Investigative reporters, including a couple from a major American TV network, are trying to dig up details of a claim made by a senior Foreign Office official in Islamabad that Pakistan spent thousands of dollars through its lobbyists on member of the 9/11 Commission to drop some of the reports negative findings about Pakistan.
If this claim turns out to be true, it might land Pakistan in trouble in this country because it would amount to an attempt to improperly influence public officials assigned with ascertaining the truth about the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The story, which first surfaced in The Friday Times, Lahore, is based on testimony by Muhammad Sadiq, who was No 2 at the Pakistan embassy in Washington before being posted back to headquarters some months ago, before the Public Accounts Committee. Sadiq, who appeared before the Committee at the end of February this year, revealed that a lot of money had been spent to silence members of the inquiry commission and induce them to go soft on Pakistan.
According to Sadiq, as quoted by The Friday Times in its issue dated March 3-9, 2006, dramatic changes were made in the final draft of the Commissions report after Pakistani lobbyists arranged meetings with members of the investigation body and convinced them to remove anti-Pakistan findings. This information is also said to be available in the record of the Public Accounts Committee. The officer further claimed that Pakistan won the sympathies of 75 US congressmen as part of its strategy to guard the national interest in the US.
Posted by: john ||
04/08/2006
20:31 ||
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SUSPECTED Algerian Islamist militants shouting "God is Greatest" killed 13 customs agents in the north African oil producer's southern desert, a customs official said.
The official, who declined to be identified, confirmed media reports today that said the 13 were killed, and 10 wounded, in an ambush yesterday on a party of customs officials travelling in a convoy of all terrain vehicles 200 km from the country's biggest oil producing town of Hassi Messaoud.
One agent was also reported missing after the ambush in the southern province of Ghardaia, some 700 km southeast of the capital Algiers, state radio said.
It was the worst attack by suspected Islamist militants since the launch of an amnesty for rebels aimed at ending more than a decade of conflict in the OPEC oil-exporting country.
Those killed included senior customs officials including the regional director of the national customs service, Abdelkrim Khebouza.
Customs officials play a key role in security in the south, where groups of Islamist gunmen are believed to maintain links with bandits who run cross-border smuggling networks across Africa's Sahel region.
The radio did not identify the attackers.
Independent newspaper El Watan said the assailants were chanting "God is Greatest" during the attack on the agents who were heading for the oil area of Ouargla to attend a seminar.
The attackers escaped with the customs agents' weapons.
El Khabar said it believed smugglers rather than Islamist gunmen were behind the attack.
The two groups of outlaws have been known to coordinate such attacks in the past.
AUSTRALIAN tourists are staying away from Indonesia as tensions between the countries escalate.
Tourist numbers have halved amid terrorism fears and anger at the treatment of Australian drug-runners.
They could fall even further as diplomatic relations deteriorate over Australia's decision to grant political asylum to 42 people, including several independence activists, from the Indonesian province of West Papua.
Figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveal 16,500 Australians visited Indonesia in February, down from 32,500 in the same month last year.
Despite terrorist attacks in Jakarta and Bali, Indonesia remained among our top four tourist destinations until September, but numbers dropped dramatically after the second Bali bombing in October.
Indonesia no longer ranks among Australians' top 10 destinations.
Thailand has been the big winner, enjoying a 45 per cent increase in Australian tourists between February 2005 and February 2006, according to the bureau.
More Australians also are visiting Singapore, India, Fiji and the US, especially Hawaii.
Flight Centre spokesman Haydn Long said Bali's tourist trade had not recovered as it did after the first terrorist bombings in 2002. "People aren't going there in great numbers," he said.
The latest travel advisory from the Department of Foreign Affairs warns of a "high threat" of terrorist attacks in Indonesia and says Australians should reconsider plans to go there.
But Mr Long said the tourist boycott was probably due to a combination of factors, including resentment over the treatment of Schapelle Corby and the Bali Nine drug smugglers.
"Tourists went to Bali for the people, the beach, the affordability Thailand also offers a lot of that kind of appeal," he said.
Barring further terrorist attacks, Bali is expected to recover, but it may take some years.
"From what we've seen it will probably be a bit slower than previously," Mr Long said.
#1
Muslims seem to trouble with the concept of "cause and effect." People will not visit, not invest, not help in any way places where people try to kill them. These people always seem to want the goods, services, and wealth of the West without Westerners. Indonesia is eventually going to fall apart as its continuing attempts to industrialize fall apart under the weight of militant Islam. Too bad. The West is going to vote with its wallet.
Anyone who has the smarts and the tenacity to be the first black woman elected to Congress from Georgia clearly understands the visual politics of wearing milkmaid braids and gold tennis shoes into the corridors of power. Her choices drive home the point that she is exceptional. She rolls hair, clothes and race into a tight ball. And it becomes impossible to talk about one without getting tangled up in the others. I'm gonna toss
A court in India's western Gujarat state has convicted nine people for the killing of a Hindu man during the 2002 religious riots in the state.
The court sentenced the main accused to 10 years in prison while eight others were given a year-and-half in jail.
At least 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in the widespread riots which broke out after a fire in a train claimed the lives of 59 Hindus.
The state government has been accused of doing little to stop the violence.
Additional sessions judge Sonia Gokani held nine of the accused guilty for the killing of a Hindu man and for the injuries of one other.
More than 1,000 people were killed in the riots
The judge sentenced the main accused - Mustaq Ahmed Sheikh - to 10 years in jail and also fined him 5,000 rupees ($100).
Eight other accused were given a year-and-a-half in prison.
The court acquitted 25 people in this case for want of sufficient evidence against them.
The case relates to an incident during the 2002 religious riots in Gujarat.
On 12 April, there was a clash between a group of Hindus and Muslims, in Danilimda locality, in the state's commercial capital, Ahmedabad.
The two sides threw stones and petrol bombs at each other. It was during this clash that Mustaq Ahmed Sheikh opened fire on the crowd.
One Hindu was killed and another was wounded in the firing.
The state administration, led by the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, has been accused of doing little to stop the violence which swept the state or bring the rioters to justice.
Posted by: john ||
04/08/2006
14:59 ||
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The US with its F-16 fighter aircraft is leading the race to win an Indian Air Force order for 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft one of the biggest single military orders up for grabs globally after the first round in the competition saw the Mirage 2000-V from France and the Russian MiG 29M/M2 out of contention.
The value of the order after the shortlist was drawn up could be anywhere between $7 billion and $12 billion at current prices. It is estimated that the actual selection of aircraft, not accounting for political pulls and pressures, will take till early 2008.
The global tender called request for proposal (RFP) will be issued by the end of April, sources said today. Manufacturers of six aircraft who will be given the RFPs will have till October to respond.
The Eurofighter EADSs Typhoon, Dassault Aviations Rafale and the Russian MiG 35 now enter the fray formally. The original four contenders were F-16 (Lockheed Martin), MiG 29M/M2 (RSK MiG Corporation), Jas 39C Grippen (Saab) and the Mirage 2000-V (Dassault Aviation).
Posted by: john ||
04/08/2006
14:27 ||
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#1
oh ace that'll really hack the french off if they buy f-16's
As with previous Indian orders, the first few squadrons will probably arrive assembled but majority of aircraft will be CKD kits - the planes will be assembled at Hindustan Aviation in Bangalore - where the Su-30 MKIs, the various Migs, the Jaguars, the Hawk trainers etc are already being built.
Posted by: john ||
04/08/2006 18:10
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#7
According to the HAL website Today, HAL has got 16 Production Units and 9 Research and Design Centres spread out in seven different locations in India. Its product track record consists of 12 types of Aircraft from in-house R & D and 14 types by license production. HAL has so far produced about 3,550 aircraft, 3,600 Engines and overhauled over 8,150 Aircraft and 27,300 Engines.
Posted by: john ||
04/08/2006 18:13
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#8
Not rebuilds. Lockheed offered the "Block 70". It doesn't exist yet, but is most likely a variant of the Block 60 the UAE flies (conformal fuel tanks like Israeli F-16I and Block 60, ASEA radar, AIM9-X). I'm sure the USAF wished they had a few. Lockheed Martin offers 'exclusive' F-16 fighters
I'm a bit surprised the F-16 is leading since Pakistan flies the F-16A and is receiving Block 50s. Might get a little confusing in an air war. In addition while the IAF already flies the Mirage 2000, it lost out on the tech race and the assembly line is closing. The Rafale is at least 50% more expensive than the F-16 and has less capability. The Typhoon is at least twice the price of the F-16. I know little of the Mig-35 except that it has thrust vectoring and that if its avionics is anything like the Mig-29, stay away from it.
Posted by: ed ||
04/08/2006 18:18
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#9
They appear to do licensed manufacturing of certain types of aircraft as well as just assembly.
Posted by: john ||
04/08/2006 18:19
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#10
that if its avionics is anything like the Mig-29, stay away from it.
If the Mig is chosen, the avionics will be western.
This is the route India took with the Su-30.
The plane may be Russian but there are Israeli, French and Indian avionics and weapons.
Posted by: john ||
04/08/2006 18:22
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#11
Typo: AESA radar.
Not mentioned in the article is the F-18E/F that was also offered.
Which western weapons are the Indian Su-30s carrying?
Posted by: ed ||
04/08/2006 18:45
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#12
It carries the Israeli Litening targeting pod.
The French MICA missile is supposed to be integrated with the MKI soon.
This was a design consideration for the MKI - the ability to field non Russian weapons.
They already field the French Magic-2 on their Mig-29s.
Posted by: john ||
04/08/2006 19:22
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#13
Also driving this is the manufacturing agreements between MDBA and Bharat Dynamics for the full range of MDBA missiles.
Recently read that Bharat Dynamics had manufactured more than 30 000 Milan anti-tank missiles for the Indian army.
Posted by: john ||
04/08/2006 19:38
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#14
This is a few years old
The Su-3OMKI supersonic multi-role two-seat fighter is the first Russian combat aircraft ever to be designed in conformity with the requirements of a foreign customer. Most observers agree that the time taken by India in defining and developing
the MKI version was rather well spent, as it took great pains to incorporate several technologies from the Su-37 technology demonstrator and mate it with the Su-30 airframe. These include:
> Digital Fly-By-Wire controls, which have now become the industrial standard for latest generation fighter aircraft;
> Aerodynamic configuration of an unstable longitudinal triplane, with fully movable canard surfaces;
> Rear-facing radar in the tail boom to provide warning of hostile aircraft approaching from the rear quadrants and the option of rearward-firing R-73 missiles;
> Single-axis Thrust Vector Control (TVC), that allows the axisymmetric vectoring nozzles to swivel 15 0 in the vertical plan to provide differential thrust control. Depending on the manoeuvere to be performed, engine deflection can be synchronous with or differ from horizontal stabiliser deflection. The Su-30MKI is the world's first (and so far only) operational combat aircraft to feature TVC. The above mentioned integral aerodynamic configuration combined with TVC results in what is referred to as "practically unlimited manoeuvrability," enabling the MKI to take sharp turns without any AoA (Angle of Attack) limits, as well as unique TO and landing characteristics;
> Phazotron phased array radar with increased search range, ground mapping function and compatibility with all Russian and some Western air-air and air-grwund weaponry. The radar is integrated with the fire control system for day-night, all-weather interception of hostile targets. The radar ensures a 20m resolution detection of large sea targets at a distance of up to 400km, while smaller targets can be detected at a distance of 120km. The system can simultaneously track up to 15 air targets while engaging four of them;
> Modified aerial refuelling probe: The air refuelling system enables combat missions of up to 10h duration, with a range of 8,000km at a cruise altitude of 11,000- 13,000m,
> High speed datalink providing ground control precise information about the state of the aircraft and its weapons.
In addition to the above, the specific Indian modifications to the avionics and other systems, which India developed on its own with cooperation from France and Israel, are as follows:
> A new indigenous ECM package developed by the Indian Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO) with technical support from Israel;
> A state-of-the-art "glass" cockpit with a total of six Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs), including two multi-functional
displays and a HUD developed together with then Sextant Avionique of France (now part of Thales);
> All software controls (including the mission computer and navigation systems) have been developed in India;
> An open avionics architecture allowing for the integration of a wide choice of air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles of various origin. The Su-30MKI has a total of twelve weapons stations. No formal plans have been announced, but in addition to the standard Russian range likely AAM candidates include the French MICA and the Israeli Derby and Python IV. It is also expected that the Su-30MKI will eventually receive the air-launched version of the BrahMos cruise missile currently being developed in cooperation between Indian and Russian industries;
> A quick response auto pilot operative during combat engagements. It provides "hands free" capability to the pilot to stay focused on targeting and weapons deployment.
Posted by: john ||
04/08/2006 20:04
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#15
The Su-30MKI is the world's first (and so far only) operational combat aircraft to feature TVC. The above mentioned integral aerodynamic configuration combined with TVC results in what is referred to as "practically unlimited manoeuvrability," enabling the MKI to take sharp turns without any AoA (Angle of Attack) limits, as well as unique TO and landing characteristics..
Perhaps someone in the know could explain why the Su-30MKI "unlimited" Angle of Attack wouldn't produce high speed stalls, loss of the fly in flying, in other words.
I'm guessing that the Su-30MKI's ability to "skid vector" is at the low end of the airspeed limits for the aircraft.
#16
Here is a short video clip (850 kb) of the Su-30 performing TVC turns
Posted by: john ||
04/08/2006 20:57
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#17
iow, At relative slow speeds the Su-30's high thrust to weight ratio along with the canard and vectoring nozzles can radically manoeuvre, but about cruise or high speed abilities?
While the how is of interest, what would be truly interesting is why. I doubt this was a simple error that took 20 years to figure out.
KIGALI, Rwanda -- Researchers said nearly two decades ago that this tiny country was part of an AIDS Belt stretching across the midsection of Africa, a place so infected with a new, incurable disease that, in the hardest-hit places, one in three working-age adults were already doomed to die of it.
But AIDS deaths on the predicted scale never arrived here, government health officials say. A new national study illustrates why: The rate of HIV infection among Rwandans ages 15 to 49 is 3 percent, according to the study, enough to qualify as a major health problem but not nearly the national catastrophe once predicted.
The new data suggest the rate never reached the 30 percent estimated by some early researchers, nor the nearly 13 percent given by the United Nations in 1998.
The study and similar ones in 15 other countries have shed new light on the disease across Africa. Relying on the latest measurement tools, they portray an epidemic that is more female and more urban than previously believed, one that has begun to ebb in much of East Africa and has failed to take off as predicted in most of West Africa.
Yet the disease is devastating southern Africa, according to the data. It is in that region alone -- in countries including South Africa, Botswana, Swaziland and Zimbabwe -- that an AIDS Belt exists, the researchers say. Keep sending those pennies and nickles
"What we know now more than ever is southern Africa is the absolute epicenter," said David Wilson, a senior AIDS analyst for the World Bank, speaking from Washington. Yup, it's real bad. Send money.
In the West African country of Ghana, for example, the overall infection rate for people ages 15 to 49 is 2.2 percent. But in Botswana, the national infection rate among the same age group is 34.9 percent. And in the city of Francistown, 45 percent of men and 69 percent of women ages 30 to 34 are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Oh yeah, with the credibility established above, I believe oit.
Most of the studies were conducted by ORC Macro, a research corporation based in Calverton, Md., and were funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, other international donors and various national governments in the countries where the studies took place. Two disinterested organizations that had a motivation to be sceptical about the results.
Taken together, they raise questions about monitoring by the U.N. AIDS agency, which for years overestimated the extent of HIV/AIDS in East and West Africa and, by a smaller margin, in southern Africa, according to independent researchers and U.N. officials.
"What we had before, we cannot trust it," said Agnes Binagwaho, a senior Rwandan health official.
Years of HIV overestimates, researchers say, flowed from the long-held assumption that the extent of infection among pregnant women who attended prenatal clinics provided a rough proxy for the rate among all working-age adults in a country. Working age was usually defined as 15 to 49. These rates also were among the only nationwide data available for many years, especially in Africa, where health tracking was generally rudimentary.
The new studies show, however, that these earlier estimates were skewed in favor of young, sexually active women in the urban areas that had prenatal clinics. Researchers now know that the HIV rate among these women tends to be higher than among the general population.
The new studies rely on random testing conducted across entire countries, rather than just among pregnant women, and they generally require two forms of blood testing to guard against the numerous false positive results that inflated early estimates of the disease. These studies also are far more effective at measuring the often dramatic variations in infection rates between rural and urban people and between men and women. EFL
#1
Why? LLL conspiracy theorists would suggest it was all a propaganda ploy to get the people to use condoms, with the desirable side effect of reducing the rate of population growth.
Another possibility is that the rates were not overstated then, but that somehow the Rwandan population had or rapidly developed some natural immunity. In my opinion this disease is not new, and has jumped into the human population repeatedly in the past, such that there are reservoirs of potentially more resistant people scattered about.
#2
"U.N. AIDS agency, which for years overestimated the extent of HIV/AIDS"
Well, I'm just shocked!
Hooda thunk the sainted UN could possibly get something wrong when it involves extorting more money from the West.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/08/2006 14:49
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#3
Heck, back about the mid-80s there was concurrent publication by Newsweek and Time [promoted by the advocates of the gay agenda] that a HIV epidemic would sweep hetero America by the mid-90s if nothing was done to stop the spread by dumping billions of dollars looking for a cure. Dire Predications[tm] of another 'black plague' style destruction of normal society and economy. Concurrent with those ravings were repeated denials that HIV in America was largely a disease spread among the gay community. Twenty years later the general population remains pretty free of the threat, but the gay community has paid a heavy price for that misdirection, largely self-inflicted. Watch carefully as they shift the discussion from America to the world in trying to tag it as a hetero spread disease. Its the same rhetorical slight of hand as the discussion of illegal immigrants is changed to 'immigrants'.
#4
I wonder what the stats would show if they tracked the UN's movements with the spread of HIV? Any bets the Peacekeepers and bureaucrats raped and impregnated these city prostitutes, following the same trails that infection spread? Years ago I read AIDS, not yet identified for what it was, seemed to originate in Africa and Haiti, in places the UN had medical missions and and gave innoculations, playing into the conspiracy theory it was an engineered disease targeting blacks. Doesn't seem so improbable anymore. Who knows what goes on in Geneva?
#5
Actually, the spread of AIDS with U.N. medical missions is due to incompetence and penny-pinching, not a wide ranging conspiracy. The U.N. medicos simply reused syringes dozens of times in those areas, effectively infecting thousands with AIDS, hepatitis, and similiar blood-borne diseases. In the developed world, such reuse was already banned and so was not a contributing factor to the spread of AIDS, except among IV drug users.
EFL
When I visited Turkey last week on an inaugural London-to-Ankara flight, I decided the country was clearly ripe for membership of the European Union. Only a short walk from my hotel I found a Marks & Spencer, a McDonald's, a Body Shop and a Mothercare. I could have been in Milton Keynes.
But on the flight home next day, a stewardess gave me a copy of the Daily Telegraph that threatened to change my view. It contained a story from Ankara, the city I had just left, bearing the headline Muslims Accused of Killing "Unclean" Dogs. The report said a Turkish vet caring for stray animals had come across hundreds of dead dogs in a municipal dump. These were said to have been left there by city workers who liked to round up, torture and kill dogs because they believed them "unclean". Grrrrrrr. It's bad enough here, with the dog-fighting pits, the "Oope! Fluffy had more puppies. Well, let's just dump them; they'll find good home," and the occasional deliberate torture. But at least our culture considers these wrong and condemns those who do it.
This made me wonder if Turkey really is ready to join Europe. True, its people seemed charming, intelligent and civilised; and its capital city could boast an M&S. But this was no way to treat a dog. Furthermore, the report included the distressing detail that at least two of the dead dogs had been sexually abused. Why would you want sexually to abuse a dog if you considered it "unclean"? Because they're devil-worshipping savages? It made no sense, but it suggested that the founder of modern Turkey, the great Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, had died before Europeanising his country as fully as he would have liked.
But I mustn't make too much of this. Since the is Al Guardian, after all. Muslims are by no means alone in not liking to be licked by dogs and Islam is opposed to cruelty to animals of any kind, its faith teaching that animals are part of Allah's creation and so should be treated with respect. Male animals, anyway.
AIRFIELD, Afghanistan Afghan and Coalition offensives continued to maintain pressure on Taliban extremists this morning, striking a second blow to enemy leaders in southern Afghanistan.
The Coalition first reported a senior Taliban commander killed during offensive operations last night.
