#6
Typical...To censor and still include J C in a sacrilegious segment. Comedy Central pretends to be edgy and brave. This just proves how full of it and gutless they really are. I am so sick of these fakes who tout the importance of free speech as long as it is anti-Christian/Jewish. When it might actually get them challanged they lose their nerve.
An Era of a major player in the Aerospace industry and especially the defense industry is coming to an end.
Stanley Aviation, which has been in business since 1948 (and well before via Robert (Bob) Stanley during WWII and before) is closing down after nearly almost 60 years in the industry.
Eaton a large global manufacturer aquired Stanley Aviation from Cobham PLC(UK) in November of 2005 has reached the decision to transfer manufacturing to low cost manufacturing country or countries.
You've probably not heard much about Stanley, which has a rich history in the industry and American Defense, as it was a quiet but important player in the industry. Note this is not like some little plating company or machine house shutting down.
For example a few of our projects past and present:
Ejection Seats, Bell X craft, Nulcear Range Finding and Computation (before computers), parts on the moon, major components of many aircraft, fuel air and ECS systems for commercial and military, missile seals for sea launch ICBMS, cones and nozzels for sea launch and other ICBMS, F22, F35 (JSF), C17, UAVs, other military planes, etc, etc, etc, etc.
Eaton is not to blame for this, there are other issues, however, it is indeed a very sad day for Aviation and especially American Aviation that Stanley is ceasing manufacturing activities.
This is the reality now that the American Aerospace Industry and even general manufacturing in America face ... simple math. We cannot compete with $2.50 - $10.00 per / hour shop rates that the Low Cost Countries can deliver. The myth that China, India, Mexico, et al are not quality or mature manufacturers is complete just that, a complete myth.
They've recently started to crush ITAR / Export concerns and issues, a major roadblock for any Military transfer to an LCC and quality is no longer a concern.
As I've mentioned before, there will be a major shift when an industry / country make nano-manufacturing a reality. If the US is not first, we will face major problems as we already do with traditional manufacturing. We've tried many things, heavy automation, new technologies and methods / processes, new materials, etc but we just can't compete anymore.
If you care about our Areospace and Defense Industry (A&D) please urge congress or whatever to really chase nano-tech as that is the next big step ... as it is now, we as an industry have tried / done all the incrementals. Thus a major revolution has come, which is transfer of even important commerical and military manufacturing activites to LCCs. This train has already left the station and there is nothing we (as Americans) can do about it. But what we can do is make sure we book and are on the next train, and hopefully exclusivley on the next train of Nano, before we are left in the dust.
Please have a thought for Stanley Aviation, as a major player in the industry and our defense has fallen at last.
Rest at link.
Irans radical President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a fiery sermon demanded that Irans enemies, or the West, bow down before Iran and apologize for having held back Tehrans nuclear program for three years. He also warned the West that it would burn in the fire of the nations fury.
Those who insulted the Iranian nation and set back Irans movement for progress for several years must apologise, Ahmadinejad said at a rally in the eastern town of Rashtkhar. His comments were aired on state television and carried by the official news agency. You must bow down to the greatness of the Iranian nation, he said, addressing the West.
He added that if the United States continued to seek to use bullying tactics then every nation of the world would chant Death to America and Death to Israel. If you do not return to monotheism and worshipping god and refuse to accept justice then you will burn in the fire of the nations fury, Ahmadinejad said. He once again accused the West of launching a psychological war against Iran.
On Tuesday, Ahmadinejad declared that Iran had joined the Nuclear Club. I officially announce that Iran has joined the worlds nuclear countries, Ahmadinejad said in a speech that was broadcast on state television.
The UN Security Council adopted a Presidential Statement unanimously on March 29 giving Iran 30 days to suspend all of its uranium enrichment activities and resume its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Posted by: ed ||
04/12/2006
20:00 ||
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#1
I would like to submit for consideration my candidate for a reasoned response:
#3
Whoops. Attribution to JihadWatch, not Rest at link.
Posted by: ed ||
04/12/2006 20:54
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There don't seem to many alternatives. Conventional war now or nuclear war later. Better to lose 5,000 or even 50,000 now than 50,000,000 and most of our cities later.
Posted by: ed ||
04/12/2006 20:57
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The UN Security Council adopted a Presidential Statement unanimously on March 29 giving Iran 30 days to suspend all of its uranium enrichment activities or we shall taunt you a second time.
Shorter Presidential Statement. Beware the wrath of the inevitable strongly worded letter. To be followed by the tersely word joint communique which no one caqn resist.
Posted by: Scott R ||
04/12/2006 21:01
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You must bow down to the greatness of the Iranian nation, he said, addressing the West.
Crater the sonsabitches.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
04/12/2006 21:25
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If you do not return to monotheism and worshipping god and refuse to accept justice then you will burn in the fire of the nations fury
Translation: "Submit to Islam and Sharia or we will nuke you."
I agree, crater the sonsabitches.
#12
WIthin the narrow context of Radical Muslim extremists being labeled Islamo-FASCISTS, notice how "Fascist" MadMoud is beating the emotions/
spirit-based intense war rants while NORTH KOREA'S Kimmie is almost virginally quiet, and CHINA being more quet vv TAIWAN??? REGIME CHANGE IRAN. MEMRI, and DRUDGE all have reports that MadMoud wants to sign regional non-aggression pacts wid Iran's Muslim neightbors [yeah right].
The world's leading powers, including Russia and China, have joined to condemn Iran for advancing its atomic program in defiance of the United Nations.
However, Russia says force cannot resolve the dispute.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declared that his nation has produced its first batch of enriched uranium and will now press ahead with industrial-scale enrichment.
His announcement has kept Iran on a collision course with the United Nations and with Western countries convinced it seeks atomic arms, not just fuel for power stations as it insists.
United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says the UN Security Council, which last month told Iran to halt all enrichment work, should respond with unspecified "strong steps" to maintain the credibility of the international community.
Asked if the council might impose sanctions on Iran, White House spokesman Scott McClellan says: "That's a possibility as well, that's one option that's available".
Russia and China, key players on the Iran issue with veto rights at the Security Council, have hitherto opposed sanctions.
Force 'no answer'
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says the use of force was no answer to the stand-off over Iran's nuclear program.
"If such plans exist they will not be able to solve this problem," he said.
"On the contrary they could create a dangerous explosive blaze in the Middle East, where there are already enough blazes."
US President George W Bush this week dismissed media reports of plans for strikes on Iran as "wild speculation".
China's UN Ambassador Wang Guangya says Iran's enrichment move is "not in line with what is required of them by the international community".
Russia's Foreign Ministry has urged Iran to stop all enrichment work.
But a senior Iranian official has ruled out any retreat.
"Iran's nuclear activities are like a waterfall which has begun to flow, it cannot be stopped," the official, who asked not to be named, said.
Annan urges sense
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has urged all parties to return to talks and "cool down the rhetoric".
Three European states behind a deal to suspend enrichment which broke down last year have weighed in with criticism of Iran.
British Foreign Minister Jack Straw says the announcement is "deeply unhelpful" and undermines confidence.
His German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, says Iran is "going in precisely the wrong direction" for a return to negotiations.
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy says it is a worrying step and Iran should stop its "dangerous activities".
The US State Department says it is unable to confirm that Iran had enriched uranium and some experts say even if Iran's assertions are accurate, it would still be years before the Islamic Republic is able to produce a nuclear weapon.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei will visit Iran on Thursday to seek Iranian cooperation with the Security Council and the IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog.
ASYLUM-SEEKERS who land on the Australian mainland will face deportation to offshore processing centres under tough new rules to be announced by the Howard Government today.
Expanding its controversial regulations that allow islands to be excised from Australia's migration zone, John Howard has decided that even those asylum-seekers who make it undetected to the mainland will be denied generous review process under Australian law.
The new rules, signed off by cabinet's National Security Committee yesterday, mean that any claim for asylum will be processed as if the applicant were in an overseas UN refugee camp, joining the worldwide queue.
The move is designed to stem the flow of asylum-seekers from Papua and mend relations with Jakarta.
Under current arrangements - brought in during the 2001 wave of Middle Eastern and south Asian asylum-seekers - if an asylum-seeker reaches an island it is not regarded as Australian territory for the purposes of migration law.
Future asylum-seekers could be sent to Australia's Christmas Island or the Australian-funded centre on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island for processing.
Until now if an asylum-seeker reached the mainland - as the 43 Papuans who arrived in January did - the law deemed them to be in Australia and the Government had to hear their claim according to Australian rules.
Last month, using these rules, the Department of Immigration issued temporary protection visas to 42 of the Papuans, sparking a diplomatic crisis between Australia and Indonesia.
Cabinet is believed to have gone for the idea because it is simple, will work effectively in the Papuan case and does not contravene Australia's international treaty obligations.
The change is likely to placate Indonesian concerns that Australia is treating Papuans more sympathetically than asylum-seekers from other nations.
Last month's decision to grant temporary protection visas to the Papuans sparked a diplomatic row with Jakarta, with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono calling the move "inappropriate and unrealistic".
He said last week relations with Canberra were entering a "difficult phase" and called for serious discussions on the future of the bilateral relationship.
The Howard Government has already tightened maritime surveillance of Australia's northern waters,. involving defence and customs aircraft and ships with a sharper focus on the Torres Strait.
Jennifer Pagonis, a spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva said last night that any changes by Canberra to its asylum-seeker processes should accord with international treaty obligations.
"The bottom line for us is that they uphold their international obligations," Ms Pagonis said. "We have to see what the review is going to entail and then we'll have a look at it."
Ms Pagonis said UNHCR representatives in Canberra would continue talking to the Government on refugee policy
In Washington, human rights advocacy group Refugees International warned that Australia's asylum-seeker review was threatening to violate the intent of the UN Refugee Convention and all the basic tenets of international refugee law.
"You just can't go around consulting countries of origin about whether asylum-seekers should be granted refugee status," said the group's Joel Charny. "Countries like Australia need to stand for the rule of law. If Australia and others are not willing to stand for the rule of law, even in the context of the war on terror, then we're all in big trouble."
Mr Charny predicted the Indonesian position on future Papuan asylum-seekers would be the same as it was in East Timor and the Indonesian province of Aceh.
"They would argue the situation in West Papua is calm and they are governing the province appropriately," he said.
"They would say there is nothing going on and if there is something going on, they're fighting terrorism."
Mr Charny said Australia's security interest in ensuring Jakarta remained committed to rooting out Indonesian-based terrorists could not justify the concessions being contemplated.
"I know the Australian-Indonesian relationship has been tension-filled over time, but we're at a low point if we have to violate international refugee law to maintain a common stance on the war on terror," he said.
"This is a pattern we are seeing. The war of terror in the US is being used to justify all kinds of things. The Attorney-General has even said we don't have to pay attention to the Geneva Convention in the context of the war on terror."
A BRITISH man who allegedly crippled US defence systems in the "biggest military computer hack of all time" could be sent to Guantanamo Bay if he is extradited, his lawyer argued today.
Edmund Lawson told Bow Street Magistrates Court in central London that Washington wanted "administrative revenge" on his client, Gary McKinnon, because he had exposed embarrassing weaknesses in its IT security.
Mr McKinnon, who was described by his lawyer as a "40-year-old computer nerd", is wanted in the United States for allegedly infiltrating systems at the Pentagon, Army, Navy and space agency NASA from his bedroom in north London.
He is alleged to have caused $US700,000 ($956,480) damage to defence systems and rendered computers inoperable at a naval weapon station at a critical time following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Mr Lawson argued that US President George W. Bush was unlikely to be bound by an "unsigned and anonymous" diplomatic note the lawyer had received from the US Embassy in London guaranteeing Mr McKinnon would not be treated as an "enemy combatant".
As such, Mr McKinnon - who was inspired by the 1983 film WarGames - was still vulnerable to a "Military Order Number One", the legal mechanism by which the US president can order a suspect's detention indefinitely, he said.
That risk meant it would be a breach of his human rights to extradite him, he added, noting that even if he was not sent to the US military camp for security suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, he was still likely to face a stiffer jail sentence.
Proceedings began last year when lawyers for the US Government called Mr McKinnon's alleged activities "the biggest military computer hack of all time".
Referring to the diplomatic note today, lawyer Mark Summers said there was no precedent for Washington reneging on its pledge and urged the matter to be taken on "faith".
#1
lawyer Mark Summers said there was no precedent for Washington reneging on its pledge and urged the matter to be taken on "faith".
Bullshit.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
04/12/2006 20:00
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he was still likely to face a stiffer jail sentence.
And he should be in a slammer until he turns blue or repays the damage, whichever comes first.
Of course computer systems/networks have vulnerabilities, but the correct way to go about it, if one is so inclined to hacking, is to notify the target party of the security problems they have. Else it is cracking and (I am a peacefull man, but there are limits) that deserves reciprocal cracking of the offender's cranium by steel core truncheons.
A LEBANESE appeal court has dropped terrorism charges against Sydney man Saleh Jamal.
Jamal, 31, could walk free from a Beirut jail within weeks after the Lebanese Court of Appeal ruled that terrorism charges could not be upheld against him due to a lack of evidence.
He allegedly told his wife, in an intercepted telephone call, that she would never see him again because he was going to a place "that is higher than the mountains".
Prosecutors wanted to mount a charge that Jamal was planing to become a suicide bomber.
His two-year sentence - slashed from five years on appeal - is due to expire next month, and he will be released to the custody of Lebanese General Security.
It is then up to NSW police to extradite him to Australia to face charges in Australia over the 1998 shooting of the Lakemba police station, The Australian newspaper reports.
He has previously threatened to crash a plane into the Harbour Bridge if he were forcibly returned to Australia.
THE UK Home Office intends to appeal against a court decision allowing Australian Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks the right to British citizenship.
In London last night, the Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the terror suspect, supporting last December's High Court judgment that the UK government cannot refuse to register Hicks' citizenship, which he is entitled to because his mother was born and raised in England.
The Home Office has until April 25 to lodge a fresh appeal to the House of Lords - via the Court of Appeal - with a decision expected in early May.
If that is denied, the Home Office then has the option of directly petitioning the House of Lords for a hearing, which would be held late this year or early 2007 if granted.
Adelaide-born Hicks, 30, has been held by US authorities at Guantanamo Bay since he was captured with Taliban forces in Afghanistan in late 2001.
He has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit war crimes, attempted murder and aiding and abetting the enemy.
He has sought British citizenship because the UK government, unlike Australia, has successfully fought for the release of its nationals from Guantanamo Bay.
His father Terry said the Court of Appeals decision is pleasing, but there is still a long road ahead.
"I was certainly pleased, certainly," Terry Hicks said last night.
"I think it's a positive step but, as I say, I think there's a long way to go yet."
Mr Hicks said he suspected the government would appeal to the House of Lords, but was hopeful of a similarly favourable decision there.
"I think their outlook is a lot different from the actual government and they might look at David's case and think that four years is too long (in Guantanamo Bay without conviction)."
Terry Hicks said his son was most likely oblivious to the development and would not know of it for about three weeks, when his lawyers are able to visit to tell him.
Terry Hicks said his son was most likely oblivious to the development and would not know of it for about three weeks, when his lawyers are able to visit to tell him.
Hicks' US military lawyer, Major Michael Mori, said Hicks would never renounce his Australian citizenship and he did not believe a dual citizenship would harm his client.
"I just wish the British government would get on with it and go down to Guantanamo and formalise David's citizenship," Major Mori told ABC Television.
from an embebbed reporter with the troops.
ROSIE DIMANNO
KANDAHARMeanwhile, back at the war ...
Oh yes (cover your eyes), Canadian troops are still soldiering here, doing that thing they do what so many of their compatriots back home don't really want to grasp; indeed, are ideologically primed to reject on behalf of "our men and women," so fervently attached has much of the public become to this dreamy version of a Boy Scout military that never shoots anybody and never takes casualties.
As politicians in Ottawa prepare to lob rhetoric in the House of Commons today about Canada's mission to Afghanistan and while alarmists promote the absurd, ill-informed canard that Afghanistan is Iraq in miniature, which provides the opportunity to use that favourite word, "quagmire" this is what the troops have been up to in recent days:
Alongside coalition and Afghan allies no specifics available on the nationality of those who actually pulled the trigger killing one senior and one mid-level Taliban leader during an engagement in Sangin district, where Charlie Company deployed on April 2, following a brazen assault upon Forward Operating Base Wolf.
Helping to thwart, thanks much to A-10 aircraft tank-bombers, the planned sabotage by insurgents of the crucial Kajaki Dam in the Helmand Valley.
Conducting several dismounted patrols and shuras in Sangin villages that have had no previous contact with coalition forces and which have been utilized whether with their agreement or not as bolt-holes by suspected Taliban fighters and narco-criminals in what is Afghanistan's richest opium-growing province. Afghans, endlessly hospitable, have served the Canadians gallons of chai, but this is no tea party.
Launching investigations of two roadside explosions in Kandahar city yesterday morning that injured 11 Afghans three police, three army and five civilians, including two children.
Mostly, though, Canadian combat troops have been making their presence felt seen and heard in the area around FOB Wolf, known more latterly as FOB Robinson, in honour of an American serviceman killed there on March 25, four days before a U.S. medic and 22-year-old Canadian machine-gunner were also slain in a fierce, protracted firefight.
"The Canadians have had a very marked effect there in just one week," said Col. Chris Vernon, the British officer who is chief of staff for Task Force Aegis, commanded by Brig.-Gen. David Fraser.
Helmand will be a British responsibility and some 3,000 U.K. troops are scheduled to arrive within the next six weeks. In the interim, Charlie Company was sent 180 kilometres west of Kandahar city last week to reinforce the satellite base, which had been for the previous 40 days or so manned by Afghan National Army troops and a small unit of "mentoring" U.S. Special Forces.
It's a pivotal area because, until very recently, insurgents and drug lieutenants have operated unimpeded in Sangin. The presence of the forward operating base was provocative enough that suspected Taliban threw themselves at it in successive waves, with between 50 and 70 of them killed in the fighting. Not one of them ever got inside the wire.
Politicians will take notes today, in the debate to which Prime Minister Stephen Harper has grudgingly and, it says here, wrongly submitted. It's unlikely the troops, beyond senior commanders, will take any note of this episode at all.
It is enough that they scrunch up their faces as if smelling something even more foul than the odour around Kandahar Airfield's latrines at the mere mention of an event they instinctively recognize as an exercise in political sophistry.
What annoys them no end, as interview after interview has made clear, is the mistaken impression too many Canadians hold and hold dearly of their deployment here, where they are emphatically not Blue Beret peacekeepers but warriors, most assuredly in the battle group component.
They will engage, through their commanders, in discussions with the citizenry because that's part of the strategy in Helmand, as it is in Kandahar province. And the payoff will come. But what Canadians must understand is that a dramatic shift in the very essence of Afghanistan is a long-haul project and no definitive timeline can possibly be drawn up.
Zabul, to the north, was described yesterday by Vernon as "immaculate" clean of Taliban and free from insurgent violence, but it's taken Americans more than four years to make it so. In neighbouring Uruzgan, Dutch forces they're here already, contrary to a columnist's assertion in Sunday's Star are working hard to do the same thing.
Afghans, bewildered by the Western preoccupation with deadlines, put it this way: "The military has all the wristwatches. Afghans have all the time."
Yet, in their short time here, just over two months, Canadian troops conducting forward operations have succeeded, with coalition and Afghan allies, in disrupting Taliban objectives. In lieu of a co-ordinated broad-based insurgency, they've reverted to small bands of fighters devising ambushes, planting roadside explosives and throwing out suicide bombers that rack up civilian casualties.
"Small groups operating without centralized control are more difficult for us to break down," Vernon acknowledged. "But that is not how they generally want to operate. They operate with control coming out of Quetta (Pakistan) and from within another control within Afghanistan."
This disruption to that system has been caused by removing killing middle-level Taliban leaders, "removing them from the circuit over the past month," as Vernon put it.
"A very interesting aspect is, when they go asking for volunteers to come into Afghanistan to take over those mid-level positions, there is a distinct lack of volunteers coming forward, particularly out of Pakistan."
Further, Vernon pointed out, Taliban funding from the opium crop in Helmand is being strangled not because the poppy fields are being eradicated but because Taliban agents are having a bitch of a time hauling the raw product out and delivering the cash in. They are no longer moving about with impunity.
"From our perspective, we (have to) continue to keep the pressure on mid-level command," said Vernon. "The foot soldiers will continue, I'm afraid, and you will still get the odd unco-ordinated IED (improvised explosive devise). With any insurgency, they're let loose without any central co-ordination. But it is the mid-level that's critical."
A diminished mid-level command is a key difference between the insurgency here and that in Iraq.
"The level of sophistication, of IED capability, is far below that seen by our coalition forces in Iraq," said Vernon. "But that does not mean it will not, at times, be successful."
In talking to reporters, Vernon explained that because of operations such as that being conducted by the battle group from Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry Taliban elements have been "marginalized into pockets."
"And any organization that splinters is diminished."
Pointing to developments at FOB Robinson, he noted: "Before the Canadians got there, the whole area had pretty much been given over to the Taliban."
Now, that show of force has robbed the enemy of traction and unencumbered movement. Further, from those forward operating bases, cordon-and-search operations can be conducted, intelligence gathered and effective precision strikes launched, as clearly has been occurring over the past week.
"The thing is, we have to get a lot closer to these guys," said Vernon, in reference to securing the trust of villagers and synchronizing operations with Afghan forces. "They don't have the technological capabilities but they know the ground, they know the people, the atmospherics and the history.
"That's what (the Princess Patricia's infantry) brings. It brings 150 soldiers; it brings patrols. It begins to dominate an area to create an environment where the people have a choice between the Taliban and us. In many of these areas, they've never seen us before."
Talk is, very much, an aspect of this military mission.
In the battle of loyalties between ousted Taliban, warlords and the nascent government in Kabul the decided are in a minority, said Vernon.
"Maybe 60 per cent are sitting on the fence. And that 60 per cent are swing voters we can influence. But you're not going to influence them totally by chasing around their villages and grabbing Taliban.
"Any counter-insurgency is about the people, the will of the people in the middle."
The will of the people Canadians might want to remember that. And remember this, too: For all the hand-wringing that is apparently taking place at home about this mission, only one Canadian soldier has been killed in combat fighting in Afghanistan, and that may have been from friendly fire.
#1
It is good to see our Canadian neighbors are putting up a fight now, thanks to Mr. Harper. It has been over 50 years since Canadians have been in battle.
This very unit, the Princess Pat's were stout soldiers facing Chinese 'human wave' assault tactics at Kapyong in 4/51 alone with some Aussies, winning a Presidential Unit Citation for their brave stand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Patricia's_Canadian_Light_Infantry#Kapyong).
It is good to see our Canadian neighbors in the fight. We need them with us in this existential battle.
Courtesy of the Christian Science Monitor, this is the latest spin by the left in reaction to the steady drip of declassified Iraqi documents. Although they still maintain that there there were no WMDs in Iraq, they now say that Saddam Hussein deceived Iraqis and foreign intelligence agencies alike into believing he had them and that "Bush critics can argue that the president was too gullible in accepting the conclusion of his intelligence agencies. But the evidence does not suggest that he knowingly lied to the American public about the existence of WMD."
The article is based on "Cobra II. Written by New York Times reporter Michael Gordon and Gen. Bernard Trainor, the book is being hailed as one of the most comprehensive accounts of the war in Iraq."
Bush didn't depart one damn bit from the U.S. policy toward Iraq that was established during the Clinton administration; all he did was act instead of mouth platitudes.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
04/12/2006 17:21
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this story is like a vampire. No matter how many times or how many ways you kill it, it just keeps coming back from the dead.
This is the third installment in a Back to Iraq series which is basically a single long essay. Dont miss Part One and Part Two.
TURKISH KURDISTAN - Sean and I dragged our sorry, exhausted, and malnourished selves to the car at 6:30 in the morning just a few hours northwest of the Turkish-Iraqi border. For the first time we had a look at our surroundings in daylight.
Turkish Kurdistan is a disaster. It is not where you want to spend your next holiday.
One village after another has been blown completely to rubble.
Pakistan's Cabinet on Wednesday approved a plan to purchase 77 F-16 fighter jets from Washington, a senior minister said. The decision was taken on the recommendation of the Pakistan Air Force at a meeting in the capital, Islamabad, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told at a news conference.
Posted by: john ||
04/12/2006
15:01 ||
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Nice to see the billions in earthquake aid money is being put to good use...
Posted by: john ||
04/12/2006 16:36
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Nice to see China finally gettig access to that tech.
Centre-left leader Romano Prodi confirmed on Wednesday that his coalition intended to pull Italian troops out of Iraq by the end of 2006 and to push for a softer European line on Hamas.
In a series of comments to the media on his foreign policy objectives, the former European Commission chief also confirmed that he would be more pro-Brussels and less pro-Washington than Premier Silvio Berlusconi. Much of the foreign interest in Prodi's foreign policy focused on Italy's involvement in Iraq. The country did not take part in the US-led war but sent troops later for peacekeeping and reconstruction. Prodi and the centre left opposed Italian involvement from the start. "We will withdraw our troops from Iraq in agreement with the Baghdad government and we will send a civilian contingent to help with the reconstruction," he said in an article in French daily Le Monde.
Pressed to say exactly when the troops would come home, Prodi later told Italian television that the Berlusconi government had already said soldiers would be pulled out by the end of 2006. "We will respect that deadline," he said. But his hard-left allies in Rome appeared to see this as not soon enough. "We have to arrange for an immediate withdrawal," said Marco Rizzo of the Italian Communists' Party.
In an interview with Arab satellite television al Jazeera, Prodi was quizzed about the Mideast peace process and the European Union's attitude to Hamas, the militant movement which won Palestinian elections earlier this year. "I will work in Europe for a new position on the Palestinian government and I'm paying close attention to Hamas's signals of openness," Prodi said.
Prodi said that his first international engagement as premier was likely to be the EU summit in June. Referring to his coalition's avowed commitment to Europe, he told French radio that it was "as if things were arranged like that on purpose". "Italy's neighbours have reason to be happy. At least now they have a reliable partner with an undoubted commitment to Europe," he wrote in Le Monde.
What's the definition of an honest politician? One who stays bought. >:-(
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/12/2006 15:49
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wait, wait!! Has every vote been counted? Shouldn't we be watching them hold up the ballots and check the chads? Were all of the signatures on the absentee ballots checked and double checked and then thrown out?
Even before this election was over, I heard that Prodi had won on his platform to withdraw from Iraq. I heard it a million times before I even discovered on the internet that it was a close election.
This is Floriduh all over again. Where are the TV cameras to help us assure every vote gets and no voter is disenfranchised!!!
#3
"In hopes that we may be eaten last," Prodi's statement concluded.
Posted by: Scott R ||
04/12/2006 21:05
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#4
has he won yet? Is it official? If he did win - does he have any power? The MSM keeps trumpeting his win and telling us what he's gonna do and not gonna do, but from what I've read so far, it seems he's going to have trouble getting permission to go to the bathroom.
I'm just wondering how it can be that we had to wait weeks for the results of our hanging chads and absentee ballots but the MSM seems to be ignoring Berlusconis challenge and opting to just move on without question. I guess every vote only counts when they want the recount for their guy.
Paris - Following fresh rebel attacks in Chad, France placed its troops in the central African country on full alert Wednesday and announced that reinforcements were on their way, according to senior military sources in Paris. A company of 150 soldiers would be moved to Chad from Libreville in Gabon, the sources said. Until now, the number of French troops in Chad was 1,200. The soldiers had remained in their barracks 'except for patrols to assess the situation' and had not become involved in the fighting, the French military in Paris said. Paris condemned 'every attempt to seize power with violence,' the Foreign Ministry reported.
Owing to its central location in Africa, Chad plays an important role for the stability of the continent, the ministry said, adding that the 1,500 French troops in Chad had to be protected. France was providing the 'rightfully elected government' of President Idriss Deby with data from reconnaissance flights over the area where fighting was taking place.
In recent days, the United Front for Democratic Change (FUC) took control of Haraze-Mangueigne garrison near the border with the Central African Republic and the village of Koukou in the east. On Tuesday, the FUC said it had taken control of the town of Mongo, 400 kilometres to the east of the capital Ndjamena, and the village of Bitkine on the way to the capital. The Defence Ministry in Ndjamena claimed that it had taken Mongo back from the rebels.
