newspaper has a picture of the goat and reports that police paraded it in front of journalists in the Kwara state capital Ilorin Thursday. But this was denied by national police spokesman Emmanuel Ojukwu.
"The vigilante group arrested the goat and took it to the police, then they told the media." The next morning journalists turned up demanding to see the goat, he said. "But of course goats can't commit crime."
The BBC's Andrew Walker in Abuja says communities often rely on ill-educated and badly prepared vigilante squads to fill the gaps where the police will not patrol at night. Innocent Chukwuma of the justice reform group the Cleen Foundation, told the BBC that many Nigerian police officers were poorly educated.
"There are officers who don't even have a secondary school education, and the police have a big job to do in finding these people and getting rid of them."
He said in the past political leaders had allowed the police to be filled with incompetent and in some cases criminal officers so they could be easily bought to protect their own criminal activities. Police have also been unable to stop vigilante squads from lynching suspects before they could investigate, he said.
#1
We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody. We cannot base our information on something mystical. It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat," he said.
Ah. So that's good ya hanging onto him then, chief. Wouldn't want the bastid to get away with it...
ROTHERA BASE, Antarctica (Reuters) - Once the "delicacies of the Antarctic," fresh seal brains, penguin eggs or grilled cormorant are off the menu at research bases where chefs rely on imported and often frozen food."You have to use what you've got in the store. Frozen stuff, tinned stuff and if you're really desperate the dried stuff," said Alan Sherwood, a widely praised chef at the British Rothera base on the Antarctic Peninsula. "We're now onto dried onions because we've run out," he said. "You can't just go out and buy some."
Rothera gets most of its supplies by ship twice a year -- in December and March -- with the occasional flight from Chile. Ya got my Cheese Whiz, boy?
The 1959 Antarctic Treaty sets aside the continent as a nature reserve devoted to peace and science and bases have over the years stopped eating fresh wildlife. Seals were shot at Rothera for dog food until 1994 when dogs were banned from Antarctica to protect the environment.
But a 1950s recipe book at the base run by the British Antarctic Survey gives an insight into life as it used to be, with staff making penguin egg omelettes or cooking seal hearts. "Seal brains ... I would consider one of the delicacies and luxuries of the Antarctic, and was enjoyed by most members of the base when I was chef," the unnamed author wrote.
In a chapter on seal brains, he listed recipes for fried seal brains, seal brains au gratin, brain fritters, seal brain omelette and savory seal brains on toast. The cook must be a man -- there were no British women in Antarctica at the time. He sounds like Bubba from Forest Gump...
He also said cormorants, or shags, are delicious. "My advice is if you see any around, take a ... rifle and knock a few off. It is a very meaty bird and one is enough for about six people." Ah, when men were men...
The author said he did not like penguin but that many also considered it a delicacy. Young penguins taste best, the book says. Some say it tastes like a fishy version of chicken. Now how did I know he was gonna say that?
Sherwood, aged 49, has giant freezers and stores with tonnes of supplies for the base which can have up to 100 people at a time. He and a colleague make three meals a day and mid-morning and mid-afternoon snacks known as "smoko." Why would you need a freezer in Antarctica?
Choices for lunch at the weekend included pea and ham soup, chicken with pesto, fish in batter, rice, chips, and a variety of salads. Sherwood has worked seven Antarctic summers and in between returns to England to a job as a caterer.
"You look out the window in the UK and you've got last night's empty wine bottles and black bags in a dumpster. Here you've got icebergs rolling by," he said of his view from the kitchen. The next big meals will be when Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and his wife Princess Maxima visit in February. More seal brains, your highness?
#5
A wise man (I think it might have been Jimmy Kimmel) said that the talent competition was proof positive that the Miss America pageant was adminstered by women - the theory being that if it was run by guys, the talent portion would involve nothing more than a trampoline and the eating of bananas.
And by the way - excuse a frequent lurker/occasional commenter's ignorance, but what the heck is the DS & TP?
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
01/26/2009 18:00
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Geez, you guys sure you're ready?
PARIS -- More than six years after openings its doors, the International Criminal Court in The Hague began its first trial Monday, as Thomas Lubanga, a former Congolese warlord, took his seat in the dock, facing a crowded court and public gallery. So...have they been "on the clock" for the last six years? My guess? Most definitely... Lubanga has nothing to worry about. Like Milosevic he'll live a long and happy life in a prison hotel suite at The Hague, and die peacefully in his sleep before a verdict is rendered ...
Mr. Lubanga, 48, once the leader of a powerful and violent militia, is accused of war crimes, including commandeering children under the age of 15 and sending them into war to maim and kill. He pleaded not guilty to the crimes, which prosecutors said occurred in 2002-2003 during ethnic fighting in the Ituri region of Eastern Congo.
Supporters of the court have hailed the long-awaited trial as a momentous step for the tribunal, created to try large-scale human rights violations, while critics contend it has been too long in coming. Mr. Lubanga was brought to the Hague almost three years ago. Now, both sides see the trial as a test case that will be closely watched by lawyers and human rights activists. Turf wars within the court, bitter legal squabbles and irritation among the trial judges had almost torpedoed the case. Last July, as the trial was about to start, judges put a halt to the proceedings, citing legal and strategic errors by the prosecution, and said Mr. Lubanga should be set free, though he was ultimately kept in custody. The judges said the prosecution's handling of evidence amounted to "wholesale and serious abuse" and ruled that at that point a fair trial was not possible. Yeah, sounds about right for something that starts with "International"..
Now that the judges have given their green light and errors have been redressed, Mr. Lubanga will be tried by three international judges -- from Britain, Costa Rica and Bolivia -- in a process that is expected to go on until the end of this year. Harrrrumph harrrumph harrrrumph...
Prosecutors will start their case by calling on more than 30 witnesses, nine of them young men and women who were themselves former child soldiers. See ya in two years with the verdict. If he don't die in the meantime...
#2
True! plus the locals make good money on car parking for the one million plus visitors annually who visit the hague!
wonder if court attendees can get out of paying parking fines if their meters run out? seeing as how they dont know how to keep within schedule, i bet theyll be handing out a few time violations to some activists?
#6
tu and DarthVader, while it sounds like an easy cheap shot to claim that there's the perverse incentive here of court staff and counsel being paid by the hour/week/month/year, I'll bet it's true.
Someone in a position to know WRT an African tribunal (prob. Rwanda, can't remember) said that this perverse incentive was clearly at work, as the court would grant delays and etc. on the slightest pretext and in response to almost any request.
Of course the Iraqi tribunal has not been without its blemishes - but they get the facts on the table, the defendants have complete free reign to argue their case (if any), and the court has shown as much regard for the nuances of individual defenses as it has for the undeniably huge pressure on it to produce guilty verdicts.
So what is the current management in DC gonna do about the ICC? I'd guess they'll keep it at arms' length, if only because the fear of being "soft" or careless with our military is (rightfully) acute.
FLOTUS's inaugural outfits sent designers to their drafting tables to design knockoffs and droves went to J.Crew to get those snazzy leather green gloves. But not everyone is happy with her choices. The Black Artists Association is chiding FLOTUS for not choosing any African-American designers.
They will send a letter to FLOTUS's office and appeal to her to include items from black designers in her wardrobe. BAA Cofounder Amnau Eele, who was a former runway model told Women's Wear Daily:
"It's fine and good if you want to be all 'Kumbaya' and 'We Are the World' by representing all different countries. But if you are going to have Isabel Toledo do the inauguration dress, and Jason Wu do the evening gown, why not have Kevan Hall, B Michael, Stephen Burrows or any of the other black designers do something too?"
Wu didn't find out Michelle O. was wearing his dress until he saw her on television Tuesday night. And aides said FLOTUS didn't even decide until hours before her big night.
#2
I had a feeling that we were going to have to listen to an awful lot of this b.s. for the next few (4) years. From Reich pontificating about stimulus not going to 'White Male Construction Workers' to this senseless drivel, the great unifier doesn't really look like he's going to let his single biggest asset (the color of his skin) get swept under the carpet.
#9
LOL - the angry ankle-biting outrage groups can't wait to get their agenda in front of people who really just pretended interest to get elected. It's gonna be a long four years for them. I feel a tingle
/Chrissy
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/26/2009 19:05
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#11
when are african american women gonna learn too cross their legs like ladies and not stand like that in photos. that stance must have come from a night of fisting
#13
she should wear African-American designed clothes, because, I am sure they are all made and manufactured here in the states by African-american workers and not some foreign place like Nicaragua, Pakistan or Malaysia...
#15
Although Rabids coments may not be apprporiate, It was a Relationship Expert who raved about the Obama family and there public display of the "fist bump". Albeit the expert put it more in terms of the "rabid one".
Funny but definately inappropriate.
Posted by: Herman Angulet7719 ||
01/26/2009 23:02
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U.S. officials say Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to name a special envoy for climate change. Clinton has picked Todd Stern, a former White House assistant who was the chief U.S. negotiator at the Kyoto Protocol talks in her husband's administration, the officials said Monday. They spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of a planned midday State Department ceremony where Clinton will announce the appointment.
Stern served in the Clinton administration from 1993 to 2001, first in the White House, where he worked on the Kyoto Protocol and coordinated the president's Initiative on Global Climate Change and then at Treasury, where he was a senior adviser to the secretary.
#3
Want to cut carbon emissions. First decide that large areas of Nevada, Utah and Arizona that are federal land would make great solar farms. Screw the tortises. Second if you are gonna spend a bunch of money why not spend some of it on real energy research. Its called FUSION. And not just the ITER approach embraced by the DOE. Throw some at the other approaches like Magnetized Target Fusion or Bussard's Polywell approach. If it doesn't work, well we piss more money up ropes on bullshit than this and nobody (well pracicaally nobody) seems to care
BRITAIN'S Sky News television channel has joined the BBC in refusing to broadcast a Gaza charity appeal, saying it risked the network's objectivity.
The BBC's refusal to air the appeal has further angered pro-Palestinian campaigners who believe the broadcaster was biased towards Israel in its coverage of the Gaza conflict.
But Sky News, the BBC's only domestic rival as a 24-hour television news channel, said that it too felt it could not risk airing the appeal. John Ryley, head of Sky News, said: "The conflict in Gaza forms part of one of the most challenging and contentious stories for any news organisation to cover.
"Our commitment as journalists is to cover all sides of that story with uncompromising objectivity."
The appeal is by the Disasters Emergency Committee, an umbrella group of 13 charities including Oxfam and the British Red Cross, which kicks in with coordinated fundraising after disasters such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Adrian Wells, Sky News's head of foreign news, said on the channel: "Passions are raised on this story ... and that is part of the backdrop of why we've made the decision we've made."
"We have to, as an international channel, focus on our primary role and that is to report the story and not become the story. There is no question about Sky's commitment to reporting the region."
ITV, Channel 4 and Five, Britain's three other terrestrial television broadcasters beside the BBC, have all aired the appeal.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the leader of the world's Anglicans, has joined government ministers, more than 11,000 viewers and more than 50 lawmakers in calling for the BBC to broadcast the appeal.
#1
Archbishop Wormtongue wants to give money to Hamas? I know we're supposed to love our enemies but I never thought that meant enabling them to commit acts of terrorism.
BRITISH Prime Minister Gordon Brown says that the current financial crisis should be viewed as an opportunity to create a "new global order", ahead of a week of meetings with world leaders. Speaking in London, Mr Brown - due to meet the leaders of Japan, South Korea and China in the next seven days - renewed a warning against protectionism, urging countries to instead help set "new rules for this new global order".