Then, during the early morning hours today, Coalition forces used close-air support to destroy an insurgent headquarters in the Sangin District of Helmand Province, killing a second known Taliban commander and one subordinate.
We conducted an air assault into the known enemy compound following the air strike to gather intelligence, said Army Maj Gen. Benjamin C. Freakley, commander of the Coalitions Combined Joint Task Force 76. Once our ground forces seized the objective, we confirmed that two Taliban were killed, and we captured two terrorists. These extremists offer nothing to the people of Afghanistan but violence, intimidation and fear.
There were no injuries to civilians, Coalition forces or the Afghan National Army forces that participated in the operation.
The operational-level terrorist leader promoted fear and intimidation and was directly tied to attacks on Afghan civilians and government officials. He was also linked to several improvised explosive device attacks targeting Afghan civilians, government security forces and Coalition forces in the region.
Afghan and Coalition forces have the initiative, and we will continue to conduct offensive operations in southern Afghanistan to disrupt and destroy Taliban leaders and their cohorts so long as they pose a security threat to the people of Afghanistan, Freakley said.
Coalition forces are confident that Taliban extremists in southern Afghanistan can be located, targeted and destroyed. This operation demonstrates the growing strength and capability of Afghan National Security Forces partnered with Coalition forces to systematically improve the security and stability of Afghanistan.
#1
It's the Brutal Canadian Offensive(TM). PM Harper visited with his troops there and changed their ROE so they could actually fight. Since his visit, lots of Taliban have gone tango uniform. And it looks as though Angela merkel's German troops have been mixing it up a bit more too...
#5
Shep, Usenet is a set of bulletin boards that predates the Web. Think of it as comment threads organized by topics.
If you're using Internet Explorer to surf the web, click on Tools, then Mail and News and then Read News. This will bring up Outlook Express, which will ask if you want to see a list of all the newsgroups. The first time you say yes, it will take a while to download the list of newsgroups from your Internet service provider to you. Once they are loaded you can type in a keyword to find newsgroups on whatever topic interests you. It's a pretty Wild West part of the Net .... basically a centralization of what were (back in the 80s ) privately hosted bulletin boards on various topics.
BTW, this assumes your provider offers Usenet as part of its service. Most do, but some don't and a lot of employers block access to Usenet because of the porn and other objectionable content.
When you first got Internet access, the ISP's instructions should have told you how to specify the Usenet (news) server to use, just as you specified the server for getting to the Web.
If you are want to use some other program besides Outlook Express as a news reader, you can specify that program to Internet Explorer by choosing Tools, Internet Options and then Programs.
Hope that helps get you started. Your ISP should be able to give you more specific directions.
#6
It could also be said that USENET "newsgroups" are the other half of the Internet. First, a primer:
There are about 75,000 newsgroups, arranged according to subject. Most of the interesting, non-academic, business or community ones are in the "alt.*" groups, which are pretty much at the head of the list.
They can have a simple name, like "alt.slack", or a complex name, like "alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.girls-feet". Most groups are text only, unless they have the words "binaries", or "multimedia, or "pictures", or "mp3", etc. in them; in which case they are both text and binary attachments, like pictures, music, and movies.
Some of the groups are usually empty. Some of the group are intentionally hostile, like "alt.flame". There are political groups of every stripe. There is a ton of illegal activities that goes on there, to include Warez and illegal porn. Huge amounts of mp3 files, movies, and pictures are given out there, oblivious to copyright. Vast amounts of legal porn, too. USENET is NOT for children.
But there are generally a bunch of groups about subjects that you are interested in, which makes it worthwhile.
The way the newsgroups work, is that someone posts a message in a particular group that they have "subscribed" to, a confusing word, which just means that you have chosen that group to browse or post in.
Anyway, their message starts a new "thread", which stays up there for several days to a week or two. Anyone who wants to can reply to this message, and to other people's replies, and some threads can have dozens or hundreds of replies.
Because it is a very old system, which was designed for text only, several fixes had to be used to send and receive binary files. Some convert binary files into ASCII, some compress the ASCII to take up less space (like yEnc), and some error check and correct gaps in postings (like Par2). Often large files are compressed and split into segments with a program like WinRAR, then error correction segments are made (Par2 files), and all are posted. Each downloader must reassemble and correct any gaps in the files.
I would strongly suggest *not* even having Outlook Express on your computer for any purpose. For a USENET newsreader, probably the best free program you can use is Forte Free Agent, though its registered version, Forte Agent, is even better.
Your ISP may not provide USENET services, so for casual use, I recommend either Yotta News or Bubba News:
http://www.yottanews.com/
http://www.bubbanews.com/
The first thing Free Agent will do is download a complete listing of all the newsgroups offered either by your ISP or one of these "NNTP servers", that you have identified to Agent with a login and a sometimes optional password.
Fewer and fewer ISPs are offering USENET anymore, which has led to a rise in the "premium" news servers, which can run to about $20/month.
For just the look and feel of USENET, there is also web-based news services, such as Google Groups beta:
http://groups.google.com/grphp?hl=en&tab=wg&q=
and Newzbot:
http://www.newzbot.com/
But they are usually far inferior to using a newsreader. Google also keeps an enormous archive of the text-only messages posted, which goes back many years.
USENET remains one of the last "Wild Wests" of the Internet, along with IRC and P2P. Enjoy it while it lasts, because lots of people hate the idea of other people having fun.
#7
A few years back, I used to regularly check out alt.survivalism for its entertainment value. Some seriously weird stuff used to go on there. People sending coded messages and arranging secret rendevous.
ISLAMABAD: Activists of the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) vowed to establish a global caliphate, beginning with Pakistan.
In a rally attended by thousands of activists of the banned group to commemorate the birth of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) on Friday, leaders of the SSP called for an Islamic theocracy in Pakistan. The concept of nation state is an obstacle in the way of the establishment of Khilafat. We will start the establishment of Khilafat in Pakistan and then will do so across the world, said Zaheerul Islam Abbasi, a former general who was sacked and arrested in 1995 for trying to topple the government of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
Activists distributed pamphlets in Islamabad preaching jihad and hatred against Shias, as their leaders delivered fiery speeches to a crowd of around 5,000 late on Thursday.
They also sold video compact discs of the beheadings of American soldiers in Iraq, and militant activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan at the rally, which they said was convened to celebrate the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) this month. One of the organisers thanked the Islamabad administration for allowing the rally, which was held under floodlights in a bus depot, with hundreds of riot police watching on. SSP is known to have close links with Jaish-e-Mohammad, a militant group fighting in Indian-occupied Kashmir and with links to Al Qaeda.
Some of the crowd briefly chanted anti-Shia slogans, until they were told to refrain by their leaders. They also swore allegiance to their late leader, Maulana Azam Tariq, a fiery pro-Taliban cleric who was assassinated in Islamabad in 2003, and founder of the organisation Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, who was killed in 1980s.
Last July, President Pervez Musharraf ordered a major crackdown against clerics and organisations inciting sectarian violence. The SSP was banned by the government in 2002.
The SSP has often been blamed for violence against Shias, planting bombs in mosques or attacking religious processions. Thousands of people have been killed in tit-for-tat attacks by militants from the two sects over the past 20 years. Most of the victims are Shias, who account for about 15 percent of Pakistans predominantly Sunni Muslim population of 150 million.
On Thursday, a prominent Shia Muslim cleric narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in Karachi after his car was hit by a remote-controlled bomb Authorities have launched several crackdowns on militant outfits since Pakistan joined a US-led war on terrorism in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States, but critics say that the steps taken have been half-hearted and many groups have resurfaced under new names.
Like other groups, SSP remerged under the new name of Millat-e-Islamia Pakistan.
Founded in the 1980s, SSP wants Pakistan to be officially declared a Sunni Muslim state.
It had recently been reported in the press that the government might relax some restrictions on the group and allow it to commence political activities in a very low profile. Reuters
Posted by: john ||
04/08/2006
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#1
One of the organisers thanked the Islamabad administration for allowing the rally, which was held under floodlights in a bus depot, with hundreds of riot police watching on.
Israeli missiles slammed into a car in Gaza City on Saturday, killing two members of a Palestinian rocket squad in the second deadly airstrike since the Islamic militant group Hamas assumed power last week. The militants had just fired a rocket toward Israel and returned to their car when they were hit, the Israeli military said.
Very nice shooting, IAF.
The pair was from the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent offshoot of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Party. A third member of the rocket squad was wounded seriously.
Sepsis, pleez.
Gun sex and revenge in 3.. 2..
On Friday, a missile strike on a militant training camp in southern Gaza killed five Hamas-linked militants and a 7-year-old boy. Fourteen people were wounded, and six remained hospitalized Saturday. Training kids and bunnies are we?
Abbas, meanwhile, said Hamas has started to realize after just a week in power that it cannot govern without the world's recognition, but it is still grappling with the international community's demands that it moderate its positions. Cause and effect - brain freeze for Pals.
Hamas has sent conflicting messages in recent days. No kidding - not a coherent thought. Caught in their own trap of spew.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has said the Islamic militant group will not comply with demands that it recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept existing peace agreements. However, Haniyeh has also said Abbas is free to negotiate with Israel, and others in the group have raised the possibility of accepting a Palestinian state alongside Israel. "You may notice some confusion in their political positions," Abbas told the British newspaper The Guardian in an interview published Saturday. confusion ROTFLMAO
"If Hamas does not change, nobody will deal with them. ... They came to understand it." Well, they are getting there anyway.
Hamas initially believed they could rule without foreign help, he said. "They started realizing that this is not doable," Abbas was quoted as saying. "But they are only a week in office, so let us wait. It needs time." Are they getting the fact that ONLY foreign help has kept them alive to this point? Only the money of their enemies keeps them alive. Arabs and muslims couldn't care less. You are pawns meant to die in the great takeover. Not live and claim precious land. Dregs of islam - kill, then die and begone.
On Friday, the European Union and the United States announced they were halting hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority. Haniyeh denounced the decisions as "blackmail" and said Hamas would not change its positions. Yet Haniyeh has acknowledged that the government is broke and would have trouble paying the salaries of 140,000 government employees, who with their dependents make up about one-third of the population in the Palestinian territories. Government paychecks for March are more than a week overdue, and the new Palestinian finance minister has said he is still $85 million short, more than half the total needed. Rock and a hard place, Haniyeh.
On Friday, Abbas met with Haniyeh to try to settle some of the growing differences between him and the Hamas government. Abbas is a moderate who was elected separately last year. The two sides have been wrangling over authority and, earlier in the week, Abbas assumed direct control over more branches of the security forces.
Abbas, meanwhile, warned Israel it cannot solve its conflict with the Palestinians by drawing borders unilaterally, without negotiations. Israel can at best postpone the conflict for a decade, he said. Think again, Abbas.
"After 10 years, our sons will feel it (the border) is unfair and they will return back to the struggle," he said. Same old, same old.
Israel's designated prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has said he would try to resume peace talks with the Palestinians but has not said whether he would negotiate with Abbas even if Hamas does not change its views. The Palestinians fear that Olmert is not serious about reviving negotiations and that his real plan is to draw Israel's borders with a Palestinian state unilaterally. Olmert has said he wants final borders in place by 2010. No negotiations to revive - Pals have never been capable. negotiation is not on the plate. Time was up long ago.
Olmert, who is forming a ruling coalition, has said Israel wants to annex large areas the Palestinians consider their state, including east Jerusalem and large Jewish settlements in the West Bank a plan likely to be rejected by Palestinians. "Nobody will accept it. The struggle will continue," Abbas said. more same old, same old. it's why the unilateral move is the only sane thing to do. Ring you off and let you kill each other.
In other developments, two Palestinians were killed when the tunnel they were crawling through under the Gaza-Egypt border collapsed, Palestinian police said. The tunnel apparently caved in overnight but the bodies were found only after dawn Saturday, police said. The two Palestinians are from a family known for drug and food smuggling in the area, police said. All aid cut now. All.
#1
others in the group have raised the possibility of accepting a Palestinian state
You misspelled lie again.
"After 10 years, our sons will feel it (the border) is unfair and they will return back to the struggle," he said....
... "Nobody will accept it. The struggle will continue," Abbas said.
Otherwise (in a negotiated border) they Palios will never leave the struggle - and Israel will not have a wall to protect them.
In other developments, two Palestinians were killed when the tunnel they were crawling through under the Gaza-Egypt border collapsed
They didn't make an offering to St. Pancake for her blessings did they? Dipsh*ts.
#2
The point about Isrealis acting unilaterally, that "no one will accept", is that "no one" accepts the very existence of Israel, or that the Israelis should live in peace under their own rule.
Ergo, if you are utterly intolerant, you have no negotiating position. You have nothing to bargain with. So there is no other course of action for your enemies than to act unilaterally.
#5
I'll hazard a prediction. What does the EU really want? A new Arafat. What was Arafat's great innovation? The divide and conquer strategy. Hamas will divide into dove and hawk factions -- at least this is how it will "appear" to the EU. The dove faction will collect the dough, and the hawks will continue the war. Groundhog Day II, coming right up.
#1
He's dead on target. That said, I don't think Europe's self-loathing elites are going to be able to keep the lid on much longer. I haven't talked to a Briton yet who isn't disgusted with the Muslims in his country and who wouldn't be glad to see the back of them. It's the government that is protecting the Muzzies. If the government's civil servants (police and army) ever get to the point where they simply won't enforce the laws protecting Muslims, the pogroms against them will make the stuff against the Jews look like small potatoes. I personally think that time is not too far distant. The rage is there. Remove the consequences for unleashing it and the Muslims will have the devil to pay and no pitch hot.
Posted by: mac ||
04/08/2006 9:26
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#2
"In Hollywoodistan..."
Whhahhaahaaaa... excellent read. Thanks Phil and Fman.
#3
Well reasoned. I can't find any errors in what is stated.
Posted by: SPoD ||
04/08/2006 16:26
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#4
What mac said.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
04/08/2006 18:35
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#5
one point that I think he missed is where is the funding coming for these movies that glorify terrorists?
Lots of people write movie scripts - and I'm sure there have been some really great ones written that don't celebrate dysfunction and anti-Americanism. But they don't get funded. Hollywierd people need funding and seeing this current pack of movies, it's not to hard to take a guess at where it's coming from.
Protesters demanding a Maoist takeover return to democracy postponed a rally that had been expected to draw thousands on Saturday, after the king imposed an all-day curfew and ordered violators shot on sight.
One person was killed and at least two wounded when security forces fired at demonstrators in Pokhara, a resort town 125 miles west of the capital, Katmandu, said Gangadhar Baral, who was among those wounded. "We were protesting and some of us were throwing stones at the soldiers. Suddenly, the soldiers fired shots at us. One of my friends was killed instantly," Baral said. He spoke from the town's main hospital. I guess this is the Nepalese version of bringing a knife to a gun fight.
Khadga Prasad Oli, deputy leader of the Communist Party of Nepal, called the curfew "unnecessary, illegal and illogical" and said the protesters would try to hold the rally on Sunday. Bet the turnout is even lower than that of the Fresno Peace March last month....
Seven main political parties organized the rally as the high point of a four-day general strike that has shut down Katmandu, where King Gyanendra's refusal to give up absolute rule has led to growing unrest.
Protesters clashed with police in Katmandu and surrounding areas on Thursday and Friday. Hundreds of people were arrested and dozens were injured. The protesters have the backing of communist rebels, who are separately fighting against the king's rule and formed a loose alliance with the political parties in December.
Gyanendra dismissed the prime minister in February last year, saying he needed full powers to check the communist insurgency, which has killed some 13,000 people since 1996.
The rebels bombed government buildings and attacked a jail in the southwestern town of Taulihawa on Friday night, freeing 104 prisoners, officials said. Insurgents also attacked security bases in the nearby town of Butwal. Officials said the curfew was in response to information that the rebels would try to infiltrate the rallies and wage terror attacks against government targets.
Streets quickly emptied as the curfew began at 10 a.m. Saturday, except for soldiers patrolling the streets in vans, pickup trucks and armored cars. Tourists were cooped up inside hotels and allowed to travel only if they were going to or from the airport.
The curfew was to continue until 9 p.m. Saturday in Katmandu and two suburbs, the government announced on state-run Radio Nepal. Violators would be shot, it said. "We strongly oppose this," said Oli, whose party is not linked to the rebels. Well, Oli, if you are really pissed off you could always take it to the street and lead the parade personally....
Authorities have cracked down forcefully on the protests. On Friday, police used batons and tear gas to beat back hundreds of demonstrators in Katmandu, many of whom who were throwing rocks.
A post office in Katmandu was set on fire Friday, and students at the capital's Tribhuwan University ransacked the dean's office and briefly held several officers hostage. The students were joined by workers, professionals and business owners, in what the opposition said was a sign of building momentum against the king. Protest organizers said the curfew order and other restrictions, for example on cell phone use, show the government is nervous. Well, duh....considering you have already proven yourselves to be violence-inclined...
"It proves that we have been able to startle the government. We have not decided how we are going to respond to the curfew order but we will not be deterred by the government using these means to try quash our movement for control democracy," Subash Nemwang, another communist party member.
Of the more than 750 people arrested the past three days, 115 were sent to prison under a tough public safety law that allows authorities to jail people without charge for 90 days, Home Minister Kamal Thapa said. "The government is using minimum force to control the situation," Thapa told reporters. The rebels have promised not to carry out attacks in Katmandu during the strike, but have stepped up attacks elsewhere. "Yeah...like somewhere where the soldiers aren't, 'cause we don't wanna get shot."
Gyanendra called for calm in a speech live Friday on national radio and television. "Let us all pledge today to devote time for establishing permanent peace," he said. "It is the need of today to establish permanent peace." The remarks were the king's first public comments on the daily protests and the escalating violence.
#5
They'll torch buses and other communal property identified with the state.
Private cars are quite expensive and torching those is sure to get you in the cross hairs of another mob - one of irate car owners - who will probably kill you.
Posted by: john ||
04/08/2006 14:57
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#6
Maoists are better when dead. I have no problem with the deaths of Communists or Scientific Socialists or their supporters of any stripe. Even if it's a messed up King thingey doing it.
Posted by: SPoD ||
04/08/2006 16:42
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THE administration of US President George W. Bush is planning a massive bombing campaign against Iran, including use of bunker-buster nuclear bombs to destroy a key Iranian suspected nuclear weapons facility, The New Yorker magazine reported in its April 17 issue.
The article by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said that Mr Bush and others in the White House have come to view Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a potential Adolf Hitler. "That's the name they're using," the report quoted a former senior intelligence official as saying.
A senior unnamed Pentagon adviser is quoted in the article as saying that "this White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change the power structure in Iran, and that means war." The former intelligence officials depicts planning as "enormous," "hectic" and "operational," Mr Hersh writes.
One former defence official said the military planning was premised on a belief that "a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government," The New Yorker pointed out.
In recent weeks, the President has quietly initiated a series of talks on plans for Iran with a few key senators and members of the House of Representatives, including at least one Democrat, the report said. One of the options under consideration involves the possible use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, to insure the destruction of Iran's main centrifuge plant at Natanz, Mr Hersh writes.
But the former senior intelligence official said the attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the military, and some officers have talked about resigning after an attempt to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans in Iran failed, according to the report. "There are very strong sentiments within the military against brandishing nuclear weapons against other countries," the magazine quotes the Pentagon adviser as saying.
The adviser warned that bombing Iran could provoke "a chain reaction" of attacks on American facilities and citizens throughout the world and might also reignite Hezbollah. "If we go, the southern half of Iraq will light up like a candle," the adviser is quoted as telling The New Yorker.
#6
ROFL. Not a single quote. Not one!! LOL!! We used to call these preacher's stories. Fantasies preacher's make up and present as real, to illustrate their sermon.
the report quoted a former senior intelligence official.
A senior unnamed Pentagon adviser
The former intelligence officials
One former defence official said
the report said.[from the New Yorker, from an unnamed source]
One .. options ..involves a nuclear weapon, Mr Hersh writes.
the former senior intelligence official said the .. nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the military, and some officers have talked about resigning [but none did, did they Seymour?] according to the report.
strong sentiments within the military against .. nuclear weapons .." the magazine quotes .the Pentagon adviser as saying The a[unnamed] adviser warned
"If we go, the southern half of Iraq will light up like a candle," the adviser is quoted as telling The New Yorker.
"Damn, where do I sign up to get paid to write trash like this," said an unnamed blogger, known as 2b.
#9
But the former senior intelligence official said the attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the military, and some officers have talked about resigning after an attempt to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans in Iran failed, according to the report.