The FUC was formed in the border area next to the Sudanese civil- conflict region of Darfur. There are 200,000 Sudanese refugees in the border area, and the number of attacks on refugee camps has been increasing. Chadian generals are believed to have defected to the rebels in recent months, and there were rumours of an attempted coup d'etat in March. Deby hopes to be re-elected after 16 years as head of state in elections on May 3.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006
14:37 ||
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You add this one to the list of LOSSES.Hell they can't even win w/ thier own people!!! Chirac CAVES AGAIN!!
#5
The French play as rough as necessary in africa. Forget the surrender monkey stupidity, if they think one of their clients is going to go down, they'll fight.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
SAN DIEGO
Who killed immigration reform? The autopsy shows it was Senate Democrats.
It's tempting to put a pox on both parties. But it wouldn't be fair. Republicans were tireless in search of comprehensive, and bipartisan, reform.
U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., joined with U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., to draft the guest-worker legislation, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., made that legislation central to what his committee sent to the full Senate. U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. and Sam Brownback, R-Kan., were vocal in their support. Sens. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., and Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., offered a helpful compromise. And Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., showed leadership by reaching out to the other side.
Democratic villain
Too bad you can't say the same for Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who was the villain in this drama.
Hector Flores, president of the League of United Latin-American Citizens, told me he tried to impress upon Reid's office that it was important to get immigration reform done.
"Apparently, it fell on deaf ears," Flores said.
Reid claims it was GOP hard-liners who killed reform by running roughshod over Frist.
Baloney. The hard-liners had -- by all accounts -- no more than 30 votes, including those of conservative Democrats. On the other side, you had -- according to McCain -- as many as 70 votes.
A deal was at hand that would have offered legal status to some illegal immigrants. It would have made the GOP seem more Latino-friendly, but it would also have infuriated organized labor, which opposes something that was in the mix: guest workers.
After the Senate Judiciary Committee put out a guest-worker bill, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney issued a statement saying: "Guest-workers programs are a bad idea and harm all workers."
That did it. Senate Democrats sided with labor and sold out Latinos. The deal came undone because Reid refused to allow the legislation to go through the amendment process. Republicans had come up with as many as 400 amendments but whittled the list to 20. Reid agreed to proceed with debate on just three.
Calculated outcome
It was a masterstroke by Democrats. Labor is happy. And while Latinos are angry, there's always the chance that Democrats can fool them into channeling that anger toward Republicans.
Remarkably, it's working. At a protest in Washington Monday, one Latina held up a sign that read: "The GOP is losing my Latino vote." At another protest in Dallas, someone handed out registration leaflets urging demonstrators to vote Democratic.Some Latino leaders don't think it'll be that easy. Cecilia Munoz, vice president of the National Council of La Raza, told me: "I don't believe that it's wise for Democrats to come to our community and ask for votes by saying: "Hey, we kept an immigration bill from going forward.' People understand when they're being used."
Even so, it looks like Reid and the Democrats orchestrated the perfect deception. Trouble is, they left fingerprints.
The Washington Post said in an editorial: "Democrats -- whether their motive was partisan advantage or legitimate fear of a bad bill emerging from conference with the House -- are the ones who refused, in the end, to proceed with debate on amendments, which is, after all, how legislation gets made."
Frank Sharry, the executive director of the liberal National Immigration Forum, said in a statement: "We cannot escape the conclusion that the Democratic Senate leadership was more interested in keeping the immigration issue alive in the run-up to midterm elections than in enacting immigration reform legislation."
And Kennedy told The Associated Press: "Politics got ahead of policy on this." He then refused, according to the article, to defend Reid's performance. The story noted that, "Outside the Senate, several Democratic strategists concluded that the best politics was to allow the bill to die."
The moral: Marches and Mexican flags don't equal power. Labor uses millions of dollars in political contributions to take care of Democrats, and so Democrats take care of labor.
After the bill died, Democrats rubbed salt in the wound by insisting that Latinos had no choice but to stay on the liberal hacienda. Susan Estrich, who served as campaign manager for Michael Dukakis in 1988, told Fox News that Republicans had blown their chance to win Latino votes and predicted that Latino support would help Democrats win both houses of Congress.
You see, in a twist on the famous words of one of their icons, Democrats no longer ask what they can do for Latinos, only what Latinos can do for them.
The writer is a columnist and editorial board member of The San Diego Union Tribune. Contact him at ruben.navarrette@uniontrib.com.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
04/12/2006
14:09 ||
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"He's a 21-year-old, he's just finished 12 months at Sandhurst which is pretty gruelling for anybody and he's doing what thousands of youngsters do when they graduate, whether it's from Sandhurst or whether it's from university," he added.
A group of well financed Islamo-fascist terrorists buy current models of American-built jets, paint them to look like passenger or cargo aircraft, then fly suicide missions against targets in the West.
That sounds like the plot of one of my novels. But according to a well-placed source of mine, it's exactly what the Iranian government has been trying to do for more than a year now. Commercial aircraft brokers on at least two continents have received shadowy inquiries they believe originate in Tehran to buy eight-year-old or younger B737 new generation airplanes, and B747-400 aircraft of the same vintage, price no object.
The fact that Iran may be trying to buy American made jet aircraft clandestinely and is willing to pay sky's-the-limit prices is hugely worrisome. According to Joshua R. EDKINS [pseudonym], a retired supergrade CIA clandestine service operative, Buying aircraft is very competitive and the first question usually asked is, How much.?' When price doesn't matter, something's wrong. Such is the case here. If Iran buys these aircraft, what better way to deliver a nuke?
EDKINS and others with knowledge of the Tehran regime believe that it would be operationally feasible for Iran to buy an aircraft, fit it with a primitive nuclear device, and launch the plane against an American target. The suicide crew might be Iranian, or the mission could be jobbed out to one of Iran's owned-and-operated Shia surrogates like Hezbollah, or even sub-contracted to a Sunni al-Qa'ida or al-Qa'ida in Iraq cell.
They'll train a crew and insert a Plutonium bomb using dated Fat-Boy technology -- which is why they need a fat belly aircraft, says EDKINS.
Indeed, flight training could be conducted in Iran. The pilots could conceivably become proficient enough to fly Iran Air flights in order to learn commercial procedures and develop confidence dealing with air control centers.
Operationally, a mission against the US would be incredibly tough -- but not impossible. And the Iranians have both patience and a long-term weltanschauung when it comes to these sorts of terror operations. You want weltanschauung? Long before the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, the nucleus of what would become his Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was training in Lebanon's Beka'a Valley under the protection of the PLO's Yasser Arafat. So by the time Arafat and his minions left Beirut for Tunis in 1982, Iran had already established itself to fill the terror vacuum in Lebanon by creating what would become Hezbollah and the Islamic Jihad Organization. And patience? After the 1979 seizure of the American Embassy, hundreds of pages of shredded CIA documents were painstakingly reconstructed strand by strand.
So now, Tehran can take its time too. The Iranians can spend weeks, even months monitoring and recording communications between commercial aircraft and regional FAA control centers or even NORAD by using scanners, thus familiarizing the suicide crew with what they'd have to say as they approached U.S. airspace. The same techniques could be used to glean language from flight control in Western Europe.
The airliners could go through a series of identity changes that would make them nigh on impossible to trace. And when it came time to use them, they wouldn't have to be painted to look like jets belonging to United Airlines or other U.S.-based carriers, either. Any airline that flies 737s or 747s would do -- even FedEx or other airfreight carriers. The list of false IDs would also probably also include aircraft from South America, where Iran is currently deepening its ties with such anti-US leaders as Venezuela's rabidly anti-American president Hugo Chavez.
Indeed, the growing Tehran-Caracas axis is troubling on a number of levels. When I was in Paris recently, a source of mine with well-placed intelligence connections in Tehran mentioned that as far back as early 2005 the mullahs had budgeted more than $200 million to spread around in South America, where a growing number of the continent's new leaders, epitomized by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, are turning both leftward and increasingly anti-US in their policies.
Venezuelan president Chavez is a vocal supporter of Iran's nuclear program. As far back as March of 2005, the then-president of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, received a warm welcome from the Venezuelan strongman. Khatami did not visit Chavez empty-handed either. He delivered 100,000 AK-47 assault rifles (an impressive number of weapons considering the fact that the Venezuelan armed forces number only slightly more than 80,000) as well as a cadre of Iranian experts -- several hundred engineers and technicians to help set up joint commercial ventures. Those joint ventures also provide perfect cover for status for clandestine officers from Iran's intelligence service, the Ministry of Security and Information, thus allowing Iran's Seppah-e Pasdaran (the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), to establish a fertile and hospitable hub from which to recruit agents, gather intelligence, and organize terror operations against the United States.
Chavez and the new Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have also exchanged warm greetings in recent months. Ahmadinejad, who has called for the eradication of Israel and claimed the Holocaust never took place, is said to have been impressed by Chavez's 2005 Christmas Eve broadcast, during which the Venezuelan made a number of anti-Semitic remarks.
And how does the current Caracas-Tehran love-fest dovetail with Iran's attempts to buy American aircraft and fly one at a U.S. target? The answer is that the Venezuelan president might actually be loony enough to be persuaded to allow Tehran to substitute its suicide mission for a Venezuelan flight. Fiction? Like I said, it sounds like the plot of one of my novels. But stranger things have actually happened.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006
13:56 ||
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Paint would be irrelevant to an air traffic controller. What about the transponder on the plane?
Or for that matter, why not just use an Emirates Air jet? They land all over the US.
#5
I for one was surprised that there were not a second wave of 9/11 attacks based on this idea in late 2001 early 2002. In fact it was used in a really cheesy Glenn Ford/Vince Edwards movie done for TV called Evening in Bytantium http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077521/fullcredits
For a vision of war, it was almost elegant. The smoke and stink and deafening crack of munitions would be replaced by invisible beams of focused light. Modified 747 jets, equipped with laser weapons, would blast ballistic missiles while they were still hundreds of miles from striking our soil. Directed-energy cannons would intercept incoming rockets at the speed of light, heating up the explosives inside and causing them to burst apart in midair. And this wasnt some relic of Reagan-era Star Wars visionaries. These were modern plans, initiated barely a decade ago, that would be realized not in some far-off future, but soon. Out in the New Mexico desert at the White Sands Missile Range, the U.S. Armys Tactical High Energy Laser shot down dozens of Katyusha rockets and mortars. In 2004, Air Force contractors began test-firing the chemically powered beam weapon for a retrofitted 747, the Airborne Laser.
Then reality set in, and these recent efforts to wield battlefield lasers suddenly began looking as doomed as Star Wars. Generating the megawatts of laser power needed to detonate a missile required hundreds of gallons of toxic chemicalsethylene, nitrogen trifluoride. The weapons grew bulky. Worse, after a few shots, the lasers would have to be resupplied with a fresh batch of reactants. The logistics of hauling those toxins either through the air or across a battlefield made generals shiver. And questions lingered about how effectively the beams would penetrate dust and rain. Last year, the Army canceled its Tactical High Energy Laser project, and some think the wildly overbudget beam-firing 747 may be next to go.
But dont count laser weapons out yet. The ray-gun potential of weapons that fire with precision over tremendous distances is far too militarily appealing, particularly at a time when American soldiers are fighting guerrilla foes who melt quickly into the background. If I could reach into a crowd and take out one or two targets without a puff of dust or a crack of a rifleif I could fire for a long time, without ever having to reload, says Marine Corps Major General Bradley Lott, thats something the United States Marine Corps would be very, very interested in pursuing.
But if chemical lasers cant cut it, what will make beam warfare a reality? The answer is twofold. First, the Pentagon is slowly realizing that if it wants results, it has to lower its expectations. Shoot down mortars first, for example, then missiles. More important, however, is the reemergence of two technologies of the Star Wars pastsolid-state and free-electron lasersin the energized, promise-filled labs of two former colleagues who thought their dreams of laser triumph had died years ago.
Jumping to Light speed
Lasers all work in pretty much the same way: Excite certain kinds of atoms, and light particlesphotonsradiate out. Reflect that light back into the excited atoms, and more photons appear. But unlike with a lightbulb, which glows in every direction, this second batch of photons travels only in one direction and in lockstep with the first. And instead of shining in every part of the spectrum, laser light is all the same wavelength, which depends on the gain mediumthe type of atomsyou use to generate the beam. Shine enough of the focused light, and things start to burn.
The first laser experiments in the 1960s used ruby crystals as the gain medium. But solid-state lasers like these originally couldnt produce more than a few hundred watts of power. Thats fine for eye surgery. Knocking down a missileas the military first dreamed of doingtakes millions of watts of power, which is why researchers turned their efforts toward the ultimately failed chemically powered lasers.
There is another kind of laser, however, one that requires no bulky tubs of toxic chemicals, no crystalsno gain medium whatsoever to generate its beam. Its called a free-electron laser (FEL), and it uses a turbocharged stream of electrons to kick-start its reaction. This form of laser dominated the Star Wars national missile-defense program; it was the almost mythical beast that scientists George Neil and Bob Yamamoto toiled on together for defense contractor TRW.
It was hamstrung by high power expections. But both Neil, the projects chief scientist, and Yamamoto, a project engineer, were true believers. They thought that with enough research, a free-electron laser might really be able to stop a rogue missile. And the breakthroughs required in atomic physics, optics and superconductivity would have far-reaching benefits, even if an ICBM never got zapped. But after 10 years and half a billion dollars of investment, the free-electron laser in TRWs lab peaked out at a meager 11 wattsa tenth of what a lightbulb generates.
After several more years of executives continuing to promise 10, 20 megawatts of power, the Pentagon finally pulled the plug in 1989, and Star Wars went down in a flameout of legendary proportions. Neil particularly resented the way the reckless projections had doomed the program and turned his directed-energy ideas into a laughingstock. At scientific conferences for years afterward, Neil would advocate for reviving free-electron research. People thought we were insane and the technology was unfeasible, he says. And on the bare evidence, they were right.
Bob Yamamoto, meanwhile, stayed away from military projects for 15 years after the Star Wars fiasco. He went to work for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, TRWs partner in the free-electron laser, building magnets for high-energy physics experiments. The lab was close to Berkeley, California, where he had grown up and gone to college, so the shift gave him the chance to keep racing and rebuilding import carsToyotas and Datsunswith his old buddies. In the garage and at the lab, Yamamoto developed a reputation for making things that could be run hard. Because of this and his previous laser experience, he was tapped in 2003 to run Livermores $50-million Pentagon-funded solid-state laser project. The technology, once deemed so unfeasible, was being resurrected with more measured progress expectations. Yamamoto felt as comfortable with solid-state technology as he did with free-electron lasers, and it proved an intriguing reentry into the field. Directed-energy weapons, theyve been promised for more than 30 years, he says. I want to be the first on the block to say, We took care of it.
Under the GUN
The ammunition in Yamamotos new solid-state laser is a set of four-inch square transparent slabs tinged with the slightest hint of purple. Theyre exactly what youd expect to find powering the cannons on board the Enterprise or the Millennium Falcon.
A magazine of these see-through slabs isnt exactly infinite, though; for every 10 seconds they fire, they need at least a minute to cool off. But the slabsceramics infused with the element neodymium, the atoms that, when excited, produce the photons that eventually become the laser beamcan never be drained of their potency. And theyre a lot less hassle than bulky chemical tubs. Theyre a big reason why Yamamotos machine squeezes into a single 30-foot-long lab. Its not hard to imagine the whole thing packed into a small truck, knocking mortars out of the air. Ive been thinking about deployment for a long time, Yamamoto says.
A solid-state laser like his could now make it to a war zone in part because the bar for energy weapons has been lowered. Blasting an ICBM from 100 miles away requires megawatts of light. Solid-state lasers might never get that powerful. But heating up a mortar from a mile away until the explosives inside detonatethat takes only 100 kilowatts.
Yamamoto is getting close. He shows off dozens of blocks of carbon steel and aluminum, each two inches tall and an inch thick. On all of them are burn marks and holes. One block, marked 6-6-05, is almost completely warped by a pair of half-dollar-size depressions. A rope of formerly molten metal sticks out from the bottom. Can you believe that? Yamamoto asks, with a booming tenor and a big, boyish grin. He looks much younger than his 50 years. Its like shining a flashlight, and stuff is melting! Its ridiculous! The Livermore laser, pushed forward by larger gain-medium slabs and increased pulsing speeds, hit 45 kilowatts of power in March 2005. Thats more than triple what the laser could do three years before.
But theres a nervous tension at the lab the day I come to visit. Each of the slabs is surrounded by an array of 2,880 light-emitting diodes, like the ones in a clock radio. When they shine, they excite the atoms in the transluscent ceramic composites and begin the laser chain reaction. The problem is that the more the diodes glow, the more that temperature disparities degrade the quality of the beam. The infrared rayinvisible to the naked eyestarts to lose some of its quality. Which is bad, because the Pentagon wants to see a nice, tight beam, as well as a powerful one. And the Defense Departments team of testers is due here next Tuesday. The visit will largely determine whether the Livermore team will get the cash to make its next laser: a 100-kilowatt, weapons-grade machine.
So Yamamotos team is making last-minute adjustments to the adaptive opticsmirrors fitted with more than 200 actuators that bend them to compensate for distortions in the beam. Yamamoto is politely apologetic. Im sorry, but were under the gun, he says as our meeting draws to a close.
Wiggling through
George Neil isnt in such a hurry when I meet him a few days later. The thin, 58-year-old death race runnerhe recently finished a 78-mile ultramarathon through the Canadian Rockieshas been pushing for a free-electron laser for more than a quarter of a century. It will be another few years before hes got one as strong as Yamamotos solid-state machine. So he has some time to show me around his lab at the Department of Energys Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Virginia.
He opens a pair of magnetically sealed doors. Inside is a 240-foot-long jumble of copper piping, rubber hoses and steel tubes of a dozen different sizes. Almost all of it is designed to do one thing: generate massively powerful pulses of electrons, moving at 99.999 percent the speed of light. The electrons rush through precision-timed micro-wave fields, gathering strength and speed along the way. Then the electron beam is sent through a wiggler, a series of 29 magnets that bend the electron stream up and down. In the process, the electrons emit photonsand the laser chain reaction begins. This is Neils gain medium, his answer to Yamamotos slabs and the chemical lasers toxic gases, and it is by increasing the power and quality of this electron beam that Neil advances his technology.
The FELs tunability is what got the military interested in the first place. Most lasers lose strength as they move throughand get absorbed bythe atmosphere. A little rain only makes things worse. But an FEL could use whatever wavelength flows through the air the best. And theres no emptying the infinite magazine. No wonder Los Alamos National Laboratory associate director Doug Beason calls it lasers Holy Grail. But can anyone pull it off?
After Star Wars, ultramarathoner Neil bided his time and paced himself, waiting for the technology to catch up. For five years, he worked here at Jefferson lab on a giant particle accelerator. The labs director promised that he could build the FEL afterward. Finally, in 1995, when it came time to put the machine together, Neil and his team designed a new FEL that would produce a single kilowatt of lightnot the superstrength lasers promised back in the 80s. In 1999 they broke the record power levels of the Star Warsmodel FEL by 100-fold. In 2003 the new FEL hit 10 kilowatts, another record. I always believed the technology would get there, Neil says with a satisfied grin, if we took manageable steps with reasonable goals.
And now Neil has the militarys attention again. The Defense Department is investing $14 million a year in the machine. Theres talk of eventually equipping the Navys next generation of destroyers with free-electron lasers. Today the ships dont have the precision weaponry to stop rocket and small-boat attacks, like the kind Al Qaeda used against the U.S.S. Cole in 2000. A laser might be able to handle the job. And only a free-electron laser could be tuned to cut through the briny ocean air.
In December, Neil gets good news. The Navy has committed to the im-proved FEL in a big way: $180 million for an eight-year, multi-team effort. Theres many a challenge ahead, he writes, but at least we are started.
Yet Neils feelings are a little bittersweet. The results have come in for the Pentagons solid-state laser competition, tooand his old friend and colleague Bob Yamamoto lost out. The money to build a weapons-grade solid-state laser in the lab is going instead to a team at Northrop Grumman.
Northrops design wasnt all that different from Yamamotos, but instead of the four big see-through slabs at the core of Yamamotos machine, Northrop relies on several smaller crystals. Less energy is concentrated on individual crystals, so there are fewer imperfections in the beam. Im amazed how much power were getting out of a piece of glass the size of a stick of gum, says Northrop program manager Jeff Sollee, a 30-year directed-energy veteran, most recently with the defense contractors last big chemical-laser program, the Tactical High Energy Laser. The Pentagon has given Sollee 33 months to bring his machine to battlefield strength.
Yamamoto, meanwhile, continues to quietly tweak his laser, despite the Pentagons decision against him. Hes learned that, in this business, anything can happen. For now, were keeping an extremely low profile, he says. But were not done.
Noah Shachtman edits defensetech.org, a military-technology blog.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006
13:33 ||
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But after 10 years and half a billion dollars of investment, the free-electron laser in TRWs lab peaked out at a meager 11 wattsa tenth of what a lightbulb generates.
*cough*bullsh!t*cough*. DO NOT compare incoherent light output (as with incandescent lightbulbs) with coherent laser output. The apparent brightness of a laser can be orders of magnitude greater than a similar wattage of incoherent light. Witness how your measley 5mW laser pointer appears to be as bright as your mini MagLite.
I dare the author to stare into that "meager 11 watts" worth of FEL beam. As the old optics laboratory sign says:
CAUTION: DO NOT STARE INTO LASER BEAM WITH REMAINING EYE
I contributed work for the original round of SDI. FELs (Free Electron Lasers) are a robust technology useful in many areas of subatomic research and defense. They represent one of the few DEWs (Directed Energy Weapons) with practical applications. E beams defocus too readily in atmospheric transmission and masers or other exotic beam types exhibit idiosyncrasies that are equally prohibitive.
If you want to see the sort of "slab" laser diodes mentioned in the article wiggling their little photonic booties, scroll down at the "Beyond NIF" page linked below. We're talking major lumens on the order of driving fusion reactions (i.e., inertial confinement, like Shiva Nova).
Four men charged in Hawai'i and Michigan of conspiring to purchase aircraft equipment and weapons and export them to an Indonesian company remained in federal custody here following their arrest Sunday after arriving in Honolulu last week. The men are accused of trying to export not only the equipment and weapons from an unnamed U.S.-based company, but two also are charged with trying to get price quotes for Sidewinder missiles and aircraft ammunition.
"We consider this to be a serious and grave threat to our national security," U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy III of Detroit said yesterday. "The agencies involved in the case worked hard to arrest individuals who were ready, willing and able to buy American weapons and take them outside the country."
U.S. Attorney Ed Kubo declined to talk about the case's details, such as who would ultimately get the equipment and weapons. He said the case is still under investigation. But Kubo said the case did not involve any plot to use the weapons for terrorism.
The four include Hadianto Djoko Djuliarso, 41, of Indonesia, and Ibrahim Bin Amran, 46, of Singapore, who were charged last week in an indictment by a federal grand jury in Michigan. They are accused of conspiring to violate the U.S. Arms Export Control Act and to launder money. The other two are Ignatius Ferdinandus Soeharli, also known as "Igna," and David Beecroft, who were charged here Monday with conspiring to violate the federal export law. The conspiracy charge that they tried to purchase and export the items without a license by the Department of State carries a prison term of up to five years.
The Michigan indictment alleges a conspiracy involving an employee of a company owned by Djuliarso and Amran sending an e-mail in March last year to an unnamed company based in the United States seeking to purchase military aircraft parts for export to Indonesia. At the time, Indonesia was under a U.S. embargo that prohibited exporting those items to that country, the indictment said. In July last year, Amran also sent a message to the company asking for quotes for aircraft armaments that included 245 Sidewinder missiles and 5,000 rounds of strafing ammunition.
Djuliarso and Amran owned businesses that included Ataru Indonesia, which was identified as the company purchasing the items, according to the indictment. The two traveled to Michigan last year to meet representatives of a U.S. company, the indictment said. The two men, as well as Soeharli and Beecroft, arrived here Friday to meet with representatives of the U.S. company, a federal agent's affidavit said. All four were arrested after meetings that included a viewing of samples of MP-5 machine guns and military aircraft parts, according to the affidavit.
Federal prosecutors here were preparing to transfer the case against Djuliarso and Amran to Michigan. A hearing on that request is scheduled for tomorrow.
Defense lawyers either could not be reached for comment or said they could not say much about the case, although Amran's attorney Michael Park said his client will plead not guilty.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006
13:14 ||
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A Singapore arms dealer who federal agents said came to San Diego to buy rifles he wanted to illegally export to Indonesia was arrested Monday by undercover agents in a sting operation.
Chia Kia Cheng, 60, also known as Ronald K.C. Chia, is scheduled to be arraigned in San Diego federal court today on charges of trying to illegally export two M-4 automatic rifles.
The case began in 1999, when Cheng met an undercover customs agent who was posing as a weapons dealer at an arms expo in Washington, D.C., according to court documents.
In e-mails and phone calls after that, Cheng repeatedly inquired about buying thousands of M-16 rifles, night-vision equipment and bulletproof vests, which he said were bound for customers in Indonesia and Syria, according to court documents.
Cheng also asked about getting grenade launchers for a Syrian buyer, investigators said.
Investigators have not found any connection to terrorist organizations, said Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Lauren Mack.
In conversations over several years, Cheng and the agent referred to the weapons which are illegal to export without permission as teak furniture, according to a court filing.
Less than a month ago, Cheng said he had confirmed buyers and ordered three sample rifles he planned to show his customer and test-fire in Indonesia, they said.
To consummate the deal, Cheng agreed to come to San Diego.
During Cheng's visit, the undercover agent showed him two rifles in a hotel room, then had him fill out a shipping label for shipment to Indonesia and pay $3,280, investigators said.
Other agents arrested Cheng shortly after the payment was made, investigators said.
In an interview less than an hour later, Cheng denied paying for the rifles, but he said the deal was improper and shady, according to court documents.
The charges he faces carry a maximum prison term of 20 years if he is convicted.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/12/2006
13:10 ||
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Preez forgives, papa Cheng not sharpest hoe in rice paddy. He dink big, but no do impot/expot thingy, he just like M-4's for nytime gun sex.
$ 3,280 dolla com from Ronnie egg stash. Chickens ah dead noaw, flu got'em. Preez forgives.
Posted by: Mama Cheng ||
04/12/2006 13:24
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April 12 (Bloomberg) -- Iran, defying United Nations Security Council demands to halt its nuclear program, may be capable of making a nuclear bomb within 16 days, a U.S. State Department official said.
Don't panic, yet....
Iran will move to ``industrial scale'' uranium enrichment involving 54,000 centrifuges at its Natanz plant, the Associated Press quoted deputy nuclear chief Mohammad Saeedi as telling state-run television today. ``Using those 50,000 centrifuges they could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 16 days,'' Stephen Rademaker, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, told reporters today in Moscow.
.....it's 16 days from when they get them on line. You may exhale now.
Rademaker was reacting to a statement by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said yesterday the country had succeeded in enriching uranium on a small scale for the first time, using 164 centrifuges. That announcement defies demands by the UN Security Council that Iran shut down its nuclear program this month. The U.S. fears Iran is pursuing a nuclear program to make weapons, while Iran says it is intent on purely civilian purposes, to provide energy. Saeedi said 54,000 centrifuges will be able to enrich uranium to provide fuel for a 1,000-megawat nuclear power plant similar to the one Russia is finishing in southern Iran, AP reported.
``It was a deeply disappointing announcement,'' Rademaker said of Ahmadinejad's statement. Rademaker said the technology to enrich uranium to a low level could also be used to make weapons-grade uranium, saying that it would take a little over 13 years to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon with the 164 centrifuges currently in use. The process involves placing uranium hexafluoride gas in a series of rotating drums or cylinders known as centrifuges that run at high speeds to extract weapons grade uranium.
Iran has informed the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency that it plans to construct 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz next year, Rademaker said. ``We calculate that a 3,000-machine cascade could produce enough uranium to build a nuclear weapon within 271 days,'' he said.
So that's two years from now, more or less. Assuming they don't have a tunnel full of centrifuges already up and running
While the U.S. has concerns over Iran's nuclear program, Rademaker said ``there certainly has been no decision on the part of my government'' to use force if Iran refuses to obey the UN Security Council demand that it shuts down its nuclear program. Rademaker is in Moscow for a meeting of his counterparts from the Group of Eight wealthy industrialized countries. Russia chairs the G-8 this year.
China is concerned about Iran's decision to accelerate uranium enrichment and wants the government in Tehran to heed international criticism of the move, Wang Guangya, China's ambassador to the United Nations said.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006
13:00 ||
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#1
If all top Iranian officials do this.....