Mr Brown, who will also meet the president of the World Bank, cautioned that if a consensus was not built supporting globalisation, "all our prosperities" would be imperiled. He has previously argued for stronger international co-operation better to regulate financial institutions, and said on Monday that he wanted to work towards better cross-border regulation at a summit of the Group of 20 industrialised and developing countries in London in April.
His speech came just days after official data confirmed Britain was in its first recession - defined as two quarters running of negative economic growth - since 1991.
"We face a choice. We could allow this crisis to start a retreat from globalisation," Mr Brown said in his speech. "As some want, we could close our markets - for capital, financial services, trade and for labour - and reduce the risks of globalisation, but that would reduce global growth, deny us the benefits of global trade, and confine millions to global poverty.
"Or we could view the threats and challenges we face today as the difficult birth pangs of a new global order, and our task now as nothing less than making the transition through a new internationalism to the benefits of an expanding global economy, not muddling through as pessimists but making the necessary adjustment to a better future and setting new rules for this new global order."
Mr Brown's spokesman Michael Ellam said that the premier would meet South Korean Prime Minister Han Seung-Soo and Japanese premier Taro Aso, as well as World Bank chief Robert Zoellick at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos on Friday.
He is also set to meet Chinese premier Wen Jiabao in London later this week.
Mr Brown's Downing Street office said he would discuss with them "how we can best work internationally on financial reform, economic expansion and the creation of jobs in new sectors such as the environment".
#3
...not muddling through as pessimists but making the necessary adjustment to a better future and setting new rules for this new global order...
Sometimes I have to wonder if all this mortgage meltdown/financial crisis/recession is just the globalists breaking a few eggs to make an omelette. As long as Gordo and others of his ilk are in the kitchen I just can't help being pessimistic.
#6
Sometimes I have to wonder if all this mortgage meltdown/financial crisis/recession is just the globalists breaking a few eggs to make an omelette.
You ain't close to being the first one to think this. At first I thought maybe it was all coincidental, but the fact that so many of the architects of the collapse *cough*Bawney Fwank and Chris Dodd*cough* continue to hold onto power and craft "solutions" to the disaster they created has made me conclude that all of this was carefully and patiently planned.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
01/26/2009 18:14
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#7
The main problem is that US or US-Western domination of said OWG-NWO is NOT yet assured despite US-led successes around the world agz Radical Islam. In addition, the US per se will NOT be immune from any of the gross or specific this econ crisis.
ILLINOIS Governor Rod Blagojevich, charged with trying to sell the US Senate seat formerly held by President Barack Obama, considered offering it to talk show star Oprah Winfrey.
Blagojevich said on ABC's Good Morning America that a friend of his had suggested asking Winfrey to fill Obama's seat.
"She seemed to be someone who had helped Barack Obama in a significant way become president," Blagojevich said. "She was obviously someone with a much broader bully pulpit than other senators."
But he said he decided that the talk show queen, one of the richest women in America, was unlikely to accept the offer.
"She probably wouldn't take it, and then ... if you offered it to her, how would you do it in a way it didn't look like it was some gimmick and embarrass her?"
Blagojevich is doing the interview circuit and said he will not attend today's impeachment trial in the state Senate which could remove him from office.
#4
Blagojevich said on ABC's Good Morning America that a friend of his
apparently, he's a dog owner
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/26/2009 19:28
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#5
so he didn't offer it to her only because he felt she wouldn't accept?! Putting how it would look to the public ahead of how it would effect the public?
Nothing to do with if she's qualified or not.
unphuckingbelievable.
Posted by: Jan ||
01/26/2009 20:37
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#6
Rush has often said he wouldn't run for public office because he couldn't stand the pay cut. Now wouldn't it be ironic if 0bama and the Dims should succeed with reviving the "Fairness" doctrine and the out-of-work talk show host runs for an open senate seat and wins? Too funny.
FILTHY ZIONIST BEASTS!!!
In addition to infantry, armor and intelligence units, the Israel Defense Forces has also deployed eight Eland antelope to further secure Israel's tense northern border against Hezbollah. The antelope have been stationed in the zone between the security fence and the international border to clear problematic foliage that distorts views of the Lebanese side and within which Hezbollah guerillas could hide.
The animals, each weighing in at over 500 kilograms, are known for their sharp incisors and fondness for eating vegetation. Hailing from eastern Africa, the animals were first brought to Israel more than 30 years ago as part of a project to raise them at local zoos before sending them to Europe.
Israel's defense establishment has apparently caught onto the beasts' impressive ability to quickly chew through large quantities, as well as the low cost of looking after them and their environmental-friendliness.
Hagai Ilan, of the Israel Nature and National Parks Protection Authority, said the ability of the antelope was already known but it took around a decade until extra antelope were produced in captivity for the idea to come up to bring them to IDF bases to clear the weeds that grow every two years. "They eat huge quantities of weeds, they are the D9 of weeds," Ilan said, referring to the massive bulldozers the IDF uses to clear enemy territory. "They clean problematic areas, open trails and a view and prevent fires."
This is not the first time that the IDF has augmented its forces with animals. In addition to the army's elite canine unit, Oketz, IDF infantry units have also used llamas to transport supplies into Lebanon.
#1
Plus if the Paleo nuts blow these up, PETA and other assorted leftists will for once possibly oppose the paleos. (Jews?...OK, elands?...now this is war!)
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2009 12:46
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#6
Quite civilized actually.
Recipes » Eland steak with apples Serves four.
Take
0.75 kg eland steak, 2 cooking apples,
20 gr brown sugar, 25 gr butter,
olive oil, 25 ml lime juice,
a dash of brown rum, and freshly ground black pepper.
Peel and slice the apples.
Sprinkle the slices of apple with brown sugar, then place them in a pan.
Gently soften them in butter.
Keep the apples warm while the steaks are seasoned and fried until pink.
Once they are pink, take the eland steaks out of the pan and keep them warm. In the meantime cool the pan with lime juice and rum.
This sauce is first poured onto the plate.
The meat is then carefully arranged on the sauce and covered with slices of apple.
Delicious potato croquettes are served with this.
During my exclusive interview with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, I asked her about some of the more controversial spending in the stimulus package, including hundreds of millions to expand family planning services, and $600 million in coupons to help people to convert to digital television. Birth control and television related
"The family planning services reduce cost," Pelosi said, "One of the elements of this package is assistance to the states. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those - one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government."
"So no apologies for that?" I asked her.
"No apologies. No," Pelosi said. "And this is a, to stimulate the economy, is an economic recovery package and as we put it forth we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy. Food stamps, unemployment insurance, some of the initiatives you just mentioned. Believe it or not, they're the right thing to do but they also stimulate the economy."
On the $600 million to assist with the conversion to digital television, Pelosi argued for the spending -- but also said it might be taken out of the bill.
"Well, it's important for these people," Pelosi said, "This is a change in our country. If there - if it doesn't meet that test it will not end up in the bill at the end of the day. We are just beginning the process. It is timely. The senator talked about timeliness of this. And it helps meet the needs of the American people. But again, we have begun the process. We believe that what is in there, again, meets the test of growing the economy, creating jobs. Sort of a time release. Immediately creating jobs and then sustaining the job growth over time."
#1
Pelosi Says Birth Control Good for Economy - How about immigration control?
Babies [dead or alive] can't vote for another 17+ years, they can get the illegals on the rolls before the next election cycle. When you can't vote, you're disposable dispensable.
#4
Anyone who ever had a baby knows how much consumer spending they generate, from well before they are born. But Pelosi only cares about costs to Government.
#5
It's as clear a demonstration of how the child-hating wing of the Democratic party thinks as any. This is the Planned Parenthood, NARAL, abortion 'rights' part of the party taken to its illogical conclusion.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/26/2009 12:54
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#6
Ever read Steyn's book "America Alone". We need more westerners to have babies, not less. A culture that does not create the next generation does not last very long.
And yes, anyone who has had a baby knows that they create a large amount of economic activity.
#8
Those who want babies will continue to have them, and it will be our children running things in a generation. I've no problem if they continue to have no babies at all.
#9
I really wish the bishop of San Francisco had the stones to excommunicate "Catholic" Pelosi. She has openly supported abortion in defiance of clear and constant Church teaching.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
01/26/2009 17:08
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#10
I thought the Stimulus Package had provision for something like $300,000 worth of condoms. When I heard that it convinced me they are trying to screw us all.
#11
Regarding the illegals, we just need to change the law on the books regarding ANCHOR BABIES! That would stop alot of the costs right there.
Illegals get everything for free, no co-pays or anything, citizens have to pay through the nose.
Build the fence!
Posted by: Jan ||
01/26/2009 20:49
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#2
The spending portion of the stimulus, in short, isn't really about the economy. It's about promoting long-time Democratic policy goals
This would be humorous if it wasnt so pathetically obvious. The Democratic front men of this ruse are struggling like spoiled children to explain why they arent willing to go through the normal appropriations process for their pet boondoggles. Their rationale is that a massive stimulus is quickly needed but it must include long-term investments. Kind of like your kids begging for a bump in their allowance because eventually you will have to pay for their college tuition.
#4
Some of the smarter Obama people tried to get the word "stimulus" to be replaced by "long term recovery" in all public statements. However, too many people had already bought the 'stimulus' line (or esle didn't understand the diff).
Five Iranian parliament members intend to visit the Gaza Strip to congratulate the Palestinians on their resistance against the "Zionist offensive." this is meant to be a slap at Egypt and the Saudis
The Iranian lawmakers will tour parts of Gaza to evaluate the damage sustained during Israel's three-week-long Operation cast Lead. Iranian parliament member Mahmoud Ahmadi said the group also plans to meet with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, whom Ahmadi called "the legitimate Prime Minister of Palestine." and this is to give the finger to Abbas, the UN and the EU
Another lawmaker said Tehran's foreign ministry is trying to expedite the visa process, so they can enter Gaza via Egypt.
#7
They'd have to get permission from Israel or Egypt to go through a border crossing, wouldn't they? That's not something I'd give great odds for success.
MOUNT CARMEL -- Mount Carmel police arrested a married couple Sunday accused in the early morning robbery of a pizza deliveryman who was clubbed repeatedly with an 18-inch long piece of firewood. What, they couldn't afford a baseball bat?
The husband allegedly fled the scene with pizza, hot wings and cheese bread but no cash. It was the cheese bread that did it.
Police believe the wife, Mary Elizabeth Bond, 25, called a pizza delivery order from Papa John's around midnight to be delivered to 925 Hermitage Drive, Mount Carmel, where she and her husband had been staying for the past few days. Smart. Call him to your house and then try to rob him. Must be alcohol involved. Or just plain stupidity.
The deliveryman, David Bledsoe, reportedly arrived at the residence at 12:36 a.m. with about $37 worth of food. It's a trap!
As Mrs. Bond allegedly beckoned Bledsoe up the driveway toward the house, "Pssst! Hey, sailor!"
her husband, Bradley Allen Bond, 23, allegedly came from around the corner of the house and struck Bledsoe in the head with the wooden club. "Lady, I ain't a sailor... [Conk!]" From the picture of her I wouldn't get within a stone's throw. this is a warning.
MCPD Officer Ken Lunsford told the Times-News Mr. Bond allegedly demanded cash "Gimme yer dough!"
while striking Bledsoe repeatedly with the club, breaking the club three times in the process. Show me the Money! BAp! I don't have any! Bap. Then gimmie the Cheese Bread!
During the beating Bledsoe reportedly pulled out a pocket knife, "Look out! He's got a knife!"
prompting Mr. Bond to flee with the food. "Keds, don't fail me now!"
Bledsoe then made his way back to his car and called his wife, who called 911 to report the robbery. What, he couldn't remember the number? After being conked repeatedly on the nut with a chunk of firewood?
As Bledsoe was going back to his car, Mrs. Bond allegedly ordered her husband to try to grab Bledsoe's cell phone, "Grab his cell phone, Bradley!"
