NEARLY 66 years ago, a flotilla of mini-submarines set off to sink or cripple the mighty German battleship Tirpitz. Among the men behind this attack was Max Shean from Perth, a volunteer for one of World War II's most daring and hazardous naval missions.
Shean's courage in command of the X-craft submarines in Europe and the Pacific earned him an unrivalled reputation as a leader whose aggressive instincts were always tempered by concern for his crew.
He died on June 15, aged 90.
Born in July 1918, Shean was in his third year of an engineering degree when news of the Dunkirk evacuation inspired him to join the Royal Australian Naval Volunteer Reserves. A man of slender build, Shean was no swashbuckler. He was a man of quiet purpose, optimism and integrity. He was a meticulous planner. Shean trained in anti-submarine warfare in Sydney before serving on a British corvette, HMS Bluebell, on Atlantic convoy escort duty.
When the British admiralty called for volunteers for "special and hazardous service", he volunteered without hesitation. After 15 months crossing the U-boat infested North Atlantic, Shean thought this special service couldn't be more hazardous than what he had been doing.
Unaware that his new job meant manning top-secret X-craft submarines, he joined 12 other volunteers and began training at the submarine base HMS Dolphin, Gosport, in 1942. They soon learned that their mission was to penetrate German harbour defences with a crew of three.
Each had to be competent divers, so they could cut their way through anti-submarine nets to lay a pair of two-tonne explosive charges under the Tirpitz, an awesome machine of war that threatened Britain's trans-Atlantic supply lines. They had six months to prepare for the attack, which was initially planned for April 1943.
Conditions were cramped on the X-craft. These submarines were developed to penetrate the most heavily defended waterways and survive unrealistic odds.
Shean's engineering skills proved crucial during the X-craft sea trials. The X-craft became part of him for the rest of his life.
He was the perfect choice for such a mission. With his energy and friendly nature he became a popular member of the young group of submariners. In an effort to maintain secrecy, the British navy applied strict rules, but Shean wanted to capture the moment and smuggled a small Box Brownie camera in with him. As a result, he developed a unique record of the X-craft world.
However, the biggest obstacle to their mission was developing a means to cut the anti-submarine nets protecting the Tirpitz at its anchorage in a Norwegian fjord. In early training attempts to cut a submarine through a net, all divers had had great difficulty and one unfortunately drowned in the process. It fell on Shean to devise a solution.
Typical of a man who grew up playing around with boats on the Swan River, Shean found a way. He felt this to be his greatest contribution to the war effort.
In September 1943, Shean set sail with six X-craft submarines to carry out Operation Source, the sinking of the Tirpitz in Kaa Fjord. Although qualified as an X-craft commanding officer, Shean was appointed as the diving officer of X-9.
To reach the operations area, the X-craft had to be towed by an ocean-going submarine. Shean was on board the towing submarine, HMS Syrtis, with the rest of X-9's operational crew when it was discovered that X-9 had broken the tow and disappeared.
The shredded towline had become caught in Syrtis's port propeller and Shean was sent out to clear the snag. Working without his diving suit, which was in X-9, he dived into the freezing Arctic waters and managed to clear the line. However, the X-9, which was being manned at the time by another crew, was lost with all hands. The operation was over and, with it, Shean's chance to take part. The X-craft eventually achieved their mission and the Tirpitz was so severely damaged that it never put to sea again. But none of the X-craft survived the raid and nine men were lost.
Soon after returning from Operation Source, the British had built more X-craft, and in April 1944 Shean was appointed in command of the X-24 for Operation Guidance. The Germans had been using Bergen in Norway as a U-boat base, with a floating dock for maintenance and repair. It was Shean's task to destroy the dock, an almost impossible task given that the approach was 40 nautical miles from the open sea through busy and confined waterways patrolled by German vessels and protected by two minefields and anti-torpedo nets. The X-24 was towed to the drop-off point by HMS Sceptre, commanded by another Australian submariner, Ian McIntosh. At dusk on April 13, McIntosh slipped Shean's submarine and X-24 dived. Before departing, the two Australians co-ordinated a rendezvous. This mission was perilous from its inception and never before had only one X-craft been considered for such an operation.
Reflecting on Shean's selection as the submarine's captain, his engineer Vernon "Ginger" Coles said: "Max was the only captain I would sail with. When we went into Bergen the demeanour of Max was such that one would have thought we were going on exercise. He was cheerful, confident and pleased that we were doing something useful with no thought of not coming back."
Shean was just 25.
The X-24 negotiated the minefields and, on returning to periscope depth, passed so close to a patrolling German patrol boat that Shean could see its swastika flag. Shean calmly ducked directly underneath. The X-24 slowly crept up to the target area, where Shean manoeuvred the X-24 close to the Bergen docks. As he approached his target, Shean could see the wharf facilities looming out of the haze. The basin, however, was full of busy marine traffic. Later, he confided that it was at this point he was overcome with fear, but his sense of responsibility for his crew forced him to keep a steady head. He had to do the job. He had to get his crew home safely. He took the X-24 deep and made his run to the target.
The underwater picture was confused but the X-24 laid the charges, set with a four-hour time delay. Exhausted and starved of fresh air, Shean and his crew steered back through the heavily defended waters to the rendezvous with Sceptre. In the dark night that awaited them, a relieved McIntosh greeted Shean with a submariner's nonchalance, but through their exploits the young Australians forged a deep bond and remained close friends for the rest of their lives.
On their return to Scotland, Shean was to learn that faulty intelligence and incorrect charts had led him to lay the charges on a large enemy ammunition ship, the Barenfels, which was destroyed. Shean asked to be sent back for a second attack, a request that was refused. The British claimed the attack as a success; a significant target was sunk and the X-craft returned unscathed.
After the previous Tirpitz raid, when all six boats were lost, morale in the flotilla was low. The mere fact Shean had penetrated a heavily defended fjord and harbour 40 nautical miles deep and returned home was a great morale booster. It was the first time an enemy ship had been sunk at its berth without any loss to Allied navy personnel. More significantly, the attack proved to be a strategic success and the Admiralty gained great confidence in the ability of the X-craft in the war effort. This would later prove vital in the Pacific.
Shean was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his leadership.
But a new threat had arisen and, following D-Day, the X-craft were required in the Pacific. Leaving his new bride in Scotland, Shean was posted to a submarine depot ship and sailed to the Pacific. He was again selected to command a special mission in which he was given the job of cutting two submarine telegraph cables that were part of the Japanese communications network linking Singapore, Saigon, Hong Kong and Tokyo. The Allies could not intercept and listen to Japanese communications sent via these underwater cables. If the X-craft men could sever this link, then the Japanese would have to revert to their secondary radio communications, which the Allies had the means to decipher.
At that stage it was vital for the war effort to understand the Japanese intentions, for it would be the cue to the Allies on whether to drop the atomic bomb. The mission was no easy task and Shean's engineering background again proved most useful. He developed a special flat grapnel for XE4 that was eventually used for the X-craft mission.
After training in Hervey Bay in Queensland, Shean sailed to Borneo in July 1945, then to The Philippines where the X-craft were launched on their mission to Saigon. He almost drowned en route after being swept overboard but was able to swim back and climb aboard after swimming the fastest few strokes of his life.
On July 31, the cable was cut. For his efforts in the Pacific, Shean was awarded a bar to his DSO and a US Bronze Star.
On completion of the war, Shean graduated with honours in engineering before a career in the West Australian power industry. He was an avid sailor and in 1978 sailed his yacht Bluebell from Fremantle to Britain in the 150-year celebration Parmelia race, in the open division, which he won.
Shean was a proud submariner until his final days. He maintained close links with his X-craft comrades; Coles and he wrote to each other every three months.
McIntosh and Shean together were patrons of the submarine museum in Fremantle.
Shean is survived by his wife of 65 years, Mary; two daughters, Ruth and Heather; five grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
#3
Wow, Baltazar Garzon might have to do real work against Spanish criminals and less preening grandstanding and soaking up human-rights-org spittle press availabilities!
The horror....the horror
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/25/2009 20:52
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#4
What in the world are those judges and lawyers going to do with all this new spare time? Trailing wife, I wish you would ease up on Tipper some. Bad punsters are special children of God who teach us tolerance.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
06/25/2009 22:09
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#2
Update
MICHAEL Jackson has died following a suspected cardiac arrest, it has been officially confirmed.