Then we are safe from the next generation!
rd
Posted by: red ||
04/12/2006 13:24
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#2
I know its been said before and often, but the chants and photos from today's Iranian nuclean celebration party - replete with heavy religious overtones - looks/sounds like its right out of "Beneath the Planet of the Apes!" Let's hope for a different ending...
#6
What gets me is the false axiom that for some reason, Iran has to start with crude ore and refine it all the way to nuclear grade material.
Hasn't it crossed anyone's mind that at some point, any of the other following things could have happened?
1) They bought already-enriched uranium, and want to start up a nuclear plant just to bombard the good stuff with neutrons and create plutonium. So once that plant is online, it will start producing plutonium quickly.
2) They bought semi-enriched uranium that needs far fewer centrifuges and processing to become weapons grade than crude ore.
The bottom line here is that either of these situations could give them a bomb doing exactly what they are doing right now, and much faster than projected. The illusion is that they had to begin from scratch.
If that is not the case, then Iran could have the bomb in short order.
#7
Iran has a small PUREX plant at Tehran Nuclear Complex. It can produce 600 grams of Plutonium a year.
The only reactor in Iran that can produce Plutonium is running at high burnup and under IAEA inspections. It is tiny - 5 MW and will produce less than half a kilogram of Pu per year.
Iran can't hide a plutonium production reactor (large IR signature) , nor can it effectively hide additional Pu reprocessing plants - the presence of Krypton 85 gas in the atmosphere would be a dead giveaway.
It also doesn't have the spent fuel - you need about 1 ton of spent fuel (at low burnup) to produce 1 kilogram of Pu.
Posted by: john ||
04/12/2006 16:28
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#8
According to Richard Gawin Three years of 1,300 centrifuges
operating at 3 SWU per year would provide 11,700 SWU. The above 13,920 SWU
requirement would thus take 3.57 years (or 13,920 divided by 11,700 multiplied by 3), or 3
years, if each of the 1,300 centrifuges can deliver 3.56 SWU per year. If one assumes that an
implosion-type weapon uses 20 kg of HEU, then 1,300 centrifuges could produce the
requisite HEU in about 14 months. A centrifuge's power consumption is something like 100 kilowatt-hours per
SWU (about $5 of the $100 price of a commercial SWU). Thus a machine producing 3 SWU
per year consumes 300 kWh over a period of 8,766 hours, for an installed power of about 35
watts. This is less than that used by a 40-watt light bulb, and something like that required for
a small desk fan. A park of 1,300 centrifuges needs 45 kWh, less power than a small car.
There are many small computer centers that demand uninterrupted power, and commercial
suppliers sell such systems w
Posted by: john ||
04/12/2006 16:33
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#9
It looks like the Pakistan way--- HEU.
The Chinese design provided by AQ Khan used HEU.
Posted by: john ||
04/12/2006 16:34
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#10
More from Richard Garwin...
The performance of a gas centrifuge is measured by its yield of separative work units (SWU). Each of the centrifuges used in Pakistan or in the European enrichment enterprise, Urenco, may be assumed to produce about 3 SWU per year. The commercial nuclear-fuel market values an SWU at about $100. Technically, the number of SWU that would normally be used to produce a kilogram of U-235 as HEU (about 1.05 kg of HEU) is 232 SWU. The number of SWU that must be invested to make 1 kg of U-235 as LEU (in 22.7 kg of LEU) is about 151 SWU. In both cases one is assumed to start from natural uranium (0.711 percent U-235) and discard depleted uranium with 0.25 percent U-235. If one assumes a Urenco centrifuge with a capacity of 3 SWU per year, then the production of LEU containing one metric ton of U-235--enough to replenish for a year a single large reactor producing a million kilowatts of electrical power (the standard-size reactor such as was being built by KEDO in North Korea)--would require 1,000 kg times 151 SWU/kg, or 151,000 SWU. At 3 SWU per year per centrifuge, this would require 151,000 divided by 3, or slightly more than 50,000 centrifuges working for a year. And the next year the plant's output would supply the following year's replacement fuel, and so on.
Posted by: john ||
04/12/2006 16:41
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#11
H. Blix said 5 years, and he's bound to be right some day, maybe. After all, an expert is anyone from out of town.
#12
Excellent numbers, john, assuming they're true. From the low productivity factors, they certainly do look accurate. Thank you for a factual breakdown of what it takes. Sadly, as 'moose pointed out, there are "end run" strategies that render the time factors irrelevant. All the more reason to bomb Iran immediately.
#13
They just discussed a bomb Iran scenario on FoxNews with a target count and all..
Problem is... None of the target were Rafsanjani's properties. Ranburg discussion on March 1st about Rafsanjani's worth At the top slot comes, unsurprisingly to Iran observers, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, whose family rules over a vast financial and business empire. From the pistachio farms of his hometown Rafsanjan to huge oil trading companies, the ruling theocracys former president has used his power and influence to expand his wealth. Conservative estimates put his fortune at well beyond the 10 trillion Rial mark, the equivalent of $1.1 billion.
Most of the powerful clerics enormous wealth is vested in the hands of his sons and daughters, as well as other close relatives such as his brothers, nephews, and bother-in-laws, and son-in-laws. One of his villas was sold in 2004 for roughly 29 billion Rials. His brother, Mohammad Hashemi, the former chief of the state broadcasting corporation, owns the company Taha, which imports industrial-scale printers.
Note the sleazy Ayatollah's in that article and the Military and BUSH should make DAMN SURE that those assets are on any first strike target list.
That will destroy the Mullah's pocketbooks and make it hurt for them not only the public and the military.
#14
A little HEU, or a lot of lesser-enriched uranium can achieve critical mass - you just gotta ram 'em together. Oppenheimer & Co, didn't even test the HEU bomb (Little Man? The cylindrical one) - they dropped it and it went off. The Plutonium bomb was more complicated, but (IIRC) more efficient (Fat Boy?)
More than one way to skin a cat.
Or a Mullah.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/12/2006 21:35
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#15
You need 60 kg of HEU for a gun type weapon and 20 kg of HEU for an unsophisticated implosion type weapon.
LEU won't do.
Posted by: john ||
04/12/2006 21:40
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#16
Some bloggers on FREE REPUBLIC.com and other sites are arguing that Iran may already have 5-10 or 20 bombs, and that MadMoud is playing mind games wid the West in order to disguise that fact that Iran already has nukes. Meanwhile, REGIME CHANGE IRAN reports that iff Iran continues on its current path MILITARY ACTION AGAINST IRAN IS VERY LIKELY IN 2007 - looks like Hillary, the Dems, and the MSM/Hollyweird may get their "WE SAVED THE WORLD AND AMERICA FROM DUBYA AND USA/GOP/FASCIST-CAUSED NUKE BRINKMANSHIP-WAR" 2008 elex promo after all, and whether they truly want it or not.
Posted by: john ||
04/12/2006 23:29
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#18
The real world isn't like hollywood.
Physics undergraduates can't build atomic bombs and countries with nuclear arms don't sell them. They are heavily guarded; no terrorist can steal one or buy one.
Posted by: john ||
04/12/2006 23:43
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A British Air Force doctor being court-martialled for refusing a posting to Iraq said on Wednesday he believed the United States was the moral equivalent of Nazi Germany. Australian-born Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith could face an unlimited jail sentence for disobeying an order to go to Iraq last year and four orders to prepare for his deployment. The case is the first of its kind in Britain over the war in Iraq.
"As early as 2004 I regarded the United States to be on par with Nazi Germany as regards its activities in the Gulf," Kendall-Smith told the court amid a series of bitter exchanges with prosecutor David Perry.
Perry asked: "Are you saying the U.S. is the moral equivalent of the Third Reich?"
Kendall-Smith replied: "That's correct."
The judge in the case has already ruled that orders for British troops to deploy to Iraq in 2005 were legal because the British presence was covered by a United Nations Security Council resolution passed after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Speaking firmly but often emotionally, Kendall-Smith testified in his own defense as the only witness called in the case. He said he initially tried to resign on learning he was being sent to Iraq, but later concluded it was his duty to remain in the Air Force and refuse the order. "I love the Air Force today as much as the day I volunteered, sir," he said.
"I just didn't know we'd have to, you know, go to war."
The case, before a civilian judge advocate and a panel of five officers, concluded on Wednesday, and the panel will return on Thursday to consider a verdict. The judge provided no room for the panel to accept Kendall-Smith's argument that the orders were illegal. "My direction to you, gentlemen, as a matter of law, is that each of the orders was a lawful order," judge advocate Jack Bayliss said. "The defense contention that the orders were unlawful is wrong."
Kendall-Smith's lawyers have conceded that Kendall-Smith did not obey orders. But they presented him as a conscientious officer trying to carry out his duty.
"All I ask you to think about is that he is a human being, and he has wrestled with his conscience, and has taken a great moral stride," his lawyer, Philip Sapsford, told the panel.
Prosecutors described Kendall-Smith, who holds both British and New Zealand citizenship, as an aggrieved officer who had repeatedly clashed with his superiors. Kendall-Smith's belligerent testimony showed he was "an easily moved, stubborn individual, prone to displays of temper and resentment," prosecutor Perry said. "(He) would have been difficult for any senior officer to deal with."
Sounds like a liberal doctor, who perhaps joined the service to pay for medical school, or get trained as a doctor. Thought that he wouldn't see any action, or it would be a "justified, civilized war". The US had one or two who pulled the same thing during Gulf War One, if I remember. They got court marshalled as well.
A refusenik was a Soviet Jew who was refused an exit visa, in violation of international standards on human rights. To apply tht to a military deserter, represents a vile attempt to steal moral capital.
A highly competent and, by all accounts, pleasant man, Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith, is on patrol in mountainous terrain. In the course of one sadly uncontrolled explosion, an iron bar is picked up by the force of the blast and driven clean through the front part of his head. Malcom is sent flying, but, to everybody's surprise, he survives the removal of the protruding bar. As he recovers, however, it is observed that his personality has dramatically changed, though his memory and intelligence remain apparently unaffected. In 2006, a physician named Harlow from London writes about him: "His equilibrium, or balance, so to speak, between his intellectual faculties and animal propensities seems to have been destroyed. He is fitful, irreverent, indulging in the grossest profanity (which was not previously his custom), manifesting but little deference for his fellows, impatient of restraint or advice when it conflicts with his desires." The now extremely rude Malcom Kendall-Smith is an object of immense medical interest, for it seems clear, from his somewhat crude experience of psychosurgery, that one can alter the social behavior of the human animal by physically interfering with the frontal lobes of the brain.
#6
The people who repeatedly compare the United States to NAZI Germany are not only wrong, they are delusional and have no understanding of what the NAZI military did, especially in the Ukraine, Russia, and Poland. They not only greatly distort history, they completely rewrite it. This jerk should be hanged from a yardarm from that cruiser that's moored between Tower Bridge and Westminster, and left there. Lacquer the body with about 40 coats of clear varnish, irradiate it to he$$ and back to kill all the bacteria, and let him hang there until Charles' grandchildren are old men.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/12/2006 17:26
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#7
One of the many reasons we continue to hear and read of these idiotic comparisons of the United States to Nazi Germany is the mainstream media. And since we're talking about a Tommy who made such an idiotic comparison, I'd like to present to you Marshal of the Royal Air Force, the late Sir Arthur Harris:
"A journalist will say anything to earn a fast buck. I get my information from the horse's mouth, not from the rear end where they do."
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/12/2006 19:37
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#12
How about the wanton destruction of whole cities populated with civilians...
By todays standards that is pretty unethical...
Nevertheless war IS messy and those engaged in it get 'dirty': on both sides.
I dont think you can be engaged in killing people and hold any moral high ground for very long.It simply does not wash. Most people see right through the propaganda BS...
I would happily compare anyone who kills another innocent human being as a Nazi...
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/12/2006 22:33
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#19
"I wonder why I never hear any Jews comparing the U.S. to Nazi Germany."
You haven't been listening to the "right" people, cf. Chomsky and Finkelstein.
Posted by: Ernest Brown ||
04/12/2006 22:41
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#20
Even the HISTORY CHANNEL as of last night proclaimed STALIN killed 25Milyuhn or more of his own people, to include the pre-war wilful starvation of the Ukraine. In any case, its the US DemoLeft and its MSM thats wilfully treating Dubya as hated despicable "Adolf BushHitler" for 2008. but whom is also an imperfect, misguided, semi/non-educated Male Brutish ideo HalfCommie HalfBrother/HalfComrade to Marx, Stalin and Mao, when it comes to the USA warring around the globe vv 9-11. The RINO agenda-less Dems are such for a reason, and that raeson entails having PC,
"PLAUSIBLE DENIAL/DENIABLE" alibis should it become necessary to have Radical Islamist Spetzlamists deliberately attack Washington andor Amer cities. incurring such levels of casualties as to continue to induce the Fed to regulate. militarize, and Socialize everything while simul justifying no American-specific overseas military retaliation for any new domestic attacks.
COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM MUST NOT RECEIVE BLAME FOR ANYTHING OR EVERYTHING PERTAINING TO AMERICA LOSING ITS SOVEREIGNTY, AND COMING UNDER OWG AND SOCIALIST-COMMUNIST WORLD ORDER, VOLUNTARILY ANDOR BY ARMED FORCE. AKA NATIONAL MILITARY DEFEAT IN WAR! The Left believes it will inevitably win becuz its ideo stands for any and every side, and no side except its own. WEIRDLY AND MYSTERIOUSLY SURVIVING GOP-CAUSED/BLAMED
"AMER HIROSHIMAS", INCLUD PC ATTACKS = ASSSASSINATION ATTEMPTS ON DUBYA AND GOP-CONGRESS = SAMEO SAMEO FOR SAVING AMERICA AND WORLD FROM GOP-CAUSED/BLAMED "NUCLEAR BRINKMANSHIP" AND NUKE WAR.
An aircraft carrier strike group moved into the Caribbean this week to begin two months of naval exercises in what the U.S. military hopes will be a show of its commitment to the region.
The deployment by the USS George Washington group will also focus on threats such as drug and human trafficking, according to the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command, which oversees military activities in Latin America.
Brig. Gen. Kenneth J. Glueck Jr., the Southern Command's chief of staff, called the tour an "opportunity for us to touch base with our partner countries."
He added: "There's no other symbol of American power like the carrier."
Members of the strike group, led by the nearly 1,100-foot long Nimitz-class carrier, made their first port stops Monday and Tuesday. The USS Stout, a destroyer, stopped in Curacao, while the USS Underwood, a frigate, docked in Cartagena, Colombia.
The military has dismissed allegations by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez that it is planning an invasion of his country. But analysts say the show of force sends a signal to Chavez and other Latin American leaders about U.S. strength.
Although the group has no plans to dock in Venezuela, the U.S. ambassador in Caracas met Sunday with the head of the Southern Command, Gen. Bantz Craddock, aboard the George Washington.
Southern Command leaders were conducting a routine quarterly meeting, but the high interest from Venezuela in the deployment prompted the diplomatic participation, according to Southern Command Spokesman Jose Ruiz.
The carrier will arrive at its first stop in St. Maarten on Friday. Other countries on the tour include Honduras, Nicaragua, Jamaica, Trinidad Tobago, Curacao, Aruba and St. Kitts.
Daniel Erikson, a Caribbean analyst for the Inter-American Dialogue policy institute, said many Latin American nations are concerned because the U.S. has threatened since 2002 to withdraw military aid from governments that do not sign an agreement pledging not to turn American citizens over to the International Criminal Court.
A number of Caribbean countries have not signed the waiver.
"Washington has been trying to figure out ways, without backing down, to show the U.S. is still willing to engage with allies in the region," he said.
The deployment also sends a signal to China, which has invested heavily in Latin America, Erikson said, explaining that many Caribbean leaders "have been puzzled by what they see as Washington's passivity" on China's role in the area, Erikson said.
The Norfolk, Va.-based strike group also includes the USS Monterey, a cruiser, and a 30-plane air wing.
#2
The carrier will arrive at its first stop in St. Maarten on Friday. Other countries on the tour include Honduras, Nicaragua, Jamaica, Trinidad Tobago, Curacao, Aruba and St. Kitts.
#6
Although the group has no plans to dock in Venezuela, the U.S. ambassador in Caracas met Sunday with the head of the Southern Command, Gen. Bantz Craddock, aboard the George Washington
no need to dock to deliver the message
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/12/2006 13:21
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#7
He added: "There's no other symbol of American power like the carrier."
#8
Port of Spain harbor faces the Venezuelan mainland. It is just about 9 miles away.
To get to Aruba, the battle group will sail along the coastline of Venezuela.
Posted by: john ||
04/12/2006 14:05
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#9
Is it just me or does it look like somebody is putting everything in place to make sure no nutbag things it would be a good time to take advantage of a situation.
#13
This is obviously a DoD marketing event. Wait until Hugo sees the USS George Washington and Nimitz. He'll forget all about Condi Rice and that inflatable tub doll. USS Underwood??? Isn't that a typewriter?
#1
Sniveling apologists such s the author of this article should take their own advice.
Grow yer beard.
Join a nice mosque.
Maybe they will go easy on you when they take over.
Posted by: ed ||
04/12/2006 12:24
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#3
Schoonenboom advises "an adventurous foreign policy" for the Dutch government. "We must support the moderate Islamic powers much more, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Hezbollah in Lebanon, instead of secular movements without prospects in Muslim countries. We must talk to the Palestinian regime of Hamas. They are democratically elected. It is a terrorist movement, but so was Arafat's PLO. And the IRA in Ireland."
The dotten line is already drawn across Dutch necks.
Posted by: ed ||
04/12/2006 13:08
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#4
I'd like to comment on this, but I'm dead.
See you all soon...
Posted by: The Ghost of Theo Van Gogh ||
04/12/2006 14:01
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#5
"If you, as a Muslim in the Netherlands, keep hearing only that Islam is the equivalent of violence and that you belong to a fifth column, then you feel alien. In the debate, many big words are used without being based on facts."
Is that like, "Don't confuse me with the facts, I don't want to see that many Moslem believers are peaceful, many of the Mosque Imams are advocating violence." ?
Facts are so inconvienient. Big words are hard to understand. Big words like "Jihad", etc.
SUSPECTED Tamil rebels blew up a bus full of sailors in northeastern Sri Lanka today killing 12 and further dimming hopes for a new round of peace talks next week, officials said.
The latest bombing, the second in as many days, was seen by officials involved in the Norwegian-backed peace bid as a blow to their efforts to get the parties to meet in Switzerland to discuss ways to save a faltering truce.
Today's bombing raised to 19 the number of people killed in the latest upsurge in violence against government forces.
The navy bus, the third in a convoy of seven transporting off-duty sailors, was travelling from the port city of Trincomalee to Kantale, the next main town in the region, when it was caught in the landmine blast, a police official said.
"Victims have been sent to three hospitals," the official said. He said the bus had hit an oncoming van just after the blast and four passengers, including three Britons, were also hurt.
A spokesman for the British High Commission here said none of the three had life threatening injuries. The Britons were from the eastern England city of Norwich, police said.
Among those killed was a civilian driver of the bus transporting the sailors returning home for the traditional Sinhala New Year on Thursday.
The latest attack was a copy of yesterday's ambush in the island's north where five soldiers and two civilians were killed. The government blamed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for the attack.
There was no formal reaction from the LTTE.
Shortly after the attack, police fired teargas at a stone-throwing Sinhalese mob in Trincomalee to save a Tamil legislator, officials said.
The Sinhalese put up white flags to mourn the death of sailors and tried to attack legislator Nadarajah Raviraj in retaliation for the bombing.
"The MP's vehicle was damaged and the police action was aimed at protecting him," a police official told AFP from the port town. Several men were also arrested.
The MP had just attended the funeral of Vanniasingham Vigneswaran, who spearheaded the Tamil Resurgence Movement, a known LTTE front organisation.
He was gunned down in Trincomalee Friday by suspected pro-government activists.
The upsurge in violence came as Sri Lanka's international donors urged the Tigers to attend the April 19-21 talks aimed at salvaging a Norwegian-brokered truce that held since February 2002.
Diplomats involved in the process have expressed fears that the talks may be delayed by the violence that followed a war of words between the two sides.
"We are getting close to the date (of talks), but some of the arrangements have not been completed because of the uncertainty," an official said referring to the increasingly tentative Swiss talks next week.
However, the international community was trying to nudge both sides back to the table.
The ambassadors of Norway, Japan and the EU - known as the "Co-Chairs" for their efforts to drum up aid in support of Sri Lanka's peace bid - travelled to Tiger territory yesterday to deliver a strong message.
"The LTTE was urged again to refrain from all violence and to engage in a discussion on a political outcome, ensuring the democratic rights of all people in Sri Lanka," they said.
Today's mine attack was the third against troops since the first round of truce talks held in February in Switzerland where both sides agreed to halt attacks that left at least 153 people dead in December and January.
The LTTE was also held responsible by the Government for a landmine attack on Saturday. The Tamil separatist conflict has claimed over 60,000 lives since 1972.
#2
When has the race-baiters ever been concerned with evidence or the rule of law (never mind 'innocent until proven guilty'....).
The sad thing is that this will make it all the harder for the victims in cases of real racism. (Which I think happens - to all races including whites).
BTW: why was the only black team member exempted from providing DNA? Isn't that 'profiling'? Racism?
#3
Though not mentioned by the media, hate crime hoaxes are quite common in America, especially on college campuses. The Los Angeles Times claims there have been over 20 phony hate crimes on college campuses from 1997-2005, but even that number seems low.
I don't know, I think we've reached an important milestone in America when phony hate crimes probably exceed real hate crimes (with the exception of hate crimes against women). For the last 10 years, or so, we still get race baiting losers crying wolf to get attention- but both blacks and whites - are deeply outraged by these stunts.
This incident is far more offensive and damaging in that it was a false cry of rape than a bogus cry of racism.
Most kids today(black and white) probably find it strange and amusing that in prior generations blacks and whites did not date or marry and will view this event entirely in terms of a rape, or bogus rape, rather than some sort of statement about race relations in America.
#5
I take offense at that comment. Unless she's claiming that they bathed her, washed her clothes and scrubbed under her nails, which she is not, this isn't rocket science Angie.
Maybe she was raped, but not by the members of the LaCross team. What's outrageous about this is that the ideal of innocent until proven guilty was trampled just because one girl screamed witch, and a school/government sanctioned witch hunt occurred.
I guess you missed that part about the upcoming election when noting the prosecutor didnt have the guts to ask the lynch mobs to go home.
Maybe someone did yell the n*word at her and maybe she was scared. But young women, white black and purple, can all probably relate similar incidents in life where drunken men hanging out of sorority homes made them feel threatened. Maybe they didnt use the n* word but slut, bitch, and whore can be scary too. Its not exactly a news flash to discover that many women, non-strippers, have been raped in jock dorms, but unfortunately for them, they dont get the benefit of demagogue race hustlers racing to the cameras, convicting every single player on the team.
The only one whose bigotry is showing here is your own.
Well, tough shit. Oh, was that offensive, too? My goodness me!
If she has injuries as described, then someone gave them to her. Maybe you're right; maybe she was raped by someone else. I agree that the lack of DNA sure is damned odd. I read that in a large percentage of rape cases, DNA is not found. I also read that if they so much as sneezed on her, DNA would be found. So I don't know what to think about that.
But by "the stupids" I mean:
Black people who insist that she must be telling the truth, because of the 400-year-old legacy of oppression and hatred that has been perpetrated blah blah blah...
Men who insist that she must by lying, because of the feminazi war against blah blah blah...
Women who insist that she must be telling the truth, because of the patriarchy blah blah blah...
Idiots who conclude that she was prolly lying because she's a stripper. 'Cause, you know, strippers are women who use their dirty bodies to lead poor, innocent men astray. (Yeah, I realize he was employing hyperbole, but still...)
The prosecutor, who's apparently prepared to kiss any ass, anytime, anywhere.
The dimwitted team member who wrote an email about skinning strippers.
Now, if you find yourself in any of those groups, feel free to have your doctor check you out for a case of the stupids. Otherwise, I probably wasn't talking about you.
I agreed with your comment. I just think that it's a little bit premature to conclude that it was all a hoax.
#7
Know what, Angie? I've got $50 that says you wouldn't have made that response to 2B's face. I suspect your second comment might have placed you in a position where you badly needed the attention of a good dentist.
Posted by: mac ||
04/12/2006 15:57
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#8
well ooookay then. I guess I misread your point. If it was your point to say that it is premature to smear her the Tawana Brawley label, then I agree. Jumping to that conclusion at this point makes as much sense as jumping to any of the many other un-substantiated conclusions being thrown around at this point.
#10
I'm a rich white lad with a bright future attending a prestigious southern school. I'm young and careless, but otherwise pretty smart. I know about STD's and HIV. I have a girl friend, or two..... and I need to rape and free-boink a black stripper at a party in front of 40 of my team mates and best friends.............? Yea right.
#11
Supposedly there is video showing the her dancing with the injuries she claimed to have suffered in the rape. if so, then I wonder if the the Duke jocks stiffed or robbed her and the rape claim is her way of getting revenge. Would explain why there is no DNA evidence (as of yet).
Posted by: ed ||
04/12/2006 16:09
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#12
Gah. I can't type.
Posted by: ed ||
04/12/2006 16:11
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#13
As a Duke grad, high scholl lacrosse player and uncle of a current Duke student, I've been watching this case pretty closely.
First off, the lacrosse team seems to have a reputation for being hard partyers and getting out of control. Rape out of control? Who knows at this point. The DNA evidence says probably not.
Lacrosse players (over generalizing I know) are a mix of cocky and thug. The cocky comes from the "cool factor" attached to the sport, especially today. The thug aspect comes from the fact that this is a violent sport where the guys are big and strong. They are used to using their muscle to get what they want. Of course, lots and lots of lacrosse players are really good guys too.
Pressler should have been fired as soon as word of the party came out. Forget the rape, the party alone, on top of all of the other stuff that team members had gotten into over the years, was a clear demonstration that he did not have control over his team and that they were repeatedly engaging in behavior that did not reflect well on the university.
The race card was pulled almost immediately by the media and has been amplified ever since. Seems to me that the ladies arrived at the party and did not perform, or did so for a few minutes only. The guys were pissed and some probably said some stupid things. Personally I don't feel sorry for them and think it is just another reason Pressler should be fired.
The lefties at Duke went into immediate hyperventilation mode. The DNA evidence won't matter to them. In their mind the players, the university and white people are guilty. They make the university look stupid. The university responding to these cranks makes the university look stupid. But hey, the university faculty and administration is made up mostly of left wing cranks so why should I be surprised.
I am also pissed, but not surprised, that the media treat NCCU and Duke as academic equals, and if they don't then they derisively refer to Duke as an elite institution, like having a bunch of really smart kids who worked their asses off in high school is some kind of bad thing.
Personally, I think something happened to this lady before she got to the house on Buchanan. She was there for a little while and then bolted, pissing off the lacrosse players in the process. I am highly suspicious a rape occurred, because of the DNA, the oddities around the 911 calls and the purported photos showing her drunk and with makrs on her prior to the party.
In the end the lacrosse team showed really lousy judgement holding this party in the first place. Firing the coach and canceling their season was definitely the right thing to do. If rape is proven, the guilty party/parties should spend a long time at the big house being someone's bitch.
2b -- Concur completely on your #8. I just thought Rantburg was an odd place to be playing the "I'm offended!" card. "Pull your head out of your ass", now that I'd expect at Rantburg.
Meantime, here's another odd tidbit to add to the pile.
#16
That link does add to the mystery and to your point that it's not just a hoax, Angie. Something bad did happen to her that night. It is a very strange sequence of events.
#18
prosecutor's up for contested re-election....anything else?
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/12/2006 21:00
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#19
"I read that in a large percentage of rape cases, DNA is not found"
Thats doublespeak: saying they have no dna because they don't have anyone to compare the sample taken from the victim to; e.g. a rape where the attacker isnt' known to the victim and never is seen again. I have hear that argument before (in the court room.)
Posted by: Mark E. ||
04/12/2006 22:29
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#2
I am truly tired of propping up assholes like this.
http://eritrea.usembassy.gov/eritrea/foodaid.html
On June 7, 2005, President Bush announced that the United States will provide approximately $674 million in additional aid for Africa. Of that amount, $414 million is targeted for immediate famine prevention assistance in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea will receive 200,000 metric tons (MT) of wheat valued at about $100 million to be provided through existing Food for Peace aid programs. With this contribution, U.S. food contributions to Eritrea will have more than tripled in this year: from $60 million (providing 147, 550 MT of food aid) in Fiscal Year (FY) 2004 to $200 million (providing over 350,000 MT) in FY 2005. The amount of food pledged in FY 2005 is equivalent to 14 million 25-kilogram bagsan amount that would fill all the warehouses of the Eritrean Relief and Rehabilitation Commission four times.