"But he's got a knife!"
"Well, you got cord wood! Use it!"
but the victim was able to get to his car and drive away. "I'm outta here!" [Screech!]
"When I arrived at the scene I talked to Mary Elizabeth Bond, and talked to the victim, and I determined that she was probably involved," Lunsford said. "What was yer first clue?"
"She's just eaten an entire pizza and she was starting on the Buffler wings."
"She finally admitted she'd been involved, that her husband came up with the idea they were going to rob a pizza delivery guy." What could possibly go wrong?
The search continued for Bradley Bond throughout Sunday morning. The couple have no known permanent address, but police learned that Mr. Bond is related to the family that owns 925 Hermitage Drive and the couple had been staying there a few days. "Maw, kin we stay with youse fer a few days?"
"Who're you?"
"Bradley."
"Thought I told you to git out and never come back?"
During the search Sunday morning police interviewed other occupants of the house who said Bradley Bond indicated he "would not be taken alive." Come and get me, ya Dirty Coppers! You'll never get the Cheese Bread back! I ate it!
Around 1:30 p.m. Sunday police received an anonymous tip that Mr. Bond was back at 925 Hermitage Drive. Officers surrounded the house, "Give up, Bradley! We got da place surrounded!"
and when Mr. Bond attempted to leave through the back door he was met by Officer Chris Jones who ordered him to stop and show his hands. "Goin' someplace, Bradley? Stick 'em up!"
Mr. Bond then retreated back into the house where he was intercepted by other officers in the kitchen. So much fer not being taken alive. Piker!
MCPD Assistant Chief Mike Campbell said Mr. Bond apparently attempted "suicide by cop" as he reached into a cutlery drawer to grab a knife in the presence of officers with their guns drawn. Mr. Bond was unable to find a knife, however, and was tackled and taken into custody, Campbell said. Mary! Where the hell are the knives? Whatta ya mean we ain't got none? "Look out! He's got a... ummm... cheese grater."
Police later learned that Mr. Bond was wanted in Carter County and Virginia, although the specific charges weren't available. "There ain't no law against bein' a dumbass, y'understand. But if we think hard enough we'll come up with somethin'."
Mr. Bond reportedly told police he hatched the robbery scheme to raise enough money to get away to New Jersey to avoid the arrest warrants. Mr. Bond also reportedly told police he was willing to die because he "was tired of running." New Joisey? I been runnin' all muh life, an' it's time to quit.
Lunsford said Bledsoe had less than $20 on his person when the robbery was attempted. Bledsoe was treated at the Indian Path Medical Center emergency room for a head injury. The stolen food was not found. Try a stomach pump.
Bradley Bond was charged with especially aggravated robbery, resisting arrest and fugitive from justice and remained held in the Hawkins County Jail on Sunday night on $20,000 bond. Mary Elizabeth Bond was charged with especially aggravated robbery and was being held without bond. Life in East Tennessee
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
01/26/2009
07:12 ||
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#1
Idgits. Shoulda called his Congresscritter to come on down to do it. Then its call the 2009 Reelection and Redistribution Stimulus Package, not common robbery. Who needs a long piece of firewood when reprocessed as paper its far more effective in separating the working folk from their money to support the needy.
Vulnerabilities along the Canadian border are one of more than a half-dozen priorities identified by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano during her first week, along with cybersecurity and ensuring that federal officials are properly communicating with state and local officials.
Miss Napolitano asked for an oral report by Feb. 10 on current vulnerabilities, the overall strategy to reduce such, a budget and time frame for improving security, and the level of risk that will remain once the programs are completed.
Citing the increasingly sophisticated number of threats to cyberspace, Miss Napolitano asked Friday for a second oral report Feb. 3 on Homeland Security's responsibility for protecting government and private-sector domains, as well as the current relationships with the departments of Defense, Treasury and Energy, and the National Security Agency.
On her first day at the helm of the fledgling agency, less than 24 hours after Barack Obama took the presidential oath of office, the former Arizona governor issued directives to brief her in the coming weeks on state and local intelligence sharing, critical infrastructure protection, risk analysis, state, local and tribal integration, and transportation security.
Miss Napolitano spent her first week meeting with top agency officials. She has asked some - including Deputy Secretary Paul A. Schneider, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner W. Ralph Basham and Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen - to stay on during the transition period. Separately, Miss Napolitano announced that Mr. Obama will nominate U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Jane Holl Lute to serve as deputy secretary, and she has appointed two of her Arizona aides to Homeland Security posts - Noah Kroloff as chief of staff for policy and Jan Lesher as chief of staff for operations.
During her confirmation hearing with the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Miss Napolitano said she would increase prosecutions of businesses that hire illegal workers.
#2
WND > THE REAL REASON FOR BIG BAILOUTS. Newly former POTUS Dubya may and intended only the bailout of the private sector, but new POTUS OBAMA intends to BAILOUT THE GOVT + TRANSFORM THE US GOVT. INTO THE SOLE DOMINATING ENTITY IN AMERICAN LIFE - DITTO FOR THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY VEE ALL OTHER US POL PARTIES???
Why stop at birth control? Killing babies is like drilling in Alaska. We won't see the benefits for years. Lets go for a pandemic. That way we could get rid of all the nasty surplus population quickly. Heck, it might even help the cause of the Single Payer medical system. Win/Win if there ever was one.
#7
Donks are a death cult. This goes hand in hand with the executive order that Obama signed last week, just days after taking office, to restore federal money to international groups that perform abortions or provide abortion information. That order reverses an order Bush signed when he took office to ban funding these groups. That's just one of the reasons I ended up holding my nose and voting for McCain.
#8
If the Catholic Church had any balls (and I say this as a Catholic) it would Excommunicate her ass. But then again, they just de-ex-communicated an holocaust denying troofer bishop. The Church is becoming a disgrace and is quickly losing all moral authority it may have once held.
As for the comments, who would want to bring a child into this world the democrats are building? I worry about my two sons.
#12
Donks are not only a death cult, but honestly, they practice human sacrifice. They sacrifice the innocent, both through abortion and through failure to punish killers and murderers of all kinds.
What makes it different than simple neglect though is the fact they CELEBRATE this so much. Abortions make them happy. It's a badge of honor to them. I don't really see how it can be considered anything else.
#13
AllahHateMe, as a fellow Catholic, I fully agree with the first sentence. The others are subject to discussion.
The Catholic Church has long preached about the evil of abortion, despite what San Fran Nan claims. The teaching is clear and unequivocal: abortion is murder.
It is possible to disagree with some Church teachings and still be considered Catholic. IMHO, abortion is not one of them.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
01/26/2009 17:12
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#14
For the liberals, "Family Planning" = "Birth Control" = Abortion. Abortion = dismemberment of the infant while alive through suction or cutting to pieces, burning the skin of the infant while still alive until it dies, then cutting it to pieces, or delivering it live and suctioning it's brains out while it's still alive . . . DEMS = Pro Family Planning = Pro Abortion. Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in the country. Follow the money.
#15
I don't think most people wanna think about it in that much detail, ex-lib. My experience is they will shout you down if you even start trying to explain it that way and at that point any further rational discussion is impossible. They really, seriously don't wanna hear it. They just want their choice.
#17
Demographics matter. Pelosi is simply playing to her Reconquista constituents. The Reconquista crowd ignore Planned Parenthood while cheering on liberals and the entitlement crowd as they abort themselves out of California.
#19
DMFD: Nah, a post-partum abortion will do just fine. Very similar to the partial birth abortions she defends so strenuously, but in her case more cutting and bigger buckets.
#21
if she seriously thinks abortion is a form of contraception - she's way loonier than I ever thought - the article doesn't exactly say. If she's just saying more people need to use condoms & the pill, instead of just having un-protected sex and having kids that society will eventually pay the bill for etc, I'd agree w/that.
#22
educated folks generally use birth control, uneducated folks don't. This is nothing new.
To have welfare cover for care of the first one or two babies is one thing, but I feel it should be cut off after the second child. I don't have the statistics, but it seems that unwed, uneducated mother's are giving birth to 4, 5 and sometimes 8 kids, all needing assistance. The fathers often are not involved and if they were are on welfare as well.
Adoption is a good option, but I don't see it used very often, even by very young girls that haven't finished school yet. Instead of adopting the child out so they can finish their education, they drop out and our system helps them find housing and pay for their kid for 18 years.
Often having more kids.
Compare this scenario to those that work hard and have to drop their kids off at day care so they can go to work. We're paying for the uneducated to stay home and sit on their butt, and they don't do a very good job at raising their kids often times.
In addition to this, the entitlements that folks are demanding is starting to really get to me. We need to revamp our laws to encourage folks to be productive and contribute to society, not expect something for nothing.
With these recent cutbacks, instead of cutting back some or all of the free stuff we give out to patients, not even talking about how most of the hospital bill is paid in full by you got it our tax dollars, they are cutting back on staff ratios, (nurses getting more patients) This is the front line of patient care. Pretty stupid if you ask me.
Sorry, rant off, Jan
Posted by: Jan ||
01/26/2009 20:28
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#23
Get to the core issue.
She, and other libs, prefer cash over life. Its all there in what she said. We cannot afford... therefore abort (murder) babies to cut costs.
What a vile evil bunch of lefty thugs we now have in power.
Three people have been killed in Thailand's Muslim-majority south, police have said, including two terrorists separatist insurgents who died in a shoot-out with authorities.
Five terrorists militants in a pick-up truck opened fire on a police checkpoint in Narathiwat province near the Malaysian border on Sunday afternoon (local time), authorities said, injuring the three policemen on duty. The wounded officers managed to return fire, killing two of their attackers.
Also Sunday, a man was killed after being shot by suspected separatists who opened fire on him and his wife as they travelled to work at a rubber factory in Narathiwat. The man died in hospital, while the woman remains in a serious condition.
#2
The Thais should just go Sri Lankan on these "separatists". Unfortunately, their leadership seems to have more in common with Israel's. That is, maintaining a soft-touch due to fear of world opinion re: "aggression" against Muslims.
#3
Too many of Thailand's leaders are Buddhists, who abhor violence. They really need to build a division of just upland tribal folk (mostly animists), equip them and turn them loose on the lower three provinces. The terrorists will never know what hit them.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
01/26/2009 12:51
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President Barack Obama's pledge to seek a worldwide ban on weapons in space marks a dramatic shift in U.S. policy while posing the tricky issue of defining whether a satellite can be a weapon.
Moments after Obama's inauguration last week, the White House website was updated to include policy statements on a range of issues, including a pledge to restore U.S. leadership on space issues and seek a worldwide ban on weapons that interfere with military and commercial satellites.
It also promised to look at threats to U.S. satellites, contingency plans to keep information flowing from them, and what steps are needed to protect spacecraft against attack.
The issue is being closely watched by Lockheed Martin Corp, Boeing Co, Northrop Grumman Corp, the biggest U.S. defense contractors, and other companies involved in military and civilian space contracts.
Watchdog groups and even some defense officials welcomed the statement, which echoed Obama's campaign promises, but said it would take time to hammer out a comprehensive new strategy.
Enacting a global ban on space weapons could prove even harder.
For instance, it was difficult to define exactly what constituted a "weapon" because even seemingly harmless weather tracking satellites could be used to slam into and disable other satellites, said two U.S. officials involved in the area who were not authorized to speak publicly.
Michael Krepon, co-founder of the private Henry L. Stimson think tank on space, cited recent reports that the Pentagon was using two smaller satellites launched in 2006 to fly near a dead missile-warning satellite and investigate what happened. The Defense Support Program satellite, DSP-23, built by Northrop, failed on orbit in mid-September.