Paramedics reportedly performed CPR on the 50-year-old singer while transporting him to hospital in Los Angeles, but reports claim they never managed to get a pulse.
The Los Angeles Times reported LA Fire Department Capt. Steve Ruda said paramedics responded to a call at Jackson's home around 12:26pm (5.26am AEST), and they found him not breathing.
Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around "as high as a kite", a government official has said.
Lara Giddings, the attorney general for the island state of Tasmania, said the kangaroo-like marsupials were getting into poppy fields grown for medicine.
She was reporting to a parliamentary hearing on security for poppy crops.
Australia supplies about 50% of the world's legally-grown opium used to make morphine and other painkillers.
"The one interesting bit that I found recently in one of my briefs on the poppy industry was that we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles," Lara Giddings told the hearing.
"Then they crash," she added. "We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high."
Rick Rockliff, a spokesman for poppy producer Tasmanian Alkaloids, said the wallaby incursions were not very common, but other animals had also been spotted in the poppy fields acting unusually.
"There have been many stories about sheep that have eaten some of the poppies after harvesting and they all walk around in circles," he added.
Retired Tasmanian poppy farmer Lyndley Chopping also said he had seen strange behaviour from wallabies in his fields.
"They would just come and eat some poppies and they would go away," he told ABC News.
"They'd come back again and they would do their circle work in the paddock."
Iranian state television's Channel Two is playing a Lord of the Rings marathon in an attempt to keep people inside watching hobbits and not protesting in the streets. Normally people in Tehran are treated to one or two Hollywood movies a week, but with recent events the government hopes that sitting through a nine hour trilogy will take the fight out of most. Perhaps this was not the best choice in films if you want your people not to believe that "even the smallest person can change the course of the future."
Posted by: liberal hawk ||
06/25/2009 16:42
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#2
All that is gold does not glitter
Not all those who wander are lost
The old who are strong do not whither
Deep roots are not reached by the frost
From the ashes a fire shall be woken
A light from the shadow will spring
Renewed be the blade that was broken
The crownless again shall be king.
#3
Considering the heroic role of the Persian women in all this, the scene Jacket ought to worry about is:
Witch King: [taking Eowyn by the throat] You fool. No man can kill me. Die now.
[Eowyn rises and pulls off her helm, her hair falls down over her shoulder]
Eowyn: I am no man.
[she thrusts her sword into the Witch King's helm and twists; he shrieks and implodes]
Posted by: Matt ||
06/25/2009 17:00
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#4
yes
Posted by: liberal hawk ||
06/25/2009 17:09
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#5
One of the best parts Matt. But you forgot that Merry stabbed him behind the knee.
Might get them thinking about stabbing others behind the knee.
The US Supreme Court has ruled that school staff broke the law when they ordered a 13-year-old girl to strip while searching her for painkillers.
The Arizona school, which bans prescription and over-the-counter drugs, suspected Savana Redding, then 13, of carrying ibuprofen.
After no drugs were found in her bag, she had to remove her clothing, and then move her bra and underwear.
However, the court said individuals could not be held liable in a lawsuit.
The school principal acted on a tip-off from another student that Savana was carrying ibuprofen.
Justice David Souter said: "What was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear," Associated Press reported.
"We think that the combination of these deficiencies was fatal to finding the search reasonable."
The justices said the lower courts would have to determine whether Safford United School District No. 1 could be held liable.
#2
Is this a strip searchable case if the person was an adult? Seems doubtful to me. If an adult couldn't have been searched under these circumstances then it seems ridiculous that this got all the way up the appeals chain. This seems like an expensive lesson to the school about the dangers of these 100% inforcement rules that they make.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
06/25/2009 15:23
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#3
I just looked it up to be sure,
IBUPROFEN is NOT a DRUG, it's a painkiller commonly known as Tylenol.
What the hell is a school doing banning what amounts to aspirin
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
06/25/2009 16:32
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#4
If I were the girl I sure as hell wouldn't comply to such a ridiculous over-the-line request. The parents should have been called at this point and informed.
However, the court said individuals could not be held liable in a lawsuit.
If school personnel were held liable there would be a lot more common sense in the public school.
#6
In schools, asprin is the same as heroin to the teachers, which in my opinion is dumb, lazy, and is missing the point. There are a handful of kids I know over the years that have been kicked out of school because they had an asprin at the bottom of their purse.
Posted by: Boss Grolump7843 ||
06/25/2009 17:32
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#7
I hate it when I agree with the left wing of the court, but the school employees should most definitely be held personally liable. It should also result in mandatory termination.
#8
I wonder how many teachers and Administrators have Asprin, Tylenol, and Motrin in their desks or purses or cars.
When I was in high school the Dean of Students kept a bottle of booze in his desk - and would sometimes take a sip or three during school hours. One time he was talking to me and I had to step back the booze on his breath was so strong.
#9
teachers, which in my opinion is are dumb, lazy, and is missing the point
There, fixed it for ya.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
06/25/2009 18:20
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#10
The bottom line is that this is just one, of about a dozen issues, all about public schools, that have been in the courts repeatedly for decades now. They are an unconscionable waste of resources, costs many millions of dollars annually, and are never, ever resolved.
Should students be required to wear uniforms. Should students be allowed to wear clothing that is distracting and/or political-religious. Should school newspapers be censored. Should parents be able to keep offensive books out of school libraries. All the zero-tolerance issues. Can teachers physically touch students. Corporal punishment. Prayer in school. Valedictorian speeches.
The SAME crap, over and over again. Perhaps the SCOTUS should put its foot down and make a blanket statement that it will refuse to hear any more of these State level cases.
Do you know that the "Bong Hits For Jesus" case is being heard for a SECOND time by the SCOTUS?
#12
I feel your pain, 'moose, but the Court itself decides whether to grant cert, so if they're hearing too many of these cases, it's their own damn fault.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/25/2009 21:40
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#2
Gromky, your an ass. Thanks Mods for sinktrapping this jerk.
My prayers and best to her family.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
06/25/2009 16:09
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#3
RIP
both a victim of cancer and then a victim of 'alternative treatment' (which I think was the group that declared her cancer-free in Feb 2007)
Posted by: lord garth ||
06/25/2009 19:09
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#4
Perhaps gromky was drunk when he posted that. Ms. Fawcett's death brought surcease from a long period of pain and fear, and for that is a blessing to her and those who loved her.
#5
If that was the real Gromky, I've given him waaaay too much credit. Sinktrap was a no-brainer, thx. In the future, expect rough handling, Gromky. An apology and a STFU is in order
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/25/2009 20:41
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#6
That was the real Gromky. The IP used matches his previous weeks' posts.
Note the original title called her Jackie Onassis but she didn't become Onassis until 1968. In 1964 she was still Jackie Kennedy.
MARLON Brando enjoyed two nights of passionate sex with Jacqueline Kennedy and wanted to bare the intimate details to the world, a new book reveals.
In "Bobby and Jackie: A Love Story," which details a purported post-JFK assassination affair between Jackie and Robert F. Kennedy, C. David Heymann has obtained passages from Brando's account of how he hooked up with Jackie in 1964. They were in the first draft of the Oscar winner's 1994 memoir, "Songs My Mother Taught Me," until an editor friend of Jackie (by then also the widow of Aristotle Onassis) at Random House insisted they be cut, Heymann writes.
The first time, "according to Brando, [their] three-hour meal included a good deal of drinking . . . Jackie and the actor danced and drank. During their dance, Jackie, deeply attracted to Brando, 'pressed her thighs' suggestively into his. They danced again, then sat down and began to 'make out,' " according to Heymann.
He relates: "In Brando's words, 'From all I'd read and heard about her, Jacqueline Kennedy seemed coquettish and sensual but not particularly sexual. If anything, I pictured her as more voyeur than player. But that wasn't the case. She kept waiting for me to try to get her into bed. When I failed to make a move, she took matters into her own hands and popped the magic question. 'Would you like to spend the night?' And I said, 'I thought you'd never ask.' "
A week later, Jackie again hooked up with Brando at a Sutton Place apartment he borrowed from a friend. Commenting on Jackie's "boyish hips" and "muscular frame," Brando said, "I'm not sure she knew what she was doing sexually, but she did it well."