The 153,905 MT of food already provided to Eritrea by the United States this year met more than 43% of the 2005 food aid needs in Eritrea projected in the FAO/WFP Crop and Food Supply Assessment conducted in January 2005. With this new contribution, the United States by itself will meet more than 100 percent of Eritreas estimated needs for cereals this year, with food available for FY 2006 as well.
#3
Eritrea has 4.8 million people. 350,000 MT of wheat meets the caloric requirement for 2.1 million people for a year (that's if they ate nothing else). In other words, the USA, just by itself, is feeding 44% of the population just with with wheat charity.
So what does Eritrea produce but war with Ethiopia and repression of the Christian monority? Another Socialist, muslim, dictatorial paradise.
Posted by: ed ||
04/12/2006 15:25
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#1
I got about 3/4 of the way through this and decided this is bullshit. Somebody somewhere in the global MSM wisdom must have decided that this is the month to seek out any and every Muslim, world-wide, who has been given a dirty look at NASCAR or subject to the tauntings of a mob. And this, apparently, was the best they could do.
Let's review shall we? A reporter gets attacked on the subway. What a great story!! Wasn't it lucky he was one of the few Muslims in the country to encounter an attack. A another brave guy who is sheltering children coming out dance lessons in a cultural center [nice touch, but they forgot the puppies and baby ducks] is attacked by a zenophobic mob of 20 "youths" that "a witness" confirmed was shouting,
Russia for Russians". Ok, maybe so. Chalk one up for the "big search". Another guy, with a swastica on his gun kills one Muslim and "another person", (curiously they don't mention if he's a Muslim) on the same night. Unlike our Muslim covert DC snipers, this guy wasn't nearly as good, but apparently, far more indicative of a deep seated problem. And then some people didn't want a mosque in their city and the leader of racist slogans against them resigned "in surprise". All well, too bad about the resignation, but again, it was the best they had to prove the fear and terror that Muslims live in world-wide.
It's so funny to me. You could find, on a daily basis, Christians and Jews who are gang raped, murdered, slaughtered in large numbers, imprisioned, blown up or threatened, on a daily basis, by Muslims in the Muslim world but the global mainstream media can't see it, doesn't report it and doesn't think it's really a problem. But they search the NASCAR, the nation and Russia and come up with these weak events and breatlessly announce that the pogroms have begun.
Here's a tip to any Muslim readers out there. Your biggest threat to your lives is Muslims from another sect. Our biggest threat - is you.
#2
...somewhere in the global MSM wisdom must have decided that this is the month...
2b, what makes this month different from all the other months?
That's right...it's Easter, the commemoration of Christ's death and resurrection. And it's Passover, the commemoration of God's special relationship with his Chosen People.
I'm not surprised these stories are coming out now, though I didn't make the connection 'til just now.
#4
Good catch, Sea -- it's also the reason for all the loon "DaVinci Code" crap the press is pushing, as well as the push on the apocryphal "Gospel of Judas".
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
04/12/2006 14:01
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#5
It appears that the climate in Russia is becoming more hostile to Muslims, both at a street level and higher up in the echelons of power.
Fairly long, this needs p. 49 (or an editing to the first few ones if this is really too long, my bad).
I find this good, even if this doesn't concern me directly - except that some of thoses are closely mirrored in our own immigration myths (and are even falser, think of the absurd anti National Front slogan "we are all children of immigrants" applied to France which was long a land of deeply rooted peasants) -, but this may prove interesting to some RB readers who follow the issue.
And other revelations from the Iraqi regime files.
by Stephen F. Hayes
SADDAM HUSSEIN'S REGIME PROVIDED FINANCIAL support to Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda-linked jihadist group founded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law in the Philippines in the late 1990s, according to documents captured in postwar Iraq. An eight-page fax dated June 6, 2001, and sent from the Iraqi ambassador in Manila to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, provides an update on Abu Sayyaf kidnappings and indicates that the Iraqi regime was providing the group with money to purchase weapons. The Iraqi regime suspended its support--temporarily, it seems--after high-profile kidnappings, including of Americans, focused international attention on the terrorist group.
(...) Rest at link, fairly long.
April 12, 2006: American intelligence has picked up indications that the ongoing chaos in Haiti may be providing Islamist terrorist groups with a safe haven, and an opportunity to plan, organize, and train. This sort of thing was also suspected in Somalia, and known to be happening in remote parts of Pakistan and the Philippines. It's no accident that al Qaeda has been unable to set up permanent and productive training operations anywhere. Many, if not most, of the U.S. Army Special Forces deployed worldwide are not in Afghanistan or Iraq, but in dozens of out-of-the-way and lawless places like Haiti. Restoring order to Haiti would not only do wonders for the economy (especially the once booming tourist business), but provide enough bright lights and bustle to shoo away al Qaeda. But at the moment, Haiti is most hospitable to gangsters and thugs. Every thing is for sale, and justice comes out of the barrel of a gun. The presence of UN peacekeepers in Haiti provides some muscle to go after any terrorist groups setting up shop. While the proximity to the United States may appear attractive to some Islamic terrorists, others know that this proximity works both ways. Keeping some Special Forces in the country on a regular basis, if only for intelligence gathering, would appear as the best antidote for al Qaeda infestation.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006
09:47 ||
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#1
What, is this article trying to tell us the USMC and Brit Royal Marines haven't saved the Haiti beach babes yet!?
#1
"Statements made by preachers in the mosques, in articles and on various media channels accusing non-Muslims of heresy, the [preachers'] curses, and their characterization of Jews as the descendents of apes and pigs - [all these] cause Westerners to perceive Islam as an intolerant religion that rejects religious pluralism.
Actually, aren't those sorts of behaviors the DEFINITION of an intolerant religion?
But the guy is probably just warming up, because we then read this:
Osama bin Laden didn't force anyone to go to Iraq, murder its people and destroy its institutions. He didn't force anyone to murder innocent people in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, America and Europe. Bin-Laden did not tell the Muslims in the West: 'Hate the country that gave you shelter when you fled [from your homelands], made you rich when you were poor, fed you when you were hungry, gave you freedom after the bondage you suffered in your Muslim countries, and educated you when you were ignorant.'
"You caused all these catastrophes out of your own choice and your own free will... and failed to repay the kindness [shown to you]. So what do you expect the West [to do] when it sees its citizens being murdered in the name of religion, when it [experiences] hatred in the name of religion and suffers the damages of terrorism [perpetrated] in the name of religion? It is only natural that the West should hate you and tighten the rope around your necks, so you do not 'invade it from within' as you declare in your announcements and sermons...
I've read through the Koran, and haven't found ANY verse that tells Muslims that gratitude is to be paid to Kufirs if the latter aid the former. I haven't found ANY verse that forbids hypocrisy to Muslims: there are plenty of verses where the Koran complains of hypocrisy IN OTHERS: doing unto others what they have done to you is advice given to muslims regarding their Enemies, and demand sura, verse, and context if a Muzzie cites one such.
The truth that we must deal with today is that people in the West no longer trust Muslims in general...
April 11, 2006: The U.S. admitted that it was backing, with cash, equipment and weapons, a coalition of Somali warlords that are fighting the militia of the Islamic Courts movement for control of Mogadishu. The Islamic Courts are something like the Afghan Taliban. The Islamic Courts enforce Islamic law in order to bring some sense of peace and stability to the country. The Islamic Courts are run by Islamic conservatives who are friendly with Islamic terrorists and al Qaeda. This prompted the U.S. to back clan leaders and warlords who oppose the Islamic Courts (which are dominated, in turn, by a few clans and tribes). American Special Forces have been inside Somalia collecting information, and is certain that the Islamic Courts provide al Qaeda with an opportunity to establish bases in Somalia. It's believed that some high ranking al Qaeda leaders have already taken refuge in Somalia, and are protected by the Islamic Courts.
Some members of the pro-U.S. (or "Counter-terrorist) militias were flown to Kenya to receive some military training, and more equipment. These clan leaders were probably also briefed on the high ranking al Qaeda believed to be in Somalia, and the multi-million dollar rewards for the capture or killing of these al Qaeda big shots.
In an April 9 story about U.S. involvement in Somalia, The Associated Press erroneously reported that a U.S. official said the United States was backing Somali militants fighting Islamic extremists for control of the lawless nation's capital. In fact, the official said only that the U.S. had met with a wide variety of Somali leaders in an effort to fight international terrorists in the country.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006
09:44 ||
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#1
Now this is how it is done!
Any bets on how long before there is an expose from the MSM that makes this sound like the second coming of the "Pheonix(sp?) Program"?
Posted by: N guard ||
04/12/2006 10:04
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#2
But you don't understand. I want those virgins. How dare you arrest me and put me in prison for 40 years. This is an outrage and very anti-Islamic!
Porn stars... what would we do without them, I ask you...? Sad thing is, when it coms to carnal fun, Osama is into goats and lil' girlz/boyz, not gerontophilia.
Cicciolina proudly displays her experienced bosom and her ego.
Italy's most famous porn star Cicciolina has offered herself to Osama Bin Laden.
Why not? Everybody else has had her...
The 55-year-old actress said it was about time somebody tackled the terrorist and claimed she could be just the woman for the job. Speaking at an erotic fair in Bucharest, Romania, Cicciolina said: "It is time someone did something about Bin Laden, and I am ready to do it. I am ready to make a deal, he can have me in exchange for an end to his tyranny. My breasts have only ever helped people while Bin Laden has killed thousands of innocent victims."
So he's to be rewarded with a pair of well-used honkers? I think he's out for more than that...
The blonde porn star, whose real name is Anna Ilona Staller, pointed out that Bin Laden could learn from Saddam Hussein's mistakes. In the 1990s she offered herself to Saddam Hussein if he gave up dictatorship of Iraq, and added that if he had taken up her offer "who knows what might have happened."
Not having a sense of humor, I'm still not too clear on what the advantage to Binny is of having the bosom of a 55-year-old Italian porn star over having the bosom of one of his 18-year-old Yemeni dancing girls.
#9
Hey, we're all talking about her, aren't we? When was the last time any of you even thought about Cicciolina, let alone had a conversation about her? Sheer genius, I tell you.
#10
It wasn't you Anna dear, it was the cross on your neck. They were drawn toward you but it repelled like it does vampires. And we were so close to world peace!
#17
Bin Ladens have their pick of young, virginal, beautiful women.
The magnate would send his private pilot all over the Middle East to pick up yet another bride. "Some were as young as 15 and were completely covered from head to toe," the pilot's widow recently recalled. "But they were all exceptionally beautiful."
Bin Laden's mother, Hamida, was not a Saudi or a Wahhabi, but a stunningly beautiful, cosmopolitan, educated 22-year-old daughter of a Syrian trader.
Posted by: john ||
04/12/2006 15:46
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#18
Well then, Binny sure takes over after his daddy in the looks department. Sheesh.
#19
WId traditional movie theaters and multiplexes losing sway to home theater systems and computerized households, the world wants to see how many Hollyweird thespians are gonna make the inevitable leap into competing with home internet porn, iff not leap into porn itself. The [future] difference between naked wimin on [future]home theater, and naked porn stars on the Net/Web, is .........WHAT, AGAIN???
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A leading fundraiser for an Islamic charity allegedly linked to terrorists who has spent nearly two years in federal custody should be deported to Jordan, an appeals panel has ruled. The opinion released Tuesday by the Board of Immigration Appeals overturned a judge who blocked Abdel-Jabbar Hamdan's deportation last month on grounds that he would be tortured because of his alleged ties to Hamas. The judge also had recommended that Hamdan, of Buena Park, be released from custody.
"What has happened here is that the government just doesn't like his politics," said Hamdan's attorney, Stacey Tolchin. "That's why they're trying to deport him."
Since his "politics" include raising money for Hamas, yes, we are.
Hamdan, 45, who founded a mosque in Anaheim, was arrested on immigration charges in July 2004 as federal authorities unsealed an indictment against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. The government alleged the Texas-based charity funneled millions of dollars to the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which is listed as a terrorist organization. Hamdan was accused of having ties to terrorism but was never criminally charged. Instead, he was convicted of overstaying a student visa he got 27 years ago and ordered deported.
Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the government is "gratified by the (board's) decision." Hamdan's attorneys said they would appeal the board's ruling to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is reviewing a separate petition for his release. He has been jailed for 21 months.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006
09:38 ||
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#1
He will leave behind 6 offspring who will carry on for him.
Posted by: ed ||
04/12/2006 10:17
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A group of Muslims protesting Playboy's decision to launch an Indonesian edition of the magazine clashed with police Wednesday and stoned the company's editorial offices, witnesses said. No one was injured in the protest involving around 150 members of the Women's Christian Temperance UnionIslamic Defenders' Front, a small group with a history of attacking bars and nightclubs, as well as Western embassies. The protesters smashed several windows and the door and gate at the magazine's offices in south Jakarta, witnesses said. Several were seen scuffling with police officers guarding the building. But many Islamic politicians and preachers have condemned the publication, with most saying that the name of the magazine itself was grounds for the government to ban it. The magazine is selling well, according to vendors, and threatened mass protests against it have failed to materialize.
Hef just celebrated his 80th birthday. The world will be a smaller place when the old goat's gone...
#3
I notice that they have the book open to the centerfold when burning. Might as well take a look and protest at the same time.
Maybe thier eyes will fall out.
Gypsies tramps and thieves
We'd hear it from the people of the town
They'd call us
Gypsies tramps and thieves
But every night all the men would come around
And lay their money down
The federal prosecutor overseeing the indictment of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, yesterday corrected an assertion in an earlier court filing that Libby had misrepresented the significance placed by the CIA on allegations that Iraq attempted to buy uranium from Niger.
Last week, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald wrote that, in conversation with former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Libby described the uranium story as a "key judgment" of the CIA's 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, a term of art indicating there was consensus within the intelligence community on that issue. In fact, the alleged effort to buy uranium was not among the estimate's key judgments and was listed further back in the 96-page, classified document.
In a letter to U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, Fitzgerald wrote yesterday that he wanted to "correct" the sentence that dealt with the issue in a filing he submitted last Wednesday. That sentence said Libby "was to tell Miller, among other things, that a key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium." Instead, the sentence should have conveyed that Libby was to tell Miller some of the key judgments of the NIE "and that the NIE stated that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium."
Libby is not charged with misportraying or leaking classified information. He was indicted last year for allegedly lying to the FBI and a grand jury about what he said to reporters. The indictment came as part of Fitzgerald's investigation into who leaked to the media the name of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, whose husband became a public critic of the Bush administration's case for the Iraq war.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006
09:34 ||
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The high court in India's financial capital, Mumbai (Bombay), has lifted a ban on dance bars, imposed last year by the state government. The court ruled that the ban was discriminatory and violated the right to equality. The court ruling has been welcomed by the city's out-of-work dancing girls.
But the BBC's Zubair Ahmed in Mumbai says the ruling is being seen as a big setback for the government. The government had said the bars were breeding grounds for crime and prostitution. The ban had affected more than 100,000 women who worked in some 1,400 bars across the state of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital. More than half of them had become jobless overnight and many were forced into prostitution to survive. Following the court ruling, the bars can apply for licenses again.
The state government has been given eight weeks to appeal against the judgment in the Supreme Court. Bar owners and dance girls had bitterly protested against the ban, saying that the government was playing with their lives. They were particularly critical of Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister, RR Patil, who was instrumental in banning the bars. Mr Patil had argued that the bars had become a den of prostitution and that they were "a bad influence on young men".
The fully-clothed girls would dance to the tune of Bollywood numbers and clients often threw them money.
#1
Once the Jihadis visit these places, get their lap dances and drinks, they'll be fraught with deep guilt and shame. From there, they will proceed to blame the Jews, the USA, and women, and of course carry out the next logical act: murderous boomings of the dance bars.
#2
n a 260-page ruling, it held that the law was void as it imposed "an unreasonable restriction which was "not in the public interest". The ban, enforced from August 15 last year on grounds of "immorality and obscenity", was touted as one of the key achievements of the ruling Congress-NCP alliance.
A division bench of Justice F I Rebello and Justice Roshan Dalvi, hearing a bunch of public interest petitions by bar owners, bar girls, activists and NGOs challenging the government legislation, ruled that the ban violated fundamental rights and the constitutional right to equality of bar dancers and bar owners.
While the judges maintained that the law "did not violate the dancers or bar owners right to life or freedom of speech and expression", as claimed by the petitioners, they took exception to the fact that the state government was restricting dance performances only in dance bars, restaurants and permit rooms, while allowing hotels, clubs and discotheques to continue with these. They said the blanket ban on all types of dances in these places did not have any connection with the object of the ban which, according to the government, was "to prevent dances which are obscene, vulgar or immoral and derogatory to the dignity of women".
The judges said the governments justification for the ban on grounds that bar girls were exploited did not stand the test. "If women other than dancers can work in prohibited establishments and that does not amount to exploitation, we do not see why, when women dance to earn their livelihood, it becomes exploitation," said the judges.
Posted by: john ||
04/12/2006 16:06
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CAIRO - Police in boats and on the quay guarded the Queen Elizabeth 2 as it docked in the north Egyptian port of Alexandria on Thursday after a security threat against the British-built cruise liner. The ships owners, Cunard, and Britains Transport Department said in separate statements Tuesday they had received information concerning the security of the Queen Elizabeth 2, but they declined to disclose the type of threat.
I'm guessing it's not iceburgs
We believe there is no cause for alarm, said Julie Benson, the US-based director of public relations for Cunard. As a precaution, we have placed the ship on to a higher level of security as it passes through this area. We treat all such information very seriously and the United Kingdom, United States and Egyptian security authorities have been kept fully informed, said Benson in a statement issued in Miami, Florida.
Police boats followed the QE2 as it sailed northwards through the Suez Canal on Tuesday. And police guarded the ship Thursday on land and water when it berthed in Alexandria harbor for the day, Egyptian police officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the press. The ships passengers were allowed to disembark in Alexandria for sight-seeing. The port is within three hours drive of the pyramids outside Cairo.
The 70,300-ton liner was launched in 1967 and carries up to 1,750 passengers and 1,000 crew. In 1972 a security threat against the QE2 led to British bomb disposal specialists parachuting into the Atlantic Ocean next to the ship. The threat turned out to be a hoax.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006
09:30 ||
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When the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, lands in Tehran today, he will step into a new reality created by yesterday's announcement by the mullahs that Iran has "joined the group" of nuclear nations.
The brazen boast in Tehran yesterday that Iran is now able to enrich uranium independently instantly changed the diplomatic landscape, but at the United Nations few diplomats expect any action from the Security Council before April 28, when Mr. ElBaradei is scheduled to report on Tehran's compliance with the council's demand to stop all enrichment activities. "All eyes are now on ElBaradei," an American official said yesterday. America is expected to argue that Iran is in noncompliance with last month's unanimous statement by the Security Council, and ask for punitive measures.
"Iran is not paying attention to what the Security Council said," American Ambassador John Bolton told The New York Sun. The Islamic Republic's clerics "show why we feel a real sense of urgency," he added. "Iran has to realize that it is clearly going down the wrong road."
An IAEA official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the agency was not immediately able to verify yesterday's announcement by Iran's atomic organization chief, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, that Iranian scientists have succeeded in enriching uranium at Natanz to the level of 3.5%. IAEA inspectors are expected to look today at cameras and other devices installed in Iranian nuclear facilities.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2006
09:27 ||
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#1
If I were one of those inspectors, I'd be itching to get out of there as fast as possible.
#4
Since ElBaradei got the Nobel Prize that is enough affirmation of his incompetence for me. Between Iraq, Iran and Korea, ElBaradei has been a real whizbang success at controlling nuclear arms poliferation.
I have this sick feeling that a major city will have to disappear before some of those morons at the UN get serious about Iran.
Of course a nuke in NY would solve two problems:
The UN and the Yankees but I digress.
ACTUALLY..........This is getting scarier by the day and I get the feeling that we are going to have hell to pay for Jimmy Carter and ZB's incompetence in Iran.
TEHERAN - Iranians on Wednesday celebrated their countrys announcement that it had mastered nuclear technology much as they would celebrate a birthday or the purchase of a new car, with boxes of sticky pastries. The basij, Irans volunteer Islamic militia, set up nuclear celebration tents at roadsides around Teheran, handing out sugary cakes and ladling out orange squash to passers-by.
"Cake or death?"
A militiaman approached a Reuters television crew to shout: We are so happy and proud of our young nuclear scientists, before rousing his comrades into a chorus of God is greatest.
Elsewhere in Teheran, some 150 schoolchildren wearing bibs embossed with nuclear power is our irrevocable right chanted slogans and waved the national tricolour. I am very thrilled and excited with the great news I heard last night and believe Western countries will behave now, said peddler Ali Bozorgi, 26.
Iran announced on Tuesday it had started enriching uranium to the low level needed for nuclear power stations, openly flouting UN Security Council demands that it halt its work on atomic fuel. Iran was referred to the council over fears that its uranium enrichment programme is intended for nuclear weapons in addition to power stations, a charge Iran denies.
On the streets of Teheran, people were impressed by the national achievement but worried that trouble could be brewing, with more calls for sanctions and military action. I am happy with the news because we should have nuclear fuel but I hope it will not trigger military action against us, said Naghmeh Moini, 40. The United States has said it prefers diplomatic means to resolve the standoff but does not rule out military action.
Not everyone was celebrating. A 40-year-old English teacher who wanted to be identified only as Reza said: It is the nail in the governments coffin because it will cause more concern in the international community and unite them against us. And the schoolchildrens ardour for nuclear power began to wane and their jokey chants started to mock street hawkers: Nuclear energy -- 200 tomans (22 US cents) a box!
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006
09:24 ||
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#1
And here I thought all Iranians were on mushrooms.
Posted by: ed ||
04/12/2006 9:46
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#2
Anyone want a nice ladle of squash to go with your yellowcake?
#6
They better hope those canisters don't spring a leak. That stuff is very deadly.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
04/12/2006 12:50
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#7
Does this give anyone the creepy feeling that they may be just like the mutants in planet of the apes that worship the atomic bomb? It's getting really weird over there.
COLOMBO - Nine people were killed and at least 50 injured in a bomb blast at a vegetable market in Sri Lankas restive northeastern port town of Trincomalee Wednesday, police and doctors said.
The device planted on a bicycle damaged several shops ahead of the traditional Sinhalese and Tamil New Year festivals on Thursday and Friday. It was a bomb placed on a bicycle, a local police official told AFP. First we thought it was a bomb thrown at the market, but now it is established that it was rigged up on a cycle.
Shortly after the blast, local mobs attacked several shops in the market and there were clashes in the multi-ethnic area, police said. An indefinite curfew was imposed on the area to bring the situation under control. Hospital sources said nine people had been killed and at least 50 injured people were admitted to the main hospital.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006
09:18 ||
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ISN SECURITY WATCH (Wednesday, 12 April 2006: 14.24 CET) Burma (Myanmar) has agreed to allow Russia to exploit its oil fields in return for weapons in a deal that is expected to spark much international controversy in light of the poor human rights record of Burmas military junta.
Russias Kommersant daily newspaper reported that the agreement was signed between Burmese General Maung Aye - the juntas second in command - and Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov on 3 April. The Russian daily said the two sides were now involved in discussion about the delivery of Russian arms and Burmas request for assistance in developing an anti-aircraft system. The newspaper harshly criticized the deal, saying: The rapprochement between Moscow and Myanmar, a pariah on the international scene because of its serious restriction of freedoms, is explained not only by economic factors.
Burma is one of the worlds poorest countries but has one of the world's largest armies. Since the 1960s, Burma has been under military rule - with the exception of a brief pause in the 1970s before the country returned to military rule in 1988 amid nationwide anti-military protests. The Southeast Asian nation has had no constitution since its 1974 charter was suspended that same year.
The international community has accused the military regime of human rights abuses. The country has no independent judiciary and political opposition is not tolerated.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006
09:13 ||
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#1
Curious. Last I knew, the Chinese were handling the oil exploration. Burma's buffoons are playing both sides.
KARACHI, Pakistan - Mobs of youths rioted in this southern city for a second straight day Wednesday to protest a suicide bombing that killed at least 57 people, which a top Pakistani official said was aimed at "eliminating" the leadership of a moderate Sunni Muslim group.
Quibble: they weren't "eliminated", they were eliminated. Murdered. Stone cold dead. No need for sneer quotes.
Amid soaring sectarian tensions, hundreds of security forces blocked main roads and shut schools throughout Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, to prevent a repeat of Tuesday's riots that broke out after the suicide bombing. But a group of youths, apparently supporters of the Tehrik group, rampaged through a neighborhood, setting fire to a bus and two cars and smashing shop windows before police forces, aided by local Islamic clerics, brought the situation under control, said area police chief Shah Nawaz Khan.
Shop keepers in Multan, a Punjab provincial city 230 miles north of Karachi, closed their doors to protest the bombing, while about 150 Islamic students staged a noisy rally at a busy intersection in the capital, Islamabad. "We demand answers for the blood of these martyrs," the students chanted.
And vows of Dire Revenge(tm) can't be far off. Happy birthday, big Mo.
Police on Wednesday confirmed that a lone unidentified suicide bomber detonated an 11-pound bomb near Sunni dignitaries seated in a downtown Karachi park Tuesday at a religious service with 10,000 other worshippers. The service, to mark the birthday of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, was organized by moderate Sunni groups including the Tehrik group, whose top two leaders and a third senior official were among the 57 people killed, including the bomber. Numerous Tekrik leaders, including its founder, have been killed since forming more than seven years ago. The group promotes a moderate form of Islam and members are known to have close ties with Shiite Muslim groups. But hard-line Sunni groups are opposed to more liberal groups, like Tehrik, and their more moderate schools of thought. Simmering tensions between hard-line Sunni and Shiite groups have also been behind previous attacks.
#1
You don't fling mud without getting that on to yourself too.
When they like to hate and seeth so much, they naturally create more opportunities for the same. In their bigoted self-righteous one-way street approach to life this is what they'll reap naturally.
Karachi, 12 April (AKI) - (by Syed Saleem Shazad) - The Sunni Tehrik movement in Pakistan, whose leadership was wiped out in Tuesday's bombing at a prayer gathering in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, which killed 57 people, has given authorities 48 hours to catch the perpetrators of the attack or face the "anger of the masses."
The call was issued on Wednesday by the movement's interim chief, Shahid Ghaur,i in a news conference in Karachi. Sunni Tehrik's leader, Abbas Qadri, and several other of the religious movement's top officials, were killed in the blast in a Karachi park where thousands of worshippers had gathered for evening prayers. Police say the explosive was detonated by a suicide bomber.
"Everybody knows who the assassins are," Ghauri said. "They are the same who killed our founder, Saleem Qadri," he said referring to Qadri's murder in a 2001 ambush, allegedly planned by a rival group, the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM). "They are the same who have been killing our members and have been threatening to kill Abbas Qadri," said Ghauri, speaking at the news conference.
"We demand the resignation of the provincial government and an independent inquiry to be carried out only by the military intelligence or the inter-services intelligence. No other inquiry into the case will be accepted," Ghauri said.
Sunni Therik - originally formed as a moderate Sunni group, but increasingly taking more hardline positions - has been locked in a bitter rivalry with the pro-American MQM, which is largely made up of people whose families in 1948 moved from India to Pakistan when the latter came into being. Funeral prayers for the slain Sunni Tehrik leaders are scheduled for Thursday evening.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006
08:50 ||
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#1
Hmm. Is the MQM getting into the suicide bombing biz? I thought that more of an MMA specialty.
Posted by: ed ||
04/12/2006 9:16
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#2
It is just astonishing, how fast they know for sure who did it. And yet, are unable to stop it.
No, No. The Muslim specialty is fast action, right or wrong, make more enemies who cares if we kill the wrong people, the right people will get the message. Just suprised that they don't realize that then, the wrong people will want them dead. It's they that dose'nt get the message.
In the wake of Israel's escalated response, Palestinians living in the northern Gaza Strip have appealed to the new Palestinian Authority government to take immediate action to prevent gunmen from firing Kassam rockets from their neighborhoods at Israel, a senior Hamas official said Tuesday. Whatever the politics between Hamas and Fatah
#3
"Some of these groups are acting against the interests of the Palestinians," he charged. "These rockets are endangering the lives of many innocent people who are being attacked with Israeli shells."