"This incident clarified how important it is to have rules of the road for technologies that could have many different applications," Krepon said. "There are lots of benign reasons to have a closer look at an object in space. But we all know that when satellites make close passes they could also do things that are not benign."
Two years ago, China used a missile to destroy one of its own satellites in a test that raised worries about a new arms race in space. The incident may have created thousands of pieces of debris. Last year, the United States also destroyed one of its own satellites, saying its toxic fuel tank could pose a danger if it fell to Earth.
#2
Well, guess I'd better finish that Death Star soon...
Posted by: Darth Vader ||
01/26/2009 8:05
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#3
That'll stop the asteroids. I guess its Rube Goldberg back ups of installing solar sails or ion engines early enough to deviate the orbit. Not. Yep, sure we'll have at least 10 years notice to get it all together.
#4
but said it would take time to hammer out a comprehensive new strategy.
Whether its been troop reduction in Iraq, GITMO closure, or interrogation methods - everything weve seen from Obama thus far has been all sizzle and no steak. If even the rubes on the progressive left can recognize the giant loopholes in the fulfillment of his campaign promises you can bet the USs international adversaries are able to distinguish the reek of bullshit in his symbolic actions.
#8
Whether it's been troop reduction in Iraq, GITMO closure, or interrogation methods - everything we've seen from Obama thus far has been all sizzle and no steak.
The conservative party line is that Obama is too scared or too moderate in reality to indulge in a leftist binge. I think he's just getting started on his job and needs to figure out how to get things done before anything can happen. And the media will cover for him every step of the way.
#12
When the leper messiah and his crew fail in the arena of "fixing the economy" (and they WILL fail), they'll need other things to pursue in order to project an image that they are actually accomplishing something.
That's when they'll go after Catholic and other hospitals that won't perform abortions, ram unions down our throats, push a greenred environmental agenda, ban home schooling and mandate a cultural marxist high school history curriculum, try to confiscate firearms, etc.
I figure 12-16 months, although I will concede it could be earlier.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
01/26/2009 11:26
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#13
I swear to the hypothetical Almighty, if that mirror-ball bastard loses the high ground to the Chinese, there's no hole deep enough to hide his craven ass.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
01/26/2009 11:43
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#14
"ban home schooling"
as info, theres a whole bunch of hippie type leftie home schoolers. I don't think he wants to alienate them. And the teachers unions dont care as much about that as about vouchers.
#17
Part of the problem is defining what exactly is a weapon and where it enters into the space ban. Are earth based interceptors a "Space Weapon"? Ground lasers? Things which can "accidentally" wander into the path of another object?
Either way, it is a hell of a lot easier to say it than do it and getting other nations to play along is almost downright impossible. Whoever holds the high ground has a better chance of winning a war and space is the ultimate high ground.
But thoughts of broken eggs being necessary for omelets come to mind.
Agree on vouchers. Teachers unions are compsoed largely of people who worship at the altar of perfect income security, vouchers threaten that, so they are opposed.
Ceding space to other nations would be a huge mistake. It is our future - perhaps not today or next week, but at some point. If you believe that America's memeset is the one to send out to the stars, you are obliged to defend our supremacy in space.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
01/26/2009 13:06
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#19
Why not ban weapons in Gaza, the West Bank, and southern Lebanon as well? I'm sure our enemies will abide by our ban.... How about we ban nuclear development in North Korea and Iran?
This is just plain stupid. There _will_ be weapons in space. Either we will put them there or our enemies (China, Russia, etc...) will - they are not quite as stupid as that.
#20
To quote from a Tom Clancy novel: Law without force is impotent. Bans do not work without enforcement. How do you enforce a ban on space weapons without having space weapons? Leftist lunacy drives me bonkers.
#21
I just want to point out that my desired High Energy Directed Microwave Emitters would not be space weapons. They would be signaling devices for people who were previously unaware that they are in fact....dead. And well done.
And they would also be merely devices made to amuse and keep me from being bored.
#24
Wonder what bambi thinks about the gun on the international space station? Ever since the early days of the soviet space program russian space capsules have packed a firearm.
#26
Lest we fergit, NET POSTERS > many argue or believe that any and all Muslim States have the right to NUCLEAR ENERGY, NUCLEAR WEAPONS, + ADVANCED MILTECHS INCLUDING BALLISTIC MISSLES.
#28
bambi's either very stupid or a very naive (or both). This is one subject that should never even be brought up. Continue research, continue testing, gain & maintain an advantage. And, keep it quiet.
#29
he's a preening pile of bullshit who's found that facts, realities, and the actual responsibilities of the Presidency have rendered most of his empty-suit promises inoperative. Now he's grasping for fig leaves to soothe the easily-led. Check the hands vs lips and then gut him publicly if he follows through
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/26/2009 20:36
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h/t Jawa Report. this is a little more than creepy. On Amazon (link) there is a little blue book on sale with the following description. Its temporarily out of stock.
I'm sorry but no mere human deserves this much adoration. Particulary someone who hasn't done anything. Product Description
Printed in a size that easily fits into pocket or purse, this book is an anthology of quotations borrowed from Barack Obama's speeches and writings. POCKET OBAMA serves as a reminder of the amazing power of oratory and the remarkable ability of this man to move people with his words. His superb and captivating oratory style has earned comparisons to John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and this collection presents words that catapulted his remarkable rise to the American Presidency. Includes themes of democracy, politics, war, terrorism, race, community, jurisprudence, faith, personal responsibility, national identity, and above all, his hoped-for vision of a new America. This book is truly a primer for readers who want to examine the substance of his thought and reflect on the next great chapter in the American story. It is an unofficial requirement for every citizen to own, to read, and to carry this book at all times. That last sentence might lead one to believe that the book is some sort of joke. But this _is_ amazon and this was found by going to amazon's site and searching for 'Pocket Obama'.
#2
Yes, going through amazon, it seems to be a straight spoof; possibly, the book is on backorder because, well, it's not obvious it's a spoof, and obamauts are buying it to find guidance. Now, THAT would be funny, squared spoof.
Posted by: ed ||
01/26/2009 7:07
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#5
Quite similar to the lava lamp, plates, etc. Entirely disguting, but it's not what's written, said or appears on the telly that bothers me. Of greater concern is what's in the minds of the people who brought him to power.
COLOMBO (AFP) Sri Lankan government troops were Monday pushing into the last pockets of jungle still held by Tamil Tigers after the capture of the rebels' last urban stronghold and military headquarters. Soldiers on Sunday overran Mullaittivu, a northeastern coastal lagoon town that was the Tigers' main base for more than a decade, the island's army chief announced in a televised address to the nation.
The Tigers' latest setback follows the loss three weeks ago of their political capital of Kilinochchi, where they had the trappings of a separate state with their own police, courts and a bank.
Army chief Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka said the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) now controlled just a "small strip" of land in the northeast and were completely cornered. "We have cleared 95 percent of the work (to defeat the Tigers)," Fonseka said, adding the island's government -- which abandoned a Norwegian-brokered truce a year ago -- was now on the verge of winning one of Asia's longest-running civil wars after a massive ground, sea and air campaign against the rebels. "The end of terrorism is near and we will definitely win," he said.
There has been no comment from the rebels, and there is no way of confirming any of the claims as independent journalists are barred from travelling to the conflict zone. Aid agencies and human rights workers are also barred from areas where the Sri Lanka military is active.
The big question now is whether LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran -- who has been leading a separatist war against Sri Lanka's ethnic Sinhalese majority since 1972 -- is even still on the island. What is also unclear is whether the LTTE command structure is still intact, and whether the rebels' can survive the loss of their mini-state and return to fighting a guerrilla war from hidden jungle bases.
Army chief Fonseka said last week that Prabhakaran, 54, may already have escaped by sea. Authorities in nearby India as well as Malaysia have said they were on the look out for the rebel leader. The rebel chief is seen as having no safe havens overseas.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/26/2009
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#1
"There has been no comment from the rebels, and there is no way of confirming any of the claims as independent journalists are barred from travelling to the conflict zone. Aid agencies and human rights workers are also barred from areas where the Sri Lanka military is active."
And fist-shaking condemnation by socialist Europeans, Arabs, and leftist liberal idiots of all stripes??? [::crickets chirping::]
Compare/contrast with Israel. Anti-semitism, anyone? How about news-whores breathlessly waiting for Obama to weigh in? Urgent calls to stop the vicious cycle of violence? Don't the Lankans know fighting terrorists only makes them stronger? It's a lost cause! The military CAN'T win!!!
OH, TEH SUFFERING. TEH HUMANITY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
RED THINGY -- WHERE R U??????
A long article that fleshes out the stories we've been reading.
Every night around 8 o'clock, the terrified residents of Swat, a lush and picturesque valley a hundred miles from three of Pakistan's most important cities, crowd around their radios. They know that failure to listen and learn might lead to a lashing - or a beheading. Using a portable radio transmitter, a local Taliban leader, Shah Doran, on most nights outlines newly proscribed "un-Islamic" activities in Swat, like selling DVDs, watching cable television, singing and dancing, criticizing the Taliban, shaving beards and allowing girls to attend school. He also reveals names of people the Taliban have recently killed for violating their decrees - and those they plan to kill.
"They control everything through the radio," said one Swat resident, who declined to give his name for fear the Taliban might kill him. "Everyone waits for the broadcast." Being named in one of the nightly radio broadcasts often leaves just two options: fleeing Swat, or turning up headless and dumped in a village square.
International attention remains fixed on the Taliban's hold on Pakistan's semiautonomous tribal areas, from where they carry out attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan. But for Pakistan, the loss of the Swat Valley could prove just as devastating. Unlike the fringe tribal areas, Swat, which has 1.3 million residents, is part of Pakistan proper, within 160 kilometers of Peshawar, Rawalpindi and the capital, Islamabad. After more than a year of fighting, virtually all of it is now under Taliban control, marking the militants' farthest advance eastward into Pakistan's so-called settled areas.
With the increasing consolidation of their power, the Taliban have taken a sizable bite out of the nation. And they are enforcing a strict interpretation of Islam with cruelty, bringing public beheadings, assassinations, social and cultural repression and persecution of women to what was once an independent, relatively secular region, dotted with ski resorts and fruit orchards and known for its dancing girls.
From 2,000 to 4,000 Taliban fighters now roam the Swat Valley, according to interviews with a half-dozen senior Pakistani government, military and political officials. By contrast, the Pakistani military has four brigades with 12,000 to 15,000 men in Swat, officials say. But the soldiers largely stay inside their camps, unwilling to patrol or exert any large presence that might provoke - or discourage - the militants.
When the army does act, its near-total lack of preparedness to fight a counterinsurgency reveals itself. Its usual tactic is to lob artillery shells into a general area, and the results have seemed to hurt civilians more than the militants, residents say. In some parts of Pakistan, civilian militias have risen to fight the Taliban. But in Swat, the Taliban's sweeping takeover amid such a large army presence has convinced many people that the military must be conspiring with the Taliban.
"It's very mysterious how they get so much weapons and support," while nearby districts are comparatively calm, said Muzaffar ul-Mulk Khan, a member of Parliament from Swat, who said his home outside Mingora had recently been destroyed by the Taliban. "We are bewildered by the military. They patrol only in Mingora. In the rest of Swat they sit in their bases. And the militants can kill at will anywhere in Mingora," he said.
#5
My thought exactly, tu. We're told the general way in that part of the world is to back the strong horse or risk the consequences, but if the people actually showed some balls and stood up for their own interests instead of being cowed and bullied by the Meanest Thugs In Town, we wouldn't all have to endure the consequences. If they're not prepared to take a principled stand against the Taliban they are all our enemy.
#6
PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUM > THE TALIBAN HAVE A HIT LIST.