Probability that this is a load of bullshi*, between 99 and 100%. Thank you for the load Seymour, but I think your spreader has a couple of flat tires.
#10
This is illogical for one primary reason: the US doctrine on the use of tactical nukes is to *save* US lives. And not just a large number of lives, but a very large number of lives.
When push comes to shove, it really does boil down to this: is it worth the lives of a Division of soldiers to *not* use a nuclear weapon?
For example, all agreed that it would *not* be better to nuke Baghdad instead of to attack Iraq conventionally. That decision cost more than 2,000 US lives. And yet nobody in retrospect still thinks it would have been better with nukes.
So what is the alternative in Iran? Strategically, they have only one weapon: missiles. If we can counter their missiles, then the rest of their country can be pounded at our leisure. If one conventional bunker-buster won't do, then what about a dozen in the same hole?
The key to the whole thing is both that we destroy their immediate nuclear weapons capability, and we take away their ability to re-constitute it in the future.
This can only be done in one way: to annihilate their military and revolutionary guard, and to partition Iran, to deny them the resources to rebuild their program. Their military and RG must go, as they are what holds their country together by force in the first place.
This is a far easier proposition than going after their bunkers first. A 3-plane chalk of B-52s dropping a total of 153 - 500lb iron bombs will reduce about 1/2 square mile. Infantry on the ground will cease to exist.
But by partitioning Iran, in essence reducing it to Persia only, takes away what Persia would need to re-create its nuclear program. Especially the oil money in the Arab southwest.
So it is a three step plan: missile defense, extended conventional attack, and partition.
#14
ROFLMAO!!!Seymour has been had with a planted story designed to get the turbans tied a little tighter. Seymour's the best weapon in our psyops arsenal. Waytago Seymour!
#15
My advice would be to use the bunker-busting nuke warheads; but detonate them at night during a raining session to washback the fallout!! FAS has indicated that the resultant explosion if not reached to a depth of 400 feet would result in a crater blowout rather than an encapsulated crystalized dome, they assumed the US prefers!!
#16
"Seymour is an idiot, man never been right in his life."
I disagree. Hersh is no idiot. If anything, he has proven to be very skilled at manipulating reality to bolster his speculations. Rightly or wrongly, his reports carry more weight because of his perceived credentials. Also, other journalists that report on these issues would sever their own appendages to have access to half of his sources. However, I believe he has tarnished what credibility he had with his frequent denunciations of what he refers to as a neo-con agenda. Which in turn suggests that some of his reportage must be viewed as agenda driven prose.
#20
I saw the headline and was interested in the story, then saw Hersh's name and my interest just vanished.
Hersh is the King of unnamed (non-existant?) sources.
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
04/08/2006 12:19
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The article by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said that Mr Bush and others in the White House have come to view Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a potential Adolf Hitler.
Hersh or no, this would represent a desireable evolution in executive thinking. The more Islamists are equated with Nazis, inside and out of the war room, the sooner America will purchase a clue.
As to America making first use of nuclear weapons, it is clearly against our doctrine of "response in kind." As always, first use by the USA would also be an open invitation for any and all terrorist organizations to mount a nuclear attack against America. I do believe this is why they're testing a 700 ton fertilizer bomb in Nevada. Who needs nukes when similar effects can be obtained without any fallout? Yes, nuclear weapons would have greater concussive effects, which are quite good at cracking rock and, yes, drilling them in before detonation would be even more effective.
Still, however much I continue to question the overall intelligence or prudence of Bush, I am extremely confident that he understands the ramifications of first use by America and knows well enough that such a thing is verbotten.
#22
I think the stated desire to push Israel into the sea is what brings mention of nukes into the 'rumor'. After all, we could bomb Iran over a period of time without loses. Iran mush attack the oil shipping and oil fields or Israel to stay in the game. So, not to defend against our loses, rather to defend against mass loses by allies, we discuss the nuke option.
Faster please.
#24
Also, other journalists that report on these issues would sever their own appendages to have access to half of his sources.
Looking at what he wrote here, that really shouldn't be too hard for them. Everyone knows a former senior intelligence official, a senior unnamed Pentagon adviser, former intelligence officials and former defence officials, and some military officers. I could get you a quote from all of those sources myself, and I'm a nobody. Wouldn't mean jack, but the titles would be accurate.
#28
The administration probably leaked the "nuclear option" so they will seem more reasonable when they bomb the hell out of Iran's weapons facilities with conventional weapons.
Besides, I don't think we've actually built/tested the bunker buster nukes yet have we? Didn't they cancel that.
#29
The only Seymour worth anything is Seymore Butts!
Au contraire, I would nominate Seymour Cray for that position. Without that True American Genius the following would not be possible.
Besides, I don't think we've actually built/tested the bunker buster nukes yet have we?
My own personal Frink-O-Matic Probability Meter says "yes" to all of the above. Especially since we now have sufficiently high resolution supercomputers, like the Cray series, that can accurately simulate such an event. Given the fact that you could, literally, hide a B-52 underneath the "black projects" paperwork that crosses DARPA's desk each year, I'd also wager they've been built and tested in real life. Just because the program was canceled doesn't mean that all the related R&D died with it. I'd look up "Rapid Mountain Canal Deployment Technology - Compact Land Moving Devices - see Nuclear" for starters.
#30
"Besides, I don't think we've actually built/tested the bunker buster nukes yet have we? Didn't they cancel that."
I think what was cancelled (if it really was cancelled) was a deep-penetrator replacement for the B61-11 earth penetrator nuke (some info here) which entered service in 2001 as a replacement for the older B-53 bomb (a 9-megaton surface-burst device which destroyed buried structures by the sheer brute force of its enormous yield).
So we do have bunker-busters.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
04/08/2006 19:41
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British officials called for calm after confirmation the deadly bird flu virus had reached the country's shores in a dead wild swan in Scotland.
"I don't think that one dead swan is a crisis," the government's chief science adviser, David King, told BBC radio.
"I think what it meant was we immediately had to step up our surveillance procedures, we had to see that animal movements were restricted, and we had to make sure all of our reactions were done in the proper and reasonably constrained way."
Officials have said the threat to humans is remote, despite the discovery of the deadly H5N1 strain in the partially eaten carcass of a Mute swan, found late on March 29 in Cellardyke harbour in eastern Scotland.
Since the swan was found, 14 other birds, including 12 swans, have been tested, with results yet to be announced.
"The risk of this particular virus passing into humans is extremely low. It's unlikely to occur unless there is any very close contact between a diseased bird and an individual," Scotland's chief medical officer Harry Burns said.
"There is a better chance of a person winning the national lottery than catching bird flu in the UK today," said Jim Robertson, a virologist from the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control.
Scientists fear bird flu could become highly dangerous to humans if the virus mutates into a form easily passed on from one person to another, although it has not done so yet.
According to the World Health Organisation, the virus has killed 109 people out of at least 192 known human infections since 2003, almost all of them in Asia and involving people who had close contact with infected birds.
It has infected birds in France, Germany and several other European Union countries in recent months, but there has been no reported case of human infection in the EU.
Doctors say properly cooked poultry is safe to eat, but farmers worry demand could plummet because of fear of the disease.
Scottish officials announced measures to prevent the spread of the disease to domestic poultry farms as has happened in some other European countries.
Vets will test birds at all poultry farms within 3km of the site the swan was found.
The authorities also set up a new, 2,500 sq km "wild bird risk area" in Scotland.
The government said it had ordered poultry farmers within this area to keep their flocks indoors.
There are 175 poultry centres in the zone with some 3.1 million birds, of which 260,000 are free range.
Federal Minister for Customs and Justice Senator Chris Ellison says the Federal Government has the power to force boats carrying Papuan asylum seekers back to Indonesia.
After the Tampa affair in 2001, the Navy forced several boats carrying Middle Eastern asylum seekers back to Indonesian waters.
Speaking on ABC Radio National's The National Interest, Senator Ellison said the Government's policy has not changed.
He says circumstances would determine whether the Government would consider forcing boats, carrying Papuans, back to Indonesia.
"It will depend on the circumstances in which we intercept these people, but certainly they will be dealt with as we would deal with any other attempts at illegal entrance into Australia," he said.
"We've put in place measures for dealing with people who try to enter our country illegally and you've seen what we've done in the past and our policy has not changed."
No breach
Australia is a signatory to the International Convention on Refugees, but Senator Ellison rejects claims that the policy of forcing a refugee back to a place of persecution is a breach of international law.
"The international law that we're upholding is our sovereignty in that we're maintaining our borders," he said.
"As the Minister for Customs and Justice, I have responsibility for border control, and that is to safeguard our borders against illegal fishing, illegal entrance, security risks and anything else which might pose a risk to this country including quarantine.
"When we're faced with a boatload of people, they don't come with a sign saying, 'These Are Refugees'. When we're presented with that situation on the water, we don't know who they are; we don't know their background.
"They might say they're refugees, they might say they're all sorts of things but I have to tell you that we're primarily charged with looking out for Australia's sovereignty and security and that means that we intercept people who are trying to enter this country illegally and that could involve a number of measures which would be determined at the time by authorities who are engaging in the process of looking after our borders."
The full interview with Senator Ellison will be broadcast on The National Interest at midday on Sunday on ABC Radio National.
#1
I doubt they will force West Papuans back to sea. A lot of people who are hardline on immigration like me, have considerable sympathy for these people, because they are getting F&&ked over by the Javanese who run Indonesia.
Incidentally, my wife is going on business to Papua New Guinea in a couple of weeks time and I'm trying to swing a trip.
The US has accused city officials of the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, of complicity in an attack on the car of US Ambassador William Brownfield.
The ambassador's convoy was pelted with eggs, onions and tomatoes and chased by motorbikes for some miles by supporters of President Hugo Chavez.
US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns said the attack had been condoned by the city government.
However, the mayor's office in Caracas denied any involvement in the incident.
The BBC's Greg Morbasch in Caracas said Mr Brownfield is accustomed to verbal abuse from supporters of the president but this latest incident is the first time he and his team have had objects thrown at them.
Mr Brownfield - who was visiting a low-income neighbourhood in Caracas to donate baseball equipment to underprivileged children - had recently stated he was concerned for his safety.
The US under secretary of state told Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez that if such an incident happens again there would be severe diplomatic consequences, department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
Mr Burns said the attack was a violation of the Vienna Convention and that the action was clearly condoned by the local government, the spokesman said.
US Embassy spokesman Brian Penn said the Venezuelan police escorting the convoy did not intervene to stop the incident.
"The motorcyclists were throwing things at us for at least 10 minutes, and the police did nothing... It was serious," he said.
Mr Penn claimed the incident was organised by the mayor's office in Caracas, which has denied any involvement in the incident.
"No official authorised by the mayor's office participated," Luis Martinez, a spokesman for Mayor Juan Barreto, told AP.
Officials said the incident was organised by local residents who wanted Mr Brownfield to leave the area.
Relations between the US and Venezuela have been strained for some time, and Mr Brownfield has faced protests at recent appearances.
The American embassy has also asked the Venezuelan government to improve security for the ambassador, saying it is legally bound to do so.
President Chavez has been at loggerheads with Washington, accusing the Bush administration of orchestrating assassination and coup attempts in order to get at Venezuela's vast oil reserves, our correspondent says.
But US officials say Mr Chavez is causing instability in the region with his fiery anti-Bush rhetoric and autocratic style of leadership.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/08/2006
02:32 ||
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#1
Hugo is .... brokeback. Ignore the little gun queer punk. First time he tries something, grind his little member into the bloody dirt.
Iran has killed the leader and 11 members of a Sunni militant group responsible for murdering 26 people in southeastern Iran, press reports said.
"Abdolmalek Rigi, leader of the terrorist group, the Jundullah (Soldiers of God) ... was killed in an operation on the border with Afghanistan," Iran's hardline Kayhan daily said, quoting an unidentified source in the interior ministry.
The group had reportedly carried out an ambush in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan in March that left 26 people dead and another 12 missing, according to Kayhan.
In January, the group claimed the execution of one of nine Iranian soldiers it kidnapped along the Pakistani border a month earlier. The government said later that the other soldiers had been freed, according to AFP.
The report said the rebels had intended to ask for ransoms and the release of their men detained by the Islamic Republic.
The mostly Sunni Muslim province of Sistan-Baluchistan, in predominantly Shiite Iran, is notoriously lawless. It is a key transit route for opium and other drugs from Afghanistan and Pakistan headed for Europe and the Persian Gulf.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/08/2006
02:29 ||
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FOR years, Ahmad al-Hamwi has led an inconspicuous life like thousands of refugees from the Middle East who settled in Sydney's southwest.
But in fact Syrian-born Hamwi is anything but an ordinary asylum-seeker. An investigation by The Weekend Australian has revealed that he has alleged links to terrorist organisations spanning a good part of the globe.
Hamwi is allegedly connected to the international web of Osama bin Laden, and his terrorist arm, al-Qa'ida.
Hamwi has been accused of being a senior al-Qa'ida bagman linked to the 1993 World Trade Centre bomber, Ramzi Yousef.
Living for a decade in the southwestern Sydney suburb of Riverwood, he has admitted he was a confidant of some of bin Laden's closest lieutenants, and he is a relative by marriage to the world's most wanted man.
Since Hamwi, also known by the alias Abu Omar, was given asylum in June 1996, it has been revealed he was a key figure in a Manila-based charity funding Yousef's terrorist cell, which was conspiring to blow up US airliners and assassinate Pope John Paul II.
Hamwi was, by his own admission to the Refugee Review Tribunal, a key figure in the Islamic charity known as the International Research and Information Centre.
According to Philippines National Police intelligence reports obtained by The Weekend Australian, Hamwi and his two colleagues at IRIC were funding Yousef's plans, codenamed Operation Bojinka, which were a harbinger for September 11.
Research by world-renowned terror expert Zachary Abuza also alleges that Hamwi was an "important money man for the cell".
"He (Hamwi) was the hand-picked executive director of the IRIC, which had little in the way of charitable works and I refuse to believe he did not know what was going on," Abuza told The Weekend Australian yesterday.
"At the time, (in the mid-1990s) the IRIC was involved in funding the MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front), al-Qa'ida and Abu Sayyaf, the group involved in military training with Jemaah Islamiah operatives."
According to Abuza, Hamwi helped bin Laden's brother-in-law, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, with introductions to set up al-Qa'ida's network in Southeast Asia, and then ran IRIC for him as a front for terrorist financing.
The pair lived together for years and married Filipina sisters, Nora and Alice.
For Khalifa, this was one of two wives - his other wife is Osama bin Laden's older sister.
But when the refugee tribunal granted Hamwi asylum in June 1996, they had scant details about his past, and he denied he knew Yousef or anything about the men involved in the Operation Bojinka plot.
Although Hamwi revealed to the tribunal he had shared the apartment with Khalifah, who has been named by the US State Department's co-ordinator for counter terrorism, Philip C.Wilcox, in a letter to a US court as a "terrorist financier", the tribunal was aware only that Khalifa was a suspected terrorist.
The tribunal asked ASIO whether Hamwi was "directly or indirectly responsible for any acts of terrorism", and despite Hamwi being interviewed several times by the intelligence agency, "neither ASIO nor DFAT could or would provide any evidence to the tribunal in this regard".
Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, told The Weekend Australian that Canberra had "in the past had a policy where people who were very much involved in terrorism could enter Australia".
But Gunaratna said this had now changed in the wake of the Bali bombings.
Abuza said that at the time sought a protection visa in Australia there was not much information-sharing between countries.
"I would be surprised if the Australians had any idea (about his background)," he said.
The Weekend Australian put detailed questions to Hamwi but he repeatedly refused to respond.
A spokeswoman for federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said that should an applicant for a visa be assessed as a risk to national security, the Immigration Department had no option but to reject it.
But it appears that the authorities may not have been told about claims, known by the Philippine National Police counter-terrorist unit, that Hamwi had been involved in radical activities in Turkey and was one of four foreign students banned by the Turkish government for their suspected involvement in a 1986 bombing.
He explained the Turkish visa in his passport by saying he told Syrian authorities that was where he was going to study to enable him to get a passport, but that he went to Pakistan instead.
He later turned up in The Philippines running the Islamic charity IRIC, a "three-man operation" with a tiny office in Manila, Abuza said.
One of the other men involved with the IRIC was Wali Khan Amin Shah, a close associate of Osama bin Laden who became a key planner in the Bojinka plot.
Wali Khan was arrested in February 1995. He was later convicted along with Yousef. He has since co-operated with US authorities.
Hamwi, when questioned by Philippine police, admitted he had known Wali Khan since 1993.
While Hamwi denied any involvement with terrorism to the refugee tribunal in 1995, The Weekend Australian has learned from US Court documents that when his former flatmate Khalifa was arrested in the US, he had letters on him on IRIC letterhead discussing funding the establishment of military training camps.
In Khalifa's defence, Hamwi, as director of the IRIC, wrote letters to the US Immigration Court considering Khalifa's deportation, denying any allegations that the IRIC was clandestinely funding militant training.
Khalifa now lives in Saudi Arabia and regularly protests his innocence.
Hamwi's role in the Manila al-Qa'ida cell was discovered after Yousef's Operation Bojinka was literally blown apart by an accidental explosion in Manila in January 1995.
It resulted in the subsequent arrest of cell member Abdul Hakim Ali Hasmid Murad, alias Abdul Murad, who later proved crucial to US investigators unravelling the September 11 plot.
Philippine senior counter-terrorist Police Superintendent Rodolfo Mendoza Jr, who led the manila investigation, found plans to bomb 11 US planes over the Pacific and to kill Pope John Paul II. Tragically, the plot had already had a dry run, when they bombed a Philippines Airlines flight to Tokyo, killing the Japanese passenger sitting over the bomb.
Mendoza's investigation fingered Hamwi for providing funding to Yousef for his terrorist activities through an intermediary, Carol Santiago (who revealed his name during interrogation), and her boyfriend, Wali Khan, who was Hamwi's offsider at IRIC.
Hamwi was questioned but never arrested for his role in the plot. Philippine officials later told Abuza that after the plot was discovered they realised they were ill-prepared to round up all the suspects, who soon fled the country.
Hamwi fled to Australia just months after the discovery of the plot.
Former ASIS spy Warren Reed said allowing Hamwi into the country was a "potentially dangerous situation".
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/08/2006
02:28 ||
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So what I'm reading is blah, blah, if people had done their jobs, 911 would not have happened. So many good people would not have needed to jump from windows in the WTC.
But there were plans for 11 planes, so apparently someone did their job. Good for them. I guess not everyone fell down on the job.
The Supreme Court in the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia today convicted two residents of the neighboring republic of Kabardino-Balkaria for their involvement in attacks on Ingush law-enforcement agencies two years ago.
Dmitry Kurichev was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Rustam Kurozokov received a nine-year jail term.
Seventy-nine people were killed and more than 100 wounded in the series of raids in June 2004.
Russian officials say the assailants were linked to separatist fighters in Chechnya.
More than 20 other people from Ingushetia, Chechnya, and Kabardino-Balkaria have been sentenced to prison terms of up to 25 years for their role in the attacks.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/08/2006
02:25 ||
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AUSTRALIA'S top cop has evidence that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida group is infiltrating South-East Asia.
Mick Keelty yesterday warned that al-Qaida and Jemaah Islamiah cells were sharing expertise at terrorist training camps in the area.
The Australian Federal Police Commissioner revealed al-Qaida was forging links with other extremist groups in South-East Asia.
Mr Keelty hopes the AFP will become part of a permanent regional anti-terrorism taskforce to counter the threat.
A working party will meet in the region within weeks to discuss agencies joining to fight the common curse of terrorism.
"I am very keen for the AFP to play a major role in the proposed regional taskforce," Mr Keelty told the Herald Sun.
In an interview to mark the first week of his second five-year term as AFP Commissioner, Mr Keelty also revealed:
HIS personal opposition to the death penalty would not stop him or the AFP co-operating fully with police from countries that execute criminals.
IF another Bali Nine situation arose in a death penalty country, he would have no hesitation in again tipping off police in that country.
DEPORTED French terror suspect Willie Brigitte was a significant threat to Australia and was almost certainly establishing a cell in Sydney to commit terrorist acts.
AVAILABLE evidence would lead any reasonable person to conclude former Melbourne taxi driver "Jihad" Jack Thomas was an al-Qaida recruit who was setting himself up in Australia as a sleeper agent for future use by al-Qaida.
BURGEONING threats from terrorist and organised crime groups meant it was time to consider radical reforms to Australia's judicial system, because the odds were currently in favour of the accused.