They still don't understand the big picture. When they recognize that the people targeted by the rockets are innocent too, then they might have a chance to live in the civilized world.
#2
I bear no love for Playboy, and agree with the Muzzie contention that Playboy has a reputation of being the nose of the Camel in the tent of a nation's morality.
HOWEVER, I violently disagree with the notion that attacks are a legitimate means of protesting a publication that is not actively advocating the overthrow of the existing government. By violently, I mean that I support vigorous police action, in the form of swinging billysticks, to bring down these stone throwers.
There are legitimate means of protest open to those opposing pornography. If they can't think of any, then it is a reflection on their intelligence and imagination. If they WON'T think of any, then it indicates how much of a threat they are to the society.
As an aside, I wonder how much of this is really opposition to pornography in general when, as the article states, there are other "adult" "male" magazines with similar "standards" for their models. Makes me wonder if these guys aren't being egged on (or paid) by Playboy's competition in Indonesia.
#7
It's a good thing they don't have internet connections!!
Mmm.. remember that article a while back about how the soddies used the internet firstly to get PrÖn? I'm sure the Pious Muslims in Indonesia are not the last one to get their share of smut online, if the Master Race itself falls for it.
Apparently they were a little unclear on the "cause and effect" thingy....
A manager at a Detroit meatpacking plant said Monday that 15 immigrant women were fired last month after attending a protest for immigrant rights. He said they had been told that they would be terminated if they missed work on the day of the protest.
But the workers and an activist working on their behalf said the women were given no such assurances. If the workers knew they would have been fired for attending the March 27 rally in Detroit, they never would have skipped the morning shift, said Elena Herrada, a Detroit activist who is trying to help the women get their jobs back.
An illegal ditches work and then complains of being fired. Will wonders never cease.
Herrada and about 20 union officials went Monday to Wolverine Packing Co. offices on Rivard to inquire about what happened. They were given a letter signed by general manager Jay Bonahoom, explaining why the workers were terminated.
Some of the Wolverine workers were illegal aliens undocumented, Herrada and one of the workers said, and wanted to march in the Detroit rally to show their support for immigrant rights. The next morning, when the women reported to work for their shifts as meat cutters, a supervisor told them to clean out their lockers and go home.
Bonahoom said that as far as Wolverine knows, the workers were documented, but an employment agency does the actual hiring. He said the workers had been told, "written and verbally," on the Friday before the protests that their attendance was mandatory on the day of the protest.
So there's a paper trail.
They were fired "for criminal stupidity standing up for their rights," Herrada said.
The fired workers were natives of Mexico and many had worked at the plant for several years. Most have children and are worried about supporting their families, Herrada said. Apparently not worried enough...
An inability to connect 'cause' and 'effect' is a worldwide problem ...
Many were employed by Minuteman Staffing. So when Wolverine wanted to fire the workers, the meatpacking company told Minuteman to let go of the workers, he said. A manager with Minuteman said he couldn't comment on the case. Think Immigration will crack down on Minuteman Staffing? Nah, me either.
But the workers say they were treated wrongly. "It was not fair," whined said Mercedes, a 31-year-old Detroit woman who attended the rally and was fired. "We went to fight for our rights." Mercedes is undocumented and asked that her last name not be used. Well, now she can fight for her rights all day long...
It's the French model, DB, you're supposed to get paid for fighting for your rights ...
"It was really unfair of a company to do that," said Edith Castillo, head of the Detroit-based Latin Americans for Social and Economic Development.
Posted by: Humble pie ||
04/12/2006 9:38
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#4
Sometimes I think we should adopt the Citizneship Standards of Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers. Only people who volunteer for federal service can become citizens and have the right to vote. "If you are not willing to support and defend a State then you are not entitled to protection by that State". Lazarus Long.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
04/12/2006 9:49
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#5
"We went to fight for our rights."
When dissected this logic is the foundation for the entire illegal immigration debate. This is why those that pander to the elite and special interest groups are reluctant to honestly discuss this issue. This is why that when confronted with facts that dont support their narrative: they instinctively resort to name-calling or spin the debate to economics, race, or some other anecdotal topic. Some argue that it cynical or paranoid to suggest that there is an ulterior motive at play. However, a reasonable question is; why would those that traditionally manipulate the masses for their own gain wish to grant additional rights? This is not about exclusionary laws nor is it about inalienable human dignity. This is about international rights that transcend national sovereignty.
#7
If the workers knew they would have been fired for attending the March 27 rally in Detroit, they never would have skipped the morning shift. Ok somebody tell me a job that you can just skip the morning shift and expect to still be employed when you decide to return? I wont even address the shear audacity of demanding rights in a country to which they illegally immigrated. I only hope the INS finds out their names and promptly returns these newly unemployed ILLEGAL immigrants to their home country.
I think its unfair some people believe they can ignore the law. I think it is unfair that some people can use color, race, national origin, gender or sexual preference to avoid complying with what the rest of society is suppose to obey. I think it is unfair that you get away with cheering your nationalism but mine is discounted. I think it is unfair to demand more of America than you demand of the rest of the countries of the world. I think is unfair to use perfection as the standard by which America is ajudged when no other mass culture in history has ever attained said standard.
You've demonstrated that it is not about 'fair' or justice or equality. You've demonstrated it is all about power.
#12
The argument for the illegal traffic is not much different then the arguments for slave trading and slavery. Move it back to 1858 and you could see similar arguments from the south.
#13
One thing you have to understand, they actually have an argument to stand on. It may not work in most cases, but they can make it. Very grey area in this case for a few reasons.
Temp / Contract Agency: Their rules aplly and if the customer says 'so and so is not working out' that is it.
Packing Company: They can warn and fuss all they want. But, if the employees claim they were protesting for their working environment / conditions there is nothing they can do.
Now we all know they were not protesting for working condition issues but for illegal alien rights. However, if they claim that it was working conditions, well all is up in the air.
Add a union, an activist, a paper trail, etc in the mix and this is going to be messy.
Anyway, point is they CAN skip work for a protest, but only if it is for a work / conditions protest.
The deputy nuclear chief said Wednesday that Iran intends to move toward large-scale uranium enrichment involving 54,000 centrifuges, signalling the country's resolve to expand a program the United Nations has demanded it halt.
Mohammad Saeedi made the comments a day after Iran announced it had succeeded in enriching uranium on a small scale for the first time, using 164 centrifuges, at a facility in the central town of Natanz.
We will expand uranium enrichment to industrial scale at Natanz, Mr. Saeedi told state-run television. He said Iran has informed the UN nuclear watchdog agency that it plans to install 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz by late 2006 and that it will then expand to 54,000 centrifuges, though he did not say when.
He said using 54,000 centrifuges will be able to produce enough enriched uranium to provide fuel for a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant like the one Russia is currently putting the finishing touches on in southern Iran. Or enough for 35 bombs per year.
Rest at link.
Posted by: ed ||
04/12/2006
07:09 ||
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#1
Like it or not, sooner or later we're going to have to adopt a policy and enforce it: that no Islamic nation shall be permitted to possess nuclear weapons or the means of creating them. No exceptions. No excuses. "Fairness" and legality be damned, to do otherwise is suicidal.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
04/12/2006 8:34
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Iran is ready to sign non-aggression pacts with countries in the region, the Islamic republic's defence minister was quoted as saying Tuesday. The comment came less than a week after military exercises were held to trumpet the Islamic republic's "homegrown" military achievements.
"Our exercises were welcomed by Muslims of the world, and they dismayed our enemies. Since (the exercises) were a message of peace and friendship, we are ready to sign non-aggression pacts with the regional countries," Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said. "Islamic Republic of Iran announces once again its readiness to hold a joint military exercise with regional countries," he was quoted as saying in Iranian dailies.
Posted by: ed ||
04/12/2006
07:06 ||
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#1
Intersting how the offer of a non-aggression pact seems like an hostile move. What happens if you don't sign? Consider the source, I guess.
#6
Non-agression pacts among countries that are not noted for keeping their word. A novel idea. Ask Russia and Germany how their little pact worked out. Toilet paper is more valuable than these documents would be.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/12/2006 10:11
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#7
Why don't they sign a pact stating that they are desperately wanting nuclear weapons and will use them to hold the world hostage.
Now that I would believe. That would be worth the ink it was written with. And you wouldn't have to worry about the breaking that one.
The two top Republicans in Congress, confronted with internal party divisions as well as large public demonstrations, said Tuesday they intend to pass immigration legislation that does not subject illegal aliens to prosecution as felons.
A written statement by House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, did not say whether they would seek legislation subjecting illegal immigrants to misdemeanor prosecution or possibly a civil penalty such as a fine. "It remains our intent to produce a strong border security bill that will not make unlawful presence in the United States a felony," the two men said. An estimated 11 million men, women and children are in the United States illegally. The Republican-controlled House passed legislation late last year that is generally limited to border security measures. It makes illegal immigrants subject to felony prosecution. Rest at link.
Posted by: ed ||
04/12/2006
07:03 ||
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#1
Please define "guest worker." The word "guest" implies someone who has been invited, as in guest invitation,welcoming a guest, looking after one's guests, providing dinner for one's guests, etc. In Texas and in most states, if one is not a guest, then he is a trespasser. And trespassing is illegal. Please point me to the person who invited these fine "guests."
#2
If the GOP does not want to enforce even the existing laws against illegal aliens, then they need to be kicked out of office on their fat, overpaid, self-serving a$$es. This whole illegal alien issue, as well as the MSM, Congress, AND the President's actions in this affair, have totally angered and disgusted me. It gets my boiler pressure going too much.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/12/2006 10:22
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#3
Most of these "Republicans " have become pandering fat slobs on the take, just like the Demos before them. We desperately need alternative parties. The major parties continue to offer the voters nothing. Their only goal is to pocket as much cash as possible and stay on the gravy train as long as possible. Demo alternatives ? Hardly. Did you catch the bleating Hillary and that disgusting fat whale from Cape Cod pandering to the DC mob?
#5
Identity Theft and Assumption
Deterrence Act of 1998''
SEC. 3.(7) knowingly transfers or uses, without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person with the intent to commit, or to aid or abet, any unlawful activity that constitutes a violation of Federal law, or that constitutes a felony under any applicable State or local law.
Unfortunatly the loopholes in the section that lists "Factors for Consideration in Sentencing guidelines" allows immigration judges to charge as a misdemeanor, refer to state laws, or dismiss outright. Indviduals are rarely charged unless it is in conjunction with another crime.
#6
come on. The Dems are just as bad if not worse.
I watched the videos on the blogs on the immigrants and my heart went out to the Mexicans here in this country. Most of the immigrants here are just scared. They know that the status quo is going to change and they are frightened. Where will they go? What will they do? I would be too if I were them. Things have changed and they won't be the same in the future. It's got to be scary.
Forget these yahoos rounded up by ANSWER and LA RAZA. They are just idiots like the idiots that dress up in black and bring puppets to the ANSWER parades that demand we turn our governmenet over to ...hmmm....actually I'm not really sure what they want once from their revolution and I doubt they do either. Forget the losers in these parades. They are losers.
I just feel bad for the majority of the Mexicans here, the hardworking Mexicans who live and work here and are productive citizens. That's most of them.
What we need is a fair system that allows the good ones to become citizens, the bad ones to be shipped home and a big giant wall to enforce the process.
#7
Right 2b. I don't like the idea of making convicts out of workers and I don't like the idea of making voters out of illegals. They can stay, but never vote, unless they join the military.
Finally, Congress has to keep the paperwork out of the hands of the lawn care guy. That too.
In an earlier essay titled Migration to the West and Radicalization of the Muslims, I have delved into how Muslims suddenly become more radicalized or Islamized when they arrive in the West and how that helps in transforming the next generation Muslims into tools of violence and terrorism. I have also explained that the Western cultures are hateful and unacceptable to Muslims. They consider Western way of life sinful. Migrants of other religious backgrounds, such as Hindus, Buddhist, Christians etc., coming from the same countries with similar socio-cultural traditions and values do not seem to show similar hatred against the Western social and cultural values as do the Muslims. The question readily arises: Why Muslims only find the Western culture, tradition and way of life sinful and unacceptable and get into clash with them?
The Islamic theological basis needs a detailed exploration to grasp this riddle of the migrant Muslim communities of the West. This clash emerges from the crux of the Islamic creed. The core theme of Islam is contained in the Islamic Shahada which reads There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet. Explicit in this central creed of Islam is the denial of all other Gods and all other ways of spiritual life. Also implicit in the Shahada is the denial of the history, cultural and traditional heritage prior to the Islamic revelation. Islam in itself is the perfect and complete code of life, culture and tradition thrust directly from the infallible master of the universe. The history, culture and tradition, prior to Islam is unworthy an era known as the age of Jahiliya (ignorance) in Islam. The civilized history of the world starts with the perfection of the religion of Allah and the history, culture, tradition and heritage within the fold of Islam are the only civilized ones. The extra-Islam tradition, culture and ways of life are the extension from the Jahilaya age and contrary to the wishes of almighty creator, Allah. Shashi R Sharma writes on the advent of Islamic theology in the 7th century Arabia, In one fell stroke of theology, the accumulated vision of mankind in every other part of the globe its most cherished cultural and intellectual acquisition are consigned to a state of utterly forgettable decadence. Nothing was valuable prior to Islam and nothing will be valuable for mankind in the future unless the assignation of value corresponds to some element of Islamic ethics. [Caliphs and Sultan, p38]. He continued, Rejection of every value contrary to Islamic precepts is the sine quo non of a pure life of (Islamic) faith.
Affirmation of this central thought in Islam has been brilliantly reflected in a recent article by Aatish Taseer, titled The Damascene Conversion in Prospect Magazine after his months-long probing the state of Islam in the so-called secular state of Syria. He wrote:
Nadir, my guide and translator, showed me that history itself came from Islam. In a frustrated moment, he said: "We used to have a great history. Not before Islam of course, but since." By "we" he meant Syrians, who a mile away had founded the Christian church, and who, a millennium before that, had invented the alphabet.
"This land has had a great history for thousands of years that pre-dates Islam," I said.
"Yes," Nadir answered, "an immoral history."
I had never heard of such a thing, but Nadir's idea, like Khaldun's (authors Arabic teacher in Damascus) was part of Islam's all-encompassing nature. If you had it, you needed nothing else. "If I find one thing," Nadir said, "one thing that the Koran doesn't cover, I will renounce the faith." But Nadir could never find that one thing because Islam served as the source of everything.
Since Islam is prefect in every aspect for living the ideal human life [Q10:37], everything else is unnecessary, uncivilized and immoral innovation and extension from the Jahiliya age. Those are not worth entertaining and must be rejected and destroyed, if within the power. The rejection of all extra-Islamic value and cultural systems, which is binding on the Muslims by the Islamic doctrine comes to work when Muslims are faced with values and cultures which are different from what is acceptable in Islam, such as those in the West. If one follows Prophet Muhammads life and actions, it becomes evident that he had single-mindedly worked on destroying all other religions, cultures and tradition, including his ancestors, which he came in contact with and replaced them with his own brand, that is, Islamic religion and culture. On the day the victorious Prophet Muhammad entered his hometown of Mecca in 630, he immediately destroyed all the pagan temples there, including the Kaba which have been places of worship for his ancestors for centuries.
Indeed, Muslims have destroyed or tried to destroy every culture and tradition that they had come across during the glorious days of Islamic conquests and replaced them with the Islamic ones or sought to do so. One shining example is the people of Turkey whose life-style, social values and thought-process are so vastly different from the people of other European countries, despite desperate attempts to modernize, secularize and westernize the Turkish society and culture starting with the disbandment of theocratic caliphate and introduction of secularism by Kamal Ataturk in 1924. The vastly different life-style, culture and values of the Caucasian people of Chechnya and Russia also tell us the same story. The underlying reason lies in the fundamental theological basis of Islam. The word Islam means complete submission to Allah, the almighty owner of the Universe. This submission is achieved on earth by unquestioned acceptance of Gods perfect laws and guidance as revealed in the Koran. Allah Himself says, Today I have perfected your religion through the Koran. Since Allah is the unquestioned owner of every terrestrial being and object, who is infallible in his judgment, all must submit to His perfect and unchangeable code, which is Islam. It cannot happen that one lives in the Kingdom of Allah but does not follow or submit to His laws, which is perfect, infallible. This desire of the almighty Allah for complete submission of the entire mankind to Islam has been explicitly spelled in the Koran: Mohammad is the messenger bringing Islams rules to all humankind, and Allah is sovereign of the heavens and the earth (7:157-158). This submission has to come through persuasion; if not, through threats and intimidation and if needed, through force including wars, massacres and mass enslavement. The protocol for submission of infidels to Islam as described in the Koran has been summed up by Sir William Muir in his The Life of Mohamet as follows [p288]:
In the Koran, victories are announced, success promised, actions recounted; failure is explained, bravery applauded, cowardice or disobedience chided; military or political movement are directed; - and all this as an immediate communication from the Deity (Allah).
All such means were put to practical application by Prophet Muhammad himself, which must be continued until complete submission of human beings to Islam has been achieved. Allah urges the Muslims to fight those, who are outside the fold of Islam, until such an end has been achieved:
· And fight with them until there is no persecution, and religion should be only for Allah, but if they desist, then there should be no hostility except against the oppressors. [Q2:193]
· Fight those who believe neither in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book (Christians and Jews), until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. [Koran-9:29]
Destruction of extra-Islamic societies and cultures or attempt to do so, has been one of the glorious feature of the victorious history of Islamic conquests. If one takes a careful look at the Muslim people across the world and compare them with their non-Muslim counterparts (people of their ancestor religion), one can easily recognize how the invading Muslim rulers have systematically destroyed or the converted Muslims have ditched the vastly different cultures, customs and ways of life and replaced them with largely similar Islamic ones. In India, thousands of Hindu temples and Buddhist monasteries and other indigenous religious institutions were destroyed by the Muslim invaders and rulers and many famous temples were replaced by mosques. The construction of Babri mosque at the site of temple of Rama, the most revered Godly figure in Hindu religion (which has created so much tension and violence recently in India), is one such example. In fact, Indias National Archaeological Survey has identified 400 mosques across India having building materials extracted from destroyed Hindu temples. Remains of temples structures have recently been identified below the destroyed Babri mosque.
Thus, the desire to destroy extra-Islamic religion, culture and value system, which are all born out of ignorance (extension from Jahiliay age), is central to the fundamental thesis of Islam. This central ordinance of Islam has been put to practical application throughout the last 14 centuries of Islam's existence on earth, starting from the days of Prophet Muhammad. This doctrine is being routinely exercised by Muslims wherever they are a dominant force even today. In Saudi Arabia, one cannot carry Bible or any other non-Islamic religious book, nor can there exist any Church, temple or synagogue. In so-called modern democratic Muslim states, such as Bangladesh and Pakistan, non-Muslims are routinely being harassed, their young girls are being abducted and forcefully married to Muslims, they are being evicted from their homes, lands and properties and their religious places of worships are being attacked and destroyed. Even in a place like Kosovo, the Muslims Albanian settlers, brought during the Ottoman occupation and who now form a majority, are reported to have destroyed ~200 churches of indigenous Serbian Christians, since the Kosovo war ended in 1999. These are all happening in front of the very nose of UN protection force. The central writ of the Islamic theology has been applied by the Muslims with unfailing conviction starting the Prophet Muhammad and continues even today in all Muslim-dominated territories. Import of the Muslims through the generous policy of the West have placed the Western social, political and cultural systems and values at the receiving end of the central Islamic doctrine which is now becoming increasingly evident as Muslims tend to constitute a visible numerical force there.
#1
Why Muslims only find the Western culture, tradition and way of life sinful and unacceptable and get into clash with them?
Because once in the West, they're reminded of the reason their ancestors invented Islam in the first place---total inability to compete on a level playing field.
#2
"Import of the Muslims through the generous policy of the West have placed the Western social, political and cultural systems and values at the receiving end of the central Islamic doctrine which is now becoming increasingly evident as Muslims tend to constitute a visible numerical force there."
This parallels my own thinking, that there are really no "moderate Muslims"-- only Muslims who are, for the time being, outnumbered by the non-Muslims around them.
Once they become a significant political presence, say goodbye to moderation.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
04/12/2006 8:20
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#5
Yeah, it's perfect. That's why anywhere in the world where you find muslims, you also find an impoverished, uneducated, socially retarded society that treat their women like farm animals and strap bombs on their kids to blow up the mosque down the street.
Very Enlightened.
#6
That's why anywhere in the world where you find muslims, you also find an impoverished, uneducated, socially retarded society that treat their women like farm animals and strap bombs on their kids to blow up the mosque down the street.
#10
"The extra-Islam tradition, culture and ways of life are the extension from the Jahilaya age and contrary to the wishes of almighty creator, Allah."
So, it's a free ticket with guaranteed permission to destroy other cultures.
Funny, though:
"Fight those who believe neither in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book (Christians and Jews),
until they pay the Jizya with willing submission,
and feel themselves subdued. [Koran-9:29]
Well, in fact, doesn't it make sense that the People of the Book are STILL in rebellion against Islam, by BEING "People of the Book" still? Otherwise, they'd go ahead and be muzzies, right? So, in Islam it's okay to be "in rebellion," and the muzzies will accept this only as long as you give muzzies MONEY honor them, (i.e., kiss their ass).
#11
Got a haircut today. I told my barber that we would have to kill them all before we see peace again. He said, we can't kill them ALL, there are too many.
#12
take away the freebies, make em work, and they assimilate better. It seems to be the welfare layabouts that talk the most trash and feel "victimized"
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/12/2006 19:36
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A firefight between police and suspected militants on Tuesday left one officer and two rebels dead, officials said, as violence continued to afflict the region surrounding Chechnya.
Two other policemen were hospitalized in a grave condition and a third suspected rebel was wounded, said Roman Shchekotin, spokesman for the Interior Ministrys branch in southern Russia. The armed clash took place in Nazran, the main city in Ingushetia.
The official said ammunition and automatic weapons had been discovered in the militants hideout - a house near a school.
He identified the two dead suspected militants as brothers Umar and Magomed Barchishvili, residents of Ingushetia, who were wanted for their involvement in several attacks. The third gunman, named as Ali Gazgireyev, was under guard in a hospital, the official said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2006
04:09 ||
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More than 90 percent of the suicide attacks in Iraq are carried out by terrorists and foreign fighters recruited, trained and equipped by al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a U.S. military spokesman said Monday.
Al-Zarqawi and al-Qaida in Iraq "are real threats to the citizens, security and stability of Iraq and we continue to conduct aggressive operations to eliminate the threat they pose not only to Iraq, but also to the rest of the region," Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said in a statement.
The Washington Post reported Monday that U.S. military was conducting a propaganda campaign to "magnify the role" of al-Zarqawi to turn Iraqis against him and to link the war in Iraq to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
According to the newspaper, some U.S. military intelligence officials believe the campaign has overstated al-Zarqawi's importance within the Iraqi insurgency.
Lynch's statement did not refer directly to the Post story but said "a recent article" had called into question the threat posed by al-Zarqawi.
"Nothing could be further from the truth," Lynch said. "The terrorists and foreign fighters that he recruits, trains and equips carry out more than 90 percent of the insidious suicide attacks against the men, women and children of Iraq attacks that have killed or injured thousands of Iraqis in the last year alone."
The Post quoted Col. Derek Harvey, who it said served as a military intelligence officer in Iraq, as telling an Army meeting at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., last summer that al-Zarqawi and other foreign fighters had conducted deadly bombing attacks but remain "a very small part of the actual numbers."
"Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature, if you will _ made him more important than he really is, in some ways," the Post quoted Harvey as saying, citing a transcript of the meeting. "The long-term threat is not Zarqawi or religious extremists, but these former regime types and their friends."
The newspaper said Harvey did not return its phone calls seeking comment on his remarks.
Lynch acknowledged that al-Qaida in Iraq represents a "relatively small portion" of the insurgency but "their impact has been ruthlessly devastating."
He cited statements attributed to al-Zarqawi on Islamist Web sites calling for foreign fighters to come to Iraq and declaring war against Shiites and coalition forces here.
In January, al-Zarqawi's group said in a Web statement that it had joined five other Iraqi insurgent groups to form the Mujahedeen Shura Council. Since then, al-Zarqawi's group has stopped issuing its own statements.
On April 2, Huthayafa Azzam, believed to have close ties to Iraqi militants, told The Associated Press that al-Zarqawi had been confined to a military role within the coalition, specifically barred from making public statements and from any political or propaganda role.
Azzam said Iraqis in the Shura Council had demanded that al-Zarqawi give up his political role _ particularly in propaganda _ because he had "embarrassed" them with statements about regional politics, al-Qaida's activities and beheading videos.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2006
04:06 ||
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#1
I can't believe they are embarrassed over the beheading videos, unless it is because of their poor picture quality.
A suspected Abu Sayyaf leader, who landed on Washington's list of terrorists for bombings that included an attack that killed an American serviceman in 2002, and his father were killed during a shootout with authorities in Curuan district here early yesterday morning.
Colonel Edgardo Gidaya, commander of the antiterror Task Force Zamboanga, identified the slain suspect as Amilhamja Ajijul, alias Alex Alvarez. The father was identified as Andalul Ajijul.
Gidaya said the elder Ajijul was killed when Alvarez's group exchanged shots with authorities at around 3 a.m. in the sub-village of Dulian in the village of Calabasa.
Alvarez was critically wounded in the 30-minute gunfight and died while being treated at a hospital.
The United States had put a bounty of $20,000 on his head and, according to Senior Superintendent Angelito Casimiro of the Western Mindanao police, another P350,000 under the interior department's reward program.
Alvarez and his men were also wanted for crimes other than the bombings like kidnapping and murder.
Four of Alvarez's companions were arrested. They were identified as Asirin Asmani Aslon, Sherhan Aslon, Sawang Aslon and Sambri Kamlon Andon. They were brought to the military's Southern Command headquarters for interrogation.
Gidaya said government security forces also recovered two .45-cal. pistols, cellular phones, jungle bolos and documents from the Abu Sayyaf safehouse.
"Finally we neutralized the leader of this urban terrorist group of the Abu Sayyaf and we have preempted a much wider scale of terrorist attack in the peninsula," he told the Inquirer.
Gidaya said the death of Alvarez and the "neutralization" of his group was an effort by "homegrown experts."
"No foreign troops were involved. Our units painstakingly built up information for almost four years," he said.
Gidaya said Alvarez was wanted for two bomb attacks at the Shoppers' shopping malls here on Oct. 17, 2002, that claimed several lives, another bombing at the Fort Pilar Shrine three days later, as well as the 2000 kidnapping of 53 students and teachers at a Roman Catholic school on nearby Basilan island.
Alvarez's group was also believed to be responsible for the bombing of a café near the gates of the military's Camp Arturo Enrile in the village of Malagutay which killed five persons, including Sergeant Mark Johnson, an American soldier. Forty others, including another US serviceman, were wounded in that attack.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2006
04:03 ||
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#1
Sergeant Mark Johnson
Correction- Sergeant First Class Mark Jackson.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
04/12/2006 10:44
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Interior Minister Prince Naif announced yesterday that thousands of people have been released after it was confirmed that they were not involved in any crime or terrorist act. We have set free thousands as we keep only those people who are either convicted or sentenced by court ... and this releasing process will continue, the Saudi Press Agency quoted him as saying.
Speaking to reporters after attending a ceremony marking the release of a UNICEF report in Riyadh, Prince Naif said the launch of the UNICEF report was recognition on behalf of the United Nations of the Kingdoms humanitarian efforts.
While speaking at the Cabinet meeting, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah has told Saudis and non-Saudis to sponsor children orphaned by the tsunami and other calamities, he pointed out.
Prince Naif, who is supervisor of the Saudi Relief Committee, voiced the Kingdoms readiness to sponsor orphans in Indonesia, Pakistan and Palestine. We have done this before, he added.
Asked about the fate of those detainees whose role in terrorist operations have been proved, he said, All of them will be taken to court. We are just waiting to complete the procedures.
He also said that the formation of the state security court would be announced shortly. The minister confirmed reports that some Saudis had provided financial and material support to Al-Qaeda terrorists. He disclosed that interior ministers of countries bordering Iraq would meet in September.
He also promised tough punishment against those who try to smuggle children into the Kingdom. We will send back the intruders, he added.