But Jackie then ended it. Heymann writes: "Having twice consummated her relationship with Brando, Jackie showed no interest in pursuing him further."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has put cap-and-trade legislation on a forced march through the House, and the bill may get a full vote as early as Friday. It looks as if the Democrats will have to destroy the discipline of economics to get it done.
Despite House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman's many payoffs to Members, rural and Blue Dog Democrats remain wary of voting for a bill that will impose crushing costs on their home-district businesses and consumers. The leadership's solution to this problem is to simply claim the bill defies the laws of economics.
Their gambit got a boost this week, when the Congressional Budget Office did an analysis of what has come to be known as the Waxman-Markey bill. According to the CBO, the climate legislation would cost the average household only $175 a year by 2020. Edward Markey, Mr. Waxman's co-author, instantly set to crowing that the cost of upending the entire energy economy would be no more than a postage stamp a day for the average household. Amazing. A closer look at the CBO analysis finds that it contains so many caveats as to render it useless.
For starters, the CBO estimate is a one-year snapshot of taxes that will extend to infinity. Under a cap-and-trade system, government sets a cap on the total amount of carbon that can be emitted nationally; companies then buy or sell permits to emit CO2. The cap gets cranked down over time to reduce total carbon emissions.
To get support for his bill, Mr. Waxman was forced to water down the cap in early years to please rural Democrats, and then severely ratchet it up in later years to please liberal Democrats. The CBO's analysis looks solely at the year 2020, before most of the tough restrictions kick in. As the cap is tightened and companies are stripped of initial opportunities to "offset" their emissions, the price of permits will skyrocket beyond the CBO estimate of $28 per ton of carbon. The corporate costs of buying these expensive permits will be passed to consumers.
The biggest doozy in the CBO analysis was its extraordinary decision to look only at the day-to-day costs of operating a trading program, rather than the wider consequences energy restriction would have on the economy. The CBO acknowledges this in a footnote: "The resource cost does not indicate the potential decrease in gross domestic product (GDP) that could result from the cap."
The hit to GDP is the real threat in this bill. The whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars. Consumers will cut back on spending, which in turn will cut back on production, which results in fewer jobs created or higher unemployment. Some companies will instead move their operations overseas, with the same result.
When the Heritage Foundation did its analysis of Waxman-Markey, it broadly compared the economy with and without the carbon tax. Under this more comprehensive scenario, it found Waxman-Markey would cost the economy $161 billion in 2020, which is $1,870 for a family of four. As the bill's restrictions kick in, that number rises to $6,800 for a family of four by 2035.
Note also that the CBO analysis is an average for the country as a whole. It doesn't take into account the fact that certain regions and populations will be more severely hit than others -- manufacturing states more than service states; coal producing states more than states that rely on hydro or natural gas. Low-income Americans, who devote more of their disposable income to energy, have more to lose than high-income families.
Even as Democrats have promised that this cap-and-trade legislation won't pinch wallets, behind the scenes they've acknowledged the energy price tsunami that is coming. During the brief few days in which the bill was debated in the House Energy Committee, Republicans offered three amendments: one to suspend the program if gas hit $5 a gallon; one to suspend the program if electricity prices rose 10% over 2009; and one to suspend the program if unemployment rates hit 15%. Democrats defeated all of them.
The reality is that cost estimates for climate legislation are as unreliable as the models predicting climate change. What comes out of the computer is a function of what politicians type in. A better indicator might be what other countries are already experiencing. Britain's Taxpayer Alliance estimates the average family there is paying nearly $1,300 a year in green taxes for carbon-cutting programs in effect only a few years.
Americans should know that those Members who vote for this climate bill are voting for what is likely to be the biggest tax in American history. Even Democrats can't repeal that reality.
#2
Are they gonna tax the coal that we ship to third world countries so they can do our jobs?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
06/25/2009 13:06
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#3
This is not going to pass. Blue Dogs are scared as hell of it. It is now 1200 pages of BS. It will strangle once and for all the economy. There will be no economy to pay for it.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
06/25/2009 13:11
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#4
Whenever you see the name "Ed Markey" associated with anything, assume you will be screwed in some way. His last major achievement that I can remember was "reforming" the cable TV industry.
behind the scenes they've acknowledged the energy price tsunami that is coming
Yeah, and you are the effin reason why.
Not only is this a titanicly large tax increase, it is not equally applied in any sense. Congress members should be laughed out of the building for this shit, yet here it is with a chance to pass. And all this just to cover a part of the democrat stimulus you betcha.
#7
And yet environmentalists will argue the whole thing is worthwhile, if for no other reason than to cripple the US economy. I mean, to heck with the actual goals of the bill, if it can hurt the US, then let's put our 100% weight behind it.
#8
Simi clean industries will move off-shore to some third world toilet that could give a hoot about Gullible Warming. There will be a net increase in emissions and we lose jobs.
#9
Waxman actually is a dumb as he looks. The rest of the Pelosicrats with half a brain, have to worry about losing their jobs next year if this boondoggle passes.
To find your congressdude/dudette, here's a good site:
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/
#3
How did the newspapers get Elliot Spitzer's private story?
Because someone knew. Someone always knows. There are no secrets in political life.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/25/2009 11:05
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#4
This suggests to me that someone had access to either his or her computer. Was she in NC when these emails were sent or back in Argentina? If she was back home in December, what happened to her computer? Sounds to me like there are some very specific places and persons that could be checked out to answer some questions. Any bets on the party affiliation of the person responsible?
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
06/25/2009 11:55
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#5
I'll bet someone tipped off The State (for money, revenge, glory) and they somehow were able to get spyware installed on his computer.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
06/25/2009 12:57
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Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
06/25/2009 10:40
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#4
Argentina sure gets some strange animal problems. They have an overabundance of beaver that have made themselves as pestiferous as nutria in the US South.
#5
A marine biologist developed a way to make dolphins live forever. One day he was headed back to his lab with a bag of sea gulls (the active) ingredient, when he saw a sleeping lion in the doorway. He carefully stepped over the lion, when he was immediately arrested. The charges: transporting gulls across staid lions for immortal porpoises.
President Obama uses network primetime special and overtime 'Nightline' coverage to talk for more than 45 minutes of combined 75-minute programs, revealing nothing new.
Call this a teachable moment, but even with ABC's best-laid plans to kickstart the debate about health care reform and not allow the "Prescription for America" special to become an "infomercial," as many have complained -- the president spent more than twice as much time as his questioners vaguely answering or not answering the questions asked of him. But the network consistently presented the event as part of the need to fix a "broken system." When asked, every one of the 164 hand-picked audience members said they felt that health care needed to be changed.
President Barack Obama appeared on the ABC network in a town hall format broadcasted from the White House on two separate programs on June 24 -- an hour-long primetime special during the 10 p.m. Eastern Time hour and later on the "Nightline" program that aired during the 11:30 p.m. Eastern Time hour.
ABC's "Good Morning America" co-host Diane Sawyer billed the event as "a serious conversation" about the issue and she moderated the discussion along with her former "GMA" partner, now "World News" anchor Charles Gibson. ABC medical editor Dr. Timothy Johnson, a long-time network advocate for universal health care plans going back to Hillarycare, also participated in the event.
While Obama had to field some difficult questions -- from the audience and ABC -- he faced no Republcian critics of his proposals. The network also allowed him to dominate the program with long-winded and vague answers. Out of the 75 minutes the network dedicated over the two programs (commercials excluded), the president managed to take 60 percentof that time: 45 minutes to give 19 vague responses -- not exactly the "dialogue" advertised by ABC:
In fact, at one point, the president went on for four minutes and 33 seconds to answer a question about government interference, the "Big Brother fear" as the questioner put it and how it would be paid for. In the next segment Gibson pleaded with the president to keep his response to the next question shorter.
Obama was also granted the opportunity to deliberate over two of the audience questions during the commercial breaks. And the initial hour-long program never even addressed some of the most debated aspects of health care because Obama consistently ran long and was unchecked by the hosts. And while some of the members of the audience asked challenging questions, not one Republican critic of Obamacare was given a chance to be heard. Gibson did attempt to question the president about such critics, but no Republican voices were allowed to speak for themselves.