AUSTRALIAN authorities should consider establishing special terrorism courts to hear terrorism cases.
IT was time to consider allowing courts and jurors to draw adverse inferences against those on trial who choose to hide behind their right to silence rather than testify or answer police questions.
SOME judges were ruling too much evidence as inadmissible, which was contributing to guilty people going free.
HE believed jurors were often embarrassed to find out after returning not guilty verdicts that they never got to hear damning inadmissible evidence that would have changed their minds.
INTELLIGENCE suggested the AFP's three most wanted men - terrorists Noordin Top, Dulmatin and Umar Patek - were hiding near the border between the Philippines and Indonesia, and were plotting attacks by keeping in regular contact with extremists in Indonesia and Malaysia.
TOP, Dulmatin and Patek were involved in many of the recent terrorist attacks in South-East Asia, including the 2002 Bali bombing which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.
INFORMATION provided to the National Security Hotline has greatly helped AFP and ASIO agents identify suspects and make arrests.
IT was vital that Australians continued to use the hotline to report suspicious activity because it was almost impossible for agencies alone to stop a suicide bomber.
THE AFP is working closely with Australian kidnap victim Douglas Wood and Iraqi police to prepare a brief of evidence against his kidnappers, and is confident those responsible will be convicted.
WEST African crime gangs were focusing on Australia to commit fraud and to smuggle drugs.
THE mistaken belief by young Australians that it was relatively safe to take ecstasy and amphetamine-based tablets was by far the biggest drug problem facing the community and police.
Mr Keelty said he expected countering terrorism and international organised crime gangs would continue to dominate the AFP's activities during his second five-year term as commissioner.
"It is increasingly critical that police travel the world to gather evidence that may assist in prosecuting those engaged in terrorism and other forms of crime," he said.
"But we encounter a number of constraints imposed by laws relating to evidence that does come from overseas.
"I believe Australia's criminal justice system needs to allow courts to exercise even greater discretion to admit evidence acquired in circumstances which may not strictly conform to domestic requirements."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/08/2006
02:19 ||
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TO HEAR September 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed tell it, Osama bin Laden was a meddling boss whose indiscretion and poor judgement threatened to derail the terrorist attacks.
Bin Laden also saddled Mohammed with would-be hijackers who, the ringleader thought, were ill-equipped for the job. And he carelessly dropped hints about the imminent attacks, violating Mohammed's cardinal rule against discussing the plot.
The repeated conflicts between the two al-Qaeda leaders emerged last week during the penalty phase of the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. Jurors heard new details of the plot from the interrogation summaries of several captured al-Qaeda officials.
In a written statement for his US interrogators, Mohammed described al-Qaeda as an almost mystically efficient corporation. The portly Kuwaiti, who was captured in Pakistan in 2003, told them that they could learn a lot from the organisation.
"You must study these matters to know the huge difference between the Western mentality in administration and the Eastern mentality," he wrote.
The hallmark of the system, he said, was unquestioned control: everyone up the chain of command did as they were told and never bucked authority all for the common cause of the enterprise, which, in this case, was killing as many Americans as possible.
"I know that the materialistic Western mind cannot grasp the idea," Mohammed wrote. "But in the end, the operation was a success."
Yet Mohammed describes a terrorist outfit fraught with the same conflicts and petty animosities that plague many Western corporations.
"Mohammed stated that he was usually compelled to do whatever bin Laden wanted," the interrogation summary says. "That said, Mohammed noted that he disobeyed bin Laden on several occasions."
His independence from bin Laden had its limits, however, because it was al-Qaeda's money and operatives that enabled the plot to go forward.
Mohammed succeeded in rejecting three attempts by bin Laden to accelerate the plot. But he said his boss cancelled an overseas element of the hijacking scheme that he was orchestrating.
Presumably, bin Laden would have his own version of events. But a former FBI agent who closely tracked al-Qaeda said the testy relationship described by Mohammed was consistent with the accounts of other terrorism suspects.
"They couldn't stand each other," the former official said. "They both had huge egos."
The seeds of conflict were planted in 1996, when Mohammed first presented his idea to hijack US planes and fly them into buildings. He specifically suggested "that they send (mujahideen) to study in the flight institutes and use large planes" rather than the smaller military ones that al-Qaeda operatives were trained to fly. Mohammed said that bin Laden turned him away, saying the plan was unworkable.
Three years later, bin Laden summoned Mohammed to Afghanistan and gave him the green light. By October 2000, Mohammed had climbed the ranks and was in firm control of the September 11 plot, showing an array of management skills.
It was Mohammed who decided to send two hijackers to San Diego after finding out it had numerous flight schools. He told them to visit the zoo and other tourist sites so they would blend in while they were preparing for the suicide hijackings.
He told his interrogators he provided "personalised training" to an estimated 39 al-Qaeda operatives.
Mohammed was a stickler for security. He insisted on compartmentalising the details of the plot to such a degree that even some of al-Qaeda's top officials did not know them.
"When four people know the details of an operation, it is dangerous; when two people know, it is good; when just one person knows, it is better," Mohammed said, according to his interrogators.
Had Mohammed not insisted on such security measures, he suggested, bin Laden might have endangered the whole mission. Apparently he had a knack of forcing Mohammed to take operatives who could not follow directions or keep their mouths shut.
Mohammed had concerns from the outset about Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar.
"The only reason they were involved in the 9/11 plot was because they had (US) visas and because bin Laden wanted the two to go on the operation."
Mohammed and bin Laden also had repeated disagreements over Moussaoui. Mohammed was convinced he was not a "suitable operative".
The interrogation summary said that Mohammed was frustrated at bin Laden's repeated hints to visitors and trainees about the coming US attacks. He resisted swearing allegiance to bin Laden "to ensure that he remained free to plan operations however he chose".
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/08/2006
02:18 ||
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Long after this is over, our descendants will look at OBL and KSM as the young are starting to look at Hitler et. al. and ask, "How could our great grand parents have let these bozos screw things up so badly?" as the next threat grows unattended in new ground.
Tajik and Russian military held joint military exercises Wednesday, repelling a hypothetical intrusion by a large group of international terrorists, officials said.
The exercises involved more than 800 Tajik military cadets and servicemen deployed at the Russian military base in the ex-Soviet republic that borders Afghanistan.
Pavel Konev, deputy commander of the Russian base in Tajikistan, said the drill was aimed at improving interaction between Russian and Tajik servicemen and their combat readiness.
The exercises at the Lyaur military range 30 kilometers (18 miles) south of the Tajik capital Dushanbe involved SU-25 fighter jets, tanks and heavy artillery, Konev said.
Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov and Russian Ambassador to Tajikistan Ramazan Abdulatipov watched the drill.
Russia has maintained a military presence in this impoverished Central Asian nation since the 1991 Soviet collapse. Tajikistan hosts Russia's 5,000-strong 201st Motorized Rifle Division.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/08/2006
02:09 ||
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To repel terrorists. Right.
How's that Russian global campaign to destroy terrorists coming along, Pooty?
A Syrian-born refugee living in Sydney's south-west is allegedly connected to the international terrorism web of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Living for a decade in the suburb of Riverwood, Ahmad al-Hamwi has been accused of being a senior al-Qaeda bagman linked to the 1993 World Trade Centre bomber, Ramzi Yousef, a newspaper reports.
Also known by the alias Abu Omar, Mr al-Hamwi was given asylum in Australia in June 1996.
Mr al-Hamwi has allegedly admitted he was a confidant of some of Osama bin Laden's closest lieutenants, and he is a relative by marriage to the world's most wanted man.
According to Philippines police documents obtained by the newspaper, Mr al-Hamwi was allegedly a key figure in the Manila-based Islamic charity called the International Research and Information Centre (IRIC) that funded Yousef's terrorist cell which conspired to blow up US airliners and assassinate Pope John Paul II.
Research by world-renowned terror expert Zachary Abuza alleges Mr al-Hamwi was an "important money man for the cell".
"He was the hand-picked executive director of the IRIC which had little in the the way of charitable works and I refuse to believe he did not know what was going on," Professor Abuza said.
The newspaper said it put detailed questions to Mr al-Hamwi but he declined to respond.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/08/2006
02:07 ||
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Syrian, huh? This guy seems to be about the right age. He could be a big wheel. When did he emigrate from Syria? Round about 1982? He's probably linked to Baathist Iraq, too.
#2
they seem to be wrapping up a very big sting. Should be interesting to get more details on the 1993 bombing and how it led into 911. Pity the poor folks who said, "Ah, yes, he has links to terrorists, but we shouldn't be hasty." They may have thought they were kind, multicultural sensitive folks, but history won't be kind to them - they were gullible and stupid and many people died horrible deaths because of them.
Three suicide bombers dressed as women killed at least 79 people at a Shi'ite mosque on Friday, the bloodiest attack in Iraq for at least three months.
At least 140 people were also wounded in the attack in north Baghdad, the latest proof of how Iraq's leaders have been unable to tackle sectarian violence as they struggle to form a government.
"This is a cowardly act. Every time I see these bloody scenes it tears apart my heart," said fireman Jawwad Kathim, holding a severed finger.
A police official said the bombers were dressed in traditional Shi'ite women's black robes when they struck, two inside the mosque and one just outside. Some police sources said all of them were women. others that two were men.
Men screamed as bodies of victims were taken on wooden carts to ambulances at the complex, which belongs to SCIRI, the most powerful group inside Iraq's ruling Shi'ite Alliance.
People picked up pieces of flesh and placed them on trays.
"The Shi'ites are the target and it's a sectarian act. There is nothing to justify this act but black sectarian hatred," said SCIRI leader Jalal al-Deen, who was at the mosque during the explosions. He said he had counted 65 bodies.
He accused some Sunni newspapers of inciting violence by publishing reports that the mosque contained a detention centre where Sunnis were abused.
It was the biggest suicide attack on a Shi'ite target since November 2005, and the worst attack overall since at least January 5 when suicide bombers killed around 70 people in Ramadi.
"This was clearly perpetrated by those who wish to divide Iraq, who wish to encourage sectarian strife," US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement.
"We are going to be working very closely with the Iraqi government to take appropriate measures to strengthen security to help to prevent similar types of attack in the future."
In New York, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan also condemned the bombing and said it showed the urgent need for Iraq's political leaders "to resolve their differences in the best interests of the nation" his spokesman said.
The attack came a day after a car bomb exploded near a Shi'ite shrine in the sacred southern city of Najaf, killing at least 13 people.
Sectarian tensions have been running high since the Feb. 22 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, one of the holiest sites in Shi'ite Islam. This touched off reprisals and pushed Iraq to the brink of a sectarian civil war.
Hundreds of bodies have turned up on Baghdad streets since then with bullet holes, bound and blindfolded and showing signs of torture.
But there has been a lull in spectacular suicide attacks, which Iraqi and US officials say are part of a campaign by al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi to draw Shi'ites into sectarian civil war.
The attack could not have come at a worse time for Iraq's fractious leaders, who promised after December elections to tackle violence but are struggling to break a deadlock over a new government as the country keeps counting casualties.
Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a leader in the Shi'ite Alliance with SCIRI and other parties, refuses to heed calls to step down to end the political paralysis.
The Shi'ite Alliance faces an internal crisis if it drops Jaafari but will prolong the deadlock over a government if it keeps him, a dilemma the country cannot afford.
With Sunni Arab and Kurdish politicians refusing to work with Jaafari, pressure is mounting on the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) to secure a breakthrough.
"It is regrettable that they have put themselves in a lose-lose situation," a senior source in negotiations on a government told Reuters.
"Not only is the UIA damaged but the country is losing and the political process is losing."
In Najaf, senior SCIRI official Sadr Eddine al-Qabanji said in Friday prayers that Iraq's political blocs should seek the help of top Shi'ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani on forming a government.
Sistani's calls for moderation are credited with restraining Shi'ites in the face of suicide bombings which have killed thousands of people in the 60 percent majority Shi'ite community.
The Iraqi Accordance Front, the three main Sunni parties, appealed for calm and blamed the Shi'ite-led government and US troops for the security crisis.
With no signs of a government being formed soon, Iraqis can expect more carnage like the scene at the north Baghdad mosque.
"My house is opposite to the mosque and when we heard the first huge blast I ran to make sure my father, who was praying there, was safe," said Naba Mohsin.
"When I entered the mosque a second huge blast occurred and I saw a big blast with flames, I was thrown, then I woke up in the ambulance. I want to know if my father is alive."
An elderly woman borrowed a mobile telephone from a reporter to call her son Abdullah, one of the worshippers in the mosque.
She wept as it kept ringing and ringing.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/08/2006
02:05 ||
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Aparantly, according to news this morning, there were 4 bombers and one was a woman. does the Boomer Babe get 72 stud muffins?
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
04/08/2006 8:37
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Nope. Boomer Babes become one of the 72 virgins given to pimple-faced jihadi's.
Shiite Muslim militias pose the greatest threat to security in many parts of Iraq, having killed more people in recent months than the Sunni Arab-led insurgency, and will likely present the most daunting and critical challenge for Iraq's new government, U.S. military and diplomatic officials say.
Assassinations, many carried out by Shiite gunmen against Sunni Arabs in Baghdad and elsewhere, accounted for more than four times as many deaths in March as bombings and other mass-casualty attacks, according to military data. And most officials agree that only a small percentage of shooting deaths are ever reported.
The surge in sectarian killings, triggered by the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in late February, had slowed in recent weeks. It was uncertain if attacks on prominent Shiite mosques Thursday and Friday would signal an onset of renewed bloodletting.
While acknowledging the instability caused by Shiite armed groups, the largest of which are linked to the country's dominant political parties and operate among Iraq's police and army, U.S. and Iraqi officials here have yet to implement, or even publicly articulate, a strategy for addressing the problem.
"We know militias are an issue. We've asked both the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Defense to work there," said Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson, the top American officer working with Iraq's police force, in which many Shiite militiamen serve. "They recognize the problem. But there's been no decision as to what to do about it."
"There are laws and constitutional articles dealing with militias that explain how to dissolve them and integrate their members into the security forces on an individual basis," said Adnan Ali Kadhimi, a senior adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari. "But this is on the basis of theory. On the basis of practicality, the situation is still very fragile. The implementation has to be cautious and careful."
Militias last emerged as a top U.S. concern in 2004, when the American and Iraqi armies spent months putting down violent uprisings by the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to the firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, in Baghdad, Najaf and other cities. But the problem is far thornier now, U.S. officials say, because the militias have added thousands of foot soldiers and gained new political stature.
Two years ago, the Iraqi government was largely under American control and led by interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite. Iraq's next parliament will be dominated by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a religious party that oversees a militia called the Badr Organization, and by followers of Sadr. Together the two groups claim nearly a quarter of the legislature's 275 seats and will likely hold several cabinet ministries.
"It's a far more serious problem now than it was then because of who is in power," said a U.S. official who worked on the militia issue with the now-disbanded Iraqi Governing Council two years ago and spoke on the condition that he not be named. "Until there's a commitment on the part of the government, there will be no solution."
Practically every Shiite political party in Iraq maintains a force of men with guns -- some virtual armies of several thousand or more, others what Peterson described as little more than a "neighborhood watch on steroids."
Iraq's other major factions maintain armed forces as well. Insurgent groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq and Ansar al-Sunna are composed predominantly of Sunni Arabs and conduct frequent attacks on U.S. and Iraqi soldiers and Shiite civilians. The pesh merga , a large militia maintained by ethnic Kurds, is formally under the command of the Iraqi army, operates mainly in the Kurdish north and poses no major security threat, U.S. officials say.
All of the militias justify their existence, to some extent, by claiming a need to protect their communities from the violence that pervades the country.
Shiite militiamen are believed to number in the tens of thousands. Maj. Gen Rick Lynch, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said in a recent interview that the Mahdi Army -- formed by Sadr from the long-oppressed Shiite underclass in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion -- was believed to have about 10,000 members. The Badr Organization, created in Iran in the 1980s to fight Saddam Hussein's rule, has roughly 5,000, he said.
Other estimates for the groups, both accused by the United States of receiving backing from Iran, range far higher.
The aftermath of the Feb. 22 bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra refocused attention on the Mahdi Army. Hours after the bombing, dozens of pickup trucks packed with rifle-toting young men -- most clad in the militia's telltale black shirts and pants -- streamed out of Sadr City, a sprawling Shiite slum in northeastern Baghdad. Many said they had left work immediately in response to commanders' and clerics' calls to protect their mosques and neighbors.
In the days that followed, despite a government-imposed curfew on vehicle traffic and Sadr's public pleas for calm, residents of several Sunni neighborhoods of Baghdad said roving bands of gunmen dragged people from homes and Sunni mosques, some of which were then occupied by Shiites.
A Mahdi Army member, who did not want to be identified by his real name, denied charges that the militia had killed Sunnis after the Samarra bombing, calling the claims "a rumor by the occupation forces to get the Iraqi people into an internal war."
Dressed in a suit and seated at a large wooden desk, the commander of a company of some 200 men looked little like a fighter during an interview one recent morning at an office in the southern city of Najaf. He said he expected another confrontation between U.S. forces and the Mahdi Army, which has won a fierce following not only by battling foreign troops but by providing such social services as cleaning streets and feeding the poor.
"It is like fire and ice. We will never get together and we consider the occupation our worst enemies," he said. "We are expecting martyrdom at any moment. When the order comes to defend ourselves, God willing, we will fight bravely."
Approaches to the problem of militias have often conflicted.
Order 91, issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-led organization that administered Iraq following the invasion, outlawed militias. Members of nine recognized armed groups, including Badr but not the Mahdi Army, were supposed to turn in their weapons and were offered places in Iraq's security forces. The weapons were never handed over.
Last month, the Iraqi government renewed calls for the fighters to be further folded into Iraq's police force and army. But U.S. and British advisers to the police and army units have pressed Iraqi commanders to weed out members with militia ties.
The State Department's annual report on human rights practices, released in March, said that "militia members integrated into the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) typically remained within preexisting organizational structures and retained their original loyalties or affiliations."
In December, about 160 members of the 2nd Public Order Brigade, an Interior Ministry force with a little more than 2,000 officers, were discharged for alleged involvement with the Mahdi Army. And the police internal affairs division in the southern city of Basra was closed late last year amid accusations it was operating death squads.
Rival Shiite militias -- including the Mahdi Army and an armed group tied to the Fadhila political party -- fight openly in Basra's streets, doubling the city's homicide rate in recent months. This week, about 42 people were killed over a four-day period, local officials reported.
Some U.S. officials and military commanders argue that the groups must be confronted. "There's a law on the books that these things are illegal, and it has to be enforced," said the U.S. official who worked on the militia issue.
Col. Jeffrey Snow, commander of the 1st Brigade of the Army's 10th Mountain Division in restive western Baghdad, said he had taken an aggressive stance toward militias, particularly the Mahdi Army, which he blames for a February roadside bomb attack that killed two U.S. soldiers.
"Second to the formation of the government, the key thing here now is dealing with these militias," said Snow, 44, of Nashua, N.H. "My personal opinion is, they form the greatest risk to the development of a professional army and police force."
Snow pointed to a series of heated meetings he has held with Mahdi Army representatives in recent months. "We told them, 'We will not tolerate you bearing arms.' We said, 'You can protect property but cannot leave property carrying a weapon.' And we gave them clear examples of people we detained while implanting bombs who were carrying Mahdi Army badges."
Though the militia question is unlikely to be dealt with until Iraqi leaders finish forming a government, U.S. officials are turning up the pressure but offering few specifics about how the problem should be addressed.
"You can't have in a democracy various groups with arms. You have to have the state with a monopoly on power," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on a recent visit to Baghdad. "We have sent very, very strong messages repeatedly, and not just on this visit, that one of the first things . . . is that there is going to be a reining-in of the militias."
For now, Iraqi leaders are circumspect about what exactly they will do. "The government has a detailed plan on this. I know -- I'm the coordinator," said the national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie. "But I am sorry, I cannot comment on what it is."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/08/2006
02:02 ||
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Assassinations, many carried out by Shiite gunmen against Sunni Arabs in Baghdad and elsewhere, accounted for more than four times as many deaths in March as bombings and other mass-casualty attacks, according to military data. And most officials agree that only a small percentage of shooting deaths are ever reported.
A former head of CIAs Al Qaeda unit, and now a political analyst, has warned the Bush administration not to push Pakistan too much to do things that are against its national interests as it can lead to the collapse of a major US ally in South Asia.