Prince Naif said the King Khaled Cultural Center was wrong when it allowed mixing of men and women. We cannot blame others when they criticize wrong actions, he said while answering a question.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2006
04:02 ||
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An Iranian Sunni rebel group video broadcast on Arab satellite television on Tuesday showed the killing by firing squad of a man identified as an Iranian Revolutionary Guard officer. The Jundollah (Gods Soldiers) video broadcast by Al Arabiya television showed militants kill the man. They displayed his identification card bearing the name Zahed Shaykhi.
The video also showed the Baluchi groups leader Abdolmalek Rigi despite official media reports that Iranian forces had killed him. "These are falsehoods aimed at playing with the emotions of people," a militant reading a statement said.
Iranian officials have said Rigi is the leader of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network in the Islamic Republic.
Rigi appeared on the tape speaking to the Iranian officer who sat nearby with a gunman pointing his rifle at his head and another standing by. The two militants later fired rounds at the officer who was sitting on the ground wearing white robes. The group has kidnapped Iranian soldiers in the past to try to force the release of detained members.
In March, the group claimed responsibility for an attack that killed 22 people in a remote region in southeastern Iran and said it had taken seven hostages.
The attack was in an impoverished area on the borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan , the scene of sporadic unrest among Irans Baluchi minority, most of them Sunni Muslims. There are frequent police clashes with armed drug smugglers in the region. Some 90 percent of Irans 69 million people are Shiite and the Sunni minority sometimes complains of discrimination. In July, the rebel group said it had beheaded an Iranian security agent.
Iran also blames Britain for unrest in its restive and mainly Arab southwestern oil province of Khuzestan, across the border from southern Iraq where British troops are stationed. Britain denies supporting the ethnic Arab rebels.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2006
04:01 ||
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The top U.S. military officer on Tuesday defended Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld against three retired generals demanding his ouster, and denied that the United States invaded Iraq without sufficiently weighing its plan.
Standing next to Rumsfeld at a Pentagon briefing, Marine Corps Gen. Pete Pace said critics could legitimately question the defense secretary's judgment but not his motives.
"People can question my judgment or his (Rumsfeld's) judgment," Pace said. "But they should never question the dedication, the patriotism and the work ethic of Secretary Rumsfeld."
Retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton and Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni have recently separately called for Rumsfeld to be replaced. This comes as opinion polls show eroding public support for the 3-year-old war in which about 2,360 U.S. troops have died.
"I don't know how many generals there have been in the last five years that have served in the United States armed services -- hundreds and hundreds and hundreds," said Rumsfeld, whom critics have accused of bullying senior military officers and stifling dissent.
"And there are several who have opinions, and there's nothing wrong with people having opinions. And I think one ought to expect that when you're involved in something that's controversial as certainly this war is," he said.
Newbold, the military's top operations officer before the Iraq war, said he regretted not speaking up more forcefully against what he now regards as an unnecessary war and a diversion from "the real threat" posed by al Qaeda.
In a Time magazine opinion piece on Sunday, Newbold encouraged officers still in the military to voice any doubts they have about the war.
"My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions -- or bury the results," Newbold wrote.
Newbold said he went public with the private encouragement of some still in positions of military leadership.
Pace, chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, questioned whether Newbold knew all the facts about the invasion plans, noting he retired in September 2002, six months before the invasion took place.
"It's also important to go back and take a look, when you look at people talking: When did their personal knowledge end?" Pace said, noting that the war plan changed many times after Newbold's departure.
Pace said the war plan was thoroughly vetted before the operation was launched.
"We had discussions in the department, we had discussions in the National Security Council, we had discussions with the president. And they were extensive discussions. An awful lot of people around were not shy about giving their views," he said.
Pace said when now-retired Central Command head Gen. Tommy Franks presented the final invasion plan "we were satisfied that he had a good, executable plan, and we so told the secretary of defense and the president of the United States."
Rumsfeld said he was unaware that Newbold had publicly or privately questioned the war plan.
Eaton, in charge of training the Iraqi military from 2003-2004, wrote in a New York Times opinion piece last month that Rumsfeld had put the Pentagon at the mercy of his ego.
"In sum, he has shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically, and is far more than anyone else responsible for what has happened to our important mission in Iraq. Mr. Rumsfeld must step down," he wrote.
Pace said he did not know whether Eaton ever voiced his concerns before leaving the military.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2006
03:57 ||
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"People can question my judgment or his (Rumsfeld's) judgment," Pace said. "But they should never question the dedication, the patriotism and the work ethic of Secretary Rumsfeld."
Excellent. Turning the liberal's "don't you DARE question my patriotism" mantra around on them. Let's see how they wriggle out of THAT one, then apply the method they use against their darlings.
#3
Rummy changed the way the arm forces does business and it pissed people off, they need to get over it and if they don't like it they become Sec of Defense and change it.
Ya sure. Whatever floats your boat. What speaks volumes is when a former combat general, who served in Iraq, like Major General John Batiste, criticizes Rummy for not providing sound military planning. Ouch.
But of course, Batiste is one of those who "doesn't get it", so he doesn't count.
#6
know lots of 07's do you TE? Just like everyone else they bitch about their bosses.
The difference between me and you is that you seem to think its breathless news that the Generals bitch about the decisions by the Sec Def. OOooh newsflash - not all decisions were popular or perfect. I feel faint.
I saw Zinny on CNN the other day and couldn't help thinking of McClellan.
#7
Wasn't Lincoln throwing genrals out left and right, boy they sure bitched, nobody threw Lincoln out of office because of it. You don't have to like the boss but you better do what he sez.
#8
ok...in the editing I left out "and above". Wasnt' gonna fix it, cause I figured TE wouldn't catch it anyway, but I just know someone is going to correct me. bah.
#9
dj - yeah, they all thought they knew better too. If I were these guys, I'd wait a bit to see how the winds blow before I'd go spouting off about how much better things would have turned out if they'd only done it my way.
#10
Funny thing is, I wonder if history will view them like McClellan. If McClellan had done his job properly, the war would have been over quickly. But his personal beliefs got in the way and prevented him from achieving decisive victories at the beginning of the war which allowed the south a chance to organize and believe they could at the very least, win concessions by continuing to fight. The end result was that McClellan's wimpiness made the war last much, much longer than it needed to and resulted in many unnecessary deaths, all for the same end result.
#11
you seem to think its breathless news that the Generals bitch about the decisions by the Sec Def. OOooh newsflash - not all decisions were popular or perfect.
Didn't happen with the Vietnam-era generals. And they had a bit more reason to complain. I wonder why it's happening now.
But, sure, 2b knows his stuff. At least, he knows much more than Batiste.
#12
Oh and, forgot to mention, Batiste is obviously a Democrat, like McClellan was. So obviously, my original assertion stands. Not everyone in the armed services "gets it".
#14
My point is, genius, that in this circumstance and context it is news when a former combat general criticizes Rumsfeld, and one that served in Iraq no less.
#15
ok. And it was news when McClellan did it to. In fact it wasn't just news, it made the history books. McClellan's insubordination is credited with losing the opportunity to put a quick end to the war and resulting in many lost lives.
#16
I'm always skeptical of Generals who criticize after the fact. I'm not so sure they did everything to carry out the mission that they possibly could because they disagreed with the mission to begin with. The problem with McCellan was he was so afraid of losing and he believed the wildy inflated reports of Confederate strength that he couldn't possibly win. I think some of these ex-generals are like that.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
04/12/2006 19:44
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#18
You are still not getting it, Rummy is the boss, these generals didn't want to listen to him, they got fired now they are whining about it. McArthur was popular general too, but he pissed off the boss guess what got fired.
#19
Poor Clasing, he doesn't get out much and only sees the world in terms of Democrats v/s Republicans. Almost cute in its childish, naive, simplicity.
Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels killed two Sri Lankan policemen in an ambush on Wednesday, police said. Diplomats said violence was spiralling out of control, upcoming peace talks looked unlikely and war might beckon.
More than 20 people have died since Friday in the island's minority Tamil-dominated north and east. The military have blamed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for a string of claymore fragmentation mine attacks on security forces.
"It was a claymore attack," Senior Superintendent Nihal Samarakoon told Reuters from the northeastern port of Trincomalee, close to the scene of Wednesday's ambush of a police truck. "Two were killed and two were injured. It was the LTTE."
A second round of talks between the two sides is due to take place next week in Switzerland, but with the Tigers still to commit themselves to attending, diplomats fear that the meeting may not happen and that the attacks will destroy the 2002 truce.
The head of the Nordic-staffed unarmed mission monitoring the truce met the rebels on Monday to discuss the escalation in violence, which has taken diplomats and analysts by surprise.
"Oh God," said one western diplomat when told of the latest attack. "It's very bad... there's no other way to describe it. Time is basically running out here. Things are spiralling out of control."
The rebels say they want a government safe-conduct for a Sea Tiger vessel to take their commanders from eastern rebel areas to the de facto Tiger capital for talks. If they cannot meet their commanders, they say they will not go to Geneva.
The rebels deny carrying out the attacks and blame local groups of Tamil civilians, but analysts and diplomats say the ambushes are too sophisticated to be the work of anyone else.
"It seems like the incidents are escalating," head of the Tiger peace secretariat S. Puleedevan told Reuters by satellite phone from rebel territory. "It is very important the Sri Lankan government work so our eastern commanders can come."
A senior diplomat said the attacks could be some form of "bizarre brinkmanship" ahead of talks, but that even if the meeting did take place the best that could be hoped for was staving off war, not real progress. With both sides re-arming, the rebels may not want to wait.
This is the second spell of serious violence in recent months. In December and January, more than 200 died after a series of similar suspected rebel attacks but tensions fell after the two sides agreed to a first round of talks in Geneva.
The rebels say the government has failed to meet its pledge to disarm a renegade group of ex-rebels led by former senior Tiger Karuna Amman, whom they say the army is using to attack them. The army denies the charge.
Analysts fear any return to conflict could see Black Tiger suicide bombers attacking the capital, Colombo, scaring investors away from the island's $20 billion economy and hurting a country hard hit by the 2004 tsunami.
Civilians, aid workers and foreigners have also been hit by the past week's violence. Two Sri Lankan aid workers died in a claymore attack in the northern army-held Jaffna enclave on Monday, and two British nationals were wounded in an attack on a naval bus on Tuesday that killed 10 sailors and a bus driver.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2006
03:56 ||
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A suspected Abu Sayyaf rebel was accidentally killed by a bomb he intended to use to attack government troops on violent southern Jolo island, an army general said Wednesday. The powerful blast on Tuesday mangled the body of the still-unidentified militant in Boalo Lipid village in Jolo's Maimbung town, said Brigadier General Alexander Aleo, head of an anti-terrorist task force.
Aleo said the militant planted a land mine, which failed to explode when a military convoy passed by but went off when he checked on it.
Why does a picture of Wiley Coyote checking a landmine after the Roadrunner safely eats the birdseed off it come to mind?
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2006
03:55 ||
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#1
This is better than cartoons!
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
04/12/2006 8:50
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#5
When I got my first red-eye-reducing camera, I took lots of pix of my feet. I'd click the shutter button, nothing would happen, I'd bring the camera down to check it, and *flash!* yet another picture of my comely toes.
#6
Today completely sucked until I read this article.
Posted by: Better now ||
04/12/2006 17:33
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#7
yep - Abu coyote goes out, checks it, jumps up and down violently on it until BOOM****... but you also need a really deep valley for him to plummet in after BOOMing (with that little impact cloud)...do they have those in the PI?
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/12/2006 19:27
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#8
Yes and big rocks to land on them after
Posted by: 49 pan ||
04/12/2006 19:57
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#9
I like the part where Wiley bounces from landmine explosion to landmine explosion over, and over, and over, (Etc)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
04/12/2006 20:31
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#10
LOL 49! coool
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/12/2006 20:43
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Al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia issued a 35:34 minute video presentation of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Jeddah on December 7, 2004, yesterday, April 9, 2006. This release follows over six months of advertising amongst jihadist forums, and a message last week containing a series of screenshots and announcing the films imminent release. Though the operations execution and aftermath are only depicted via photographs, footage is provided of the initial stage of attack, wills and advice from two martyrs involved, Faez al-Samiri and Faez al-Judhi, and the blueprints and preparation of the mujahideen from the Fallujah Brigade.
The video constantly emphasizes an urgency of jihad incumbent upon the Muslim Nation, opening with a series of scenes of U.S. attacks and bombardments in Iraq, and images of dead children and women, and maltreatment of prisoners; a background voice incites Muslims to resist the U.S. presence in Iraq. Orated testaments of Faez al-Samiri and Faez al-Judhi are dispersed throughout the video, the content of which are both similar in advising Muslims to drive U.S. soldiers from their countries. A short lecture including a map of the Middle East and American army bases explains that the Saudi government is supporting these American forces, and from these locations they depart to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq: Here they are, the descendents of apes and pigs, making plans to wage war on Islam - from the land of Islam [Saudi Arabia].
Additional pictures from the Prince Sultan Air Base are shown, of which are images showing missiles that do not distinguish between a woman or a mujahid. The narrator of the video explains that the U.S. consulate in Jeddah was targeted due to the Saudi cooperation with the American forces: Therefore, the lions of Al-Qaeda on this blessed land perused the news and collected information in order to find out from where these crusading wars are waged After much effort, the Mujahideen found out what they sought. They found the abode of the [US] intelligence, they found the proselytizers for Christianity, they found the true rulers of the country Afterwards the military plan was composed, and the Mujahideen underwent training - and evident victory was achieved at the hands of the lions of the Fallujah Brigade.
The now deceased al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia, Saleh al-Oufi, is shown going through the military plan of the consulate attack, explaining its security composition and then a detailed means of attack. Amidst the pictures of the attack, audio of the mujahideen is heard with their recurring call of Allah is the Greatest. In addition, photos are shown of the mujahideen killed in the attack.
Interesting is a point from Faez al-Samiris (Abu Hamza Al-Madani) testament in which he advises it is preferable to fight Americans in Saudi Arabia, rather than Afghanistan and Iraq. He states: Why are you going to Afghanistan? Why are you going to Afghanistan and Iraq? Not in order to fight America? Not in order to fight America and its allies? By God, in Afghanistan the American soldiers are only scum sons of whores, or poor people. As to the heads of the Americans, they are in the Arab Peninsula, and their bases are spread out from the East of the country to the West, from the North to the South.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2006
03:54 ||
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Seven members of the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Suffia gang voluntarily surrendered to the military in the province of Sarangani, a top military official announced.
Armed Forces of the Philippines' 4th Civil Relations Group (CRG) chief Lt. Col. Oscar Lasangue said the militants are followers of Akmad Yusop, whose group is affiliated with the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf, operating in the areas of Maitum, Lake Sebu and Palimbang in Sarangani province.
Lasangue identified them as Eddie Tungkay alias Tafilak, Daniel Bon alias Otig, Luna Tungkay alias Hamsa, Josen Tungkay alias Josen, Richard Tungkay alias Maglam, Israel Tungkay alias Dod, and Ludy Gaday alias Ludy.
The former members of the militant group said they were merely used by Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon as security guard and tour guides in Sarangani province.
Hapilon alias Salahuddin has a P11 million bounty in his head.
Hapilon is one of the Basilan-based Abu Sayyaf leaders who fled to remote areas in Mindanao to escape authorities.
Hapilon, like Khadafy Janjalani and Jainal Antel Sali alias Abu Solaiman were involved in the 2001 kidnapping of Americans Guillermo Sobero and missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham.
Lasangue said the Abu Sayyaf movements are limited and are no longer capable of committing terror actions as the military offensive continues with great intensity coupled by the people's support in the government's anti-terror campaign.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2006
03:54 ||
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#1
The Abu Suffia were a gang that extorted money from the locals near Palembang. Like the article said when the Abu Sayyaf came to the Kraan River to hide and plan missions they were escorted by the Abu Suffia. These guys were intorduced to the Abu Sayyaf by the MILF leadership in the town and protected by the MILF. THey are really nothing more than punks that carried bags for the Abu Sayyaf.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
04/12/2006 8:49
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A Spanish judge indicted 29 people Tuesday for alleged roles in the deadly 2004 Madrid train bombings and concluded that the attack was carried out by a local radical Islamic cell that was inspired but not directed by al-Qaeda.
After a two-year investigation, Judge Juan del Olmo handed down a 1,471-page report and the first indictments, charging six people with 191 counts of terrorist murder and 1,755 attempted murders. The 23 other people were charged with collaborating in the plot.
Explosives-filled backpacks were detonated by cell phones on the morning of March 11, 2004, ripping apart four rush-hour commuter trains. One hundred ninety-one people died and 1,800 were injured in what remains Europe's second-worst attack by terrorists after the 1988 downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
The bombers' alleged ideological leader and six other men blew themselves up three weeks after the attack as police closed in on their Madrid apartment hide-out. But several of the people indicted Tuesday are described as senior members of the conspiracy.
They include Jamal Zougam, 32, a Moroccan. He is accused as a material author of the synchronized attack and charged with murder, attempted murder and membership in a terrorist group.
According to the indictment, Zougam supplied the cell phones that detonated the 10 backpacks used in the attacks. In addition, four witnesses identified him as having placed dark blue bags under different seats on trains that blew up.
Youssef Belhadj, Hassam El Haski and Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed -- known as "Mohamed the Egyptian" and currently on trial in Italy on separate terrorism charges -- are also accused of membership in a terror group, murder and attempted murder.
Jose Emilio Suarez Trashorras, a former miner who allegedly provided the bombers with plastic explosives stolen from a mine in northern Spain, was charged with 192 murders. They included that of a policeman who was killed during the attempt to arrest suspected bombers at the Madrid apartment.
The judge discussed the local nature of the conspiracy at length in his report. "If it is true that the operative capacity of al Qaeda has lessened in the past few years, it is not noticeable in a sustained decrease in its activity," del Olmo wrote. "From the point of view of the threat, regional networks and local groups have acquired greater importance."
Del Olmo highlighted a trend of Moroccans and Algerians working together in radical Islamic groups in Spain. "It is a very noteworthy change, given that until relatively recently Algerian groups in Spain were homogenous in so far as nationality, and the relationship between Moroccan and Algerian jihadists was scarce," he wrote.
The 29 indicted people include 15 Moroccans, one Algerian, one Egyptian, one Lebanese, one Syrian and one Syrian with Spanish nationality. Also indicted were nine Spaniards, most on charges of having helped the bombers obtain their explosives.
According to Del Olmo, the bombers studied a report posted on the Web site of the Global Islamic Media Front in which a committee of al-Qaeda experts suggested an attack in Spain before the general elections of March 14, 2004. At the time, Spain had 1,300 troops in Iraq as part of the U.S.-led forces.
The indictment details Spanish intelligence warnings to then-Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar that Spain was one of a group of European countries at high risk of an Islamic terrorist attack.
The bombings took place three days before the election. Aznar initially blamed the Basque separatist group ETA. But as evidence mounted of Islamic involvement, Spanish voters turned against Aznar and unseated his Popular Party. The Socialist Party, led by Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, won the election and quickly fulfilled a campaign promise to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq.
Some people in Spain have speculated that ETA helped the bombers in some way. The indictment draws no such link. "The judge has only addressed what evidence there is," a court spokeswoman said.
A trial is likely to begin next year.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2006
03:52 ||
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So much for the "no al-Qaeda link" that was being touted awhile back ...
A Spanish judge indicted 29 people on Tuesday in connection with the Madrid train bombings two years ago, suggesting that the group attacked Spain for its support of the American-led invasion of Iraq and for its increasingly aggressive police investigations of Islamic radical groups.
The indictment, part of a long-awaited report about the attacks running nearly 1,500 pages, did not assert directly that the plotters had been motivated by anger at the policies of Spain's government. But the judge who wrote the report, Juan del Olmo, noted that the timing of the attacks, March 11, was just three days before Spain's general election.
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of the Socialist Party won that election in a surprise victory and fulfilled his campaign pledge to withdraw Spanish troops immediately after taking office in April.
Five of the men indicted Tuesday were charged with carrying out or conspiring to carry out the attacks, done with 10 strategically placed bombs that exploded on four commuter trains, killing 191 people and wounding about 1,800.
A sixth man was accused of acting as a "necessary collaborator," while the rest were charged with belonging to or aiding a terrorist group, or contributing to the attacks through support roles like providing explosives or falsifying documents.
The trial is expected to begin next spring.
Judge del Olmo's report largely summarized provisional findings he had made in filings over the past two years. It asserted that the cell that carried out the attacks was made up mostly of Moroccan radicals, several with ties to Al Qaeda and to the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, a militant organization seeking to establish an Islamist state in Morocco.
Spanish investigators have said that the cell came together in Spain initially under the guidance of a Syrian named Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, also known as Abu Dahdah, who was convicted in September by a Spanish court for conspiring to commit the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States and for leading a Qaeda cell in Spain. He was sentenced to 27 years in prison.
After Mr. Yarkas and several followers were arrested in 2001, investigators have said, the group reconstituted itself under the leadership of Sarhane ben Abdelmajid Fakhet, a former Tunisian graduate student in economics who in 2003 began calling for an attack on Spain in part because of its support of American policies toward Iraq.
There is no indication in Judge del Olmo's report that Mr. Fakhet or Jamal Ahmidan, a Moroccan identified as the operational head of the cell, had any direct links to the top leadership of Al Qaeda.
But in explaining the major influences on the group, Judge del Olmo cited a document posted on a Web site run by Global Islamic Media Front, a group widely seen as a front for Al Qaeda.
The document, apparently posted in late 2003, called for attacks on Spain before the general elections in March, saying they would help drive a wedge between the Spanish public, which overwhelmingly opposed the invasion of Iraq, and the government of former Prime Minister José María Aznar, who supported the invasion and contributed troops.
Judge del Olmo also suggested that the Madrid attacks were partly a response to a crackdown on Islamic radical groups by the Spanish police that began in the late 1990's. That crackdown, which included the arrest of Mr. Yarkas and the breakup of his cell in Madrid, disrupted a major logistical base for Islamic radicals in Europe, Spanish investigators say.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2006
03:51 ||
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Peter Bergen, author of the new book, "The Osama bin Laden I Know," says the conventional wisdom that Al-Qaeda is dead as an organization needs to be revised. Although Osama bin Laden no longer has operational control over Al-Qaeda, he continues to provide "broad strategic guidance" and "specific instructions" to his followers through video- and audiotapes. Contradicting a new British government report on last year's attacks on London's transport system, Bergen told an audience at the Nixon Center in Washington, D.C., on April 7 that one of the terrorists did have a link to Al-Qaeda.
Britain's "The Observer" reported on April 9 that a soon-to-be-released report by the British government has concluded that the July 2005 bombings in London were carried out by four men who had no links to Al-Qaeda.
But author Peter Bergen contends that one of the men alleged to have been involved in the attacks, Mohammed Siddique Khan, likely made contact with the "outer fringes" of Al-Qaeda during one of his trips to Pakistan.
"If you look at the [videotaped] suicide will of Mohammed Khan, who was after all a Pakistani, second-generation, it was shot by Al-Sahab, which means the clouds in Arabic," Bergen said. "Now that's Al-Qaeda's video-production arm. Al-Qaeda's video-production arm doesn't exist in Leeds [England], where Mohammed Khan is from."
Bergen links the London attack with the first anniversary of the expiration of a "truce" offered by bin Laden in April 2004. The Al-Qaeda leader offered European countries the chance to withdraw from the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and stop "attacking Muslims." The offer expired on July 15, 2004.
Bergen, who produced the first televised interview with bin Laden in 1997, challenges the popular impression that Al-Qaeda has ceased to function as a formal organization.
"Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri are out there and actually influencing what is happening," he said. "Of course, they're not in command and control of their organization. Bin Laden hasn't been picking up a sat [satellite] phone or cell phone to order people to do things for a very long time. But through the medium of videotapes and audiotapes bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri provide broad strategic guidance to the network, and they also give specific instructions."
Since September 11, 2001, 35 video- and audiotapes from bin Laden and al-Zawahri have surfaced. According to Bergen, these tapes do more than just attempt to foment righteous anger toward the infidels. They provide specific suggestions for targets. For example, in late 2004, bin Laden called for attacks on Saudi oil facilities.
"I think there is some relationship between that call and the attack we just saw on the Saudi oil facility, the very major oil facility," Bergen says. "And we've seen a lot of attacks on oil workers in Saudi [Arabia], and bin Laden has also called for attacks on Iraqi oil facilities.
To buttress his argument, Bergen cites an interview on Al-Jazeera television in February 2006 with former senior Taliban military commander Mullah Dadullah. Dadullah said that bin Laden and al-Zawahri "are in operational control" and are "giving us orders."
Dadullah and Bergen are not the only people convinced that bin Laden continues to pick targets for his terrorist network around the world. According to "The Daily Mail" on 9 April, following the release of the British government report, the Conservative Party is going to demand further investigation into the London bombings. The paper quoted Conservative homeland-security spokesman Patrick Mercer as saying that the lack of a link with Al-Qaeda was difficult to believe.
Bergen, for his part, suggests that pinpointing ultimate culpability for any particular bombing may not always be possible or necessarily what's most important. "In the end does it really matter?" he asks. "When a bomb goes off and it kills your mom, does it matter if it was Al-Qaeda itself or Al-Qaeda inspired?"
Bergen says he is particularly worried about the possibility of a rocket-propelled-grenade attack bringing down a passenger jet. That, he predicts, would have a devastating impact on the aviation and tourism businesses.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2006
03:49 ||
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Palestinian Finance Minister Omar Abdel Razak warned on Wednesday that if the Hamas-led government were to fall the Palestinian Authority would turn into "a second Somalia".
In an interview with the British The Times newspaper Razak said that there would be no calm in Israel if the current financial crisis continues and there would be terror attacks if PA wages were not paid.
The finance minister asked Arab countries to grant them 120 million dollars a month to prevent the Palestinian government from collapsing. He said that Hamas had inherited a deficit of 1.2 billion dollars from the previous Fatah-led government.
Posted by: Howard UK ||
04/12/2006 3:52
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#2
Funny. The arab world didn't give a sh*t about the first somalia.
In fact, if somalia was so much worse than paleoland, why didn't the ISM come to its rescue? Why didn't the arab league try to get resolutions passed in the UN? Why didn't the arab world seethe the way they do every time Israel is mentioned?
#4
"Razak said that there would be no calm in Israel if the current financial crisis continues and there would be terror attacks if PA wages were not paid." Yes, but there will be FEWER.
#6
I really think the world is getting sick of listening to the pissing and moaning of the Palis and could care less if it turns into New Somalia.
I know I am.
#7
In an interview with the British The Times newspaper Razak said that there would be no calm in Israel if the current financial crisis continues and there would be terror attacks if PA wages were not paid.
I believe this is referred to in the civilized world as simple blackmail.
#8
No, Besoeker, the term is extortion. Blackmail means that you pay me to keep quiet about your indiscretions; extortion means you pay me to keep from killing you.
What I'd like to know is "...would turn into "a second Somalia". "
#9
When the Israelis finish their fence and the Paleos can no longer threaten Israeli civilians, who in Israel will care what the Paleos do to each other. Or did he mean by a "second Somalia" that there would be widespread famine amongst the seething, unproductive masses if charity donations aren't increased?
Chadian rebels have raided the town of Mongo, about 400 kilometres east of the capital N'Djamena, in their boldest attack so far in a campaign to disrupt elections next month. President Idriss Deby's Government, which accuses neighbouring Sudan of supporting the insurgents, says the raiders have succeeded in entering Mongo. But it denies a claim by a rebel group that its fighters have captured the town.
Information Minister Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor says government forces have repulsed the latest rebel strike in the landlocked central African oil producer.
The raid on Mongo, a regional administrative centre halfway between N'Djamena and the Sudan border, is the closest to the capital so far by rebels who have vowed to try to oust Mr Deby, who is standing for re-election in a May 3 poll.
The attack follows a series of hit-and-run raids in the last three days in which mobile columns of rebels travelling in pick-up trucks have attacked government forces in the east, briefly occupying at least one village and a refugee camp. Mr Doumgor has given no details of casualties in the Mongo attack but says the assailants have caused "some damage". "These strikes are aimed at sowing panic among the population and above all at disrupting the ongoing presidential election campaign," he said.
The rebel United Front for Democratic Change (FUC), which has claimed responsibility for a series of attacks in eastern Chad since Sunday, says in statements posted on a Chad opposition website that it has captured Mongo and nearby Bitkine. Mr Doumgor says the rebels control no towns in the country and FUC forces have in the past quickly withdrawn from towns and villages they initially claimed to have occupied.