Saving the Most Controversial for Last
In addition to Obama's longwinded responses, the ABC special left the most critical questions until the "Nightline" portion of the segment -- after a 30-minute break for local news and likely fewer viewers.
One of the biggest points of contention opponents of government's involvement in health care has been the threat that it would crowd out private health insurance providers by creating market forces they couldn't compete with -- or what Aetna Insurance president Ron Williams called it as part of the town hall: "introducing a new competitor that has rulemaking ability, the government would have."
While William's was introduced as an audience questioner he actually faced a question from Sawyer, which wound up being a populist rant critical of his industry and emphasizing the president's claim that insurance companies need to be "kept honest."
"If I could, I'm going to bring in Ron Williams from Aetna, CEO of Aetna, and if I can reverse the order a little bit Mr. President, I'd like to ask a question of him and then let you comment on his answer," Sawyer said. "Mr. Williams, Aetna, to take one, an insurance company. We hear people all over the country people see their premiums going up 119 percent in the last several years. They see the profits of the insurance companies, the billions and billions of dollars, even in a lean year. They see profits in the billions of dollars. Is the President right -- that you need to be kept honest?"
Despite Gibson, Sawyer and some audience members' tough questions, the president remained optimistic throughout his 45 minutes of the ABC broadcast and said health care reform would be resolved assuming he gets the support of the American people. He even claimed "the stars are aligned" to get this done.
"The answers are yes to all of that, and if the American people get behind us, this is going to happen," Obama said, getting the last word from ABC.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
06/25/2009 12:55
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#2
He is giving the name Gas Bag an even worse reputation. Anyone who has ever worked for someone who only wanted to hear his own voice and was a de-missive listener knows its all BS. I think this act is getting old and tired and American's are waking up - some with buyer's remorse.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
06/25/2009 13:03
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#3
Sorry, as unfair and rigged as it might be, I just can't get angry about Aetna Insurance president Ron Williams getting screwed on national TV. Sorry, I just can't.
Only by expanding government control of health care can we bring down its cost. That's the faulty premise of the various proposals for health reform now being batted around Washington. The claimed cost control depends on politically safe ideas such as preventive care or the adoption of electronic health records. And neither -- even according to the Congressional Budget Office -- will do much to reduce spending.
If these proposals are implemented and fail to produce savings, government will turn to a less appealing but more familiar tool to cut costs: the regulation of access to drugs and medical services. Medicare is already going down this path. What will be new about government-run health care is the instrument of regulatory control. There will be an omnipotent federal health board. Buried in current reform proposals, this board deserves closer scrutiny.
Our best look at this construct comes from a bill released by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. The bill calls for a "Medical Advisory Council" to determine what medical products and services are "essential benefits" and those that shouldn't be covered by a public insurance plan.
Continued on Page 49
#2
Medicare.
Medicare.
Medicare.
The Gubmint can't get that to work properly, refuses to plan for its near future, and now wants to create an even bigger monster. Idiots writing legislation for a nation of idiots.
Dr. Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldnÂ’t seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan heÂ’s proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get.
The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if “it’s my family member, if it’s my wife, if it’s my children, if it’s my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care.
#4
Health care is rationed now, as is everything else in the world. The rationing mechanism we use is called 'money.'
All that Bammo is suggesting is to change the rationing mechanism. He wants to ration based on scarcity instead of money.
Reminds me of an old cold war joke about the difference between communism and socialism. Under socialism you wait in line to buy oranges. Under communism you say 'what are oranges'? I guess you could round out the comparison by adding that under capitalism we have to pay money for oranges. Gasp. The horror.
On Wednesday, Mousavi met with 70 university professors, said the Web site, Kalemeh. The professors, among a group pushing for a more liberal form of government, were detained after the meeting, the site said. It was not clear where the professors were taken, the report said. most of article is on other stuff in Iran
Posted by: Lord garth ||
06/25/2009
08:30 ||
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If Estimates of Taliban Forces Are Correct, Pakistan Cannot Win
For many years, each time the Pakistan Army has said it lacks the resources to fight the Taliban, at Orbat.com we've engaged in rude sniggering. The Pakistan Army has close to 30 division-equivalents worth of troops, 80% infantry. It is one of the largest armies in the world. Its men are long-service professionals - long service means 10, 15, and 20 years for the soldiers and NCOs. It is well-trained, reasonably well equipped by Third World standards and well led.
How then could Pakistan claim it cannot fight the Taliban?
Of course, it didn't/doesn't want to fight the Taliban because even today with the exception of Baitullah Mesud whom the Pakistan Army says it is hunting, the other three major commanders are pro-Government, as are a host of minor commanders.
But from www.longwarjournal.org June 17, 2009 we learn that this Mesud gentleman has 30,000 fighters under his command and another 20,000 in allied/associated groups. The three other major commanders have 50,000 fighters. AQ in Pakistan has 10,000. This makes 110,000 fighters, and it doesn't take too much math to calculate that at 600 fighters per Pakistan army battalion (rifle and weapons companies) the Pakistan army has 130,000 infantry to the Taliban's 100,000. Of course, that doesn't count the Pakistan Army's approximately 130 or so towed artillery battalions and the approximately 300 or so fighter aircraft in the Pakistan Air Force.
No one can argue that the Pakistan Army has firepower superiority. But the Taliban's forces, for all they operate in units as large as brigades, do not fight a conventional fight when facing the Pakistan Army. They are guerrillas, and while that firepower comes in handy if the Taliban commander makes a mistake, it is of basically no help except to make holes in the ground and kill civilians.
So Pakistan could send every single soldier it has facing India to the west, it is absolutely, completely, totally not in a position to fight the Taliban and win. Even the US, for all its phenomenal surveillance, reconnaissance, intelligence, mobility, and firepower resources cannot win at such odds.
So - something we'd better get used to as a concept - even if Pakistan suddenly got religion and decided to go after the Taliban, it is not going to win. You are going to get one ghastly mess that will, within a year's of fighting, destroy what remains of Pakistan's economy and unity because all out wars inflict unbearable stress on any country, leave alone a 3rd world nation riven by ethnic divides on every side.
Now, Pakistan is not going to get religion. It's going after the Mesud because the US has given the 10-centimer diameter steel shaft and because it seems the Pakistan Army has decided to come down on the Government's side - at least for now. You must keep in mind the Army's leadership is totally opportunistic. At any rate, its not going to go after the other commanders because they are vital strategic assets against the US in Afghanistan and India.
The prospect of taking on the Mesud and his 50,000 own/allied fighters is bad enough, AQ will have to join in because the Pakistan Army is intruding into its safe havens. Now here's what's really scary: the Pakistanis are doing their level to keep the "good" Taliban out of this battle and perhaps even get some of them to help with eliminating Mesud. But, as Bill Roggio at LWJ says, basing his opinion on local information and media the good Taliban are tied by promises and ethnic loyalties to the Mesud fellow. The Pakistan army can say all it wants "we are only targeting an anti-Pakistan person", and it is true in the Frontier money does run thicker than blood, but if for no reason other than that the "good" Taliban have to wonder if Mesud is knocked out the Pakistan state is not going to go after them to bring them under control they way they were under control before the fall of Kabul in 1996.
So: to sum up. Mesud and AQ have 60,000 fighters which is way too many for the entire Pakistan Army to take on to begin with. The whole kit and kaboodle has 110,000 fighters. This is not a winning situation no matter which way anyone looks at it.
Here's more bad news: according to the Indians, Pakistan has deployed 22 brigades against the Taliban. That's almost a third of its infantry, and people, you have to realize that so far the Taliban haven't really put up up a fight. For all the drama the ISPR tries to keep going, if 390 Pakistan soldiers/Frontier Corps have been killed, that's 65 a week. That's not a war, its a bunch of skirmishes.
As someone who has closely studied the Pakistan Army for forty years, Editor can testify that by its lights, the Pakistan army is doing what it can.
Because - please don't forget - there's the equivalent of 40 powerful Indian divisions sitting to the East of the Kashmir Cease Fire Line and International Border, excluding the minimum defense against China and the 70,000 specialized CI troops - who are all regular soldiers, by the way, not paramilitary. You want paramilitary, India can deploy 500,000 against Pakistan if it needs to.