Posters - Pakistan has likely already lost SWAT, and may lose the NWFP per se to the Talibs.
* ALso, ISRAELI MIL FORUM > PAKISTANI TALIBAN TELL MORE THAN 50 [SWAT Valley]OFFICIALS - COME TO SHARIA COURT [submit to Clerical Law/Rule]OR BE HUNTED DOWN.
DEATH BY SHARIA, DEATH BY DEATH SQUAD, or DEATH BY SHARIA AND DEATH SQUAD.
* STAR TREK > DR.MUDD ["Mudd's Women"] - THE KEY WORD YOU'RE DESCRIBING, MR. SPOCK, IS "DEATH".
The government formally took control of the main operational facility of the banned Jamaatud Dawa in Muridke near Lahore on Sunday.
Lahore Division Commissioner Khusro Pervaiz visited the 'Markaz-e-Taiba' institution with Sheikhupura's deputy inspector general of police, the district police officer, the district coordination officer and officials of the Auqaf Department. He met the mohtamim (manager) of the facility and later appointed a grade-19 District Management Group (DMG) officer, Khaqan Babar, to supervise the social, charitable and welfare projects. The new in-charge said the move was aimed at ensuring the beneficiaries of the charity would not be affected by the ban. That'd be the Widows and Orphans Ammunition Fund... Salman Ejaz, a senior official in the Punjab province, told the Associated Press that all assets and properties of the charity in the province were now under the government's control. Most of the assets, offices and operations of the group are in Punjab. "The government has appointed an officer as administrator for all the assets," Ejaz said. "The schools and hospitals will keep on working as they are."
Ejaz said the administrator and other officials would try to gauge and map out the extent of the charity's operations -- especially the boodle its bank accounts, which Pakistan has ordered frozen. Asked why it took so long for the government to take over the Muridke site, officials said it was a complicated task. After the initial crackdown and assessment of the group's operations, "we are going for total regulation under government control," Punjab Home Secretary Nadeem Hasan said. "All things cannot happen in one go."
Jamaatud Dawa official Khalid "Sonny" Walid, son-in-law of its founder Hafiz Saeed, confirmed the takeover while talking to AFP, and said Babar would "look after the administrative and financial matters of the schools and hospital in Muridke".
Jamaatud Dawa is one of Pakistan's biggest charities, but it is also widely seen as the political wing of the banned militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which India says was behind the attacks on Mumbai in late November. Indian officials could not immediately be reached for comment on Sunday. Pakistan has urged India to allow a joint investigation into the attacks.
Pakistan's Interior Ministry has said that 71 leaders of Laskhar and Dawa had been arrested while another 124 were put under surveillance. Authorities have also said they closed 20 offices, 94 schools, two libraries and six websites linked to the charity, while shutting down more than a dozen relief camps, some of which are alleged to be militant training grounds.
This article starring:
Muridke
District Management Group (DMG) officer, Khaqan Babar
HAFIZ SAID
Jamaatud Dawa
KHALID WALID
Jamaatud Dawa
Lahore Division Commissioner Khusro Pervaiz
Punjab Home Secretary Nadeem Hasan
Salman Ejaz, a senior official in the Punjab province
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2009
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Top|| File under: Lashkar e-Taiba
Posted by: Mike ||
01/26/2009 8:05
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#7
I like her because she doesn't look too sober and parts of her are about to pop right out of that dress.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2009 9:19
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#8
Fred, those were the same reasons I proposed to my ex-wife.
Posted by: Scott R ||
01/26/2009 9:49
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#9
O.K., she's nice.
Have we had any sunspots yet?
Full-blown La Nina in effect?
I've been away...
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/26/2009 9:52
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#10
"Watt's up with that?" is my source for all information climate and solar related. An excellent resource: the blogger maintaining it is doing a survey of the suitability of weather station equipment disposition, so as to clean up the climate record. A place where pictures are indeed worth a thousand words.
We had one short-lived (2 days) group of three about a week ago, Bobby, but that's it. Here's a good link. Rather cold in Colorado Springs this morning, but with all the heat generated by Fred's and GB's photos, that may change...
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
01/26/2009 12:30
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Taliban -- who control "virtually all of" Swat -- continue to use radio transmitters to terrorise residents and even reveal the names of people they kill or plan to kill, according to a New York Times report published on Sunday.
Policemen are either beheaded or renounce their jobs, the civilian government is ineffective or unresponsive, and the local residents say the military has "willingly allowed the militants to spread terror", it says.
The Pakistani government failed to protect its ally Pir Samiullah -- who led 500 followers to fight the Taliban. They killed him in a gunfight last month, but beheaded his followers until they disclosed the location of his gravesite. "They dug him up and hanged his body in the square," a villager said.
In Mingora, "residents were shocked early this month to find the bullet-ridden body of one of the city's most famous dancing girls splayed on the main square", says the report on the New York Times website. "They shot her to death and dragged her body more than a quarter-mile to the central square."
There are 2,000 to 4,000 Taliban in the Swat Valley, senior officials told the newspaper, and the military has four brigades with 12,000 to 15,000 men.
"But the soldiers largely stay inside their camps, unwilling to patrol or exert any large presence," Swat residents said.
The military also has not raided a village that locals say is the Taliban's headquarters.
But military spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas rejected the allegations. He said the military did not have the means to block the Taliban radio transmissions.
"Just because they come out at night and throw down four or five bodies in the square does not mean that militants control anything," he told the NY Times.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2009
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#1
Isn't radio of any form unIslamic? As in, if Mohamned didn't have one, we can't have on either? Seems to me, it goes right along with music.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
01/26/2009 1:15
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#2
This connects to the International Herald Tribune article on the same subject. Interesting that the Pakistani newspapers picked it up.
Muslims in Indonesia have been banned from doing yoga if they engage in Hindu rituals during the exercise as clerics decided not to ban smoking, the chairman of the country's top Islamic body said on Sunday. About 700 clerics from the Indonesian Council of Ulemas (MUI) agreed on the actions at a national meeting, Ma'ruf Amin told AFP by telephone. "The yoga practice that contains religious rituals of Hinduism including the recitation of mantras is 'haram' (forbidden in Islam)," he said. But Amin said Indonesian Muslims were still allowed to do yoga strictly as an exercise. "If Muslims refuse to follow this fatwa, it means that they commit a sin," Amin said. Meanwhile, the clerics decided not to ban smoking for Muslims in a country that is the fifth-largest tobacco market in the world and Southeast Asia's biggest economy, agreeing to ban smoking only in public places, for pregnant women and children. "There was disagreement between clerics over the smoking ban. But we all agreed to decide that it is 'haram' for Muslims to smoke in public space, for pregnant women and children," Amin said.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2009
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#1
RJ Reynolds, your mission is to provide zillions of maximum flavor, maximum tar & nicotine cigarettes to Indonesia and at a cost every Muslim can afford. Could this be an effective and inexpensive (if slow acting) secret weapon against SE Asian terrorism?
El Salvador's former rebel movement has become the country's largest political party, 17 years after signing a peace accord that ended the bitter civil war. But the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front (FMLN) failed to win a majority of parliamentary seats, final results from last week's vote have shown.
A party spokesman called the result a platform for victory in El Salvador's presidential election in March. It is their first such win since the end of the conflict in 1992. But in a significant setback, the FMLN lost the capital for the first time in 12 years. Arena candidate Norman Quijano unseated Salvadoran Mayor Violeta Manjivar of the FMLN.
Final results from Sunday's parliamentary election gave the FMLN 35 seats against 32 for the governing conservative party Arena, election officials announced. But conservative parties and their allies can still hold a majority in the 84-seat assembly if they combine forces.
The FMLN has overcome internal divisions and chosen a moderate leader with wide appeal - former television journalist Mauricio Funes, who took no part in the civil war. Mr Funes is favoured to win the 15 March presidential elections, but the party needs to convince the public that it can end a growing wave of kidnappings and gang violence.
The FMLN was once a formidable guerrilla army that posed a serious threat to El Salvador's American-backed military leaders. Formed in 1980, it brought together a number of left-wing rebel groups, and launched a series of offensives from its bases in the countryside over the next decade. At least 75,000 people were killed in one of the bloodiest of the ideological conflicts that raged across Central America in the 1980s.
The Reagan administration in Washington responded with substantial aid and training for the military as it fought to keep the guerrillas out of El Salvador's major cities. With the end of the Cold War and stalemate on the battlefield, the FMLN signed a peace agreement in 1992, and reinvented itself as a legitimate political party.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/26/2009
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Hinting that the United States drone attacks in the Tribal Areas would continue as before, US Vice President Joe Biden said the US would act if there was an 'actionable target' in sight.
He said the US was working towards strengthening Pakistan's counterinsurgency capability, but declined to specifically address the issue of drone strikes against suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda targets on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border.
"I cannot speak to any particular attack. I cannot speak to any particular action. It is not appropriate for me to do that," he said in response to a question in the backdrop of Friday's drone strikes on North and South Waziristan, which killed 18 people.
Working: "What we are doing is we are in the process of working with the Pakistanis to help train up the counterinsurgency capability of their military, and we're getting new agreements with them about how to deal with cross-border movements of these folks, so we are making progress," Biden said.
Referring to US President Barack Obama's election campaigning, Biden said the president had "said during his campaign and in the debates that if there is an actionable target, of a high-level Al Qaeda personnel, that he would not hesitate to use action to deal with that".
He, however, praised increased cooperation by Pakistani authorities, calling the coordination 'good news'.
"The good news is that in my last trip - and I have been to Pakistan and that region many times - there is a great deal more cooperation going on now between the Pakistan military in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Waziristan, North Waziristan - all that area that we hear about being ungovernable," he said.
FATA: But Biden added that the areas had "been ungovernable for the Pakistani government. That's where the bad guys are hiding. That's where the Al Qaeda folks are, and some other malcontents".
Biden also expressed understanding of the fact that FATA had been historically ungoverned.
According to a Pakistani embassy spokesman, agreement of views on coordination of border monitoring, improvement in intelligence-sharing and bolstering the capacity of Pakistani security forces was a continuous process between the coalition partners.
A senior official in Islamabad on Sunday said the drone attacks were counterproductive to Pakistan's efforts aimed at curbing extremism.
On Afghanistan, Biden said the new US administration had inherited a 'real mess'. "What's happened is that because of a failure to provide sufficient resources, economic, political and military, as well as failure to get a coherent policy among our allies, economically and politically, and in terms of military resources, the situation has deteriorated a great deal," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2009
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#1
See PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUM > VPOTUS JOE BIDEN: US WILL TO ATTACK PAKISTAN IFF IT HAD EVIDENCE.
And thus the US need to make sure there never is any evidence, espec as per 9-11.
#3
No doubt a great many major crises will face Prsident Obama, JosephM. He's sitting in the big chair now, the one that gets the big problems left after the little chairs deal with the smaller problems. He moved into the house where the buck stops, which no doubt will be a salutary experience.
About 150 fighters from Ahmed Jibril's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command have reportedly been smuggled to the northern refugee camp of Beddawi and the coastal town of Naameh south of Beirut.
The daily Al Balad on Sunday said the PFLP-GC -- which has bases in barren terrains in east Lebanon's towns of Qossaya, Hilweh, Sultan Yaqoub, and Deir el-Ghazal -- had smuggled around 150 fighters to Beddawi camp and a tunnel in Naameh. The newspaper, citing a security report, said the fighters were smuggled via the northern town of Talbira in the Akkar province.