UPDATE: Chad's government says it has regained control of the town of Mongo, 400km (250 miles) east of the capital, after it was raided by rebels. The government had previously denied a claim by United Front for Change (Fuc) rebels that they had captured Mongo. The fighters opposed to President Idriss Deby say they are advancing towards the capital on three fronts.
Mongo is the nearest the rebels have come to N'Djamena, which is tense, since the six-month rebellion began. "Since yesterday afternoon our defence and security forces took total control of the town of Mongo," an unamed military official told Reuters news agency.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2006
00:46 ||
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#1
I was just about to post this under the headline -
London, Apr. 11 Iraqi military forces recently discovered an Iranian-make weapons cache hidden in the city of Tikrit, north-west of Baghdad. The weapons, which were all new and of Iranian origin, were found hidden in a large well in the west of Tikrit, according to an Iraqi army officer whose comments were reported by Iraqi media.
The United States and Iraqi officials have accused Irans radical Islamic government of sending agents and arms into Iraq to assist the insurgency.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2006
00:23 ||
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#1
So we have Iranian weapons in Tikrit, the heart of the Sunni insurgency. Of course the MSM will tell you that they Sunnis and the Iranian Shiites would never, ever work together.
This seems like the latest in the smoking gun evidence that is needed to justify retaliatory air strikes on military targets in Iran.
Iran must pay a price for their perfididy, even if that perfididy is limited to their arming of insurgents fighting our soldiers and not their incipient nuclear weapons program.
Bottom line is that we now have very clear evidence that Iran is directly contributing to the deaths of our troops. MAKE THEM PAY!
#2
I've wondered for some time whether there weren't a way to hit back directly at SAVAM or whichever arm of the Iranian regime were most directly involved in killing Americans here. Apart from the nuclear tangle, which is clearly more challenging, I would think we could identify and hurt Iranian personnel/assets. I think we're at the stage where two can play the shadow game. No need for much more than "no comment, but they may well have been work accidents" when the Hellfires from the Predators take out several Iranian vehicles and offices (inside Iran).
Of course I'm also whacky enough to have wondered why we haven't been hitting (through proxies or directly) Iranian intel world-wide, for a long time. They crossed the rubicon right up front, back in '79 - and even more so just a bit later.
#5
Verlaine in Iraq----I certainly hope that we have been doing something signficant. It does not look like Syria got any serious hurt for supporting cross-border ops in western Iraq. It also does not look like Iran is getting any message about their meddling in Iraq. There must be serious consequences to the M²s for their actions, personally. I see nothing yet.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/12/2006 9:57
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If we have "failed" in Iraq, this is where it happened. We allowed a porous border with Syria for the first couple of years and obviously still have that problem with Iran. In both cases I think we should've been extremely aggressive. As I see it the experiment has been ruined by our lackadaisical response. Hindsight is perfect yes, but it is/was a natural instinct to punish them for subverting the elections and supporting the terrorists. It was a common theme here as many have voiced frustration and puzzlement over it ever since the fall of Baghdad. Why we did not employ much stronger measures, particularly those involving very few or no boots, completely baffles me as well. Now only the decimation of Iran's regime can save a unified Iraq, I think.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/12/2006 13:12
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#8
"Can anyone say casus belli"?
All due respect Barbara, this report is from Iranfocus. Therefore should be taken with a tanker-truck of sodium. An Iraqi army officer whose comments were reported by Iraqi media is not exactly a smoking gun. And the ambiguous term cache needs some clarification, for instance style and quantity of weapons. Finally, even if weapons of Iranian origin are found, that alone does not prove Tehran was complicit. There are plenty of rogue elements beyond their control. If Russian rifles were to be found in Iraq it doesnt mean Putin approved of the shipment.
We did this yesterday, but I suspect we'll have more discussions today.
Tehran, Iran, Apr. 11 Radical Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared on Tuesday that Iran had officially joined the group of countries with nuclear capabilities commonly known as the Nuclear Club.
I officially announce that Iran has joined the worlds nuclear countries, Ahmadinejad said in a speech that was broadcast on state television. This is the start of greater progress and achievements, he said.
Earlier, Irans nuclear chief announced that Tehran had recently managed to enrich uranium to the level required to make nuclear fuel. We successfully enriched uranium to 3.5 percent on April 9, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, who heads Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, said.
Following the announcement, the director of the Education Organisation of Tehran told the state-run news agency Fars that a national honour and pride bell will ring in schools across the Iranian capital at 9 am on Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, former Iranian President Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani announced that Iran had began uranium enrichment, despite a call by the United Nations Security Council for it to cease all uranium enrichment activities. We operated the first unit which comprises of 164 centrifuges, gas was injected, and we got the industrial output, Rafsanjani, who currently chairs the State Expediency Council (SEC), told the Kuwaiti news agency in Tehran.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2006
00:10 ||
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#1
Yea, he's a gonna get "clubbed" all right.
Posted by: Captain America ||
04/12/2006 0:31
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#2
Isn't there a bit of hazing involved with this fraternity?
#4
WND.com has a promo for Mr. Jerry Corsi, author of ATOMIC IRAN, whom argues that Iran may only be 4 months away from having the ability to dev indigenous, enriched uranium-based nuke devices. IFF MR. CORSI IS CORRECT, RUSSIA-CHINA will be behooved to do something NOW against Iran [pre-2008 US elex]in order to prevent Iran's Radicals from having an arsenal suffic powerful and in quantity to threaten Russia-China. Moscow-Beijing can no longer afford to wait for the Clintons and the Dems. China in particular, with enuff manpower reserves to supp a multi-front conventional war in NorKor, Taiwan, and ME, and wid both JAPAN and SOUTH KOREA modernizing or re-arming, may choose to take immediate mil action in one or more theaters, i.e against IRAN in the name of Internat peace and the universal fight againt Radical Terror; and TAIWAN [Norks as diversionary "holding front"], which in essence/reality would be China's super-PC opening move in "rebellious Taiwan" = US-China War for control of the Pacific. WE ALL KNOW THE GOP AND USA WILL GET THE BLAME NO MATTER WHOM STRIKES WHOM FIRST. Remember, the GWOT is more than a "CLASH OF IDEOS" BUT A FINAL WAR FOR CONTROL OF THE WORLD, CONTROL OF THE FUTURE OWG-NWO, AND WHAT -ISMS WILL DOMINATE SAID FUTURE WORLD AND OWG, which the DemoLefties say can not and must not be DEMOCRATIC/FREE CAPITALIST SOVEREIGN AMERICA - you know, PATRIOTISM!?
#6
Bush will stop them, at least for a while. I think he recognizes this is a pay me now or pay me later situation. He's not the type to pass it on to the next guy. Nobody except maybe the Chinese, wants the MM with nukes. Let's polish that ATO.
I am he as you are he as you are me,
and we are all together.
See how they spin, centrifuges now!
U-2-3-5
I'm cheering.
Waiting on some yellow cake.
Waiting for the van to come.
Isotopic distill, holy missile launch day
Man its been a long time,
So let your beard grow long.
I am the madman
they are the launch men
Ahmadnejad-man!
Goo goo g' joob
Religious rockets sitting
pretty little missiles in a row.
See how they fly like birdies in the sky
See how they sail
I'm crying
I'm crying, I'm crying
Yellow cake ore-man
Put out the blasphemer's eye
Stone the little harlot
Pornographic priestess
Boy, you've been a naughty girl
you showed your hair to all
I am the madman
they are the launch men
Ahmadnejad-man!
Goo goo g' joob
Sitting in an Persian garden
waiting for the sun
If the sun don't come, you get the sand
from standing in the Persian wind
I am the madman
they are the launch men
Ahmadnejad-man!
Goo goo g' joob
Expert, UN, inspects equipment,
Don't you think the imam laughs at you?
See how they smile knowing what's coming
See how they sneer!
I'm cheering
Rocket that's launching
climbing up the Persian sky
Elementary children singing Allah Akhbar
Man, you should have seen them reading
Omar Khayyam too
I am the madman
they are the launch men
Ahmadnejad-man!
Goo goo g' joob
Goo goo g' joob
Goo goo g' goo
goo goo g' joob goo
juba juba juba
juba juba juba
juba juba juba juba
juba juba
#8
I agree with TC8214. The Iranians will have nuclear weapons. So will their richer neighbors. The trick will be to limit any detonations to within muslim lands.
Actually, I think this a dog and pony show for the natives and a sleight of hand for western audiences. I think the Iranians already have enough U-235 for one or more bombs. They are known to have had for several years parts for 3000 centrifuges and can manufacture thousands more.
It's quite easy to hide centrifuge cascades in tunnels. They don't use anything like the electrical power of the Manhattan project. I read somewhere that a centrifuge uses about 40 watts each and UF6 sublimates into a gas at 120°F at 1 atmosphere (triple point at 133°F).
Posted by: ed ||
04/12/2006 12:20
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#18
You don't have to test a critical-mass uranium bomb. Oppenheimer didn't. The physics is known and understood. IIRC, about 200 KG of moderatly enriched uranium, or a little as 20 KG of highly-enriched uranium - slam 'em together with a small explosive charge, and ... boom.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/12/2006 21:43
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David Hicks's US military lawyer says he will travel to Guantanamo Bay in the next few weeks to check on the welfare of his client.
Major Michael Mori has confirmed Hicks has been moved into solitary confinement in recent weeks, but says his legal team has not been given a legitimate reason.
Does there need to be one?
The Australian Government says it has been told by US authorities that Hicks is not being kept in solitary confinement in Guantanamo Bay. The Government has been advised he has been transferred to a newly completed facility within the detention centre and is in a single occupancy cell.
If he's quiet he can hear his ward mates snore ...
A spokesman for Attorney-General Philip Ruddock says Hicks continues to have access to exercise and outdoor facilities in group areas, as well as natural light from a window in his cell.
Maj Mori says being in confinement will break Hicks's will. "When I first went and saw him back in December 2003 he was in isolation," he said. "He didn't have access to sunlight and he was basically a shell of a person.
"To move him back now into isolation and undo everything the Australian consulate has worked hard to provide him, I don't understand what's going on."
The UK High Court is expected to rule tonight on whether Hicks is eligible for British citizenship, which his lawyers hope will help clear the way for his release.
A civilian lawyer for Hicks, Joshua Dratel, says there is no legitimate reason for keeping his client under those conditions. "They have not provided any explanation and certainly there is not any disciplinary or security interest involved," he said. "It's a mystery in terms of any specific reason but we think that it's part of the arbitrary and punitive nature of the way that they treat David."
Mr Dratel says the process under which changes at the jail are made is arbitrary. "All the things that become routine are no longer available," he said. "Certain psychological aspects of it, such as solitary confinement, lack of sunlight, are extremely important in keeping one's psyche in order."
Remind us how Mr. Hicks's victims are doing?
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2006
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#1
As usual, they make an accusation that they know cannot be disproved, since any photo to the contrary can be claimed to have been faked.
The question, of course, is whether you trust the US Military or a lawyer.
#4
I thought Hicks was "on his last leg" months ago? This guy has more lives than a cat! Ship his happy ass back to Afghanistan and let them deal with him and his civil rights lawyers.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, speaking yesterday during a visit to Pakistan, urged the Islamic world to benefit from Pakistan's "rich experience" in defense. "Pakistan has achieved excellence in the defense field and the Muslim countries must benefit from its experience," he told reporters after visiting a heavy industry plant near Islamabad, which indigenously manufactures the state-of-the-art Al-Khalid tanks and other military equipment.
Yet somehow Pakland has never managed to win a war. But I guess when heroes are scarce you take what you can get, if anything.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2006
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I know that they have a serious problem with arsenic in the water in Bangladesh. I wonder what is in the groundwater of Pakistan or Yemen that fosters such dementia. Boggles the mind.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/12/2006 9:52
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heavy industry plant near Islamabad, which indigenously manufactures the state-of-the-art Al-Khalid tanks
Lets see a tank patterned after a Soviet design family that has won just how many stand up fights in the last 60 years against properly trained opponents
The Lebanese military judiciary issued arrest warrants Tuesday against 14 people for planning to carry out terrorist acts while Hizbullah confirmed the suspects intended to assassinate the group's Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Charges included forming "a gang with the intent of carrying out attacks against the state and terrorist acts and trading in arms and bombs," but did not explicitly state that a plot to kill Nasrallah had been in the works.
Military intelligence arrested nine of the 14 suspects, eight Lebanese and one Palestinian - the other five are still at large - and seized weapons, officials announced Monday, following reports by daily newspaper As-Safir that a gang was detained for plotting to kill Nasrallah on his way to the national dialogue. A statement issued by the Loyalty to the Resistance parliamentary bloc headed by MP Mohammad Raad condemned the "terrorist" plot against Nasrallah, stressing it served Israel's interests. But Raad said Hizbullah would continue its participation in the national dialogue, despite the plan to murder Nasrallah.
A Hizbullah spokesperson told The Daily Star Israel had long been planning to kill Nasrallah, and added that the investigation should continue to determine whether those had links to Israel's secret service. Nasrallah's predecessor, Sayyed Abbas al-Moussawi, was killed in an Israeli raid in 1992.
Earlier Monday, Nasrallah's political adviser, Hussein Khalil, station confirmed As-Safir's reports in a television interview with Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV. He said "information collected by Hizbullah's security apparatus converged with that of Lebanese intelligence, leading to unearthing the network in question." Khalil said focus should next be on determining the political background of the plotters and blamed "the enemies of Lebanon and the enemies of the (Arab) nation," in an apparent reference to Israel. Meanwhile, a judicial source said reports about Nasrallah being the target of the arrested group were "exaggerations," and could not yet be confirmed.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2006
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Bill Clinton invoked Scripture and Al Gore warned of the looming calamity of climate change as the former president and vice president appeared onstage to honor an outgoing Democratic Party official.Democrats sentimental for a return of the Clinton-Gore political era saw their wish briefly fulfilled Monday night at a dinner for Democratic National Committee official Maureen White. The two did not appear onstage together, joining committee Chairman Howard Dean at different moments in the program. Gore was accompanied by his wife, Tipper Gore.
Speaking to the 500 donors who'd paid at least $1,000 to attend the dinner, Clinton urged the group to think of themselves as "values voters" whose concerns mirror those of most Americans. "We don't have to be afraid of our values," Clinton said, outlining a message he said Democrats need to convey when asked by skeptical voters what they stand for. "We believe in ... shared opportunities, shared responsibilities and shared participation in the community." And if there are any female Interns out there, we'll share them, too.
Clinton said Republicans "believe in concentrated wealth and power and using ideology to divide people." He said that with a straight face.
Mentioning the coming Easter Sunday holiday, he reminded the crowd that Democrats stand for one of the hallmarks of the New Testament - helping the poor. and soaking the taxpayers. Render unto Ceasar and all that. Other than that, religion can go take a hike.
In recent weeks, Clinton and other party leaders have sought to frame Democratic concerns in religious language. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Bill Clinton's wife, and Sen. John Kerry,(I fought in Vietnam) D-Mass., the party's 2004 presidential candidate, recently criticized a tough Republican-backed immigration bill as contrary to Christian beliefs. Horsepookey! It's got nothing to do with religion and they know it!
Republican National Committee spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt, in an e-mail, said later of Bill Clinton's remarks at the dinner: "Ironic choice of words given that the senator has increasingly used her bully pulpit to launch personal negative attacks rather than talk about ideas to better our country." Gore called on the crowd of donors to use their "moral imagination" to address the threat of global warming, estimating that only 10 years remain to make the global changes necessary to thwart a potential environmental catastrophe. You have to imagine there is a real calamity, just like I do.
Gore, who alomost stole narrowly lost the 2000 presidential election to Republican George W. Bush, did not cast his argument in partisan terms.
"Democrats need to push a political consensus," he said. Fat chance, Howlin Al.
Monday's event honoring White was expected to raise $1.3 million for the DNC, spokeswoman Karen Finney said. White, the DNC's longtime national finance chair, is retiring.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
04/12/2006
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"Only ten years remain..." - ahhh, year 2016, right around the time frame when Russia-China, one or both of them, likely both vv SHanghai Coop, say war is not possible against America, and only America, but desired/preferred by them.
DAY AFTER TOMORROW says solar output is normal ergo we're doomed.
Posted by: Captain America ||
04/12/2006 0:32
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#3
and in the spirit of the Democratic Party, all of those who did not finish their $1000 dinners, had the left overs boxed up and well heeled guests gave the tasty scraps to the homeless who were sleeping outside in the gutters and on the grates showing their commitment to sharing.
The top United Nations envoy in Afghanistan condemned the "heinous" attack on a school in the eastern Afghan province of Kunar, which killed six children and wounded 14 other people. He called for the end of such atrocities against the youngsters of the war-torn country. "In all cultures and traditions it is universally accepted that women and children should be outside the arena of conflict and it is most upsetting that this principle is not being respected in Afghanistan," UN Secretary-General Kofi Annans Special Representative Tom Koenigs said in a statement on the attack.
"Children have a fundamental human right to education and there can be no justification for such a heinous attack. I want to re-iterate my clear message that the children of Afghanistan should not be targeted by such violence and must be left alone in peace," he added. We know that all Afghan communities and the entire international community will join us in condemning this atrocity," he said.
The rocket attack on a school building occurred in the capital of the Kunar province, Asadabad. The province lies on the border with Pakistan. The school building lies close to a US-led coalition base and reports say that militants regularly target the military base with rockets but they rarely hit their target. Hundreds of children, aged six to 16, were reportedly in the school at the time of the rocket attack.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2006
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#1
"Remember, turbans, the first clause in the UN Charter clearly states: 'No hitting'."
#2
In all cultures and traditions it is universally accepted that women and children should be outside the arena of conflict
Annan added, That's why we move the women and children inside our UN compounds and let them sleep with the peacekeepers - to keep them outside the arena of conflict.
#3
The Quran also says it, plus most of the great Muslim leaders of history were known, or respected, for their general or absolute adherence to this rule, even by the West. The Radics may love to invoke the names of SALADIN thru SULEYMAN, etal. but they are way Way WAY far from possessing the same morals or warrior skills.
Georgia Democratic Rep. Cynthia McKinney's recent run-in with a security official at the nation's Capitol reminded me of an earlier dust-up.
On New Year's Eve 2002, while I was a visiting professor at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, the superintendentthe distinguished three-star Vice Adm. Richard J. Naughtontried to enter the academy without wearing the photo ID required of all military and civilian personnel.
Naturally expecting that the young Marine sentry on duty would recognize his all-important superintendent, Naughton boldly tried to pass. But instead, the Marine asked him to produce identification. Angry words and some sort of altercation ensued between the admiral and the enlisted man.
Later, Naughton claimed he couldn't "remember" whether he had "touched" the guard, but he did concede he "might" have done so. After a lengthy, ultimately damning investigation, Naughton resignedfirst from his post as academy superintendent and then subsequently from the Navy altogether. During the investigation, some skeptics at Annapolis had doubted whether Naughton would pay any price. But his exalted rank, along with his race and gender, won no exemption.
I mention the Naughton case to illustrate that such mix-ups at government checkpoints are not unusualand that eventually public pressure catches up with aristocratic arrogance and even the powerful are held to account. Rest at link.
Posted by: ed ||
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#1
No law or internal regulation in the US Constitution, USC(A), CFR, NavRegs and ... UCMJ says "political privelege" or "politicians/
crats/flag officers only". No law or regs gener forces anyone to be PC, just as no law or reg prevents anyone from telling the truth or untruth of anything. As posted on the Net over the years, where the Commie Clintons and their PC anti-AMer cabal are concerned, America will eventually be attacked, and when that attack occurred [9-11] it occurred in large part to the establishment/NPE's willingness to protect its own Destroyer(s), and to do so willing, wid the Clintons or any others like them superior or inferior, despite knowing it and the Country will be betrayed and sold down the river later on. AMERICA, AND BOTH ITS ALLIES OR ENEMIES, ARE ALL IN A "KILL OR BE KILLED", "FIGHT OR DIE", "RULE OR BE SLAVE", "IMPLODE OR BE IMPLODED" NATIONAL AND UNIVERSAL SITUATION. America and its democratic Allies must now either de facto rule the world, and by extens the future OWG and NWO; OR BE DESTROYED. Be it under Secular Communism-Socialism, or God-based Global Caliphate/Islamist State, aka God-based Socialism, America must either unilater give up, or forcibly lose by armed force and warfare, domestic control its own sovereignty, freedoms, laws, Govt. and endowments to other weaker nations whereupon, iff Eric Pianka, CoasttoCoastAM guests, the Chicom defense white paper of 2005, and other radical intellectuals are any measure, Americans may still end up being gulagged andor exterminated anyways whether we "submit" voluntarily or forcibly. Our national destruction and holocaust is good for us.
#5
The most recent run-in is not the first one for McKinney. She did pretty much the same thing during her first term. The Capitol Police went so far as to post a picture of her on the bulletin board. She refused to wear her Congressional ID pin then, too. Talk about an elitist snob.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
04/12/2006 9:05
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The only reasons I can think of for members of Congress to be recognized on sight are if their pictures are displayed at the post office or we are allowed to hunt them for sport.
#7
An event like this happened at Ft. Eustis when a visiting one star was stopped at the gate and berated the gate guard. All the guard asked for was ID. When the General refused, because he was in uniform and did not need to he said, the MP ask him to get out of the car. When he refused the MP drew his side arm and insisted. General Starry was the highest ranking officer on the post at the time and came to the gate to get the officer. Before he had the officer's hand cuffs removed Gen Starry pinned an impact ARCOM on the troop. Where have the great officers like Starry gone?
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
04/12/2006 10:35
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#8
SteveS - now that might not be a bad idea......
/Joking - do not construe this as a threat against congresscritters....
Twenty-two people were arrested in connection with a gunfight Monday in the town of Khalwat al-Kfeir in Hasbaya district, Interior Minister Ahmad Fatfat said on Tuesday. Three people, including the grandfather of current Druze MP Wael Abou Faour, were wounded in the fight.
"You bastards! You shot Grampaw!"
The shooting reportedly occurred between the bodyguards of pro-Syrian former Minister Wiam Wahhab, who was paying condolences at a funeral in Khalwat al-Kfeir, and numerous people identified as partisans of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP). Wahhab said his convoy was ambushed by PSP supporters, according to judicial sources.
Local witnesses also reported that Wahhab's convoy was attacked. Druze Sheikh Kamal Abou Ibrahim tried to stop the assailants "because the Druze tradition is against harming the guests," the witnesses said, but Abou Ibrahim was was hit by gunfire. At a press conference Monday Abou Faour accused Wahhab of "provoking strife" and said the shooting incident "shows that there is a Syrian political decision to blow up the situation in Lebanon."
The 22 arrestees included 12 of Wahhab's bodyguards, according to Lebanese satellite television station Future T.V. All the arrestees were reported to have been in possession of weapons. Abou Faour, who is from Khalwat al-Kfeir, confirmed that his 82-year-old grandfather was among the wounded. After the incident, military and security forces personnel moved into the village to restore order. Fatfat said that the Internal Security Forces and the Lebanese Army are working their best to ensure that calm prevails in the area.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2006
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Israel says it will continue its bombardment of populated Palestinian areas in retaliation for militant rocket strikes into Israeli territory, despite the death of a child in the latest shelling. Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister, said on Tuesday Israel would stand by its new policy of firing artillery shells into Gaza in an effort to stop rocket fire at Israel. "The role of the Israeli army is to defend Israeli civilians, combat terrorism and prevent rocket attacks," Livni told public radio. "As long as Palestinians fire at residential area, the army must reply."
An Israeli military spokesman echoed Livni's comments. "There has been no change in policy," he said on customary condition of anonymity. "We will continue to fight them intensely, while trying to avoid hurting innocent civilians."
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2006
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#1
How about cutting of their water & electricity. Say, one day of cutoff per Kassam?
#2
I have been harping on that point for a long time, grom. Israel needs to cut off the electricity for some intervals to send a message. The intervals get longer, based upon naughty behavior. The water supply is a more serious issue, as the consequences of lack of sanitation could cause diseases like choleria to spring up in Gaza, which could have major public health ramifications in Isreal. That one will be Israel's call.
But the electricity would send a good message. Productivity in the machine shops that produce Kassims would definitely go down.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/12/2006 10:04
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The death toll from an explosion at a hospital complex in northern China rose to at least 33 on Tuesday amid reports that explosives stored in a garage may have caused the tragedy. Rescuers found a total of 33 bodies amid rubble after the Monday morning blast at the Xuangang Coal Power Company's staff hospital in Shanxi province, China Central Television (CCTV) reported in its evening news.
The first report of the blast which emerged on Monday afternoon said 15 were killed. Various state-run media reports said that between 40 and 200 people were injured in the explosion, some of whom were nearby villagers whose houses have been damaged. The powerful explosion, which occurred in a garage in a building in the hospital complex, flattened that building and six other houses nearby, the CCTV report said. It caused damage within one square kilometre of the blast site, with one end of a five-storey residential building for hospital staff completely destroyed. The blast site was less than 500 metres from the main building and the patients have since been moved to other local hospitals. Some of the windows of the main hospital building, which can accommodate 300 patients, were smashed.
The cause of the blast remained unknown, according to police contacted by AFP. But official press reports said investigators were looking into the possibility that explosives stored at the site were responsible.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2006
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#4
Gasses used in anesthesia are usually explosive, also whether or not the gasses blew, they always have Pure Oxygen.
In the presence of Pure Oxygen even a charcoal briquette becomes explosive. Those "NO SMOKING" signs are not just beaurocratic whim.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
04/12/2006 20:07
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It seems to be carelessness with explosives: The explosion in a storeroom below a ground-floor garage destroyed a small hostel and damaged other buildings at the staff hospital run by the Xuangang Electricity and Coal Co. in the Shanxi province city of Yuanping.
Think "company hospital", like in the old mine company towns in the eastern US.
'Local police have found large quantities of detonators and blasting fuses at the incident spot and are further investigating the cause of the explosion,' the agency said. Hospital staff said drivers held keys to the storerooms under the garage and that explosives and butane gas tanks may have been stored there. The hospital is very close to one of the company's coal mines, where explosives are used regularly, a hospital administrator said.
Storeroom under garage at rooming house right next to hospital, not in hospital itself.
A visitor to the hospital reported seeing a fire in the garage about one minute before the explosion, a hospital security officer told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa by telephone on Monday. The agency showed photographs of the flattened garage and the extensive damage to one end of a five-storey apartment block used by hospital staff. The explosion also destroyed six one-storey buildings that were used as a hostel and were 'full of people' early Monday, it quoted eyewitnesses as saying. A local government official said the hostel was used mainly by migrant workers.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006 21:47
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Jordan has barred five Egyptian Baptist priests from entering the country to attend Easter celebrations, well informed sources said on Tuesday. It was not immediately clear why the five Christian clergymen were sent back to Egypt. Reverend Nabih Abbasi, the leader of Jordan's tiny Baptist community said he was "shocked" by the decision to turn away the the Egyptian priests. Christians - mostly Catholic - make up just 3.4 percent of Jordan's mainly Muslim population of five million.
I presume they're "ministers," rather than "priests," but you know what they mean.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2006
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#1
Certainly a new approach to... "beating the Baptists to the buffee."
#3
ministers, priests, Catholics, Mormons, Buddhists, whatever. It's difficult to get these distinctions right when translating since they all translates from just one word - infidel.
Saudi Arabia will exert all efforts to fight terrorism and its financiers, the kingdom's crown prince said Tuesday, calling it a "disease" that threatens the whole world. Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdel-Aziz, who is also the kingdom's deputy prime minister and defense minister, said terrorist acts were contrary to the teachings of Islam. Saudi Arabia "has emphasized its strong rejection and condemnation of all forms of terrorism," the prince said during a lecture in Singapore organized by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
"Terrorist actions are contradictory to the teachings and values of Islam," he told diplomats, government officials, academics and business executives. "The kingdom has strongly voiced its determination to continue to exert all possible efforts in combating terrorism and whoever helps in financing or inciting terrorism," he declared. "Terrorism ... is a disease that threatens the whole world and our two friendly countries have agreed on the importance of fighting terrorism and terrorists."
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2006
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I thought there were prohibitions in the extreme Wahhabi practice of Islam against humor?
Either the Crown Prince has strayed from the "pure" faith of the Prophet (PBUH) or he is not an extreme Wahhabi but rather ... a moderate Muslim.