In a hard-hitting opinion piece published in the Washington Times on Friday, Michael F. Scheuer, a 22-year CIA veteran, describes Pakistan as an ally that did far more and took more lethal risks to accomplish Americas dirty work than any other of its allies, including all of Nato, in the war against al Qaedaism.
Mr Scheuer, who created and served as CIAs Osama bin Laden unit head, says that while Pakistans internal political contradictions, economic problems and the Homeric venality of its politicians have (also) long caused a steady downward spiral, Americas shabby treatment of this close ally also had done a great harm. US officials believe they can add untold pressures to the Pakistani leaders burden and still find him eager to do Americas most important dirty work: Killing Osama bin Laden. Well, think again, warns Mr Scheuer.
The CIA veteran says that since 9/11, Washington has often forced Pakistani leaders to take steps that run counter to Pakistans national interests.
Pakistan, for example, had no enemies in the Taliban or al Qaeda until (Pakistani leaders) made them such at our behest. Likewise, there could have been no better Afghan government for Pakistan than the Taliban regime, and yet (Pakistani leaders) helped America destroy it and replace it with the Karzai regime, a government that has allowed an enormous increase in the Indian presence in Afghanistan.
The author recalls that for the first time Pakistan has sent the regular army into the largely autonomous tribal areas to root out Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
To date, Pakistan has lost more soldiers killed and wounded than the US-led coalition in Afghanistan. More dangerously, the offensives are stoking the fires of a potential civil war between Islamabad and the Pashtun tribes that dominate much of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
This situation, he says, is heaven-sent for Pakistans enemies, the Karzai regime and India, to fuel Pashtun irredentism. If successful, this people could lead to the creation of a country ungovernable without Western bayonets, reducing Islamabads domain to an indefensible sliver of territory, faced by angry warlike tribes to the west and a billion-plus, nuclear-armed Indians to the east. For New Delhi, this would be nirvana on earth.
What have (Pakistans) US allies done to help lighten the load of an ally Washington describes as indispensable, asks the author.
President Bush visited India before Islamabad and there again declared New Delhi a strategic US partner. Then, as if to ensure Pakistanis did not miss the snub, the president signed a nuclear deal with India that however non-weapons-related its content will be seen by Mr Musharrafs fellow generals, Islamist political parties, and most Pakistanis as giving their enemy a WMD leg-up over Pakistan.
On arriving for a hurried visit to Pakistan, the president spoke the usual boiler plate describing Pakistan as a major ally in the war on terrorism, and then asked Mr Musharraf what all US leaders ask their Pakistani counterparts: What have you done for me lately? Mr Musharraf, reeling from what he has done, was told he must do more to eliminate al Qaeda and the Taliban, help the anti-Pakistan Karzai regime, and to forget the idea of a US-Pakistan nuclear deal like that America signed with India.
Such measures, he believes, would provoke the Pashtun tribes, endanger Pakistans western border and force it to do Indias bidding, Mr Scheuer said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/08/2006
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If Sheurer doesn't like the way we are handling India and Pakistan, then I most certainly do.
#2
I think we have a fine balancing act in our relations with Pakistan. The Pakistanis have done more recently than most in the US know or care to acknowledge. In the end, however, we will not be able to achieve or goals in the region without the support of Pakistan.
#5
When President Ayub Khan visited Washington around 40 years ago, to meet the American president from Texas, Lyndon Baines Johnson, the latter told him: We give India food or anything else we want. Our India policy is our business. Ayub Khan described the treatment meted to him by President Johnson: I had barely sat down when President Johnson started speaking. He didnt even address me as President, and thus spoke: Go and patch up with India. I said: Please listen to me... He stopped me right in the middle of the sentence and retorted: I have told you, go and patch up with India or shut up. Ayub Khan hadnt revealed this incident to his cabinet, but only to the Working Committee (Munir Ahmed Munir. 1985. Aatish Fishan Publications, pg337).
Posted by: john ||
04/08/2006 12:02
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If they had listened to LBJ, Pak would not be in the hole it is in now...
Posted by: john ||
04/08/2006 12:24
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If Pakistan's heroic efforts have gone largely unhearlded, they must be some absolutely incredible undercover enterprises. That said, since the ISI does all the undercover work, it sort of brings us back to square one, since the ISI cannot be trusted with even so much as a ball point pen.
Our alliance with Pakistan compares well with attempting to use a highly toxic poison. It is just as easy to harm oneself as to kill your opponent when using such fatal measures. This has been the exact case with Pakistan. Any actual successes enjoyed at their behest have been accompanied by so many compromises and outright betrayals that little headway is the most likely result.
When you add to this meager balance sheet the fact that Pakistan continues to churn out countless thousands of potential taleban and jihadis on a daily basis, the degree of betrayal assumes true proportion.
Pakistan must eventually experience regime change and forever be steered away from the theocratic cesspool it has always been since its very inception.
Coalition forces killed a senior Taliban commander during an offensive in southern Afghanistan, the US military said. The commander 'was directly tied to dozens of improvised explosive device attacks that killed and crippled multiple Afghans since 2001, when the Taliban regime was ousted,' the statement said, adding that he was also responsible for the deaths of Afghan National Army soldiers and coalition soldiers. The shooting happened Friday in the Musa Qaleh district in southern province of Helmand. The US military did not provide the commander's name.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
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The US military did not provide the commander's name.
Once the DNA tests are in, a name will be released. Must be a big fish.
French prosecutors called Friday for a 25-year prison sentence for a young man accused of burning a 17-year-old woman to death in a Paris suburb. Sohane Benziane, a Frenchwoman of Algerian origin, was doused with lighter fuel, set on fire and left to die in the basement of a run-down housing estate in Vitry-sur-Seine near Paris, in October 2002. Jamal Derrar, 22, is accused of acts of torture and barbarity leading to death and faces 25 years' imprisonment, while his co-defendant Tony Rocca, 23, faces eight to 10 years in jail. State prosecutor Jean-Paul Content argued that Derrar had premeditated what he called "an act of boundless cruelty", but had intended only to scare the young woman, not to kill her. According to the prosecutor, Derrar had focused his anger on Sohane after getting into a fight with her boyfriend. The article notes that the victim was of Algerian origin, but conveniently glosses of the perpetrator's origin.
Sohane's murder deeply shocked the country and her name became synonymous with the fight to improve women's rights, particularly to combat violence against women of immigrant background in the country's poor suburbs.
#1
Not good enough for him. He deserves at least as much as she was put through. What the heck is wrong with the legal system when they allow premeditated torture and murder being punished with only time in prison?
#3
25 years? And the EUros wonder why we think their "justice" is a joke?
Twenty five years that is what the prosecutor is demanding. It will be probably lowered by the jurty (1). Then there will be the reductions for good behaviour. In 10 years max he will be out again. And it is fortunate he being judged in France: in Spain he would also get further reductions for playing football, feigniong to study or washing the jail floors (real eaxmples) so he would be out in five years max.
(1) In France the juries are composed of 9 citizens and 3 judges ie the judges vote and are in the same room where the ciizens deliberate thus being able to influence/pressure the 9 citizen voters. They only need to rally four on the 9 to get a majority (since the judges vote).
#5
In unrelated news today, the.eu extensions are up for grabs. Being American, I can't get a .eu web address, but it doesn't matter anyway as sacrebl.eu and mondi.eu are already spoken for.
The crime in a housing project in Vitry-sur-Seine southeast of Paris exposed the problem of violence against women in impoverished French suburbs. Vitry-sur-Seine was the starting point of a protest march four months later for women's equality.
Derrar's accomplice, Tony Rocca, was sentenced to eight years in prison for barring the door of the garbage closet where Derrar left the victim while she screamed for help. Rocca denied the charge.
The two young men sat silently, their heads down, during the sentencing. Their supporters wept outside, calling the sentences too heavy.
The family of the victim left the courtroom immediately without speaking to reporters. The family's lawyer, Francis Szpiner, said Derrar should have been charged with murder. He noted that Derrar bought the bottle of gasoline a day before the attack and that rumors had flown around the neighborhood that "he was going to torch Sohane."
The court, however, ruled that the act was not premeditated
#8
Sohane's murder deeply shocked the country and her name became synonymous with the fight to improve women's rights, particularly to combat violence against women of immigrant background in the country's poor suburbs.
#9
Not to seem cold hearted, but while this tragedy was mediatised and acted as some kind of waking call (the media favorite and socialist front feminist org from the 'hood "ni putes ni soumises" was created from the "femmes de quartier" org at the occasion, and used this as a prop to get public exposure, to be later disawoved by sohane's family), this isn't certainly neither the firts, nor the last. There had been at least two others instances since, including one with the perp probably at large in his native Pakistan, hidden by his extended family.
and I remember reading in my very own local newspaper, quite a few years ago (mid-late 90's I'd say?) the sad case of a nurse who left her turkish boyfriend; the guy then lured her into an ambush in the country, gangraped her with a couple of pals, burned her alive and left her to die. I remember reading how a nearby farmer found her still alive, crawling in his courtyard, naked and "red as a lobster".
speaking of a nurse, there was also that other nurse who was doused with gasoline while coming home on Xmas eve, and being set on fire by a Youth(tm) who was later sentenced as mentally insane. This happened in 2002-2003, and she was disfigured and lost both hands.
And there was that handicapped womand set on fire during the 2005 ramadan riots, plus at least an another unreported case (except in local press and the www) of a woman doused with gasoline just outside of her home, but who managed to run away, also during the RR.
Add the rampant car BBQ, the torching of schools, gymnasiums,... what's with fire and theses guys??? Any possiblity it's psychosexual, or am I too freudian or something?
#10
Btw, the first case in my last coment was at least as horrible as Sohane's (that's why I wrote about being cold-hearted), but this was treated in a small article, and I even doubt it made national news except in a very discreet way, as it is usually when the victim is not "a victim by essence"; time was different, but I somehow resent sohane "made the headlines" because it is emblematic of the feminine condition in the muslim projects. Still sad for that poor kid, though, and for her family (her sister's testimonies were quite clear, this guy was NOT a disgrunted would-be lover, as the defense said, but a smug young thug too cowardly to take his revenge on her boyfriend); JFM is right, in France the time actually spent in jail is roughly 1/2 of the sentence, with time spent before judgment included into the total. Thus, in about 10 years this scum will be out.
#12
Frenchman faces 25 years for burning girl alive
Were I the French media, I'd make d@mn sure to specify how the individuals in question were newcomers to French society, as in "first-generation" or some such other monicker. French people in general should be up in arms that the people of their country are being attributed with crimes of such barbarity.
Add the rampant car BBQ, the torching of schools, gymnasiums,... what's with fire and theses guys??? Any possiblity it's psychosexual, or am I too freudian or something?
Bah! My own bet is on how they never, ever get to barbecue pork ribs. Us Americans know that it is exactly this sort of manly, pyroclastic beer-drinking-accompanied sport that sublimates all sorts of primal urges and instinctual predispositions. Charred pigflesh and chilled alcohol, even paradise has little better to offer without taking your clothes off and it works on so many levels!
As I write this, there are people who would like nothing better than to see me dead. In fact, we just received another threat last week.
What have I done to "deserve" threats? As the founder and director of Jihad Watch, I have dared to expose the otherwise underreported or misreported activities of jihadists not only in America but also in Europe, Russia, Asia, Indonesia, Australia, Africa -- and everywhere else jihad is being waged around the world today.
I have also countered -- in frequent radio and TV appearances, and in countless books, articles and speeches -- the dishonest efforts of many Muslim spokesmen to conceal the true nature of jihadist activities, and to obscure the traditional meaning of jihad as enjoined upon every faithful Muslim by Muhammad himself: which is to subdue, by force if necessary, the entire non-Islamic world to Muslim rule.
For our pains, we at Jihad Watch have been vilified as anti-Muslim "bigots," denounced by Muslim pressure groups (such as the Council on American Islamic Relations, a.k.a. CAIR), and worse. And I myself have been threatened with death by jihadist Muslims who speak openly about having put me on a "hit list." For one public appearance in New York City, in fact, the NYPD placed me under the protection of its "Hercules Team," an anti-terrorist SWAT unit.
Although I take these threats quite seriously, I have decided not to let them deter me from continuing our work, which I believe plays a crucial role in the defense of our civilization and our way of life.
But I desperately need your help. Unlike CAIR, unlike the hundreds of Saudi-funded mosques that are spreading the extremist Wahhabi Muslim ideology right here in America, we at Jihad Watch operate without the backing of Middle Eastern oil billions. In fact, we operate with only a couple of volunteers.
That is why I am writing to you today. If Jihad Watch is even to continue our all-important work -- much less to expand our truth-telling efforts as we would like to -- we must build our staff and operations to a level capable of countering the oil-funded propaganda efforts of jihadists and their allies.
And that means gathering not only operating capital (of dire importance right now), but also seed capital for our own fundraising campaign -- and that campaign has to start with you. I have no one else to turn to.
If each of you gave $1,000, we'd be well on our way to our meeting our crucial goals. Now, that might be a lot for some, but, if those who could, gave more, we would still meet our present needs -- and more important, begin building a stable base for future action (we have quite a few things we would like to do, if only funding permitted). And eliminate the need to make special, urgent requests like this one.
Won't you please make a tax-deductible donation right now? Checks may be sent to: Jihad Watch, PO Box 9437, Gaithersburg, MD 20898-9437. Or you can donate amounts up to $100 (with complete confidentiality and security at jihadwatch.org)
Again, I implore you to be generous. And I thank you with deepest gratitude.
Sincerely,
Robert Spencer
Director, Jihad Watch
Posted by Robert at April 7, 2006 02:33 PM
#1
go Robert. It occurred to me last night, I'd rather have my head cut off than to submit to these 7th century barbarians. Live free or die; it's the American way, and I'm an American.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The State Department accused Caracas city officials of complicity Friday in an attack on the car of U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield in the Venezuelan capital. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns summoned Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez to the State Department and told him that Venezuela was in violation of an international treaty that requires the host countries to ensure the safety of foreign diplomats, department spokesman Sean McCormack said. The incident ``clearly was condoned by the local government,'' McCormack said.
Pro-government activists bombarded Brownfield's car with fruit and vegetables and a group of motorcyclists chased the convoy, at times pummeling the vehicles with their fists.
McCormack said local government officials were handing out snacks to the perpetrators as Brownfield was participating in a ceremony at a Caracas stadium. The event included a gift of baseball equipment to children. McCormack said it was the fourth government-sponsored attempt to intimidate U.S. diplomats in Venezuela, three having occurred in the past three weeks. ``We will not be intimidated,'' McCormack said.
According to McCormack, Burns warned Alvarez that there will be ``severe diplomatic consequences between our countries'' if there is another incident.
That phrase means something different when we say it compared to when Kofi says it, Hugo.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/08/2006
00:37 ||
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Isn't this an act of war? It seems to me this is how the Iranians began their undeclared war against us.
Darpa pulled the mothballed NASA X-37 space plan out of storage and is turning it into a space bomber?
Space plane flies free: After weeks of delay, the military X-37 space plane went through its first free flight through the skies over California's Mojave Desert today and landed autonomously at Edwards Air Force Base.
That's the good news from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The bad news is that the vehicle experienced an "anomaly" and went off the runway, DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker told me. Fortunately, only minor damage was done, she said.
The X-37 was carried up from the Mojave Airport by Scaled Composites' White Knight airplane, the same mothership that bore SpaceShipOne into the sky for its historic private-sector space launches. That's been done several times before. But until today, either unacceptable weather or electronic glitches had stymied the maiden drop test â and the X-37 had to stay hooked to the White Knight.
This time, all systems were go when the White Knight reached its target altitude of 37,000 feet, and the X-37 was set free at last for a three-minute glide to touchdown.
Back in the 1990s, the X-37 was designed as a NASA experimental craft, 27.5 feet (8.4 meters) long with a 15-foot (4.5-meter) wingspan. It was meant to be carried into orbit in the space shuttle's payload bay or atop an expendable rocket, then deployed for independent missions lasting up to 21 days. At the end of each mission, the X-37 would glide back down to an autonomous landing.
NASA dropped the project after deciding that the X-37 was not a good fit for its future exploration plans, but DARPA picked it up in 2004 for its potential military applications. As far back as 2001, NBC News producer Robert Windrem reported that the craft could be adapted to serve as a "space bomber."
Today's drop test was only the first of what surely will be a long series of flights, and the fact that the plane went off track after today's touchdown won't be a mortal blow. After all, SpaceShipOne veered off the runway at the end of its first supersonic flight. (For pictures of that mishap from Mojave photographer Alan Radecki, click here.)
Stuart Witt, manager of the Mojave Airport, was clearly pleased that the X-37 was finally released for free flight after so many false starts. "It's exciting," he told me.
"It's been good to see synergistic tests springboard off previous successes and capitalize on national assets like the White Knight for other uses," Witt said.
Here's the full statement from DARPA's Walker, released at 5 p.m. ET:
"The DARPA-sponsored X-37 Approach and Landing Test Vehicle (ALTV) conducted its first drop test on April 7, 2006.
"White Knight and ALTV took off from Mojave, Calif., airport at 6:30 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time (PDT). At 7:28 a.m. PDT, White Knight released ALTV within the Edwards AFB test range airspace at an altitude of 37,000 feet. ALTV touched down on runway 22 at Edwards AFB, Calif., at 7:31 a.m. PDT. ALTVâs autonomous landing sequence and initial touchdown were flawless and fully according to plan, but ALTV did not stop in the distance expected and rolled off the end of the runway. ALTVâs steering was nominal for the full length of the runway.
"The cause of the incident is not yet known. The ALTV flight team continues to assess the situation.
"All flight data has been recovered from ALTV. There was minor damage to ALTV â the nose landing gear is heavily damaged, but the main landing gear and aircraft appear structurally intact."
#1
Long-range, high-altitude bombers are an obvious application of autonomous systems. Apart from the landing, it's really a quite straightforward problem assuming you are high enough above any air defenses. Fly to location x, drop GPS guided munitions, return to start point.
#2
Taxpayers: Unfortunately a very limited amount of discretionary tax dollars are available. Please make your 1040 selections.
(____) Military X-37 Space Plane
(____) Federeral Emergency Motel Agency (FEMA)
(____) Cynthia McKinney legal fund
(_X__) Concertina wire for the Mexican border
#4
I see a very practical application for it right now. Dropping a bunker buster that is a rocket assisted GPS meteorite, in effect. A "Rod From God, Jr."
Imagine the impact of even a cargo full of fist-sized ceramic balls over a large area? I gather its cargo can be 12,000 lbs. Imagine the psychological impact of perhaps 3,000 meteorites striking a large area simultaneously?
#5
Are you thinking of dropping thousands of tiny little rocks on our enemies? Each with little navigation units? Course their mass to air ratio would slow them down to subsonic on impact. But still being bombarded by baseballs is very American.
#6
The space plane is nice, but for a weapons application I'd put my money on hypersonic missiles that can reach anywhere on the globe in about two hours. Low cost, high accuracy and astonishing impact velocities. Such vehicles would dramatically change the need to deploy carrier based aircraft and other high cost slow-to-deploy conventional assets. The ne plus ultra when it comes to projecting (non-nuclear) power.
Danish-Swedish dairy company Arla Foods has said it is getting its products back into stores in the Middle East. It supplied 50,000 stores in the area before the publication in Denmark of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed triggered a boycott of Danish goods. Arla's butter and cheese are back in 3,000 stores across the region and 31 of its largest clients in Saudi Arabia will start selling them from Saturday.
To win back trust, it is now sponsoring bribes humanitarian causes in the Middle East. "We are delighted that out largest Saudi customers have decided to lift the boycott," said Arla's executive director Finn Hansen. "We expect the other large supermarkets in the rest of the Middle East to follow."
Arla said it had contacted the Danish Red Cross for help in finding the right humanitarian causes in the region to provide assistance to. The Danish-Swedish company estimates that the boycott will cost it £37m ($64m) this year.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/08/2006
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Are they also supplying products to stores in Israel? Inquiring minds want to know.
I suggest that they help provide medical care for survivors of suicide bombings in Iraq and Israel. Somehow, I think that's not what Arla will do.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
04/08/2006 1:03
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Actually, Eric, I would think it should be the Arab countries that pay for victims of islamist violence and the boomers they create, fund and train. SA in particular.
Let Denmark choose it's own beneficiaries and hope they choose well.
#4
Pretty hard to drink sand, melt it on your pita or fry your lamb chops in it, eh? So, let's see now, doesn't collaborating with these Danish blasphemers constitute violation of the numerous fatwahs pronounced against them? Shouldn't bomb-vested jihadis be going after the Saudis in droves? Oh, wait, that would be logically consistent, a concept utterly unknown in Islamic countries.