It reported "unusual" PLFP-GC activity, including setting up rocket launchers, anti-aircraft guns and planting anti-personnel mines and anti-vehicle mines around its bases, in addition to sending more trained fighters to back-up its forces in the region.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2009
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Security forces were issued 'shoot at sight' orders against people who violate the curfew imposed in Kooza Bandai, Bara Bandai, Ningolai, Chota Kalam and Shakardara areas of Swat on Sunday. A spokesman for the troops' media centre in Mingora said the indefinite curfew began at 5pm on Sunday. "Anyone violating the curfew in these areas will be shot at sight," he said. Meanwhile, ISPR Director General Athar Abbas told the Voice of America that the Swat situation was normalising and several political leaders had returned to the area. Intelligence operations are underway to determine who funds the Taliban, he said, pledging the army would bring peace to the area.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2009
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#1
'Shoot At Sight'...fairly straight forward I'd say. Might wish to synchronize watches and make it 16hr30 just to be on the safe side.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday condemned a US operation he said killed 16 civilians. Karzai said the killing of innocent Afghans during the US military operations 'is strengthening the terrorists' while hundreds of villagers denounced the American military during an angry demonstration.
The Afghan president added that his Defence Ministry had sent Washington a draft technical agreement that would give Afghanistan more oversight with regard to the US military operations. The same letter has also been sent to NATO headquarters.
You think he thinks he can roll Bambi?
Who doesn't think he can roll the Bambino?
In recent weeks Karzai has increasingly lashed out at his Western backers over the issue of civilian casualties, even as US politicians and a top NATO official have publicly criticised Karzai for the slow pace of progress.
The back-and-forth comes as the new US administration of President Barack Obama must decide whether to support Karzai as he seeks re-election later this year as part of the overall Afghan strategy of the United States.
I'm guessing here but Bambi's 'support' isn't going to be a big factor in the elections, and Bambi doesn't realize that ...
Civilian deaths during the US operations have been a huge point of friction between the Afghan government, the US and NATO militaries. Karzai had told parliament last week that the US and NATO had not heeded his calls to stop airstrikes in civilian areas. Karzai had recently sought more control over the activities the US and NATO forces could carry out.
Meanwhile, Afghan police in remote northwestern Afghanistan killed 13 Taliban fighters in a clash that also killed five civilians by Taliban, said a police official.
The Taliban first shot dead a tribal elder and his wife in their home in Badghis province on Saturday because the man did not agree to collect food and money for them, provincial police chief Muhammad Ayub Niazyar said. Three more local men were killed and five wounded when residents attacked the rebels, Niazyar told AFP. "Thirteen of the Taliban have been killed and seven of them were injured in a clash when the police arrived at the area," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2009
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#1
Meanwhile, Afghan police in remote northwestern Afghanistan killed 13 Taliban fighters in a clash that also killed five civilians by Taliban, said a police official.
Did we kill any civilians, Mahmoud?
No, sir. We used the "non civilian killing" bullets, sir. Like Hamid told us to.
#2
Im not sure how much influence we have in the elections - I dont think its that minimal. I assume we are talking about US weight being thrown behind already important dissenting elements (including some ex Northern Alliance).
I also assume that Obama has access to input from US commanders on the ground, etc.
Egypt on Sunday closed its Rafah crossing point with the Gaza Strip, fearing fresh Israeli attacks on the smuggling tunnels as Hamas proposed a one-year ceasefire instead of Israel's 18-months suggestion.
Egyptian authorities have evacuated the Rafah border crossing into the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, acting on reports of a possible Israeli air strike on the Palestinian side of the crossing, Egyptian security sources said on Sunday.
Security sources and witnesses speaking on condition of anonymity said authorities had carried out a sudden and rapid evacuation of the crossing area, removing staff and ambulances from the vicinity of the gates that control access to the crossing.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2009
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#1
apparently Egypt has been telling Hamas to take whatever deal they can get now, before Bibi is elected.
Swat Taliban have released a list of 43 people -- including former and incumbent ministers -- who they have declared 'wanted' and liable to punishment under the Taliban sharia.
The 'wanted' men also include former and current members of the national and provincial assemblies, district and local nazims, officials of political parties, local elders and other influential residents of the restive valley.
The announcement that the leaders were liable to punishment and must appear in Taliban courts was made by rebel cleric Mullah Fazlullah on his FM radio channel on Sunday morning, locals said.
The 43 people on the list were the Taliban's enemies, he said, and would be arrested or killed by his men. If arrested, they would be produced before the Taliban courts, which will punish them in line with the 'sharia', Fazlullah was heard saying on the radio channel.
The rebel cleric announced 'amnesty' for some political leaders and influential people who had stopped opposing Taliban in Swat, said locals who heard the speech. Fazlullah said they would not be harmed if they do not oppose the Taliban in future.
The brazen announcement comes only two days after a provincial minister from the Awami National Party (ANP) and two members of the NWFP Assembly visited the valley to express support for the people of Swat against the Taliban.
The ANP leaders in Peshawar are also speaking, in public and in private, of a changed strategy in Swat.
Three days ago, NWFP Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti, Information Minister Mian Iftikhar and Senior Minister Bashir Bilour had made separate claims the people of Swat would hear 'good news' in 15 days. The leaders did not elaborate.
The warning by Fazlullah coincides with ANP chief Asfandyar Wali Khan's statement on Sunday that the Taliban must lay down arms if they want to solve the problem in Swat through dialogue. He made the statement in his address at a ceremony to commemorate the death anniversaries of Bacha Khan and Abdul Wali Khan in Peshawar.
According to BBC Urdu, Fazlullah also said Swat residents other than those on the list would not be harmed, and that the people who had fled the area could return to their homes.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2009
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#1
The Progressives in the US and Europe could only *dream* of wielding that kind of power.
#5
Three days ago, NWFP Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti, Information Minister Mian Iftikhar and Senior Minister Bashir Bilour had made separate claims the people of Swat would hear 'good news' in 15 days.
Like, Fazlullah's head on a stick on the six o'clock news?
Transporters in the NWFP on Sunday asked bus drivers to remove TVs and music players from their vehicles, following Taliban threats to bus owners a few days back. A banner put up at the general bus stand in Peshawar by Haji Zahir Shah Yousafzai, president of the Sarhad Transport Owners Federation, asked bus owners to remove audio and visual equipment by January 25. "If any TV or VCR is found in a vehicle after the deadline, the owner will be fined Rs 5,000 and the equipment will be seized," the banner read.
The Taliban warned all bus owners to remove audio and video systems from their vehicles by January 25 or face the consequences. Shah said it was not the Taliban threats that had forced the music systems' removal, but the federation was trying to discourage the drivers practice of showing obscene films during inter-city travelling. Ajmal, a driver who travels between Hangu and Peshawar, told Daily Times that he had removed the cassette player from his vehicle after the Taliban threat. However, the drivers travelling on local routes are still playing music in their buses and do not intend to remove the equipment. "Listening to music is not illegal and most of the people, especially the youth, prefer to sit in buses that have music playing in them," Niamat, a local driver, said.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2009
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#1
Wouldn't it be simpler to remove muslims from the busses?
Posted by: Rednek Jim ||
01/26/2009 14:34
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#2
Screw it. Mo didn't have no busses, so get rid of em.
Start walkin, my Muslim friends...
#3
the drivers practice of showing obscene films during inter-city travelling
Of course even Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be "obscene" because it has music and lacks burkas.
Hizbullah's International Relations Official Nawaf al-Mossawi said the party would work on gradually absorbing Lebanese political forces within the framework of the resistance. He affirmed that the Hizbullah today is more solid in arms and strength. Following his meeting Sunday with the Cuban Communist Party Deputy Head of Foreign Relations Governor Oscar Martinez, Mosawai said: "Every attempt to deprive a people from arming, and resisting is a full partnership with the aggression."
"Today more than ever, we are holding to our resistance arms and are strengthening them. Moreover, we are gradually working on absorbing Lebanese political forces within the framework of the resistance," Mossawi said.
"The failure of the Israeli aggression in eliminating the resistance and the Palestinian cause is similar to the failure of the U.S. invasion of the region through its Israeli ally and Arab tools," he said.
He added that the time of the resistance as the sole method is on the rise.
"The true American image is not that of the U.S. presidential inauguration, but in the savage Israeli aggression. Once again the naïve humanitarian and civilized claim (of the west) is exposed, as western governments have exposed their complicity and partnership in killing the Palestinian people," Mossawi said.
He went on to add that those that conspired against Gaza are known although they remain silent. Saying that paying money to Gaza won't clean anyone's hands from Palestinian blood.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2009
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#1
Ah, "absorbtuion". Is that what they're calling it now? Better to be the absorber then the absorbee. Healthier too, I'm thinking...
#2
"Today more than ever, we are holding to our resistance arms and are strengthening them. Moreover, we are gradually working on absorbing Lebanese political forces within the framework of the resistance new Persian Empire," Mossawi said.
Police chief Gen. Ashraf Rifi said Sunday he was hopeful that the international tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of ex-Premier Rafik Hariri would uncover the criminals. "I hope the international tribunal would uncover and prosecute the criminals," Rifi said during a ceremony to mark the first anniversary of Maj. Wissam Eid's assassination.
He said the reason why police "are being targeted is to prevent us from developing security capabilities."
Rifi believed there was a link between the bombing that targeted Eid and a similar one directed against the Lebanese army.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2009
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#1
Yeah, it's only been four years. Hopefully they won't be dead from old age when you get around to busting them.
Hundreds of Iranians rallied in front of the French embassy on Sunday to protest at the European Union's likely removal of Iran's exiled armed opposition from its list of terror groups.
The demonstrators shouted "Death to (Nicolas) Sarkozy" and "Europe be ashamed, leave the hypocrites" -- a term Iran uses to describe its main opposition, the People's Mujahedeen of Iran (PMOI).
The EU is expected to strike PMOI off its list of terror groups on Monday, ending a long legal battle. "Europeans must be aware of the consequences of such a decision in relations with Iran," said Mojtaba Keshani, a mid-ranking cleric addressing the crowd.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2009
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#1
It makes me a bit queasy whenever I actually agree with the Iranians viewpoint.
#3
Cojones? LH, Im going to have to respectfully disagree on that assessment. In fact, its another example of how Euroweenies always look to avoid any direct confrontation. Of course, they cant legally or gulp morally fund an Islamic/Marxist terrorist death Cult with Western blood up to their shoulders now can they. But hey change the name get an up to date mission statement and presto all they have to do is pay a legitimate Resistance Group to do all the heavy lifting? Ummmm didnt work so swell in 98 when Clinton funneled cash to al-Dawa through the SCIRI. But at least they can say they are doing something.
#4
Im not as down on the MEK as you are. They havent actually attacked civies in years, unlike Hamas and Hezbo. If Yassir can be an ex-terr, why cant MEK? And they actually are willing to fight the mullahs.
Theyre not Islamist of course, they are Marxists. And yeah, sometimes Marxists can be useful, esp in parts of the ME were they can be used against the Islamists. I mean I wouldnt count on them, but its not like theres lots of good options.
This is mainly about how much are the Euros willing to defer to Iran, more than anything practical. TO take them off the list is to give Iran the middle finger. Its odd seeing the Euros do that.
Hassan Hattab, founder of Algeria's Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), issued a fresh call on Monday (January 19th) for members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb to lay down their weapons.
In the written document, which was released to the Algerian press, Hattab appealed to terrorists to renounce armed struggle in order to benefit from the law on civil concord. Drawing on a verse from the Qur'an and two hadiths from the Prophet Mohammed, he condemned the terrorist attacks perpetrated in Algeria in the name of Islam.
The former GSPC leader issued his call just as radical Islamists are demanding jihad in Gaza. "What law or moral code could allow this?" he asked in the statement. "Is this really a jihad that would please God?"
Hattab simultaneously condemned and repented for acts of terrorism, "which do nothing for Islam or Muslims and against which I have already given warnings in the past".