Beyond a point, if anyone thinks the US is going to be able to restrain India indefinitely so that Pakistan can shift all its infantry to the west is plain dreaming. Study the history of the subcontinent for just the last 1000 years and you will see this is just the right time for Delhi to start preparing to bring India's fractious and turbulent northwest under control. In case someone doesn't get it, India's northwest includes ALL of Pakistan.
The Pakistanis would have to be absolute lunatics to even think of moving many more troops to the west. Now if an Editor as an Indian citizen is saying that, think what the Pakistanis will say if the US wants them to move more troops. And that's if they want an all-out war with the Taliban that they cannot win. And they do not want such a war.
Posted by: john frum ||
06/25/2009
06:32 ||
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OKLAHOMA CITY -- A woman has been fined $1,142 after pleading no contest to prostitution charges after she was accused of accepting a box of chips for sex.
Police say they arrested 36-year-old Lahoma Sue Smith in southeast Oklahoma City after finding her in her car with a man who told officers he knew he could find a prostitute in the area. Smith told officers the man said he didn't have any money so she agreed to accept a $30 case of chips as payment.
The man was not charged and his name hasn't been released. Are we talking about poker chips, french fries, potato chips, or wood chips??? The article provides no clue. Thanks for nothing, AP!
TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Iran said the gunman who killed Neda Agha-Soltan may have mistaken her for the sister of an Iranian "terrorist," the Islamic Republic News Agency reported Wednesday. They may have. And they may not have.
Iran blamed the death of the woman known to the world simply as Neda squarely on "those groups who want to create division in the nation," saying they planned the woman's killing "to accuse the Islamic republic of ruthlessly dealing with the opposition," according to IRNA, Iran's state-run news agency. Must be terrorist groups of some kind if they want to take down the Iranian government. Only terrorists would use these kinds of evil tactics. Right?
The report said the investigation into her death is ongoing, "but according to the evidence so far, it could be said that she was killed by mistake. The marksmen had mistaken her for the sister of one of the Monafeghin who had been executed in the province of Mazandaran some time ago." It could be said. And it could be a trial balloon. Or it might not if it sticks.
Monafeghin refers to the People's Mujahedin Organization of Iran, or PMOI, which promotes a secular, Marxist government for Iran, and has waged a violent campaign against the fundamentalist Islamic regime, including bombings that killed politicians, judges and Cabinet members.
Also known as Mujahedin-e-Khalq, the group initially was formed to oppose the Shah of Iran but fell out of favor with the Islamic Revolution of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after 1979.
The European Union removed the group from its list of terrorist organizations this year, prompting outrage from Tehran. The Iranian Foreign Ministry accused the European Union of "making friends and cooperating with terrorists" by removing the group from its list.
Neda, 26, rose to prominence within hours after a crudely shot video documenting her final moments was uploaded to the Web. Shortly after she died Saturday from a single gunshot wound to the chest, she emerged as a powerful symbol of opposition to the Iranian government. One of many, I'm afraid. I guess guys don't count.
"It's heartbreaking," President Obama said Tuesday, referring to the video of Neda, which means "divine calling" in Farsi. Thanks for not voting present, Limpbama. Good to see you have an opinion, even if you did find it on a teleprompter.
"And I think anyone who sees it knows there's something fundamentally unjust about it." Something you just can't quite put your finger on. Or affix your opinion to.
The Iranian government has sought to minimize the impact of her death. By sending Basij and police to oust her family from their homes and go after anyone who mourns her death, of course. What could better befit someone who was killed by, err, "terrorists". That's why her family is reported to be under arrest, evicted from their home, and no funeral allowed, right?
IRNA reported Wednesday that the killer, or killers, may have "thought that they were targeting one of the government opposition people and that is why they immediately distributed the video of the aftermath of the killing through the official and unofficial media in order to reach their murderous objectives against the Iranian government and revolution." They may have. And they may not have . . . .
#6
my understanding is that the Basij asshole was captured by the crowd, had his ID grabbed, and released. Expect him to show up "killed by terrorists™" to cut the "who gave you the orders?" inquiry
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/25/2009 21:01
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#7
"the Basij asshole was captured by the crowd"
Too bad the crowd didn't just beat him to death and leave him for the buzzards.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/25/2009 21:42
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#8
that'll happen, and more horrific for him
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/25/2009 22:40
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A roadside bomb killed five Iraqi policemen Thursday in the once turbulent but recently secure western city of Falluja, police said, a day after at least 72 people died in a market bombing in Baghdad. Police in Falluja in Anbar province, once the heartland of the rebellion against U.S. troops and government forces, said Thursday's blast destroyed a police vehicle and killed all five policemen inside, including a lieutenant.
It came hours after an explosion tore through a busy second-hand market in eastern Baghdad's Sadr City slum, killing 72 people just four days after U.S. forces handed security of the Shi'ite Muslim area to Iraqi troops and police. Saturday, a massive truck bomb killed 73 people near the northern city of Kirkuk. That and the Sadr City market bombing were the bloodiest attacks in the country for more than a year.
Violence has dropped sharply across Iraq over the past year, but militants including Sunni Islamist al Qaeda continue to launch car and suicide bombings aimed at undermining the Shi'ite Muslim-led government and reigniting sectarian conflict. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a member of Iraq's Shi'ite majority, has urged Iraqis not to lose heart if insurgents take advantage of the U.S. military drawdown to step up attacks.
Analysts say attacks are also likely to intensify ahead of a parliamentary election in January that will be a test of whether the country's feuding factions can live together after years of sectarian slaughter unleashed by the 2003 U.S. invasion.
There is a tendency for newly installed presidents, like adolescents suddenly liberated from adult supervision, to do the exact opposite of what their predecessors did. Presidents of both parties indulge in this behavior, though Democrats who campaign as candidates of hope and change are more likely to do so.
Some of this is a legitimate response to the political process: Voters tend to elect presidents who seem to possess qualities and views they thought lacking in their predecessors. But some of it, and especially in the case of Barack Obama, seems to come from an adolescent-like confidence that everything done by those who came before is (insert your own generation's expletive here).
We have seen this spectacularly in the dozen days since the June 12 Iranian election. Back in July 2007, Obama said that he would meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other tyrants without preconditions. Grownup squares like George W. Bush wouldn't talk to these guys, so as the avatar of the generation of hope and change, Obama would. Obama figured he was cool enough to get the mullahs to agree to renounce nuclear weapons and all that hate stuff.
Obama has held to this ever since. Before June 12, he said he would give the Iranian leaders till the end of the year to be enchanted. When millions of Iranians started demonstrating in the streets, denouncing the obvious election fraud and in some cases calling for an end to the regime, his initial responses verged on stony indifference.
He expressed "deep concern" but said he didn't want to "meddle." He issued a statement on June 20 calling on the Iranian government "to stop all violent and unjust actions." Finally, in a hastily called news conference Tuesday, he for the first time uttered the verb "condemn" and said he was moved by the video of YouTube martyr Neda Soltan being shot down by the mullahs' gunmen.
But he clearly hasn't abandoned his policy of seeking the good opinion of tyrants. He didn't even rescind the State Department's invitations of Iranian diplomats to attend U.S. embassy Fourth of July celebrations (halal hot dogs, anyone?). If Bush refused to entertain the emissaries of the Iranian theocrats, it must be right to do the opposite.
But even anonymous State Department officials are saying that the chances are dismal for fruitful negotiations with Ahmadinejad or the tyrant Obama insists on calling "the Supreme Leader" by Obama's deadline -- something that seemed obvious to me and many others well before June 12.
A regime of tyrants dedicated to hatred of America, Britain and Israel is not going to be persuaded to abandon a central goal by even the most dazzling display of adolescent charm.
The other example of adolescent rejection of a policy has come on missile defense. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Democratic politicians opposed missile defense on the grounds -- mistaken in my view, but arguable at the time -- that it would destabilize the balance of nuclear terror between the United States and the Soviet Union. Democrats have clung to that position even after the fall of the Soviet Union, and Obama, as a senator and presidential candidate, joined them, routinely expressing doubts that missile defense could ever work.
As president, he has singled out missile defense for cuts, even in the face of missile launches by North Korea and evidence of continuing missile development by Iran. Bush abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and pushed ahead on missile defense, so it must be bad even if there's no U.S.-Soviet balance of terror to destabilize anymore.