Apr 7: Members of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) arrested three persons for their involvement in Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) from Agrabad area in the city on April 5 night. The arrested were identified as Mohammed Sohel alias Suja, Sayed Mohoshin Ali, owner of Chittagong Telicom Limited and Mohammed Ali Wahab.
Branching out from commies to hackers. Wonder when they'll crossfire an Islamonut?
Sources in the RAB said a team of RAB men acting on a secret information that three people involved in voice over internet protocol had been staying in Agrabad area in the city raided it and arrested the three people. The team recovered a quantum four port gateway, one computer with CPU, a monitor and a keyboard.
Send them to Yousef Islam, he's gonna need a new computer.
The arrested persons confessed that they got eight T&T telephone lines from Sanmar Properties Limited due to kinship. They were engaged in call diversion from foreign countries to local T & T phones by VOIP.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/08/2006
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, one computer with CPU
!
Something new under the RAB sun.
The Arab Bank, one of the Middle East's largest financial institutions may close down the Palestinian Authority's treasury account in the face of mounting pressure for it to sever links with the new Hamas-led Palestinian government, informed sources say. Foreign donors have channeled aid money to the Palestinians through the PA's treasury account. On Friday, the European Union announced it had suspended such payments, a decision linked to Hamas refusal to recognise Israel and renounce violence.
Earlier this week newsreports citing unidentified Western diplomatic sources, said Hamas had been trying to move the Authority's treasury account from the Amman-based Arab Bank to a local Palestinian bank to try to minimise the risk foreign funds would be frozen. Founded in 1930 in Jerusalem, Arab Bank in 1994 following the creation of the Palestinian Authority re-opened its eight branches in the West Bank and Gaza which it had closed in 1967 in the wake of Six-Day War when Israel annexed large portions of Palestinian territory. It became a founding shareholder in the 200 million dollar Palestine Development and Investment Company (Padico), which was established in 1993 to help revitalise the Palestinian economy.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/08/2006
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opleaseopleaseopleaseopleaseoplease.
Extra butter on that popcorn, please! :-D
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/08/2006 0:39
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The PA will now discover what it's like to deal with the REAL terrorists... bankers.
#6
Hamas had been trying to move the Authority's treasury account from the Amman-based Arab Bank to a local Palestinian bank to try to minimise the risk foreign funds would be frozen.
And I thought it was for the free checking and worldwide ATM usage....silly me.
A Syrian human rights group has called on the Libyan regime to free 18 political prisoners held in Libyan jails since 1990 on charges of trying to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi. "The Libyan government recently freed political detainees but it continues to deliberately disregard the situation of dozens of Syrian and Palestinian prisoners of conscience who have been in jail since 1990," said in a statement the Syrian Organisation for Human Rights.
The statement referred to Libya's decision earlier last March to release from prison 84 members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood movement held since the late 1990s. The president of the human rights group Abdul Karim Rihawi said 15 of those in jail are Palestinians and three are Syrians. Rihawi asked the Libyan government to "immediately release these prisoners and pay damages to them" and called on international NGOs to put pressure on the regime.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/08/2006
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Dozens of Lebanese nationals who collaborated with Israeli occupation forces in southern Lebanon - and who fled to Israel in the wake of the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 - are set to return home. The announcement was made Friday in a statement by the Free Patriotic Movement headed by former Lebanese general, Michel Aoun. The deal to allow the estimated 60, mostly Christian Maronite exiles, who fled Lebanon in fear of repercussions for collaborating with the Israelis, was first mooted in February in talks between the Maronite Aoun and Hezbollah leaders.
"There are some 60 Lebanese citizens, who have not committed any crimes in terms of Lebanon's judiciary and many of them are women or they are elderly," Gibran Basil, an official of Aoun's party, told Adnkronos International (AKI). "A dozen of the exiles should return before Easter while the rest will come back by mid-May," Basil explained.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/08/2006
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Activists of the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) vowed to establish a global caliphate, beginning with Pakistan. In a rally attended by thousands of activists of the banned group to commemorate the birth of the Prophet Muhammad (may his drip clear up peace be upon him) on Friday, leaders of the SSP called for an Islamic theocracy in Pakistan. The concept of nation state is an obstacle in the way of the establishment of Khilafat. We will start the establishment of Khilafat in Pakistan and then will do so across the world, said Zaheerul Islam Abbasi, a former general who was sacked and arrested in 1995 for trying to topple the government of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
There you have it, in their own words, not that we needed reminding. I don't find the thought of a world ruled by Pak primitives a comforting thought.
Activists distributed pamphlets in Islamabad preaching jihad and hatred against Shias, as their leaders delivered fiery speeches to a crowd of around 5,000 late on Thursday.
In other words, all the things they said they wouldn't do when Perv lifted the ban on them.
They also sold video compact discs of the beheadings of American soldiers in Iraq, and militant activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan at the rally, which they said was convened to celebrate the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad (may his hemorrhoids never inflame peace be upon him) this month. One of the organisers thanked the Islamabad administration for allowing the rally, which was held under floodlights in a bus depot, with hundreds of riot police watching on. SSP is known to have close links with Jaish-e-Mohammad, a militant group fighting in Indian-occupied Kashmir and with links to Al Qaeda.
But Perv thinks they're just fine, so he won't take any action against them.
Some of the crowd briefly chanted anti-Shia slogans, until they were told to refrain by their leaders. They also swore allegiance to their late leader, Maulana Azam Tariq, a fiery pro-Taliban cleric who was assassinated in Islamabad in 2003, and founder of the organisation Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, who was killed in 1980s.
I do find it comforting that their head cheeses get bumped off, rather than dying of hardening of the arteries or senile dementia, like Fazl and Qazi seemingly intend to do...
Last July, President Pervez Musharraf ordered a major crackdown against clerics and organisations inciting sectarian violence. The SSP was banned by the government in 2002.
Then he changed his mind the other day...
The SSP has often been blamed for violence against Shias, planting bombs in mosques or attacking religious processions. Thousands of people have been killed in tit-for-tat attacks by militants from the two sects over the past 20 years. Most of the victims are Shias, who account for about 15 percent of Pakistans predominantly Sunni Muslim population of 150 million.
That kinda implies they wouldn't be bumping off Sunnis if the Sunnis weren't slaughtering them, except within the normal tolerances of violence that's engrained in Pak culture...
On Thursday, a prominent Shia Muslim cleric narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in Karachi after his car was hit by a remote-controlled bomb.
Oh, golly. I wonder whoever may have been responsible?
Authorities have launched several crackdowns on militant outfits since Pakistan joined a US-led war on terrorism in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the United States, but critics say that the steps taken have been half-hearted and many groups have resurfaced under new names. Like other groups, SSP remerged under the new name of Millat-e-Islamia Pakistan. Founded in the 1980s, SSP wants Pakistan to be officially declared a Sunni Muslim state. It had recently been reported in the press that the government might relax some restrictions on the group and allow it to commence political activities in a very low profile.
Posted by: Fred ||
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hmmmmmm .....no. Because? Because they're not. By centuries
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/08/2006 0:17
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A tale of two countries
THIS is with reference to Mr Irfan Husains article A tale of two countries (March 28) in which he has depicted Pakistan in a poor light.
He writes: How much damage Dr A.Q. Khans supposedly free lance activities have done to Pakistans image. If he acted on his own, it is a poor reflection on the control exercised over our nuclear installations by the army. The other (and stronger) possibility is that he was officially encouraged to export atomic secrets to foreign buyers. He goes on: In either case, to imagine that the Americans would now supply us with the latest nuclear technology is to live in a fools paradise
A few pertinent questions immediately come to mind:
i. In 1976 when America blocked the acquisition of a nuclear reprocessing plant from France, was it due to any of Dr A.Q. Khans alleged sins?
ii. After receiving $600 million in cash and not delivering F-16s as promised, did the US backtrack on its commitment because Dr A.Q. Khan had done something somewhere?
iii. Didnt the US commit nuclear proliferation when it master-minded, engineered and orchestrated Israels nuclear arsenal? In 1973 Israel threatened Egypt that it would nuke Cairo with the backing of the US. Now the US has offered India carte-blanche to acquire civilian nuclear technology under the NPT no country can transfer nuclear technology.
iv. Did India not help Iran in any manner in developing the latters nuclear capability?
v. Did Russia not build a nuclear reactor in Iran?
vi. Did China not assist North Korea in developing the latters nuclear facilities?
Mr Husain has pointed out that investors shy away from Pakistan because of bomb blasts and terrorism. May I ask him why France is in the grip of violence these days?
Thousands of cars have been burnt there. Last July, London was hit by a series of bomb blasts in its subway system. What about the bomb blasts in Varanasi (India) and state- sponsored terrorism in occupied Kashmir? The Valley is the worst example of human rights abuses.
In a nutshell, the whole world is in the grip of violence, terrorism and extremism (the publication of blasphemous cartoons in Denmark is the latest example).
Then why single out or blame Pakistan for an international phenomenon? Albert Einstein is Americas hero, but Dr A.Q. Khan is their villain. Why?
LT-COL (r) SAFIR A. SIDDIQUI
Karachi
Posted by: john ||
04/08/2006 12:18
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Note the angst, the sense of entitlement and the convoluted 'logic'.
And this guy was a Colonel in the Pak army..
Posted by: john ||
04/08/2006 12:22
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Damn right. Start applying the same criteria (what constitutes civilized behavior, etc...), what you use for India, to Pakistan.
#7
In a nutshell, the whole world is in the grip of violence, terrorism and extremism (the publication of blasphemous cartoons in Denmark is the latest example).
The Danish catoons have nothing to do with "violence, terrorism and extremism". The reaction to the Danish cartoons has everything to do with "violence, terrorism and extremism".
Attempting to restrict freedom of speech places Islam in the category of communists, fascists, Nazis and dictatorships. If you willingly concede that categorization, then go ahead and demand the suppression of free speech. Just don't expect anyone with an IQ higher than room temperature (in ?C) to agree with you.
Islam is slowly painting itself into a corner where it will either have to genuinely reform itself of simply declare outright war on the entire non-Muslim world, (you know, that dar Al-Harb thingy). Should Islam finally declare open war, I would not bet a plug nickle on it surviving another fortnight.
Eight Palestinians were injured in an Israeli artillery attack in northern Gaza Friday, according to Palestinian medical and security sources. They added that three Palestinian children were injured by a shrapnel.
Israel announced their tanks fired hundred of shells over the past two days on Northern Gaza and damaged farms. Palestinian militants retaliated and fired at Israeli targets. They said their attack was to answer the Israeli aggression.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) condemned, meanwhile, the Israeli air raid against Rafah in Southern Gaza killing six people and injuring 15 others. A PA spokesman said in a statement the air strike was an unforgivable crime, calling for intervention of the members of the Quartet and the international community to bring about a halt for the Israeli systematic aggression.
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"They keep hitting us back and that's not fair. Allan says they're all supposed to die and we get to kill 'em. So they can't hit us back."
The cause and effect thing still isn't sinking in. Muslim block with this.
Some unknown militants, riding a bike, Friday hurled a hand-grenade inside the office of a US-based NGO, Save the Children (STC), in Southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan, said official sources. Sources told KUNA that there were no casualties but the explosion badly damaged the office, located in Chaghi district, about 335 kilometers west of Quetta, the provincial capital. They said explosion smashed window glasses, damaged walls and furniture of the office. Sources did not blame any group but pointed finger at nationalist militants.
Local Baluch nationalist militants carry such terrorist attacks on government and foreign buildings as well as security force for their cause of maximum provincial autonomy and increase in royalties.
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Gunmen attacked a convoy of customs agents traveling through the desert in southern Algeria on Friday, killing 13 and wounding eight others, the official APS news agency reported. One other person was reported to have disappeared in the attack in the Ghardaia region, 745 miles south of the capital of this North African nation, APS reported, citing local security sources. The attackers opened fire with machine-guns on vehicles transporting the customs agents to a seminar, then set the vehicles afire, according to a report on daily Liberte's Web site. The gunmen, whose numbers were not immediately known, then fled in two four-wheel drive vehicles.
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One other person was reported to have disappeared in the attack in the Ghardaia region.
And that would be the custom agent who arranged the slaughter.
The authorities in Nepal have imposed an all-day curfew in the capital, Kathmandu, as activists prepare for a rally on the third day of a strike. The curfew will be in force for 11 hours from 1000 (0415GMT) and violators risk being shot at, officials said. Some mobile phone networks have also been cut, as protesters prepare for more demonstrations against King Gyanendra's rule. He has been widely criticised for seizing absolute power 14 months ago.
On Friday, at least 150 anti-government protesters were arrested in Kathmandu. Police fired tear gas and used batons to disperse demonstrators, who hurled stones and set fire to a post office. The crowds shouted that the king was a thief and should leave the country, the BBC's Charles Haviland in Kathmandu reports. Clashes also were reported in several other towns of the kingdom.
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ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Friday rejected an appeal seeking the release of a Lebanese man accused of hijacking a Pan American aircraft after the court was told that Lebanon had acknowledged the nationality of the hijacker but had not sent his travel documents. In the last hearing the court had asked the federal government to submit a reply in a habeas corpus petition of Jamal Saeed Abdul Rahim alias Fahad Ali, who claimed to be a Palestinian. He was arrested by FIA on September 5, 1986 for his involvement in the hijacking of the American airliner. In his appeal, the hijacker had said that he was serving time even though he had completed his life sentence.
That would imply he's dead, wouldn't it?
On Friday, Deputy Attorney General Nasir Saeed Sheikh told the court that earlier no country had been willing to accept the convict and his nationality had been in doubt, but Lebanon had finally accepted Jamal Saeed as a national.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Crap, Fred! Always with the logic!
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/08/2006 0:23
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The suspected ringleader of the 2004 Madrid train bombings filed a complaint in court on Friday alleging he had been abused, tortured and humiliated in Spanish and Italian custody since his arrest in Milan nearly two years ago. Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, 35, is accused in Italy of recruiting extremists and leading an al-Qaida cell that was planning another attack on an unspecified location. Italian and Spanish investigators also believe he masterminded the Madrid bombings that killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,500 in 2004.
Ahmed filed the complaint with judges at the start of Friday's hearing, during which Milan's chief anti-terrorism investigator also testified. The judges were not expected to investigate the claims, though Ahmed's lawyer said London-based human rights group Amnesty International would. In the complaint, handwritten in Arabic and translated into Italian, Ahmed wrote that he was beaten into unconsciousness after his arrest on June 4, 2004 in Milan.
"My body and my face were full of bruises and my nasal septum was broken," Ahmed said. He also described humiliation by Italian prison guards, one of whom ordered him to pray at his feet saying, "I am your god." Ahmed also described mistreatment at a Spanish prison where he was transferred in December 2004, saying guards trampled his clothes and threw his Quran, Islamic publications and prayer rug on the floor. "They told me to remove my clothes and made me stand naked in front of them to listen to their jokes and comments. After, they ordered me to take a shower in freezing water," he claimed.
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if he wasn't, someone should stand trial for willful incompetence. Snuff him and call it Allan's will
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/08/2006 0:13
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Gosh golly, they tossed his cell. Threw his stuff on the floor. Poor baby.
he was beaten into arrest, I imagine - and where did he hear a big word like "nasal septum" Bless the LLL lawyers for these dregs.
Want a cause about real human abuses, try Darfur. Nope, huh - too tough.
The United States is quietly blocking the start of a long-awaited renovation of United Nations headquarters in hopes of keeping down costs, US Ambassador John Bolton acknowledged on Thursday. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has asked for an authorization of $100 million in new spending to get the work under way later this year, but Washington wants to commit to just $23 million at present, Bolton said.
The plan has been languishing in the UN General Assembly's budget committee for the past three weeks, and diplomats said Washington was at this point the lone obstacle. "For three weeks now, the committee has been hung up on the issue, with no real word from the US as to where things stand and when they might get resolved," said one diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. Bolton said: "This is not a matter of saying we are for or against the plan. What we are saying is, 'Let's do this in a responsible, prudent, graduated fashion.'"
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"We need time for the weapons inspectors consultants to finish their reports."
#7
It'd make more sense to sell the land in manhattan and use the proceeds to build a new UN headquarters in a more inexpensive place like Harare or Pyonyang.
#8
I can't believe Annan is serious! In these days of budget cuts for the cost of freedom, we have absolutely no slush funds for them to waste. We'll get back to the UN when we get our federal deficit balanced. Maybe they can build a spacious building on cheap land in Iran after it gets leveled? Keep an eye on the mullahs, and all.
#9
Get the UN off of American soil! It has tarnished itself beyond redemption and is essentially a source of intelligence agents from every single other country on earth. The UN needs to be moved to some backwater bumf*ck location where appointment constitutes a punishment posting. Only the most dedicated and altruistic world government types would seek the assignment. The only money we spend should be to provide free demolition and removal of the old offices once they are abandoned. They are nothing but a disgrace to human and political integrity.
We can take it - tell us what you really think of the Useless Nitwits. :-D
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/08/2006 20:14
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I'd like to %&*#@ all of these $%&@# until they can't *&^# before sun-up with a pole up their @%$&* inserted sideways! Then I'd #%$&* all of their daughters for afters once they'd %^@#* me twice and let my wolf-hybrid $%&^* them too! Then I'd wrap them all in duct tape, %$&*@# them again and sell the video online.
The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, Mohamed El-Baradei, will visit Iran next week as Tehran continues its standoff with the United Nations over its nuclear program, a diplomat with the agency said yesterday. "The IAEA Director General Mohamed El-Baradei will be traveling to Tehran to meet with senior officials for discussions related to outstanding safeguard verification issues and other confidence building measures requested by the IAEA board of governors," the diplomat said.
International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors arrived in Iran yesterday to visit the country's uranium enrichment facility and other sites. Meanwhile, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov yesterday expressed confidence that the Iranian nuclear crisis could be solved by diplomatic means.
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"The IAEA Director General Mohamed El-Baradei will be traveling to Tehran to meet with senior officials for discussions related to outstanding safeguard verification issues and other confidence building measures requested by the IAEA board of governors," the diplomat said.
What is the basis for 'confidence building measures' or any hope that they can suceed?
#4
Baradei Visit to Iran Next Week Aims at Ending Standoff
What the article fails to mention is how the only "standoff" in question is where the UN is fighting for an exemption to the soon-to-be-imposed ban on importing Iranian caviar.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya and President Mahmoud Abbas have lashed out at the US and EU decision to halt direct financial aid to the Palestinian Authority. Mr Haniya, a senior member of the Islamic radical Hamas movement, described the decisions as "hasty and unjust" after a meeting with Mr Abbas. "The world should respect the choice of the Palestinian people," Mr Haniya said. Mr Abbas said "the Palestinian people should not be punished for their democratic choice". Mr Abbas said by cutting the aid, the United States and European Union were "punishing all the people, workers and families".
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Hungry and thirsty Ismail and Mo? Pork ribs and sweet taters on the braii at my house tonight. Maybe some milk tart for dessert. Washing it all with a few pints of chilled Guinness. It will be a very civilized evening. Toss that AK in the dumpster and come on over for some real good chow!
#6
Still stupid after all these years. Democratically elected terrorists are still terrorists. And so are the people who elected them.
Bad democratic choice. Good thing about democracy - which they haven't caught on to (in Iraq either) is that an elected party can be democratically chucked out. Non confidence.
Pals don't chuck them out - they are the terrorists they elected.
Very, very, very simple turnaround. Renounce violence, keep your promises and recognize valid countries. Basic rules of life for a democracy.
It's impossible to reason with the insane. Shouldn't try.
#10
When the majority of a population supports and votes into power a terrorist government, the resulting embargoes and boycotts no longer represent "collective punishment." There is an insufficient number of innocent participants to qualify for that term.
Other novel and for more descriptive terms apply, like:
The Iraqi army commander in the northern city of Kirkuk was attacked on the Tikrit-Kirkuk road but escaped unscathed. A police source told KUNA the motorcade army commander in Kirkuk Air Vice Marshal Anwar Hama Amin cam under attack as he was inspecting army units stationed along that road. No casualties were reported in the attack. Only one vehicle was damaged.
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QUETTA: Five military personnel were injured when their vehicles stopped to re-open the Quetta-Karachi Road near Wadh, which had been blockaded by locals to protest the siege of Baloch nationalist leaders' houses in Karachi. Police were not able to confirm who had open fired on the vehicles, however local journalist Khan Muhammad said that the five military personnel were injured when their vehicle caught fire. A police officer said the injured had been admitted to a military hospital in Khuzdar. Balochistan government spokesperson Raziq Bugti said that he was waiting to receive details of the incident.