Advising his "brothers" to obey God and halt their activities, he implored them to "return to society and your families; society is ready to welcome you and heal the wounds".
Monday's appeal was not Hattab's first. Last August, he responded to an attack on the police academy in Issers with a statement calling for terrorists to abandon their violent agenda.
Hassan Hattab left the GSPC in 2003 after a dispute with current leader Abdelmalek Droukdel over the legitimacy of targeting civilians. In September 2006 the group rallied to Osama bin Laden's cause, changing its name to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Hattab surrendered to Algerian authorities in late September 2007.
Salima Tlemçani, a terrorism specialist, told El Watan that the message follows a statement by Droukdel "calling for attacks against the interests of Westerners -- particularly Americans, French and Israelis -- throughout the world".
The Droukdel communiqué was no longer available, however, just hours after its release, noted Tlemçani. Previous messages about Algeria are still available online.
According to the expert, Droukdel's organisation has suffered heavy losses in recent months, to the point where it has been unable to regain ground, except for sporadic roadblocks. This has raised questions about the future of the group.
Journalists suggest that differences at the heart of the terrorist organisation have rendered it unable to carry out attacks as visible as those of last year. This is believed to be the result of both a series of surrenders within the heart of the group and a government crackdown.
According to Nayla Berrahal of Algerian daily Echorouk, the al-Qaeda organisation "is in a really difficult position since the start of the events in Gaza... due to the reaction of the public". She said the people believe the terrorist organisation is attempting "to profit from the situation to clean up its image following a series of suicide attacks and crimes targeting civilians".
Rather than garnering the support of impassioned youths, Berrahal suggests Droukdel's group has alienated itself. "These young people have risen up against the terrorist organisation, which they accuse of executing foreigners' plans and strategies," she said.
For many civilians, the former GSPC can no longer fool young people about its real intentions. Lotfi Amine, a student, said the group "has no legitimacy or credibility to support Palestine, given the crimes it has committed against the sons and daughters of its own country".
Fellow student Djamel Alek went a step further, accusing al-Qaeda of being "mercenaries". Speaking to Magharebia, he addressed the terrorists: "Those who live in Gaza are pure and their blood is sacred. We do not want it to be mingled with the blood of mercenaries like you."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2009
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#1
It is fascinating that former major philosophers of jihadi terror and Number 1's have so publicly and forcefully recanted their original arguments. This gives me hope of a real evolution to an Islam that can live with the rest of the world, not just apostasy and conversion.
#2
Hattab seems to be recognizing the 'trap' that Zarquawi-type actions represent. Even fundamentalist Islam relies on the acquiescence of the population, and it is possible to repel them beyond terrified tolerance and into alliances with the opposition.
#3
I think glenmore is on the right track. I would also note that Algeria may be unique, in that the "insurgency" there began when some relatively moderate islamist parties were pushed out in a coup by the military (back in '92), a carry over of failed Algerian socialism, and so elements in GSPC (I am not sure about Hattab in particular) may have been moderate enough to pursuse a different strategy from the pure jihadi one.
via Tim Blair - a thankful well-done to our Aussie friends and patriots. They have stood side by side with us, which is more than we can say of other "allies and friends"
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/26/2009
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#1
A nice Jewish boy doing his bit to heal the world, an immigrant who gave back to the country that took in his family, a true Australian who helped protect all of us. May his memory be for a blessing.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) Mayor Sam Adams said Sunday he will not resign despite calls for him to step down after admitting he lied about a sexual relationship with a teenager. "Tomorrow, I go back (to) work as your mayor. I know I have let you down and made mistakes. I ask your forgiveness," Adams said in a statement. "I believe I have a lot to offer the city I love during this time of important challenges."
Even though the article doesn't say, you know he's a Democrat -- a Republican would be hounded from office.
Adams informed the four city commissioners of his decision earlier the day. He met separately with them on Saturday to privately discuss his political future just three weeks after being sworn in.
The scandal has resulted in an investigation by the Oregon attorney general and has divided the city and its gay and lesbian community. Adams has found strong support to remain, including a Friday rally on his behalf at City Hall that drew more than 400 people.
Earlier this week, Adams publicly apologized for lying about his sexual relationship with an 18-year-old man in 2005 as he began his campaign for mayor in 2007.
The city council planned to meet Monday. Commissioner Randy Leonard has been in charge of the city as president of the city council, and he told the AP he would like to get the issue resolved as soon as possible to make sure city business gets done. "At a minimum, this is very distractive," Leonard said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/26/2009
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#1
Maybe "Seedy Politician" needs a sub-category called "Guess which Party" This sort of editing by the MSM is a national joke.
#4
Lying about sex is not lying - the precedent was set by former President Clinton.
The teenager was of legal age (or at least that's all that has been claimed) and thus all Adams is accused of is an inapporpriate relationship - if it was a hetero relationship it would even seem admirable to many.
It's Portland, Berkeley of the North, so the whole thing may well play out as a battle to defend gay rights, a battle he would win.
The real issues of dishonesty and abuse of power will be brushed aside, just as they were before. And these issues are entirely independent of political party.
Hamas officials in Cairo on Sunday proposed a year-long truce with Israel and an opening of the crossings into the Gaza Strip, in the latest round of diplomatic meetings to build on a fragile ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas official Ayman Taha told reporters in Cairo that his delegation was briefed by the Egyptians on an Israeli proposal for a year-and-a-half long truce with only partial opening of the border, which they rejected.
Instead, Taha said the group made a counter-offer of a year with open borders, which they now must discuss with their leadership in Damascus. "We will study the matter again and it will be brought back to the Egyptians," he told MENA, the official Egyptian news agency, without elaborating on the other provisions of the possible deal. Hamas has said in the past that it will only maintain a truce if Israel ends its blockade of the Gaza Strip and opens the crossings.
Israel's top negotiator on Gaza, Amos Gilad, was also in Cairo on Thursday for talks.
Israel and Hamas are engaged in indirect talks to build on a fragile ceasefire in the Gaza Strip after a 22-day Israeli assault, which killed some 1,300 Palestinians. The Hamas discussions with Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman included the nature and length of the truce, a system to monitor the border crossings and how reconstruction would be carried out, said Taha. "We are ready for any help in this issue (of reconstruction), but we are not willing to make it a political issue or use it for blackmail," he told MENA.
First estimates show Gaza suffered about $2 billion in damages during the Israeli airstrikes and ensuing ground offensive. Israel and the US have opposed reconstruction funds for Gaza going to Hamas.
The issue of a new system to monitor the border crossings is key to preserving the ceasefire, and Israel, the United States and Egypt are trying to work out security arrangements to ensure Hamas does not smuggle weapons into the strip before any opening. Taha told journalists after the talks that the militant group was open to Turkish observers being part of the monitoring system, alongside the Europeans stipulated in a 2005 agreement on the border crossings.
That agreement, supported by Egypt and Israel, also stated that the borders should be controlled by members of Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas' presidential guard.
Taha said while the Palestinians monitoring the border could be members of Abbas' security forces, they had to be from the Gaza Strip.
Regarding the issue of Israeli soldier Sgt Gilad Schalit, kidnapped by Hamas in 2006, Taha said it would only be discussed as part of a prisoner swap and had no bearing on truce discussions.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2009
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#1
so, that's what they think it will take to rearm.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
01/26/2009 1:17
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Up to 2 billion now? Are ya listening Arab "brothers"?
Give til it hurts...
India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) is supporting the Balochistan Liberation Army in a move to separate Pakistan's largest province from the federation, a leading Sri Lankan newspaper said on Sunday. "Among its most ambitious operations ... is the move to separate Balochistan province from Pakistan by supporting the Balochistan Liberation Army," Daily Mirror said in an editorial highly critical of the Indian spy agency. RAW is working to destabilise the countries in the region and had also supported the rebel Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the newspaper said, as Colombo recaptures last of the insurgent stronghold in the country. "It certainly is a monumental task for ... anyone in the neighbourhood ... to keep a straight face when talking about [RAW]," it said.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2009
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[15 views]
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#1
WAFF.com > BALOCHISTAN [Cabinet[ CANCELS 63,000 ACRES LAND ALLOTMENT TO THE PAKISTANI AIR FORCE [ attempt to force LEGAL-IST SELF-SOVEREIGNTY = FUTURE BALOCH INDEPENDENCE?].
The eldest son of North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il says he has "no interest" in succeeding his father, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reports. "No one can say for sure and only father will decide," Kim Jong-nam told reporters in Beijing.
Kim Jong-nam reportedly added he had no information about reports his youngest brother Kim Jong-un would get the job. "It is not good to assume and imagine before the decision is made," Kim Jong-nam was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.
Yonhap, citing an unnamed intelligence source, last week named Kim Jong-un as the most likely successor to "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il. But Japan's Yomiuri newspaper, quoting an unspecified US intelligence report, named Kim Jong-nam as the most likely candidate.
Kim Jong-il, who turns 67 in February, disappeared from public view in 2008, raising health concerns after he failed to make an appearance at a commemorative event in September. It is thought he suffered a stroke in August. This week he met a Chinese envoy in the North Korean capital Pyongyang - his first public appearance in months.
Other figures named as possible successors include the second son, Kim Jong-chol, as well as senior figures from the country's powerful military and its ruling communist party, the Worker's Party of Korea.
Kim Jong-il's late wife, Ko Yong-hi, was the mother of both Kim Jong Chol and Kim Jong-un. Kim Jong-nam was born to the actress Sung Hae-rim, who is also dead.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/26/2009
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#1
I wonder if "nam" "un" and "chol" means 1, 2 and 3
#3
OTOH WORLD MIL FORUM > CHINA CROSSES THE "MIDDLE LINE" DEMARCATION AND CLOSES OFF ITS EAST CHINA SEA PINGHU OIL-GAS FIELD FOR PIPELINE DEVELOPMENT [Chinese EEZ, 03/09-09/09+ Months contrux]. JAPAN DEMANDS AN EXPLANATION.
* SAME > CHINA VIEWS CLOSER COOPERATION, INTEGRATION WITH JAPAN AS VITAL FOR ASIA IN RESISTING US AND EUROPE.
Asharq Al-Awsat- The Hamas movement has criticized global efforts aiming to develop mechanisms to prevent it smuggling weapons into the Gaza Strip.
Ahmed Yusuf, an adviser to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, described these attempts as "mere rhetoric". He told Asharq Al-Awsat, "The resistance, with its weapons, is a legitimate right and it will continue to provide weapons by any means in order to continue the act of resistance." He added, "Whether there are tunnels or not, the resistance will get weapons one way or another".
In response, the Palestinian Authority (PA) stated that it supported any efforts towards depriving Israel of pretexts to launch an offensive against Gaza again.
Agriculture Minister Mahmoud al Habbash told Asharq Al-Awsat: "We stand by all efforts that involve protecting the Gaza Strip. Israel uses a number of excuses to attack Gaza, including the presence of weapons and rockets, and we want to eradicate these pretexts."
Al Habbash hinted that the PA will take part in any international efforts to prevent the smuggling of weapons into Gaza. He said, "Gaza is part of the PA's territories and the PA cannot abandon it."
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has tried to put more pressure on Hamas by involving powerful states in the plan to combat and prevent the smuggling of weapons to Hamas.
On January 16, Livni signed a memorandum of understanding with former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to restrict the flow of weapons to the Gaza Strip. She stated that memorandum of understanding was equivalent to an agreement between key international players to take a series of measures to stop the flow of weapons into the Gaza Strip, indicating the main supplier of these weapons is Iran.
Moreover, PLO secretary Yasser Abed Rabbo stated to Asharq Al-Awsat that Hamas is advancing a regional conspiracy to turn Gaza into a separate entity cut off from the West Bank, and to set it up as a dark emirate supported by Iran.