Fortunately, there has been some adult supervision: Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in anticipation of a North Korean launch, has activated missile defense operations in Hawaii.
Obama has not taken an adolescent approach across the board. Despite the yearning of many Democrats for American defeat in Iraq and withdrawal from Afghanistan, he has pushed for something like victory in those theaters.
But he is persistent in seeking negotiations with the mullahs and obviously disinclined to increase the small chance of the far more promising outcome of regime change. Plus, Obama shows a continued distaste for missile defense when tyrants are aiming missiles at us and our friends.
These moves show an adolescent determination to renounce the policies of those who came before, no matter what. As parents know, it takes time for an adolescent to grow up.
#2
It probably masks the desire of the mods to say something really emphatic about the selected individuals. Especially the trolls we've had the last few days.
#3
The reason President Obama was so eager to embrace the Dennis Ross policy towards Iran comes down to a single word – appearance. So along comes a script with the leading actor as the true Anti-Bush hero. One that is willing to engage our adversaries in meaningful dialogue - all for the greater good of the world. It was simply to rich of a role to pass up. Keep in mind; this production was released with only marginal expectations of changing Iranian opinions. And with the exception of scoring political points it really wasn’t for domestic consumption either. The real target audience of this drama was Europe. (And to some extent Russia and China) It’s a simple plot really…if he gets some traction with Tehran – great but in the end he gets to deliver his historic “We gave them every opportunity” speech. Excluding some minor edits his epic presentation has already been written.
The Islamic world view is perhaps best illustrated by the following extract from the book Jihad in Islam, written by Abu Ala Mawdudi, founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan:
Islam is not a normal religion like the other religions in the world, and Muslim nations are not like normal nations. Muslim nations are very special because they have a command from Allah to rule the entire world and to be over every nation in the world. Islam is a revolutionary faith that comes to destroy any government made by man. Islam doesn't look for a nation to be in better condition than another nation. Islam doesn't care about land or who owns the land. The goal of Islam is to rule the entire world and submit all of mankind to the faith of Islam. Any nation or power in this world that tries to get in the way of that goal Islam will fight and destroy. In order for Islam to fulfil that goal, Islam can use every power available every way it can be used to bring worldwide revolution. This is jihad.
In summary, the Islamist struggle is not motivated by grievances or a sense of oppression but rather by an ideology that seeks to dominate. Grievances are viewed as opportunities because they can be exploited and manipulated for the sake of furthering the cause. The grievance argument also gives Islamists the chance to cloud their political agenda in public and use it as something to hide behind when they feel the heat. Therefore, to suggest that grievances cause radicalisation plays into Islamist hands and allows them to present a more acceptable version of their position in public discourse. In either case it doesn't help those who are looking to sincerely address bad foreign policy decisions or those who may have suffered as a result of them.
CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan -- U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal said that U.S. and other NATO troops must make a "cultural shift" away from being a force designed for high intensity combat and instead make protecting Afghan civilians their first priority.
The newly arrived four-star commander said Wednesday he hopes to install a new military mindset by drilling into troops the need to reduce the number of Afghan civilians killed in combat.
Gen. McChrystal is expected to formally announce new combat rules within days that will order troops to break away from fights -- if they can do so safely -- if militants are firing from civilian homes. One effect of the new order will be that troops may have to wait out insurgents instead of using force to oust them, he said.
"Traditionally American forces are designed for conventional, high-intensity combat," Gen. McChrystal said during a visit to Camp Leatherneck, a new U.S. Marine base housing thousands of newly deployed Marines in southern Helmand province. "In my mind what we've really got to do is make a cultural shift."
Because the military is such a big organization, the new message will take "constant repetition," he said.
President Hamid Karzai has pleaded with U.S. and NATO forces for years to reduce the number of Afghan villagers killed in combat. Mr. Karzai has long said that such deaths turn civilians away from the government and international forces and toward the Taliban, a point Gen. McChrystal underscored.
"When you do anything that harms the people you just have a huge chance of alienating the population," he said. "And so even with the best of intentions, if our operation causes them to lose property or loved ones, there is almost no way somebody cannot be impacted in how they view the government and us, the coalition forces."
Thousands of Marines this spring have poured into Helmand, which is the country's most violent province and the world's largest producer of opium poppies. Southern Afghanistan is the center of the Taliban-led insurgency, which has made a violent comeback in the last three years.
Gen. McChrystal, who took command of all U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan last week, is making his first visits to regional commanders to outline the new combat rules.
He said later that U.S. troops may have been overconfident in the early years of the Afghan conflict after the Taliban regime fell so easily. He said the U.S. may have "oversimplified" the Afghan challenge as a result.
Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, the Marine commander at Camp Leatherneck, said his forces were already following Gen. McChrystal's new commands.
"Our focus from the very beginning has not been Taliban. It's been civilians," he said. "We've paid a lot of attention to avoiding civilian casualties. ... We have a lot of combat vets, a lot of Iraq vets. And I think we learned early on the importance of trust and support of the locals."
He added: "There will be plenty of opportunities to kill Taliban, and we're pretty good at that. Bur the focus here, the reason we're here, is the people, not the Taliban."
The Pentagon has asked Gen. McChrystal for a 60-day review of the Afghan war, a review that could result in a recommendation to shift troops to new locations in Afghanistan. Gen. McChrystal said he didn't yet know if he would request more troops.
The Pentagon abruptly pulled Gen. McChrystal's predecessor -- Gen. David McKiernan -- out of Afghanistan one year into a two-year assignment. Gen. McChrystal said his deployment did not have a timetable to it, and that he would stay in Afghanistan as long as the Pentagon wanted him there.
He refused to give even an estimate of how long that might be, saying: "My wife would kill me if she read something too long. I do think continuity is key, though."
#2
Exactly. All they have to do is drag a kid or a woman along and they are invulnerable.
Or they hangout in somebody's house and shoot at Americans as they go by. We can't shoot back because we might hit civilians.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
06/25/2009 5:33
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#3
It's not the ROEs that are the problem per se, rather the 'zero tolerance' attitude that go with them. If you don't trust your subordinates to effectively use the brains they're given, then don't put them in a position of authority. Its the micromanagement that destroys initiative and in the end results in system failure.
#7
As I said before this is farking stupid. This is worse than the 'no fire zones' of vietnam. All a terrorist has to do now is flash a civilian (even if they aren't _really_ a civilian) and voila they have an instant no-fire-zone.
The Democrats (and I think this is coming form on-high) are bound and determined to recreate Vietnam - no matter what the cost in American lives - to them the more dead americans in 'Bush'es war' the better!
#8
I was watching old footage of the bombing of Nazi Germany yesterday or the day before on the History Channel. The allies made a decision to bomb German civilian populations around the clock to break the will of the civilian population. The was soon over. War is not pretty and does not follow Marquis of Queensberrry rules.
#9
I realize he's approaching retirement, but isn't it interesting how General Petreaus and his views no long appears newsworthy. One must wonder if General McChrystal's approach makes him the.... new darling of the administration. The verbage certainly matches.
#11
I've said it before and I'll say it again...there's a large (I think a strong majority) segment of the Democratic Party that desperately craves a defeat for American arms...somewhere, anywhere. My bet for "next shoe to drop" on this issue is for controls on the use of tac air to get so tight that ANY request for close-air support must be approved by the White House.
The Obamessiah and his robot army do not have this country's best interests at heart, and I believe that they're willing to cause something like this if it will serve their larger objective of driving America off the world stage.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
06/25/2009 9:47
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#12
McChrystal's not really wrong - every dead or reported-dead civilian or 'civilian' ends up being a propaganda victory for the Taliban because the US - and its Afghan allies - seem utterly incapable of conducting a propaganda campaign. There are 25 million Afghans and we cannot realistically kill all of them, which is what it could take to 'win' this war if we lose the 'hearts and minds.' We have to get the Afghans capable of being lead trigger-pullers because collateral damage wouldn't be near the propaganda problem. Until that can happen, I think we have to mainly deal in Special Ops and sniper work.
#14
It is a pity that we can`t get rid of the politicians both sides of the Atlantic, because right now they are a disgrace.