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The Mujahadeen Council, a leading insurgency group linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq, has announced the killing of a Christian in Mosul "for offending the prophet Mohammed." In a statement posted to the Internet, the group, whose military arm is still headed by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said that on Tuesday it "eliminated" a Christian in Mosul. "We eliminated him, because this impure crusader offended our noble prophet Mohammed. We killed him in the al-Tahir quarter of Mosul" it read.
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Zarqawi is dead. He hasn't been seen since he was reported wounded in mid 2005. Now he's just a boogy man. This is just a "zarqawi group". Stick a stake in his heart and bury him. He's dead.
GAZA: The new Palestinian culture minister has set his sights on stamping out pornography - and belly dancing. Atallah Abu Al-Subbah, a senior official of Islamist militant group Hamas, said belly dancing was a form of striptease.
I do not regard forms of pornography and striptease as culture. They are destructive, Abu Al-Subbah told Reuters in an interview late on Thursday. Since Hamas swept parliamentary elections in January, fears among secular Palestinians that the group might crack down on various forms of entertainment and the drinking of alcohol have largely proven unfounded. Hamas took office last week.
Abu Al-Subbah did not say how he would seek to outlaw belly dancing, which used to be performed in public in Gaza before a Palestinian uprising against Israel began in 2000. Some Palestinians expect Egyptian and Arab entertainers and singers to resume performances in Gaza, especially in the coming summer months, after the Palestinians took control of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt late last year. Abu Al-Subbah blamed Israel for the spread of pornographic movies in Gaza and the West Bank. He vowed to confront the vice by boosting the culture of resistance and Islamic values.
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I do not regard forms of pornography and striptease as culture. They are destructive, Abu Al-Subbah told Reuters in an interview late on Thursday.
But strapping bomb belts on 3 year olds for parades, gun sex and dipping your hands in the giblets of one of your leaders that gets blown up are A OK?
#2
The ugliest bellydancer I've ever seen live was in Austin, Texas at some Moroccan restaurant near the capital. I don't know Gaza quality bellydancing, but if she represents, I'm with Hamas on this one. Life is too short for ugly bellydancers.
#3
Heh! Enjoy your new Hamas masters, Palestinians! First they can't make the payroll, then they take away the girlie shows. Remember, you voted for them!!!
#4
I do not regard forms of pornography and striptease as culture. They are destructive,
Whereas, a bunch of psychotic, genocidal murderous thugs who slaughter innocent civilians with utter abandon are not "destructive"? If a comparison of cultures were made, pornography and striptease amount to a minor yeast infection compared to the Ebola virus that is Hamas.
An agreement reached Thrusday between Democrats and Republicans on immigration reform fell apart Friday. The Senate failed to end debate on the legislation in two lopsided votes Friday morning, leaving the prospects for passage dim as the lawmakers head home for their two-week Easter recess. The bill would have increased border security to try to stem the influx of illegal immigrants while providing a process to legitimize those who've lived for a long time in the country illegally.
The two parties blamed the other for the impasse. "There's a political advantage for Democrats not to have an immigration bill," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa. "This opportunity is slipping through our hands like grains of sand," said assistant Senate Democratic leader Dick Durbin of Illinois.
In the Friday morning vote, Republicans refused to go along with Democratic demands to limit the number of amendments that could be offered. The compromise proposal, drafted by Republican Sens. Mel Martinez of Florida and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, would allow illegal immigrants who have been in the United States for more than five years to get on a path to legal status and citizenship without leaving the country.
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The feckless fools in the Senate have had their kabuki dance for the cameras and decided the problem was too big for them. When they get back maybe they should solve the problem piecewise continuous manner: Build the wall, seal the border, and then worry about how to deal with the ones that are already here. (hint: deport them all, anchor babies included).
#3
Meanwhile.... grannies, vets, and other concerned citizens sit in lawn chairs along the border with 7x50's and try to assist the outmanned and outgunned US Border Patrol. Thanks worthless Washington congressional fuc*s. I hope American voters remember each and every one of you at election time.
#6
Remember them. Specter, McCain, Kennedy, Feinstein, Durbin, etc. I don't live there so you Arizonans please tell me why you keeep putting that fool back in office. Following California and Texas, you surely have the worst illegal problem in the US. Why does this sellout Feinstein keep getting back in ? It's past time for her retirement. And speaking of retirement Massachusetts, get rid of the socialist/communist Kennedy, please.
#8
Re: Arizona. Monday, April 10th, there will be a massive boycott of schools, jobs, & etc. by portions of the state's Latino population. Keep an eye out for how this plays out in the msm. Radicals calling for AZTLAN, while moderates suggesting keeping the Mexican flag waving to a minimum. (As a teacher I find boycotting the school an abominable idea - activists are shooting themselves in the foot.)
"Treason doth not prosper, what is the reason? If it doth prosper, none dare call it treason!"
So sez economics 101. If you don't believe me, ask Mr. Steve White.
Don't let yourself get lumped in with the brilliant RWV, et al., unless you don't care of course.
#10
Thank you for your kind words. However, the United States exists because its citizens accept and support its Constitution. It is a nation unique in that its laws were made by the people and apply equally to all its citizens. If people choose not to obey the laws when they become inconvenient,then the social compact frays and the nation becomes something else. I understand the social pain associated with enforcing the laws but I think the adverse effects of rewarding people who have gamed the system will result in greater pain. If you (Glerens Jalet2499 / Thaper Ebbeasing2964 / whoever you are) believe we need 11,000,000 - 12,000,000 more workers to make the economy go, then change the laws to admit them, just make sure that they are people who are willing to obey our laws. Regardless of your enlightened social views, "illegal immigrants" have broken our laws and are criminals. They cannot be rewarded without severely damaging respect for the law. As to "anchor babies", sneaking into the US to have a child for the purpose of obtaining US citizenship is despicable and is only possible because of the current interpretation of the 14th Amendment and the humanitarian impulses not to separate families.
Re USA: For the sake of our security and out of respect for our laws, citizens, and legal immigrants Shut the f*cking* Borders to illegals aliens breaking into our Union.
Authorities in Algeria have dismantled a network that helped Islamic militants enter Spain using fake passports and visas, Algerian French-language daily Liberte reported on Friday. The group of about 20 people is suspected of providing support for the leading Islamic insurgents' group in Algeria, the Salafite Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), and militants of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), Said Rokbi, prosecutor in the Algerian suburb of Rouiba, told the AP news agency. These two groups have come under scrutiny in Europe for alleged involvement in attempted terror attacks.
The network allegedly started its activity in 2000 but was only discovered by Algeria's anti-terror forces two months ago. The group provided false documents to Islamic militants who were being hunted by Algerian police and helped them flee the country, said Rokbi, confirming the Liberte report. Members of the group were brought before prosecutors in Rouiba on Wednesday ahead of a trial. According to Liberte, the operation could have involved dozens of militants who could have set up terror cells in Spain and other European countries in the meantime.
The Armed Islamic Group (GIA) has been almost entirely dismembered by the Algerian military and the Salafite Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which has sworn allegiace to al-Qaeda, has also seen its ranks reduced. A national reconciliation reform approved in September, more than a decade after the outbreak of Algerias 1990's civil war, allows militants to turn themselves in with impunity, provided they have not been involved in atrocities. Information provided by some of these militants reportedly helped the police track down members of the network.
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Militants?
n, A fighting, warring, or aggressive person or party.
Try more like terrorists:
n. One that engages in acts or an act of terrorism.
The article even says as much further down the page. "These two groups have come under scrutiny in Europe for alleged involvement in attempted terror attacks."
If we cannot even call them what they are, then there is little hope.
The press is supposed to REVEAL and INFORM, not DISTORT and DIFFUSE.
I am of the opinon that the press has become the enemy in part, mainly because it has no accountability. Each branch has a check and balance in the US. Governments are ultimately accoutnable to the people.
Who are the press accountable to? Where are its checks and balances?
#3
Spain is cruis'n for a bruis'n. They haven't quite grasped that when you welcome the fox into your hen house, that he will first eat the hens in whatever hen house he has been invited into and then move on to the next.
An Iraqi soldier allegedly shot and killed a U.S. Marine at a base near the Syrian border, the U.S. said Friday. Another American Marine then wounded the Iraqi soldier. The shootings occurred Thursday near Qaim, 200 miles west of Baghdad, the U.S. statement said. "An Iraqi army soldier allegedly shot and killed the U.S. Marine on a coalition base" near Qaim, the statement said. "The Iraqi soldier was shot by another U.S. Marine." The incident is under investigation, the statement said. No further details were released, and Pentagon officials said they had no information.
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The Iraqi security forces arrested 115 suspected terrorists over the past 24 hours, the Interior ministry said Thursday. It added in a statement the arrestees were captured in different parts of the country such as Karbala, Samarra, Mahmoudia, and Shaab. The Defense ministry, which took part in the arrest campaign, said it captured 70 people out of the 115. The arrestees possessed arms and some had forged documents. Some of those captured were wearing women's clothes to evade the security forces.
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the cross-dressing Lions of Islam! Pussies
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/08/2006 0:08
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Oh Brave, mincing, Lions of islam.
I wonder how well they tackle eating spaghetti in a Burkha.
See The Religious Policeman for a clip (April 7) on how the real ladies handle a garment that isn't just a disguise, but their prison. Pathetic.
An Iraqi civilian was kidnapped Friday by unknown gunmen in northern Kirkuk. Speaking to Kuwait News agency (KUNA), one of Kirkuk's police commanders said the kidnapped person was the son of an Arab tribal chief, adding that the abducted was taken to a village named Qaibah. The tribal chief, added the commander, was assassinated by unknown gunmen last year.
In another development, the source said that four senior officers in charge of protecting oil facilities were arrested by the Multi-National Force (MNF). He explained that the arrested officers were Colonel Ali Ahmad, who visited Syria lately, and three Iraqi army majors.
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GAZA CITY: At least six Palestinians were killed Friday night in an Israeli air strike on a training base of the militant Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) in the southern Gaza Strip, medical and security sources said.
An Israeli air craft targeted a training centre of the militant group in the town of Rafah, firing one missile at a vehicle and two missiles at a building with activits in it, Palestinian security sources said. Six people were killed in the raid, including a local PRC leader, Iyad Abu al-Aynin, and a child, said Ali Moussa, a doctor at the town's hospital. Fifteen others were also injured in the air strike, he said. Moussa was unable to confirm whether all the casualties were members of the PRC, which is an umbrella organisation bringing together secular and Islamist fighters.
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#1
the ducks. What happened to the ducks and the bunnies? It's almost Easter for heaven's sake. The state of reporting has gotten so pathetic.
#2
I've been watching the Arab media and Palestine is pronounced as Philistine in Arabic.
And Philistine is the origin of Paleostine. It might help the west and UK to revert to this name and all it implies. And read up on the history - Pals in a nutshell.
There is a lot in a name. And this one ought to be paralleled in English with it's Arabic pronunciation and real identity.
#4
Yes, there are only 8 days left till the Vernal Fertility Festival (formerly Easter). Check out the latest Peep's Research here. Perhaps you and your children can do some reaearch of your own on the Peep's they score in next week's Outdoor Fertility Search (formerly Easter Egg Roll)
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
04/08/2006 14:46
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#7
Rip the blinkers off, folks.
Enlighten me, TW2412. Are you suggesting that the modern Palestinians are descended from Bronze Age Indo European tribes who invaded the Middle East and fought with the Hebrews and Canaanites?
What should we see when we 'rip off the blinkers'?
SUKKUR: Three men were arrested in a raid on the residence of Nawab Akbar Bugti in Jacobabad early on Friday morning. A rocket launcher and two rockets were also recovered from the men. According to sources, a heavy contingent of the police and Rangers, led by Jacobabad District Police Officer Muneer Ahmed, raided the residence of Jamhoori Watan Party chief Nawab Akbar Bugti and arrested three men, Arbab Ali Lashari, Yasir Ali Wagho and Ashiq Mirani.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/08/2006
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so what if he likes to get drunk (daily) and light off some fireworks?
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/08/2006 0:09
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so what if he likes to get drunk (daily) and light off some fireworks?
I can't wait until retirement.
#3
Are there people in Pakistan so stupid as stay, or even be in close proximity to, Akbar Bugti's house?
The prospect of a 1000 pound bomb dropped from a Pak warplane doesn't scare them?
Posted by: john ||
04/08/2006 14:44
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The bunny hutches and the baby chick incubators aren't really all that mobile, john. And Akbar's house isn't technically zoned for daycare and a preschool, but he runs one just the same.
Four bombs exploded in front of four houses at Daulatdia village, an outlaw infested area in Sadar upazila of Chuadanga, early yesterday. However, no one was injured and no damage done in the explosions.
According to police, a gang allegedly belonging to an outlawed party exploded the bombs in front the houses of Abdur Razzak, Nazmul Imam, Rabiul Islam and Azizul Haq of the village at about 3:30am. Outlawed Janajuddho faction of Purbo Banglar Communist Party (PBCP) has a stronghold in the area. Police went to the village in the morning and collected splinters. They said the bomb blasts might have been carried out by the outlaws to create panic among the people of the area as combing operation in the outlaw infested areas of the district has been intensified to arrest the extremists.
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JAIPUR: A western Indian state on Friday passed a controversial bill prohibiting religious conversions, bringing renewed focus on an issue that has triggered communal violence and been used as a political tool. For decades, Indias Hindu revivalists have accused Christian missionaries of bribing poor tribespeople to change their faith, but Christians deny mass conversions and say those who do convert do so to escape the rigid Hindu caste hierarchy. Authorities in Rajasthan state, ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said it was banning religious conversions because they were weakening communal harmony.
Some religious institutions, bodies and individuals are involved in unlawful conversion by allurement or by fraudulent means or forcibly, Gulab Chand Kataria, Rajasthans interior minister, said. In order to curb such illegal activities and to maintain harmony, we have enacted a special law. Any breach of the new proposal could be punished with up to five years in prison and a hefty fine, he said.
The act was passed by the state lawmakers, but still needs to be ratified by the governor to take effect. The move has attracted stinging criticism from other political parties and religious groups, who accuse the Hindu right wing of whipping up fear for political ends. Such an act defies logic, since conversion activities had rarely been reported in the state, said Salim Engineer, state general secretary of Jamait-e-Islami Hind, describing the move as an act of fascism.
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A DSP-rank officer can arrest any person who has converted or attempted to convert a person through force, allurement or fraudulent means.
Posted by: john ||
04/08/2006 14:25
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Not that some yahoo cop won't attempt to use it to harass some preachers.
But ultimately, the law (and any conviction) has to be in compliance with the Indian constitution - which guarantees religious freedom - and survive challenge to the Indian supreme court.
Posted by: john ||
04/08/2006 14:32
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The U.S. ambassador to Venezuela's motorcade was pelted with fruits, vegetables and eggs by backers of President Hugo Chavez as police did nothing, a U.S. embassy spokesman said. No one was hurt.
The incident occurred after U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield distributed baseball equipment to little leaguers in a baseball stadium in a working class neighborhood in the capital of Caracas, said U.S. Embassy spokesman Brian Penn in a telephone interview. Supporters of Chavez, including an official who identified himself as a member of Caracas Mayor Juan Barreto's staff, demanded Brownfield leave, Penn said. On their departure, the ambassador and his four-car motorcade drove through an adjacent market where Chavez supporters began throwing produce and eggs.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Note to DIPSEC: Glenn, Sara, and Mike - After your finish washing the eggs and tomatoes off the SUV's, please re-look the Surveillance Detection Route (SDR) SOP for Caracas with an eye toward market avoidance. Thanks again for the "hearts and minds" little league tip and photo op.
Hamas denied reports yesterday that it was ready for a two-state solution with Israel or would present such a proposal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. "That is not correct. Where did you hear that?" Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said in the town of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip. He appeared shocked when asked by reporters if it was true. Any readiness to talk about a two-state solution would imply recognition of Israel, which the group is formally sworn to destroy.
We knew that. That's why we didn't believe it.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Carry on, Haniyeh. Your plan destroys Paleostine. And that's a good thing.
A picnic by student protesters held in the middle of a busy Paris boulevard turned violent Friday when a frustrated motorist burst through the crowd, injuring 10. Outraged students set upon the driver, overturning his car before police stepped in.
The scene in the Latin Quarter highlighted the increasing unruliness of college and high school students leading protests against a new jobs law for youths. But spring break, which starts this weekend, may succeed where politicians have failed in ending the protests. With Alpine ski slopes and Mediterranean beaches calling, high school students in particular say they will have to stop their protests to vacation with mom and dad. "I'm sorry to say so, but I think the movement is going to lose steam," said Elies Alexandre, one of about 200 high school students taking part in Friday's violence-marred sit-in near the Sorbonne University, which has been closed for a month. "Most people are going on vacation with their parents," said the 15-year-old, who leaves this weekend for a family holiday in Italy.
Students more keen to protest than study have been at the forefront of the standoff with the government over a law that was designed to spur the hirings of youths under 26 by making it easier for companies to fire them. The law was meant, above all, to help those less qualified get a first job, but city students led the protests.
Posted by: Fred ||
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It's a start....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/08/2006 0:40
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Let the record show, that a 'whiff of grape' has shown remarkable success in calming unruly Parisian mobs and preventing further outbreaks of rude behavior usually reserved for tourists.
This may be a trivial pet peeve but Student protesters seems like a misleading demographic classification. No question the median age of the majority protesters does provide insight into understanding the dispute. And I may be reading too much into this but the description of student suggests, as fact, that the majority attend some form of educational institution. Not only is this irrelevant but it is also impossible to verify. Furthermore it is clear, in this situation, that there is organization from people that are neither students nor of what is considered student age. Seems to me it would be more accurate to describe this as juvenile delinquents supported by Union provocateurs.
A conference of 150 Muslim leaders and imams from more than 40 European countries opened on Friday in the Austrian capital, Vienna. The three-day gathering will focus on issues affecting the Muslim communities in Europe, such as the creation of new jobs and the role of women. A key goal will be to hammer out an identity for European Muslims that preserves their traditions while integrating with Western political and social values.The gathering comes at a critical moment for the faith, under pressure from anti-terror probes and a perceived clash with Western values - highlighted by the recent Prophet cartoons crisis.
The Second Conference of European Imams will be attended by clerics from Turkey to the United Kingdom, as well as Austria's president, Heinz Fischer, Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, EU external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero Waldner, and EU Racism and Xenophobia Observatory chief, Beate Winkler, as well as the Islamic Scientific, Education and Cultural Organisation (ISESCO) director general Abdul-Aziz al-Tuweijiry. The meeting is being organised by Vienna's Islamic Religious Authority (IRA). Axel Byybu Koehler, president of Germany's Central Muslim Council, and representatives of Europe's main Muslim organisations will address the conference, where issues such as Islamic education, political participation, integration, the role of family, employment, the environment and ainmal rights will also be discussed.
An estimated 15 million Muslims live in the European Union's 25 member states, forming approximately 3.3 percent of the bloc's population. There are 400,000 Muslims in Austria, some 4 percent of the population. Islam, which was officially acknowledged in Austria in 1912, is considered the country's second religion after Catholicism.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Test how sincere they are by playing the latest South Park video. If they remain sane and don't foam at the mouth then they might be ready to grow up.
#10
A key goal will be to hammer out an identity for European Muslims that preserves their traditions while integrating with Western political and social values.
The key goal is how to bring Europe to the right level of Dhimmitude. "Integration" means something quite different in Arabic. It's the takeover that integrates Europe into an islamic society.
The government yesterday suspended the police chief and the chief administrator of the northern town of Aligarh as the death toll from two days of Hindu-Muslim clashes rose to six. At least 19 people have been injured and hospitals said the condition of eight was critical. While four people were killed in clashes on Thursday, two bodies were recovered from the city yesterday morning, Aligarh's additional superintendent of police A.K. Saxena said. Curfew has been imposed on parts of the city and Saxena said the situation was tense but under control. Newspapers, however, reported sporadic violence in some neighborhoods.
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A suicide bomber set off his explosives-laden car outside a US military base in Afghanistan on Friday, wounding three Americans in the second attack on a US base in 24 hours.
The police chief of the southern province of Helmand, Abdur Rahman, initially said two British soldiers were wounded when the bomber rammed his car into their vehicle just outside their base in the provincial capital Lashkar Ghar. But the US military later said two US service members and a US civilian contractor were slightly wounded in the blast at the main gate of their base. "The suicide bomber was killed in the blast. A nearby pickup truck and the bomber's vehicle were destroyed," a US military spokesman said.