He said that Hamas had shifted the aim of its rifle barrels from Israel to Fatah members, and turned mosques, schools and hospitals into interrogation centers for torturing Fatah members.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2009
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#3
He said that Hamas had shifted the aim of its rifle barrels from Israel to Fatah members, and turned mosques, schools and hospitals into interrogation centers for torturing Fatah members.
Yep. Jooooos are gone. Gotta remember where you hid your uniform and look fearsome for the locals.
#5
the resistance will get weapons one way or another. They can always sharpen the handles of their spoons against rocks. If they have spoons.
Posted by Glenmore
beware the ninja spork
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/26/2009 19:31
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Iraq and its national airline will pay $300 million in compensation to Kuwait Airways for Saddam Hussein's invasion of the emirate almost 20 years ago, a government spokesman said on Sunday.
The payment is a final settlement that would end a dispute that has simmered since the seven-month occupation by Saddam's forces was ended by a U.S.-led coalition in 1991.
"The Council of Ministers decided on Sunday to pay $300 million to Kuwait Airways and the two parties agreed to put an end to the legal process," government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said.
The precise terms of the deal were agreed after discussions between the Emir of Kuwait and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani at an economic summit of Arab states in the past week.
Kuwait Airways demanded $1.2 billion in reparations from Iraq Airways for planes and equipment stolen during Saddam's 1990 invasion of the emirate.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2009
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#1
Another thing checked off the list. Now Iraq won't have to listen to generations of the Kuwaiti version of, "Germans, give us back our bicycles!"
Broadcast of two Afghan cable TV channels has been halted in Peshawar for the past few days, cable operators said on Sunday. The two channels - Tolo and Shamshad -- have been off the air without any explanation from the authorities, a cable operator said on condition of anonymity. He said only the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority could stop the broadcasts, but said he had not received any directions to stop broadcasting the two channels. NWFP Information Minister Iftikhar Hussain told Daily Times that the Afghan cultural attaché had notified him about the issue on Saturday. He said the provincial government was contacting the federal government for an explanation, as only the Centre had the jurisdiction over such matters.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2009
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[14 views]
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United States President Barack Obama's decision to close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre is a mere whitewash, Muhammad Saad, a former inmate, said on Sunday.
Saad said Obama has to apologise to the prisoners, to their families and their societies. "They have to apologise to the Muslim world and a whole generation. That's the least he could do. He should pledge these atrocities will never be repeated and compensate those who suffered any kind of torture."
Maybe you should apply under the TARP program, they have plenty of money ...
Pakistani security officials say ex-inmates are subject to strict police vigilance and most of the more than 60 Pakistanis who have been released are monitored by law enforcement agencies. "They (the Americans) have destroyed so many lives. They have turned intelligent, healthy human beings into vegetables," Saad said.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2009
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#1
ION OBAMA > COUNTERTERROSIM BLOG - ABC NEWS HAS DELCARED THAT ONLY MASSIVE STATE INTERVENTION CAN RESTORE CONSUMER CONFIDENCE IN THE ECONOMY.
#3
They Muslims have to apologise to the Muslim non-muslim world and a whole generation. That's the least he they could do. He Muslims should pledge these atrocities will never be repeated and compensate those who suffered any kind of torture or murder.
#5
Well, T for one that all the "horrors" at Guantanamo didn't repay for Daniael Pearl's beheading and that is only one of the thousands murdres they would have to repay.
#9
They have to apologise to the Muslim world and a whole generation. That's the least he could do. He should pledge these atrocities will never be repeated and compensate those who suffered any kind of torture.
If Ogabe does these things, I suspect his approval rating might tick down just a little.
Protecting our way of life from some knuckle dragging, sociopaths and borderline personalities....maybe even antisocial personality disorder.......
I think the word on the street is that catch and release days are over. Catch em ,question em and kill em....oh and wrap the carcasses in pig hide and spray them with bacon grease.
Posted by: James Carville ||
01/26/2009 15:29
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#11
I fear that BO may be taking these suggestions seriously. Saad said Obama has to apologise to the prisoners, to their families and their societies. "They have to apologise to the Muslim world and a whole generation. That's the least he could do. He should pledge these atrocities will never be repeated and compensate those who suffered any kind of torture."
what's a few more trillion
what does Saad have to say about the released folks that went back to Al Qaeda? Should they apologize and compensate?
Posted by: Jan ||
01/26/2009 19:51
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The outlawed Jamaatud Dawa organisation has appealed to the United Nations (UN) to lift the ban that the Pakistani government had imposed on it following the Mumbai attacks, a private TV channel reported on Sunday. The channel cited a press release issued by Dawa from Lahore as saying that it had filed an appeal with the UN, saying that it was being treated with injustice and that India had been levelling baseless allegations against it. The statement said the organisation would fight the legal war until the very end. It claimed the organisation had rendered countless humanitarian services, including aid and relief for those affected by the earthquakes and floods in Pakistan. Earlier, a UN spokesman had said that if Dawa made a request in this regard, it would be considered by the UN Security Council, the channel reported.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/26/2009
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[15 views]
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Bolivian President Evo Morales has claimed victory in a referendum on a new constitution aimed at improving conditions for the indigenous majority. Addressing supporters at the presidential palace, he said the result marked the birth of a new Bolivia.
Exit polls for some TV stations put the yes vote at about 60%.
The new constitution gives autonomy to indigenous peoples and boosts state control of the economy, but is opposed by many of the traditional elite. Many mixed-race people in the fertile eastern lowlands rejected the charter and four of Bolivia's nine provinces had a majority no vote, according to the exit polls.
Get ready for a revolution. Those provinces will NOT follow Morales ...
Conservative leaders in one district accused President Morales of planning to impose a totalitarian regime, but he was undeterred.
Despite the yes vote, there is likely to be continued opposition to the constitution as it goes through parliament, says the BBC's Candace Piette in La Paz.
"The Bolivian people have reiterated their commitment to democracy and to the democratic acts which are happening in peace today," said Mr Morales, an Aymara Indian. The Bolivian leader has followed his closest allies, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Ecuador's Rafael Correa, in rewriting their countries' constitutions to extend their rule, tackle inequalities and exert greater control over natural resources, observers say.
Support for Mr Morales was highest in the western highlands where Indians are a majority. "Now is starting a new era in which indigenous people will be the citizens of this country. I think this is the most important part of this constitution," said Elisa Canqui, who represents one of the Indian communities in La Paz.
Many Bolivians of European or mixed-race descent strongly oppose the constitution, but the head of an international monitoring team, Raul Lagos, said voting had been largely peaceful.
Opponents concentrated in Bolivia's eastern provinces, which hold rich gas deposits, argue that the new constitution would create two classes of citizenship - putting indigenous people ahead of others.
The original draft of the constitution was more radical but Mr Morales made concessions after violent protests against his rule, including a promise that he would not try to win a third term in 2014. Under pressure from wealthy ranchers, who feared their farms would be broken up and handed over to the poor, Mr Morales also revised the charter so that limits on land holdings will only apply to future land sales.
The referendum will be followed by elections for president, vice-president and Congress in December.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/26/2009
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#1
What's the average time between revolutions in Bolivia? Aren't they past due already?
#3
for a Revolutionary icon they should put that Shemp haircut Evo wears
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/26/2009 19:46
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#4
Evil may not care if he's overthrown. He can always flee to Venezuela, where he can live in luxurious martyrdom on Hezbollah's dime and host lavish parties for Oliver Stone and similar Hollywoodists. The latter, of course, will bring along an endless supply of gullible starlets and stray hippie chicks to provide more intimate companionship.
If Chavez goes down, too, there is always Havana(the EU's designated National Whorehouse), and Berkeley after that.
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.
Two US military aircraft have crashed in northern Iraq, killing four soldiers, the US military says.
Now that the Obama administration is reconsidering California's plan to increase the fuel economy of cars sold in the Golden State and 13 others to 35 miles per gallon by 2016, we wondered how close the automakers are to getting there.
Lady LAKE, Fla. It's 11 p.m. at the Bourbon Street Bar, and Roselyn's gyrating her hips to the blues band, Sue's sipping a cocktail and flirting with her new boyfriend, and Alan is scanning the crowd for cute girls.
Police in Nigeria are holding a goat on suspicion of attempted armed robbery. Vigilantes took the black and white beast to the police saying it was an armed robber who had used black magic to transform himself into a goat to escape arrest after trying to steal a Mazda 323. 
FLOTUS's inaugural outfits sent designers to their drafting tables to design knockoffs and droves went to J.Crew to get those snazzy leather green gloves. But not everyone is happy with her choices. The Black Artists Association is chiding FLOTUS for not choosing any African-American designers. 
U.S. officials say Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to name a special envoy for climate change. Clinton has picked Todd Stern, a former White House assistant who was the chief U.S. negotiator at the Kyoto Protocol talks in her husband's administration, the officials said Monday. They spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of a planned midday State Department ceremony where Clinton will announce the appointment.
"This Week" Host George Stephanopoulos
Five 
President Barack Obama's pledge to seek a worldwide ban on weapons in space marks a dramatic shift in U.S. policy while posing the tricky issue of defining whether a satellite can be a weapon.
The government formally took control of the main operational facility of the banned 
Taliban -- who control "virtually all of" Swat -- continue to use radio transmitters to terrorise residents and even reveal the names of people they kill or plan to kill, according to a New York Times report published on Sunday.
Hinting that the United States drone attacks in the Tribal Areas would continue as before, US Vice President Joe Biden said the US would act if there was an 'actionable target' in sight.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday condemned a US operation he said killed 16 civilians. Karzai said the killing of innocent Afghans during the US military operations 'is strengthening the terrorists' while hundreds of villagers denounced the American military during an angry demonstration.
Egypt on Sunday closed its Rafah crossing point with the Gaza Strip, fearing fresh Israeli attacks on the smuggling tunnels as Hamas proposed a one-year ceasefire instead of Israel's 18-months suggestion. 
Swat Taliban have released a list of 43 people -- including former and incumbent ministers -- who they have declared 'wanted' and liable to punishment under the Taliban sharia.
Transporters in the NWFP on Sunday asked bus drivers to remove TVs and music players from their vehicles, following Taliban threats to bus owners a few days back. A banner put up at the general bus stand in Peshawar by Haji Zahir Shah Yousafzai, president of the Sarhad Transport Owners Federation, asked bus owners to remove audio and visual equipment by January 25. "If any TV or VCR is found in a vehicle after the deadline, the owner will be fined Rs 5,000 and the equipment will be seized," the banner read. 
Hizbullah's International Relations Official Nawaf al-Mossawi said the party would work on gradually absorbing Lebanese political forces within the framework of the resistance. He affirmed that the Hizbullah today is more solid in arms and strength. Following his meeting Sunday with the Cuban Communist Party Deputy Head of Foreign Relations Governor Oscar Martinez, Mosawai said: "Every attempt to deprive a people from arming, and resisting is a full partnership with the aggression."
Broadcast of two Afghan cable TV channels has been halted in Peshawar for the past few days, cable operators said on Sunday. The two channels - Tolo and Shamshad -- have been off the air without any explanation from the authorities, a cable operator said on condition of anonymity. He said only the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority could stop the broadcasts, but said he had not received any directions to stop broadcasting the two channels. NWFP Information Minister Iftikhar Hussain told Daily Times that the Afghan cultural attaché had notified him about the issue on Saturday. He said the provincial government was contacting the federal government for an explanation, as only the Centre had the jurisdiction over such matters.
United States President Barack Obama's decision to close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre is a mere whitewash, Muhammad Saad, a former inmate, said on Sunday.