Posted by: Dave UK ||
06/25/2009 10:55
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#15
This is also admitting that our military is a failure in the 'information war'. They spend their training, resources, and focus on breaking and killing things and have ignored the requirement to conduct such warfare. The enemy is in that decision loop and our uniform leadership is unwilling or unable to get into theirs. So they continuously 'react' to the enemy's effectiveness in controlling the information.
#17
It might have helped if DoD learned the MSM was on the side of the enemy and actively competed against it. Instead of shutting down the troops on the net and video on the various 'tubes, if they'd found the best and used the talent to conduct 'unconventional warfare' against that media they'd be a in better position today. Old ways of thinking [we just want to refight the good war - WWII] keep holding them down.
#18
"the reason we're here, is the people, not the Taliban."
The reason they're "over there" is that these people
who were members of an organizations based in and sheltered by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan came to the US and did this:
and this
and this
After this tragedy massacre, President Bush declared that "We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.".
Days later he issued an ultimatum
"These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion. The Taliban must act, and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate."
which that the Taliban ignored.
Hence Operation Infinite Justice Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.
Posted by: Spavith Scourge of the Jutes9383 ||
06/25/2009 16:28
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BAQUBAH, Iraq -- At 11 a.m. one day in May, eight Iraqi army Humvees barreled into government headquarters of fractious Diyala province, clouds of dust billowing behind them. They had orders to arrest a council member who belonged to a party that had run afoul of Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq's increasingly assertive prime minister.
Shouts rang out as the man's colleagues heckled the captain who served the warrant. The council chairman frantically called lawmakers in Baghdad and pleaded with the provincial security chief to intervene. Desperate, he then ran after the captain as he led the council member, Abdel-Jabbar Ibrahim, to the waiting Humvee.
The captain promised to return Ibrahim in an hour, no more than two. Chosen in the January elections to represent the province, he has remained in custody since May 18.
"This is a message," said Amr al-Taqi, a colleague of Ibrahim's on the council.
Although Iraq's parliamentary elections are not until January, the campaign has begun, and Maliki has shown a determination to fight with a tenacity and ruthlessness borrowed from the handbook of Iraq's last strongman, Saddam Hussein. From Diyala, where men under Maliki's command have arrested and threatened to detain a host of his rivals, to Basra, where security forces have swept up scores of his opponents since January, the message is: cooperate or risk his wrath.
Although Iraq's sectarian war has largely ended, and the Sunnis feel they lost, another struggle for power, perhaps no less perilous, has begun in earnest. Maliki has resorted to a more traditional notion of politics in which violence is simply another form of leverage. His goal is simple -- to ensure he emerges as prime minister again after the vote.
To allies, he is what Iraq needs, a proponent of law in a state still without order.
"Is Maliki a strongman, personally and through the constitution? Or is he a dictator?" asked Sami al-Askari, an aide to the prime minister. The former, he answered. "Maliki has a strong personality. The constitution gives him great powers, but if he was not a strongman, he would not have done what the constitution allows him to do."
Opponents, some of whom decry the arrests as "a systematic campaign," warned that the strife unleashed by the jockeying could soon spiral beyond control.
"These political tensions are undermining the security of the country, and I'm worried about it," said Barham Salih, the deputy prime minister and a Kurdish leader.
The Instruments of Power
Maliki's ascent has become a familiar narrative in Iraq. In 2006, a reputation for weakness helped secure him the post. Opponents deemed him malleable. Since then, buoyed in part by his success in the provincial elections, he has concentrated power in the hands of what critics call "the impenetrable circle" and taken command of military units that delivered him and his Dawa party what they had lacked since 2003: men with guns.
But the narrative still tells only part of the story of how complicated Iraq is these days. Everyone seems to be looking for an angle, in pursuit of the coalition they think can triumph in the January elections. Everyone has a grievance, no less pronounced.
WASHINGTON — The number of al-Qaida extremists in Iraq has plummeted and their ability to maintain a high-level of attacks has been eroded, U.S. intelligence suggests.
Battered by the surge of U.S. and allied troops into Iraq, and the slowly increasing effectiveness of Iraqi security forces, al-Qaida's franchise in the war-worn country is finding fewer foreign fighters to tap for suicide bombings, said U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials who have been studying the terror group's activities.
Those changes, officials say, suggest that the terror group is evolving to one more heavily dependent on local militants who are less committed to broader jihadist goals.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence reports, said that the number of foreign fighters coming across Iraq's borders had dropped from hundreds to "tens," and the membership of al-Qaida in Iraq, or AQI, has plunged from thousands at its peak in 2006-2007 to hundreds now.
Intelligence reports indicate that not only has AQI become less effective and less popular, it's become a different operation, said one senior counterterrorism analyst.
During its heyday, al-Qaida in Iraq had ties to the terror group's leadership with an eye to expanding beyond Iraq's borders to a broader jihadist effort against the west.
Now, the U.S. official said, AQI is focused on Iraq, struggling to maintain a foothold there as its ties to the central al-Qaida leadership weaken. The terror group's leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are now believed to be hiding in safe havens in Pakistan, along the rugged border with Afghanistan.
Still, military leaders from Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, on down have repeatedly warned that progress in Iraq is fragile, and it is too soon to count AQI out.
As the bulk of U.S. forces pull out of Iraq's cities by early next week, military commanders are already seeing the expected spike in violence, including more large-scale attacks. A truck bombing near Kirkuk on Saturday killed at least 75 people, and an attack Wednesday in a Shiite district of Baghdad killed at least 56.
The attacks have targeted Shiite areas, and appear aimed at inflaming sectarian tension by provoking a similarly violent response from Shiites that could plunge the country into civil war. The attacks also give al-Qaida successful assaults to promote as they reach out to their loyalists.
"We think we have beaten back al-Qaida to the point where they are now conducting attacks that are basically propaganda campaigns to make it look as though they are driving us out of Iraqi cities," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell asserted Wednesday.
Intelligence officials said that the U.S. is concerned about the impending transfer of thousands of jailed militants from U.S. to Iraqi control, and whether al-Qaida loyalists could be released.
Right now, said one counterterrorism official, intelligence reports and internal communications suggest that al-Qaida is suffering from a lack of volunteers, but that could change if some of those prisoners make their way back into the al-Qaida fold.
According to Pentagon spokesman Air Force Lt. Col. Pat Ryder, the U.S. military has seen some recidivism by those released from Iraqi prisons, but it is very low. At this point, he said, there is "no real evidence linking the release" of detainees to any increase in violence.
"There is a concerted effort under way to release those who are not a threat to security," Ryder said.
ALLEGATIONS that Iran's presidential election on 12 June was rigged are being followed up by statisticians in the US and elsewhere who are studying published voting figures for signs of irregularities. They say they have found "moderately strong" evidence that the figures are not genuine, though all are careful to emphasise that maths alone can't prove fraud.
Opponents of the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was declared to have won by a landslide, have pointed to his wide margin of victory, the speed of the announcement and some unexpected results, such as Mehdi Karroubi's poor showing in his home state of Lorestan.
One suggested anomaly - that Ahmadinejad's proportion of the vote remained almost constant as the results were announced in six stages - was soon debunked by New York-based statistician and political pundit Nate Silver. He says this is not surprising when votes are reported in large slabs, and that the same effect would have occurred during last year's US presidential election if the results had been reported this way.
To dig deeper, Boudewijn Roukema of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland, used a mathematical tool called Benford's law. In many random sets of data, numbers are more likely to begin with 1 than any other digit. The next most frequent starting digit is 2, then 3 and so on, in a precise relationship. The law applies to any set of numbers scattered randomly on a logarithmic scale.
Any deviation from this pattern could suggest that figures have been manipulated. This has been used to uncover tax fraud and false expenses claims, and Roukema now says it points to fraud in the Iranian election. He analysed the vote counts reported for the four candidates in 366 districts. Votes for three of the candidates fit expected patterns, but Karroubi has an unexpectedly large number of counts beginning with the digit 7. The chance of such a large deviation from Benford's law happening without foul play is only 0.7 per cent, Roukema says. "The simplest interpretation would be that someone interfered in the overall counts per district."
Political scientist Walter Mebane of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, has found another anomaly. Based on figures from Iran's presidential election in 2005, when Karroubi was also among Ahmadinejad's rivals, he built a statistical model to predict how each would be expected to do in various districts in 2009.