The death toll in a rocket attack on a primary school yard in Afghanistan has risen to seven young children with more than 30 wounded. Deputy police chief Mohammad Hassan Farahi says two rockets were fired into Asadabad, the capital city of Kunar province, and one hit a school in the grounds of a mosque, killing six students aged between seven and 10. Another child died later in hospital. Thirty-three other children and a teacher were wounded, mostly by shrapnel. The second rocket did not cause casualties.
The children were studying in the open because they did not have a school building. It was not clear if the rocket was targeted at the mosque complex, which is close to an Afghan army base and a compound for international troops. Mr Farahi says the rockets were fired from across the border in Pakistan and blamed the attack on the "enemies of Afghanistan", a term Afghan officials often use to refer to remnants of the Taliban regime ousted in late 2001 and their Al Qaeda allies.
Taliban fighters were also blamed for another bombing on Tuesday (local time), with five people, including a 10-year-old child, wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in eastern Jalalabad city, the capital of Nangarhar province that borders Kunar. The bomb ripped through a station-wagon in a crowded main road about a kilometre from the city centre.
Posted by: Fred ||
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The United Nations (UN) has advised its aid agencies to avoid meeting with Hamas political leaders and to limit contacts to technocrats in the new Palestinian Government. Restrictions on UN contacts with the new Government could further increase pressure on Hamas leaders, who are already shunned by Israel, the United States and the European Union. But by maintaining contacts with the new Government at a "technical level for operational purposes," the UN bucks efforts by the United States to isolate the cash-strapped government and its ministries. UN aid agencies are at the same time advised to "avoid political contact" with Hamas leaders. These leaders would include cabinet ministers and other high-level appointments.
In New York, chief UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric, says "working contacts" for aid agencies and other UN officials with the new Palestinian Government are permitted to ensure continuation of humanitarian programs. "The issue of political contacts will be dealt with as it arises," Mr Dujarric said.
Mr Dujarric points to statements from the quartet of Middle East mediators, which includes the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia. While the quartet was united in calling on Hamas to renounce violence, recognise Israel and abide by interim peace deals, members have each set out different policies governing contacts with the new Government.
Unlike the UN, the Bush administration has barred its officials and contractors from having any contact with members of the Hamas Government, including at the technocrat level. In private briefings, Bush administration officials have told UN agencies and non-government organisations to ensure that they do not provide any American funding to the Palestinian Authority, its ministries or local municipalities. The United States has also asked the agencies and groups to abide by its strict no-contact policy when working on projects funded by US taxpayer dollars, according to UN officials briefed by Bush administration officials.
Like the United States, the European Union has severed political contacts with the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority. But ministers of the 25 member states agreed that humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people would continue along with working-level contacts with lower-level officials to make that possible. Russia, in contrast, has brushed aside calls to shun Hamas and has maintained contacts with the Islamic militant group at the highest of levels.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2006
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#1
We told you what would happen if the check bounced.
Posted by: K. Annan ||
04/12/2006 9:11
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Iraqi police have detained 31 private security guards in a raid the interior ministry said had netted sophisticated weaponry that was meant to be used for attacks. The staff of the Al-Forat security company were "arrested as they planned to carry out terrorist activities against innocent people", the ministry said in a statement on Monday.
The 31 employees were picked up from the central Hamra hotel, which houses the offices of a number of foreign firms, including media organisations, the ministry said without specifying the day of the arrests. Bayan Jabr Solagh, the Iraqi interior minister, said Al-Forat "does not have a licence from our ministry" to operate as a security firm and charged that some of its detained employees had confessed to participating in violence. "We discovered a lot of weapons including sophisticated rifles usually used by snipers, and also rocket-propelled grenades," the minister told state television. "I am astonished how a private security company can have arms like RPGs as our ministry does not allow such companies to have more than revolvers and Kalashnikovs."
Posted by: Fred ||
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Al-Forat security company
tid bit.
Al-Forat television, run by a Shi'ite political party...?
A booby-trapped car blew up close to a popular restaurant in the Iraqi capital after nightfall on Tuesday wounding at least nine people, a security source said. The source said the explosives-laden vehicle, parked near the restaurant, blew up at 8 p.m., shortly after arrival of policemen at the restaurant, adding that four of them were wounded in the blast. The explosion wounded five civilians and caused extensive damage to the restaurant and nearby stores. Police sealed off the scene of the blast and the wounded were taken to hospitals.
Earlier on Tuesday, three Iraqi army recruits were killed after coming under fire in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. The bodies of two Iraqi civilians were also found in the city, police reports said.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Romano Prodi, Itali's centre-left leader, has rejected the idea of forming a German-style "grand coalition" with his rival Silvio Berlusconi who was defeated in the general election. "We came into this election with a set coalition, and the electoral law has alloted us a number of seats in the Chamber (of Deputies) and in the Senate which will allow us to govern," Prodi told journalists on Tuesday outside his campaign headquarters in Rome.
Prodi's Union alliance won the weekend elections, taking control of both the chambers of parliament, according to full results released on Tuesday, but Berlusconi has so far refused to concede defeat. Berlusconi, prime minister since 2001, claimed that "a great many irregularities" might have marred results, and that a pivotal race for six Senate seats - representing Italians living abroad - could be invalidated. That vote had swung the upper chamber to Prodi with four of the six seats going his way.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Doctors at the Amal Hospital have warned about the high risks of consuming cologne in order to get the intoxicating effect of the alcohol, a local Arabic newspaper reported yesterday. "The cologne abuse cases are on the increase these days. It is the fifth most common form of drug abuse," Dr. Muhammad Shawesh, supervisor at the Amal Hospital in Jeddah, told Al-Watan newspaper.
The doctor explained that cologne is considerably worse than alcoholic beverages made for drinking. In some cases effects of drinking products that contain alcohol do not take effect until 10 to 30 hours after consumption causing symptoms such as vision impairment, total blindness, respiratory difficulties and death, said the doctor. In some Western countries, methanol is mixed with the ethanol in the cologne to discourage people from drinking it while our youths drink methanol directly, he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
"Honey, I better not find you staggering home with Drakkar Noir on your breath *ever* again."
#2
Initial symptoms of methanol poisoning may appear as soon as 12 hours post-ingestion, but usually develop 24 hours after ingestion. These may resemble ethanol intoxication and consist of drowsiness, confusion, and ataxia, as well as weakness, headache, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain. Collectively, these symptoms may mimic an alcohol hangover and are due to mild intoxication, caused by methanol itself.
As methanol metabolism proceeds, a severe anion gap metabolic acidosis will develop. Severe metabolic acidosis in conjunction with visual effects are the hallmark of methanol poisoning. Patients usually describe blurred or misty vision, double vision, or changes in color perception. There my be constricted visual field and, occasionally, total loss of vision. Characteristic visual dysfunctions include pupillary dilation and loss of pupillary reflex (Burkhart 1990; Suit 1990).
Further signs and symptoms may be shallow respiration, cyanosis, tachypnea, coma, seizures, electrolyte disturbances, and various hemodynamic changes including profound hypotension and cardiac arrest. There may be mild to profound loss of memory, confusion, and agitation, which may progress to stupor and coma as the severity of the acidosis increases (Suit 1990). In severe cases, death is possible. Surviving patients can be left with permanent blindness or with other neurological deficits (Jacobsen 1997).
European Union foreign ministers have approved a temporary suspension of aid to the Palestinian Authority. Ministers said after a meeting in Luxembourg that some of the 500 million euro ($600 million) cut in funding to the Palestinian government would now be channelled via humanitarian aid organisations.
Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, said: "We do not wish to punish the Palestinian people for the decision they freely made to elect a Hamas-dominated government. At the same time, Hamas has got to recognise that being elected as a government, democratically, they have responsibilities as democrats to do what everybody else has to do as democrats, which is to eschew violence."
Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, said that the Palestinians were not being abandoned and that the EU "will do business as usual with the Palestinian people". However, Ben Bot, the Dutch foreign minister, said: "The Palestinian people have opted for this government, so they will have to bear the consequences."
Posted by: Fred ||
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Three British soldiers have been wounded, two of them seriously, by a roadside explosion in Afghanistan. The Defence Ministry says the three had been on patrol in the southern province of Helmand when the explosion hit their Land Rover on Monday. They have been flown to hospital for treatment.
"It is suspected that the explosion was caused either by an improvised explosive device or by a landmine," a spokesman said. "Until we establish [the cause] we can't say whether it was a hostile action or whether it was unexploded ordnance. One of the injured is walking wounded. Regrettably, the other two soldiers received serious injuries and continue to receive treatment."
My guess would be Pakistanis.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Scores of people, including prominent Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal leader Haji Hanif Billo, were killed when a bomb went off at a religious gathering in Karachi late yesterday. Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao said 45 people were killed and over 100 injured but unofficial toll was put at 67. Abbas Qadri, Shah Turabul Haq and Irshad Bhatti leaders and prominent members of religious parties were seriously injured. Police later confirmed the death of several leaders.
A suicide bomber triggered off the blast when speakers were offering Maghreb prayers. Ambulances were ferrying the injured to hospital, witnesses said, adding that limbs were seen scattered in the area. Witnesses also said the blast sparked panic among thousands of people who had gathered at the citys Nishtar Park to celebrate the birth anniversary of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Soon after, angry youths, some of them armed, went on a rampage, setting a petrol station and cars ablaze and firing on police and paramilitary troops as they tried to reach Nishtar Park, in the heart of the citys commercial district.
The blast was believed to have been centered close to the stage where prayer leaders from Jamaat-e-Ahle Sunnat, had been standing. Authorities had taken tough crowd control measures yesterday, two days after 29 women and children died in a stampede at a mosque.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
OK, I am confused. As was mentioned yesterday, Barelvis celebrate Mo's bare nekkid day, but here are a bunch of Deobandi MMA, Sunni Tehrik, JuS bigwigs who got boomed on the stage.
In February, rumors that Maulana Abbas Qadri (wounded yesterday) was killed started riots in Karachi. Could this be revenge for that. Otherwise who should rise to the top of the suspect list when so many high value targets are in one place?
Posted by: ed ||
04/12/2006 7:47
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Wanted to clarify my question a bit. Both the Deobandi MMA and Barelvi Sunni Tehrik were on the same stage and both groups leaders died. Why were MMA at an Barelvi festival? Couuld it have been a ploy to get an MMA bomber past security and take out a lot of Barelvi leadership, friendly fire be damned.
Also, I take it Sunni Tehrik head Abbas Qadri later died.
Posted by: ed ||
04/12/2006 8:29
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Details from AKI: Prominent Sunni Tehrik leaders killed in the attack included Hafiz Taqi, Haji Hanif Bilo, Abbas Qadri, Iftiqhar Bhatti and Akram Qadri. Another leader, Kokab Noorani, was injured. Eyewitnesses said that the blast occured near a stage where the religious scholars had gathered for prayers.
"It's better to ask who survived!" said one mourner, apparently referring to two former Pakistani cabinet ministers, Maulana Shah Turabul Haq Qadri and Haji Hanif Tayyab, who moved away from the stage just before the blast occurred.
Left the stage before the boom, huh? Lucky or informed?
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006 9:09
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Lebanon's representative on the United Nations team that demarcated the Blue Line in the South has dismissed media reports about Syria's endorsement of a supposedly new map of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights showing the adjacent and disputed Shebaa Farms region as part of Syria rather than Lebanon In a statement released Tuesday, Brigadier General Amin Hoteit downplayed the importance of Syria's having signed onto the map released by the UN Disengagement Observer Force, stressing that "the map is not new. It's 32 years old. "This is an attempt by agents acting against Lebanon and Syria to change what was agreed upon in the dialogue and to expand the gap between Lebanon and Syria," Hoteit said in the statement.
Media reports recently claimed that Syria endorsed a map of the Golan Heights released by UNDOF before the publication of the UN Security Council resolution that extended the term of this force. The media reported that the new map was enclosed with Resolution 1648 after being enclosed with the UN secretary-general's report, on which the extension was based. Hoteit said the map, revised in December 2005 and released by the maps department of the UN in the Golan Heights, holds no such endorsement by Syria. He added that Syria had no role in drawing the map initially.
Posted by: Fred ||
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A lawyer for Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks says he has learned that his client has had his conditions at the prison camp altered for no reason. Joshua Dratel understands Hicks is back in solitary confinement.
Mr Dratel, a civilian lawyer, is in Adelaide to meet potential witnesses in the Australian's case and some of his client's supporters. He says there is no legitimate reason for keeping his client under those conditions. "They have not provided any explanation and certainly there is not any disciplinary or security interest involved," he said. "It's a mystery in terms of any specific reason but we think that it's part of the arbitrary and punitive nature of the way that they treat David." A decision is still pending on Hicks's application for British citizenship, which could potentially see him freed.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Solitary confinement is too crowded of conditions for him. Let's remove one person.
Posted by: Captain America ||
04/12/2006 0:36
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French students have staged sporadic victory marches across the country, a day after President Jacques Chirac axed a hire-and-fire youth jobs law that had drawn millions onto the streets in protest. A few thousand students have marched across France - just a fraction of the estimated 1 million who had marched a week earlier to demand the withdrawal of the First Job Contract (CPE).
The CPE would have made it easier for employers to sack young workers. Parliament is due to start debating measures to help disadvantaged young people find work designed by the ruling Union for a Popular Movement to replace the CPE and end two months of crisis. Police say 2,300 people marched in Paris, compared with 700,000 last week before the Government u-turn. The lower turnout has been repeated in provincial towns across the country. "What's happening today is that there is some wavering ... but one should not conclude that our movement is dead," Anna Melun, of the main Unef students' union, said.
As CPE opponents vow to keep up their guard until Parliament votes through new measures for young workers, Education Minister Gilles de Robien says life at most of France's 84 universities is returning to normal. Some 3,400 people were arrested over five days of nationwide protests against the CPE in two months.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
SO now Paris and all Euro-Socialism can be as [happily] bankrupt as they are supposed to be, D*** YOU, iff not worse. ALL FRANCE AND EU IS VICTORIOUS - DARE, DARE, DARE I SAY, THE PROPS STAY ON THE CARRIER DE GAULLE AS IT APPROACHES AFGHANISTAN.
#3
#2 French students have staged sporadic victory marches
"Let them eat cake", said Chirac.
Posted by: 2b
"Or let them eat hummus before they face a fatal choice: embrace Islam or lose their heads!"--Unnamed Parisian Wahhabi cleric
Posted by: Humble pie ||
04/12/2006 9:38
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9000 car-b-ques and millions in property damage later, and the country still has not bottomed out. Man, we're on a roll!
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/12/2006 10:17
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#5
AP, wrong figures : the 2005 november Ramadan riots totaled 11 800 car BBQ (officially, which means 20 000+, since only insured initially torched vehicles are counted, while collaterally destroyed ones are ignored), 50 buildings (schools, police stations, warehouses,...), for a total of about 200 millions euros (that's what the insurances are gonna pay anyway, IIRC gvt will pay about 20 millions). Deathtoll was 2 to 8, according on how you count.
The CPE fun was much less drastic, it only meant a big loss of study time for the majority of non-striking students, and much less destructive; IIRC there was about 200 damaged cars during one Paris riot, for example, plus a few hundred (?) people getting their *ss kicked by the Youths(tm), while police stood by.
#7
The French youth celebrated their continuing unemployment by marching in the streets. I can understand a little of the students problem. There is nothing to strive for in France. What you get out of life is more or less determined by the station you were born into. Your life is nothing more than converting O2 into CO2 and food into excrement. You may, or more frequently may not, procreate. There is a reason why ennui is a French word. Life in France hasn't been worth a bucket of warm spit since Napoleon.
1) 35 hour work week
2) Six weeks+ / year of vacation
3) Lifetime employment
4) Early retirement w. Full Pension!
5) 100 EUD / hr minimum wage - coming soon!
Now they just need to get the rest of the planet to slack off.
Former prime minister Iyad Allawi said on Tuesday that sectarian politicians and their militias were imposing a new "terrorism" on Iraq that is tougher to tackle than insurgent bombings. "Now the new form of terrorism is different to the first form of terrorism. It is ideological, political and sectarian terror in Iraq," he told Reuters in an interview. "We can confront and eradicate the first one but the second one is the danger that has started and hit our society."
Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders are struggling to break a four-month deadlock over the formation of a national unity government they hope will avert a civil war. But Allawi, a secular Shiite, said it will take more than a political breakthrough to save the country from sinking deeper into bloody chaos, and politicians have no clear policies or plans to ease sectarian strife and disband militias. "The problem is with the programme. We need people who say 'We don't believe in militias and sectarian quotas but believe in building government institutions and moving the economy.'" That won't be easy. Many Iraqi political parties are linked to militias who Iraqis say torture and kill with impunity.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2006
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#1
What a minute, it sounds like Iraq needs Allawi as pm. No?
Posted by: Captain America ||
04/12/2006 0:35
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Unfortunately, Sistani let his name be used in campaigns for the UIA slate.
Now, Sistani and the residents of Najaf are feeling heat from the minions of Tater. If Sistani has a plan to deal with Tater its a mystery to anyone. At least Sistani didn't let himself be fooled into the 'they killed people in the mosque' scam at the end of last month.
Posted by: ed ||
04/12/2006 10:09
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thanks ed
Interesting read. However I still don't know what Sistani's anti-Tater plan is or whether he even has one or whether Sistani even has the influence he once had or even whether Sistani realizes his "Let's keep the Shia United" meme in-effect empowers Tater
#5
I don't know, that article seems a bit too hopeful to me. No plan is ever that devious and well executed.
But Sadr's in trouble cause Jaafari (or however you spell it) is also done. We could stick a fork in both of em, but it seems we'll have to wait a bit longer while we wait for the typical Islamic bluster/bravado steam to be let out.
UP to 200 Palestinian policemen on Tuesday took their positions in Rafah crossings, which separates Palestinian territories and Egypt. Salim Abu Safiya, director of crossings in Gaza, told reporters the deployment of the Palestinian police force aimed at restoring order inside the crossing and provide protection for the European monitors.
Rafah passageway is the only crossing for the population of Gaza for the outside world. Abu Safiya said it was important to work jointly with other Palestinian security forces in the crossing to facilitate the movement of travelers.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Shiite leaders from the powerful United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) have failed to decide the fate of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari. Kurds and Sunni Arabs have rejected his candidacy to head the next government, a key sticking point holding up its formation almost four months after elections, forcing the Shiites to meet to decide his fate. But Bassem Sharif, spokesman of the Fadhila Party, says the Shiite alliance leaders broke up the talks aimed at resolving the political impasse until Wednesday (local time). Mr Sharif says the secularists led by former premier Iyad Allawi "had reservations about the programs of the alliance and not about Jaafari himself". Mr Allawi's group had also rejected Mr Jaafari's candidacy.
As the deadlock continues, an adamant Mr Jaafari is refusing to budge, reaffirming his position that only Parliament could now decide his fate. "I have a principle that I will accept what our people decide," he said. "I was elected democratically by the people and I do not see power as a personal gain but a reward to be given to the people."
The dominant UIA, which won 128 out of 275 parliament seats in the December election, chose Mr Jaafari by a single vote in February but his nomination has faced stiff resistance amid accusations he failed to quell violence. The alliance lacks the overall majority in parliament needed to push through a nomination for prime minister on its own.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Shiite leaders from the powerful United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) have failed to decide the fate of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari.
His fate is already decided. They know it, we know it, everybody knows it. But what is it with these guys that they have to do the whole bluster, puffing up the chest thing. What are they waiting for. He's past history. Move forward.
#2
As the deadlock continues, an adamant Mr Jaafari is refusing to budge, reaffirming his position that only Parliament could now decide his fate. "I have a principle that I will accept what our people decide," he said. "I was elected democratically by the people and I do not see power as a personal gain but a reward to be given to the people."
IIRC, he wasn't voted in by Parliament, but only by a party vote. Party vote in, party vote out...
#3
yeah, Ptah, but SCIRI doesnt have the votes to push him out in a party vote (IE a UIA vote) as long as Dawa and the Sadrists back him. Thats why they want him to go quietly, to avoid a split in the UIA on the floor of parliament.
President Mahmoud Abbas said on Tuesday that he was willing to resume peace talks with Israel as soon as it formed a new government, even though the Israelis are shunning the Palestinian Authority led by his Hamas rivals.
Posted by: Fred ||
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More than 900 members of Jamaa Islamiya, the radical Islamist group in Egypt, including its founder, were freed on Tuesday, the interior ministry has said. The militants, some of whom had been imprisoned for more than 20 years, were released in groups over the past 10 days, a ministry official said. Najeh Ibrahim, one of the heads of the organisation, was among those released, the official said.
Jamaa Islamiya merged in the late 1970s with another Islamist group, Al-Jihad. They are held responsible for planning and carrying out the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981. Jamaa was also responsible for a wave of militant violence across Egypt in the 1990s, notably a November 1997 attack at Luxor that killed 58 people, most of them foreign tourists. The group has, however, claimed to have moved away from violent tactics, and published a book in 2003 explaining its ideological shift.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Brilliant. Couldn't they have just set the jail on fire instead?
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.
Centre-left leader Romano Prodi confirmed on Wednesday that his coalition intended to pull Italian troops out of Iraq by the end of 2006 and to push for a softer European line on Hamas.
By Amal Jayasinghe in Colombo 
A group of Muslims protesting Playboy's decision to launch an Indonesian edition of the magazine clashed with police Wednesday and stoned the company's editorial offices, witnesses said. No one was injured in the protest involving around 150 members of the 
The high court in India's financial capital, Mumbai (Bombay), has lifted a ban on dance bars, imposed last year by the state government. The court ruled that the ban was discriminatory and violated the right to equality. The court ruling has been welcomed by the city's out-of-work dancing girls.
When the director of the 
The two top Republicans in Congress, confronted with internal party divisions as well as large public demonstrations, said Tuesday they intend to pass immigration legislation that does not subject illegal aliens to prosecution as felons.
Palestinian Finance Minister Omar Abdel Razak warned on Wednesday that if the Hamas-led government were to fall the Palestinian Authority would turn into "a second Somalia". 
London, Apr. 11 Iraqi military forces recently discovered an Iranian-make weapons cache hidden in the city of Tikrit, north-west of Baghdad. The weapons, which were all new and of Iranian origin, were found hidden in a large well in the west of Tikrit, according to an Iraqi army officer whose comments were reported by Iraqi media. 
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, speaking yesterday during a visit to Pakistan, urged the Islamic world to benefit from Pakistan's "rich experience" in defense. "Pakistan has achieved excellence in the defense field and the Muslim countries must benefit from its experience," he told reporters after visiting a heavy industry plant near Islamabad, which indigenously manufactures the state-of-the-art Al-Khalid tanks and other military equipment.
The Lebanese military judiciary issued arrest warrants Tuesday against 14 people for planning to carry out terrorist acts while 
Bill Clinton invoked Scripture and Al Gore warned of the looming calamity of climate change as the former president and vice president appeared onstage to honor an outgoing Democratic Party official.Democrats sentimental for a return of the Clinton-Gore political era saw their wish briefly fulfilled Monday night at a dinner for Democratic National Committee official Maureen White. The two did not appear onstage together, joining committee Chairman Howard Dean at different moments in the program. Gore was accompanied by his wife, Tipper Gore.
The top United Nations envoy in Afghanistan condemned the "heinous" attack on a school in the eastern Afghan province of Kunar, which killed six children and wounded 14 other people. He called for the end of such atrocities against the youngsters of the war-torn country. "In all cultures and traditions it is universally accepted that women and children should be outside the arena of conflict and it is most upsetting that this principle is not being respected in Afghanistan," UN Secretary-General Kofi Annans Special Representative Tom Koenigs said in a statement on the attack.
Twenty-two people were arrested in connection with a gunfight Monday in the town of Khalwat al-Kfeir in Hasbaya district, Interior Minister 
Israel says it will continue its bombardment of populated Palestinian areas in retaliation for militant rocket strikes into Israeli territory, despite the death of a child in the latest shelling. Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister, said on Tuesday Israel would stand by its new policy of firing artillery shells into Gaza in an effort to stop rocket fire at Israel. "The role of the Israeli army is to defend Israeli civilians, combat terrorism and prevent rocket attacks," Livni told public radio. "As long as Palestinians fire at residential area, the army must reply."
The death toll from an explosion at a hospital complex in northern China rose to at least 33 on Tuesday amid reports that explosives stored in a garage may have caused the tragedy. Rescuers found a total of 33 bodies amid rubble after the Monday morning blast at the Xuangang Coal Power Company's staff hospital in Shanxi province, China Central Television (CCTV) reported in its evening news. 
Jordan has barred five Egyptian Baptist priests from entering the country to attend Easter celebrations, well informed sources said on Tuesday. It was not immediately clear why the five Christian clergymen were sent back to Egypt. Reverend Nabih Abbasi, the leader of Jordan's tiny Baptist community said he was "shocked" by the decision to turn away the the Egyptian priests. Christians - mostly Catholic - make up just 3.4 percent of Jordan's mainly Muslim population of five million.
Saudi Arabia will exert all efforts to fight terrorism and its financiers, the kingdom's crown prince said Tuesday, calling it a "disease" that threatens the whole world. 
The death toll in a rocket attack on a primary school yard in Afghanistan has risen to seven young children with more than 30 wounded. Deputy police chief Mohammad Hassan Farahi says two rockets were fired into Asadabad, the capital city of Kunar province, and one hit a school in the grounds of a mosque, killing six students aged between seven and 10. Another child died later in hospital. Thirty-three other children and a teacher were wounded, mostly by shrapnel. The second rocket did not cause casualties.
The United Nations (UN) has advised its aid agencies to avoid meeting with Hamas political leaders and to limit contacts to technocrats in the new Palestinian Government. Restrictions on UN contacts with the new Government could further increase pressure on Hamas leaders, who are already shunned by Israel, the United States and the European Union. But by maintaining contacts with the new Government at a "technical level for operational purposes," the UN bucks efforts by the United States to isolate the cash-strapped government and its ministries. UN aid agencies are at the same time advised to "avoid political contact" with Hamas leaders. These leaders would include cabinet ministers and other high-level appointments. 
Iraqi police have detained 31 private security guards in a raid the interior ministry said had netted sophisticated weaponry that was meant to be used for attacks. The staff of the Al-Forat security company were "arrested as they planned to carry out terrorist activities against innocent people", the ministry said in a statement on Monday. 
A booby-trapped car blew up close to a popular restaurant in the Iraqi capital after nightfall on Tuesday wounding at least nine people, a security source said. The source said the explosives-laden vehicle, parked near the restaurant, blew up at 8 p.m., shortly after arrival of policemen at the restaurant, adding that four of them were wounded in the blast. The explosion wounded five civilians and caused extensive damage to the restaurant and nearby stores. Police sealed off the scene of the blast and the wounded were taken to hospitals.
Doctors at the Amal Hospital have warned about the high risks of consuming cologne in order to get the intoxicating effect of the alcohol, a local Arabic newspaper reported yesterday. "The cologne abuse cases are on the increase these days. It is the fifth most common form of drug abuse," Dr. Muhammad Shawesh, supervisor at the Amal Hospital in Jeddah, told Al-Watan newspaper.
European Union foreign ministers have approved a temporary suspension of aid to the Palestinian Authority. Ministers said after a meeting in Luxembourg that some of the 500 million euro ($600 million) cut in funding to the Palestinian government would now be channelled via humanitarian aid organisations.
Three British soldiers have been wounded, two of them seriously, by a roadside explosion in Afghanistan. The Defence Ministry says the three had been on patrol in the southern province of Helmand when the explosion hit their Land Rover on Monday. They have been flown to hospital for treatment. 
Scores of people, including prominent 
French students have staged sporadic victory marches across the country, a day after President Jacques Chirac axed a hire-and-fire youth jobs law that had drawn millions onto the streets in protest. A few thousand students have marched across France - just a fraction of the estimated 1 million who had marched a week earlier to demand the withdrawal of the First Job Contract (CPE).
Former prime minister 
UP to 200 Palestinian policemen on Tuesday took their positions in Rafah crossings, which separates Palestinian territories and Egypt. Salim Abu Safiya, director of crossings in Gaza, told reporters the deployment of the Palestinian police force aimed at restoring order inside the crossing and provide protection for the European monitors.
Shiite leaders from the powerful United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) have failed to decide the fate of Prime Minister 
More than 900 members of Jamaa Islamiya, the radical Islamist group in Egypt, including its founder, were freed on Tuesday, the interior ministry has said. The militants, some of whom had been imprisoned for more than 20 years, were released in groups over the past 10 days, a ministry official said. Najeh Ibrahim, one of the heads of the organisation, was among those released, the official said. 