Posted by: Fred ||
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A suicide bomber set off his explosives-laden car outside a US military base in Afghanistan on Friday
The defense ministry Friday confirmed injury of six German soldiers in two attacks in northern Afghanistan. A ministry statement said one of the attacks took place when a German military patrol was attacked. Three Afghan civilians were killed in the attack. The second assault happened when unknown gunmen hurled hand grenades at a military position injuring three soldiers. Around 2,500 German forces are stationed in Afghanistan working within the International Stabilization Assistant Force (ISAF).
Posted by: Fred ||
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Fred's library of great pics continues unabated.
The government of the United Progressive Alliance appears to have buckled under US pressure and the persistent demands of Pakistan to completely withdraw its 4,000 troops from Siachen, the highest battlefield in the world, Indian newspaper The Pioneer reported on Friday.
The paper reported that following a secret meeting between Indian National Security Adviser MK Narayanan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in Dubai in the last week of February, India has agreed in principle to the phased withdrawal of the Indian Army from its positions. Narayanan is believed to have discussed the matter with Aziz and also conveyed the seriousness of the Indian government on the issue. Government sources told the paper that the finer points of this highly contentious issue would be discussed in the next round of defence secretary level talk between the two countries scheduled for the first week of May. "If all goes well, the agreement could be inked by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when he visits Pakistan in August this year," the paper reported.
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Siachen thaw helps Army focus on China
With the Indo-Pak diplomatic back-channels working on a solution to the Siachen issue, there are signs, a decrease in number of surveillance sorties for instance, that things are already changing on the glacier, the worlds highest battleground.
That more changes are in the offing was clear from the statement of Army Chief General JJ Singh in New Delhi today. The Army will remain positive on the issue of withdrawing from the glacier, while ensuring that national interest was not affected, he said.
We are not dogmatic and we remain positive. We are sure that national interest will be kept, he said when asked whether the Army would be happy to withdraw from the forward points on the glacier, if the government decides so.
Army sources in Leh gave clues of the Armys logic regarding the worlds highest battleground. Siachen and adjoining areas will be sufficiently patrolled as long as it seems necessary but with changing perceptions and a possible political thaw on the issue, chances are that resources will be directed towards the LAC with China among other areas.
Air patrolling missions around the glacier had started since January. The Armys 14 Corps that operates across Ladakh, through the 826-km line of actual control (LAC) with the vast China-controlled Aksai Chin valley, has been paying attention to this mission as the Army feels it would be far more compatible to its current and future strategic perceptions. The Army recognises a special need to ramp up on the Eastern Ladakh sector rather than feed a dead horse in Siachen.
Until January this year, there was a maximum of two daily surveillance sorties to Siachen by the Armys 666 Siachen Falcons helicopter squadron, thereby mounting 10-14 patrol missions a week. But over the last two months, this has dropped to six to eight sorties per week.
The Saltoro ridge, under the Indian Army, is a wedge between Aksai Chin to the east, and Pakistans Baltistan province to the west. Demilitarising the ridge and the adjacent Siachen glacier would allow the Army to draw back and focus on sub-sector North and Eastern Ladakh.
Posted by: john ||
04/08/2006 14:14
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From another report- expectations of Pak perfidy
Though Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and Ministry of Defence are not in complete agreement as to the overall proposal, they will be forced to fall in line once the Government decides to go ahead with its demilitarisation plan.
Ever since then prime minister Indira Gandhi ordered the deployment of the Indian Army in Siachen in April 1984, Pakistan has been demanding the total withdrawal of the Indian troops. It has used every trick in its trade to hammer across its argument that Indian Army should withdraw from Saltoro Hills of NJ-9842 mountain peak.
The strategic importance of Saltoro Hills can be gauged from the fact that it takes only four days to enter into Indian territory from Pakistan's side despite a maze of extremely narrow routes.
Indian Army had further fortified its deployment after the Kargil War much to the chagrin of Pakistan. Officers and men of the Indian Army should be complemented for having effectively checkmated any misadventures from Pakistan in this sector, the sources said.
In the event of Indian troops pulling out of Saltoro Hills, Pakistan would be able to straighten the passage between Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) and Aksai Chin. Pakistan had also not agreed to accept the actual ground position line (AGPL) since it had set its eye on this strategic terrain.
Most importantly, Pakistan will never agree to authenticate its military-held positions in this area, as it wants to first seek the withdrawal of Indian Army and then exploit it for fulfilling its ulterior motives.
Apprehensions are being expressed that if the peace process between India and Pakistan gets derailed and the Pakistan Army meanwhile occupies key positions in Siachen, India will have to really move the mountains to regain its previously-held positions.
Posted by: john ||
04/08/2006 14:15
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Pro-local Taliban tribal clerics in North Waziristan on Friday demanded the army pull out of the area while parliamentarians and nazims of seven Frontier districts asked government to take military action against outlaws in Malakand Agency. Two separate jirgas were held in Mir Ali and Mardan. In Mir Ali, clerics asked the army to leave North Waziristan and guard the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The jirga in Mardan agreed to take action themselves if the government failed to initiate a military operation against outlaws in Malakand Agency within 24 hours.
The clerics denounced a ban on the display of weapons in North Waziristan. JUI-Fazl North Waziristan General Secretary Maulana Abdur Rehman told the Mir Ali jirga that carrying weapon was a key element of tribal traditions and tribal people could not accept the ban. The North Waziristan administration banned public display of weapons to improve law and order situation. The ban was also aimed at keeping Al Qaeda and Taliban-linked militants away from attacking security forces in main towns. We have feuds. Living in the tribal areas without weapons is impossible, said the JUI-F senior leader, who recently surrendered after the government declared him wanted.
Eyewitnesses said that only the clerics addressed the jirga attended by around 10,000 tribesmen. The tribal elders did not speak on the occasion. The jirga will meet again on Monday to take important decisions. The participants demanded the removal of army from check-posts on roadside throughout North Waziristan.
Tribal militant commander Baitullah Mehsud also demanded armys withdrawal from Waziristan. It is part of our deal with the government that forces will be withdrawn, he said while making telephone calls to newspaper offices in Peshawar from an undisclosed location. He said the armys withdrawal was a key point of the peace deal he reached with the government and signed on February 7 last year in the Sararogha area of South Waziristan. Baitullah said all those killed on Wednesday in North Waziristan were mujahideen returning from operations in Afghanistan. He said the tribal militants did not want to clash with security forces but whenever it happened there was no other way out. He added that tribal militants would continue jihad in Afghanistan. Jihad will continue as long as it is possible, he vowed. Baitullah alleged that certain intelligence agencies were threatening him and were trying to collapse the peace deal. Gen Safdar Hussain was sincere to peace in Waziristan but not the intelligence agencies, which are threatening to kill me, he claimed.
The jirga of political leaders and elders in Mardan agreed to first meet NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani to inform him of the situation in the seven districts. They pledged to fight criminals in Malakand Agency themselves if the government did not take action against them. The jirga was attended by parliamentarians Ikramullah Shahid, Amanat Shah and Sikandar Khan Sherpao, former provincial minister Abdus Subhan, former senator from Malakand Agency Sahibzada Khalid Khan, nazims and other elders of the seven districts at Mardan Circuit House on Friday. The participants were from the Mardan, Swabi, Nowshera, Charsadda, Dir Upper, Dir Lower and Malakand Agency. The jirag was concerned over the increasing incidents of kidnapping for ransom and pledged to flush the Provincial Administered Tribal Area (PATA) of all criminals. The jirga also expressed concern over vehicle thefts and demanded a crackdown on criminals. The speakers said that a handful of gangsters in Malakand Agency had made the life of others miserable. They demanded the federal and provincial governments declare the Agency a settled area and initiate military action against the criminals. The jirga demanded the government recover Haji Lal Zada who has been in the captivity of the kidnappers for the last two months. They threatened a direct action if the government failed to start military operation against the criminals in Malakand Agency.
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Anyone who has the smarts and the tenacity to be the first black woman elected to Congress from Georgia clearly understands the visual politics of wearing milkmaid braids and gold tennis shoes into the corridors of power. Her choices drive home the point that she is exceptional. She rolls hair, clothes and race into a tight ball. And it becomes impossible to talk about one without getting tangled up in the others.
KIGALI, Rwanda -- Researchers said nearly two decades ago that this tiny country was part of an AIDS Belt stretching across the midsection of Africa, a place so infected with a new, incurable disease that, in the hardest-hit places, one in three working-age adults were already doomed to die of it.
AIRFIELD, Afghanistan Afghan and Coalition offensives continued to maintain pressure on Taliban extremists this morning, striking a second blow to enemy leaders in southern Afghanistan.
Israeli missiles slammed into a car in Gaza City on Saturday, killing two members of a Palestinian rocket squad in the second deadly airstrike since the Islamic militant group Hamas assumed power last week. The militants had just fired a rocket toward Israel and returned to their car when they were hit, the Israeli military said. 
Protesters demanding a 
French prosecutors called Friday for a 25-year prison sentence for a young man accused of burning a 17-year-old woman to death in a Paris suburb. Sohane Benziane, a Frenchwoman of Algerian origin, was doused with lighter fuel, set on fire and left to die in the basement of a run-down housing estate in Vitry-sur-Seine near Paris, in October 2002. Jamal Derrar, 22, is accused of acts of torture and barbarity leading to death and faces 25 years' imprisonment, while his co-defendant Tony Rocca, 23, faces eight to 10 years in jail. State prosecutor Jean-Paul Content argued that Derrar had premeditated what he called "an act of boundless cruelty", but had intended only to scare the young woman, not to kill her. According to the prosecutor, Derrar had focused his anger on Sohane after getting into a fight with her boyfriend.
Apr 7: Members of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) arrested three persons for their involvement in Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) from Agrabad area in the city on April 5 night. The arrested were identified as Mohammed Sohel alias Suja, Sayed Mohoshin Ali, owner of Chittagong Telicom Limited and Mohammed Ali Wahab.
The Arab Bank, one of the Middle East's largest financial institutions may close down the Palestinian Authority's treasury account in the face of mounting pressure for it to sever links with the new Hamas-led Palestinian government, informed sources say. Foreign donors have channeled aid money to the Palestinians through the PA's treasury account. On Friday, the European Union announced it had suspended such payments, a decision linked to Hamas refusal to recognise Israel and renounce violence.
A Syrian human rights group has called on the Libyan regime to free 18 political prisoners held in Libyan jails since 1990 on charges of trying to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi. "The Libyan government recently freed political detainees but it continues to deliberately disregard the situation of dozens of Syrian and Palestinian prisoners of conscience who have been in jail since 1990," said in a statement the Syrian Organisation for Human Rights.
Activists of the 
Eight Palestinians were injured in an Israeli artillery attack in northern Gaza Friday, according to Palestinian medical and security sources. They added that three Palestinian children were injured by a shrapnel.
Some unknown militants, riding a bike, Friday hurled a hand-grenade inside the office of a US-based NGO, Save the Children (STC), in Southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan, said official sources. Sources told KUNA that there were no casualties but the explosion badly damaged the office, located in Chaghi district, about 335 kilometers west of Quetta, the provincial capital. They said explosion smashed window glasses, damaged walls and furniture of the office. Sources did not blame any group but pointed finger at nationalist militants.
Gunmen attacked a convoy of customs agents traveling through the desert in southern Algeria on Friday, killing 13 and wounding eight others, the official APS news agency reported. One other person was reported to have disappeared in the attack in the Ghardaia region, 745 miles south of the capital of this North African nation, APS reported, citing local security sources. The attackers opened fire with machine-guns on vehicles transporting the customs agents to a seminar, then set the vehicles afire, according to a report on daily Liberte's Web site. The gunmen, whose numbers were not immediately known, then fled in two four-wheel drive vehicles.
The authorities in Nepal have imposed an all-day curfew in the capital, Kathmandu, as activists prepare for a rally on the third day of a strike. The curfew will be in force for 11 hours from 1000 (0415GMT) and violators risk being shot at, officials said. Some mobile phone networks have also been cut, as protesters prepare for more demonstrations against King Gyanendra's rule. He has been widely criticised for seizing absolute power 14 months ago. 
ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Friday rejected an appeal seeking the release of a Lebanese man accused of hijacking a Pan American aircraft after the court was told that Lebanon had acknowledged the nationality of the hijacker but had not sent his travel documents. In the last hearing the court had asked the federal government to submit a reply in a habeas corpus petition of Jamal Saeed Abdul Rahim alias Fahad Ali, who claimed to be a Palestinian. He was arrested by FIA on September 5, 1986 for his involvement in the hijacking of the American airliner. In his appeal, the hijacker had said that he was serving time even though he had completed his life sentence. 
The suspected ringleader of the 2004 Madrid train bombings filed a complaint in court on Friday alleging he had been abused, tortured and humiliated in Spanish and Italian custody since his arrest in Milan nearly two years ago. Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, 35, is accused in Italy of recruiting extremists and leading an al-Qaida cell that was planning another attack on an unspecified location. Italian and Spanish investigators also believe he masterminded the Madrid bombings that killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,500 in 2004.
The United States is quietly blocking the start of a long-awaited renovation of United Nations headquarters in hopes of keeping down costs, US Ambassador John Bolton acknowledged on Thursday. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has asked for an authorization of $100 million in new spending to get the work under way later this year, but Washington wants to commit to just $23 million at present, Bolton said. 
The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, Mohamed El-Baradei, will visit Iran next week as Tehran continues its standoff with the United Nations over its nuclear program, a diplomat with the agency said yesterday. "The IAEA Director General Mohamed El-Baradei will be traveling to Tehran to meet with senior officials for discussions related to outstanding safeguard verification issues and other confidence building measures requested by the IAEA board of governors," the diplomat said.
The Iraqi army commander in the northern city of Kirkuk was attacked on the Tikrit-Kirkuk road but escaped unscathed. A police source told KUNA the motorcade army commander in Kirkuk Air Vice Marshal Anwar Hama Amin cam under attack as he was inspecting army units stationed along that road. No casualties were reported in the attack. Only one vehicle was damaged.
QUETTA: Five military personnel were injured when their vehicles stopped to re-open the Quetta-Karachi Road near Wadh, which had been blockaded by locals to protest the siege of Baloch nationalist leaders' houses in Karachi. Police were not able to confirm who had open fired on the vehicles, however local journalist Khan Muhammad said that the five military personnel were injured when their vehicle caught fire. A police officer said the injured had been admitted to a military hospital in Khuzdar. Balochistan government spokesperson Raziq Bugti said that he was waiting to receive details of the incident.
The Mujahadeen Council, a leading insurgency group linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq, has announced the killing of a Christian in Mosul "for offending the prophet Mohammed." In a statement posted to the Internet, the group, whose military arm is still headed by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said that on Tuesday it "eliminated" a Christian in Mosul. "We eliminated him, because this impure crusader offended our noble prophet Mohammed. We killed him in the al-Tahir quarter of Mosul" it read.
GAZA: The new Palestinian culture minister has set his sights on stamping out pornography - and belly dancing. Atallah Abu Al-Subbah, a senior official of Islamist militant group Hamas, said belly dancing was a form of striptease. 
An agreement reached Thrusday between Democrats and Republicans on immigration reform fell apart Friday. The Senate failed to end debate on the legislation in two lopsided votes Friday morning, leaving the prospects for passage dim as the lawmakers head home for their two-week Easter recess. The bill would have increased border security to try to stem the influx of illegal immigrants while providing a process to legitimize those who've lived for a long time in the country illegally. 
Authorities in Algeria have dismantled a network that helped Islamic militants enter Spain using fake passports and visas, Algerian French-language daily Liberte reported on Friday. The group of about 20 people is suspected of providing support for the leading Islamic insurgents' group in Algeria, the Salafite Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), and militants of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), Said Rokbi, prosecutor in the Algerian suburb of Rouiba, told the AP news agency. These two groups have come under scrutiny in Europe for alleged involvement in attempted terror attacks.
An Iraqi soldier allegedly shot and killed a U.S. Marine at a base near the Syrian border, the U.S. said Friday. Another American Marine then wounded the Iraqi soldier. The shootings occurred Thursday near Qaim, 200 miles west of Baghdad, the U.S. statement said. "An Iraqi army soldier allegedly shot and killed the U.S. Marine on a coalition base" near Qaim, the statement said. "The Iraqi soldier was shot by another U.S. Marine." The incident is under investigation, the statement said. No further details were released, and Pentagon officials said they had no information.
The Iraqi security forces arrested 115 suspected terrorists over the past 24 hours, the Interior ministry said Thursday. It added in a statement the arrestees were captured in different parts of the country such as Karbala, Samarra, Mahmoudia, and Shaab. The Defense ministry, which took part in the arrest campaign, said it captured 70 people out of the 115. The arrestees possessed arms and some had forged documents. Some of those captured were wearing women's clothes to evade the security forces.
An Iraqi civilian was kidnapped Friday by unknown gunmen in northern Kirkuk. Speaking to Kuwait News agency (KUNA), one of Kirkuk's police commanders said the kidnapped person was the son of an Arab tribal chief, adding that the abducted was taken to a village named Qaibah. The tribal chief, added the commander, was assassinated by unknown gunmen last year.
GAZA CITY: At least six Palestinians were killed Friday night in an Israeli air strike on a training base of the militant Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) in the southern Gaza Strip, medical and security sources said.
SUKKUR: Three men were arrested in a raid on the residence of Nawab Akbar Bugti in Jacobabad early on Friday morning. A rocket launcher and two rockets were also recovered from the men. According to sources, a heavy contingent of the police and Rangers, led by Jacobabad District Police Officer Muneer Ahmed, raided the residence of Jamhoori Watan Party chief Nawab Akbar Bugti and arrested three men, Arbab Ali Lashari, Yasir Ali Wagho and Ashiq Mirani.
Four bombs exploded in front of four houses at Daulatdia village, an outlaw infested area in Sadar upazila of Chuadanga, early yesterday. However, no one was injured and no damage done in the explosions.
Hamas denied reports yesterday that it was ready for a two-state solution with Israel or would present such a proposal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. "That is not correct. Where did you hear that?" Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said in the town of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip. He appeared shocked when asked by reporters if it was true. Any readiness to talk about a two-state solution would imply recognition of Israel, which the group is formally sworn to destroy.
A picnic by student protesters held in the middle of a busy Paris boulevard turned violent Friday when a frustrated motorist burst through the crowd, injuring 10. Outraged students set upon the driver, overturning his car before police stepped in.
A conference of 150 Muslim leaders and imams from more than 40 European countries opened on Friday in the Austrian capital, Vienna. The three-day gathering will focus on issues affecting the Muslim communities in Europe, such as the creation of new jobs and the role of women. A key goal will be to hammer out an identity for European Muslims that preserves their traditions while integrating with Western political and social values.The gathering comes at a critical moment for the faith, under pressure from anti-terror probes and a perceived clash with Western values - highlighted by the recent Prophet cartoons crisis. 
The government yesterday suspended the police chief and the chief administrator of the northern town of Aligarh as the death toll from two days of Hindu-Muslim clashes rose to six. At least 19 people have been injured and hospitals said the condition of eight was critical. While four people were killed in clashes on Thursday, two bodies were recovered from the city yesterday morning, Aligarh's additional superintendent of police A.K. Saxena said. Curfew has been imposed on parts of the city and Saxena said the situation was tense but under control. Newspapers, however, reported sporadic violence in some neighborhoods.
A suicide bomber set off his explosives-laden car outside a US military base in Afghanistan on Friday, wounding three Americans in the second attack on a US base in 24 hours. 
The defense ministry Friday confirmed injury of six German soldiers in two attacks in northern Afghanistan. A ministry statement said one of the attacks took place when a German military patrol was attacked. Three Afghan civilians were killed in the attack. The second assault happened when unknown gunmen hurled hand grenades at a military position injuring three soldiers. Around 2,500 German forces are stationed in Afghanistan working within the International Stabilization Assistant Force (ISAF).
Pro-local Taliban tribal clerics in North Waziristan on Friday demanded the army pull out of the area while parliamentarians and nazims of seven Frontier districts asked government to take military action against outlaws in Malakand Agency. Two separate jirgas were held in Mir Ali and Mardan. In Mir Ali, clerics asked the army to leave North Waziristan and guard the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The jirga in Mardan agreed to take action themselves if the government failed to initiate a military operation against outlaws in Malakand Agency within 24 hours.