The model assumes that the 2005 votes were based on regional differences in policy preferences, ethnicities and demographics that should still show up in 2009. Yet in around 200 of the 366 districts voting numbers were inconsistent with the model - and in two-thirds of these, Ahmadinejad's vote was higher than predicted. "It is moderately strong evidence in favour of the idea that there was fraud," says Mebane.
This is far from proof, however. "It is also compatible with the idea that the model is no good," Mebane admits. "I've never said that statistics alone can prove fraud." What it can do is identify places where there may be fraud, so that other investigations - such as studying the ballot papers themselves - can follow.
#3
it is good to have professional statisticians weigh in here
back when I was in my 20s and 30s, people thought statisticians would be prominent players in policy analysis because it was important to have accuracy and precision before committing to policy
however, it didn't work out that way; it turned out politicians (both Rs and Ds) and the suck up types that depend on the favor of the politicians resent actual scientific analysis. (I got in trouble a few times for showing policy makers flaws in the p.c. analysis of the times).
I particularly like Silver's analysis because a lot of bloggers (mostly followers of Andrew Sullivan) were touting the constant proportion effect as mathematical certainty of fraud.
Posted by: Lord garth ||
06/25/2009 10:13
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maths alone can't prove fraud.
But statistics are the superior technique for taking a census to determine representation, right?
Prove, no. But very strongly indicate, absolutely. Just like Einstein's theories were only hypotheses until the astronomers saw starlight curved around the solar eclipse. Thank you for the perspective, Lord garth.
President Obama left the door open to a new tax on health care benefits Wednesday, and officials said top lawmakers and the White House were seeking $150 billion in concessions from the nation's hospitals as they sought support for legislation struggling to emerge in Congress.
"I don't want to prejudge what they're doing," the president said, referring to proposals in the Senate to tax workers who get expensive insurance policies. Obama, who campaigned against the tax when he ran for president, drew a quick rebuff from organized labor.
Obama also fielded a pointed personal question during an ABC News town hall at the White House on Wednesday. The prime-time program was the latest in a string of events designed to build public support for his plan to slow the rise in health care costs and expand coverage to the nearly 50 million uninsured.
Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist at the New York University Langone Medical Center, challenged Obama: What if the president's wife and daughters got sick? Would Obama promise that they would get only the services allowed under a new government insurance plan he's proposing. Obama wouldn't bite.
If "it's my family member, if it's my wife, if it's my children, if it's my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care," Obama said.
#1
Senators, Representatives, Governors, Obama, and their families should get only as good a level of care as the least of us if this bullshit is passed. Denial of treatment, redtape, and delays shouldn't only be for "the little people"
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/25/2009 8:47
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Thought Obama promised that we would all have the same health care plan that Congressmen and women have. I never did see that happening. If that can't happen, I like Frank's plan--that they have the same health care that the least of us have. Next we will have a tax on the tax for health care. This is kind of like the deal Clinton gave us, he taxed social security benefits. Do these lawmaker elitists never tire of taxing everything stationary and/or moving, animate or inanimate, etc.?
WASHINGTON -- More troops will be trained as unmanned airplane operators than as fighter or bomber pilots combined, the U.S. Air Force said.
The increased number of drone operators signals a turning point for the military branch as it relies increasingly on unmanned aircraft in concert with piloted aircraft, USA Today reported Tuesday. The "Unmanned System Update" report indicated the Air Force plans to develop drones that would be fighters, bombers and tankers.
The Air Force said it will train 240 pilots to fly Predator and Reaper drones compared with 214 fighter and bomber pilots for fiscal year 2009 ending Sept. 30. Officials said there are 550 drone operators compared with 3,700 fighter and 900 bomber pilots.
"The capability provided by the unmanned aircraft is game-changing," Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz told USA Today. "We can have eyes 24/7 on our adversaries. The importance of that is clear in the feedback from the ground troops -- this is a capability they don't want to be without."
Lexington Institute military analyst Loren Thompson told USA Today intelligence-gathering has been the Pentagon's weak spot for years but has improved recently. I hope this doesn't mean they are training much less manned pilots, but just more unmanned pilots.
WASHINGTON, June 24 (Yonhap) -- U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday extended his country's sanctions on North Korea amid tightening international pressure on the North following its recent nuclear test and other provocations.
Good. Now tighten them.
The sanctions, which extend restrictions on commerce with North Korea for another year under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Trading With the Enemy Act, come after the U.N. Security Council slapped financial sanctions, an overall arms embargo and sea, air and land cargo inspections on the reclusive communist state for its May 25 nuclear test, the second of its kind after one in 2006.
"Because the existence and risk of the proliferation of weapons-usable fissile material on the Korean Peninsula continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, the national emergency declared on June 26, 2008, and the measures adopted on that date to deal with that emergency, must continue in effect beyond June 26, 2009," Obama said in a notice to Congress.
"I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency declared by former President George W. Bush a year earlier," he said.
Laws restricting property dealings with North Korea were to expire on Friday, one year after they were invoked, unless otherwise stated by the president.
Bush terminated the Trading with the Enemy Act for North Korea on June 26, 2008, as Pyongyang presented a detailed list of its nuclear activities, blew up a cooling tower connected to its Yongbyon facility and pledged to return to stalled six-party talks on ending its nuclear programs. He also had notified Congress of his intention to remove North Korea from a list of state sponsors of terror, a move long sought after by the North in order to open access to financial assistance from the international community to help its isolated, impoverished economy.
While talk has abounded recently over the possibility of relisting the North due to the deepening nuclear dispute, U.S. officials and experts have said the regime's nuclear and ballistic missile tests do not constitute terrorist acts and thus do not meet the requirement for relisting the North.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/25/2009
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[Bangla Daily Star] Leader of the Opposition Khaleda Zia yesterday urged the government to immediately take effective steps to investigate each incident of 'repression on politicians, businessmen and citizens' during the emergency period and hold trials of the people responsible.
In a statement issued on the occasion of International Day Against Torture to be observed tomorrow, the BNP chairperson also appealed to the United Nations to take necessary steps for encouraging the government to take such initiatives.
Khaleda recalled the "torture on her and her two sons and her party leaders and workers during the then Army Chief Gen Moeen U Ahmed-supported unconstitutional government of January 11, 2007."
"During the emergency period," she said, "The unconstitutional government had confined me in my house for nearly one year and kept me in solitary imprisonment for another year without trial."
Khaleda said the unconstitutional government arrested her two sons and perpetrated inhuman physical and mental tortures on them taking them to unknown places in the name of interrogation.
"But in the last two years they could not prove in court any allegation brought against me," Khaleda said in her statement.
The BNP chairperson further said other political party leaders, businessmen and citizens were also subjected to torture in the name of interrogation, but proper investigation and the trial of those were not held during the emergency period.
She lamented that no step has been taken yet in this regard although an elected government is in power.
She also criticised the present government for repressing the opposition.
On the eve of the International Day Against Torture, Khaleda condemned all those incidents of repression and expressed her heartfelt sympathy to all the oppressed people of the world, including Bangladesh.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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The Swedish ambassador to Pyongyang has reportedly met with two American journalists detained in North Korea for the first time since they were sentenced to 12 years in a labor camp.
Thank you.
U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly on Tuesday said Ambassador Mats Foyer, who also represents Washington in North Korea, met with Euna Lee and Laura Ling earlier the same day, but did not elaborate on the details. This is the ambassador's first contact with the imprisoned journalists since June 1.
Kelly said Washington continues to urge North Korea to release the journalists through various channels.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/25/2009
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[Mail and Globe] A Khartoum court condemned four Islamists to death on Wednesday for the 2008 killing of a United States diplomat and his Sudanese driver, as the US embassy warned of possible retaliation over the verdict.
Judge Said Ahmed al-Badri sentenced the four to be hanged for the murders.
A fifth man, who had provided the other defendants with the weapon but did not take part in the murder, was sentenced to two years in prison.
John Granville (33), who worked for the US Agency for International Development (USAid), and his 40-year-old Sudanese driver Abdel Rahman Abbas were shot dead in their car in Khartoum on January 1 2008.
"God is Great! Long live Justice!" cried the sister of one defendant when the verdict was announced.
The four men, who remained silent inside the courtroom, shouted Allahu Akbar (God is great) as they were escorted out by police.
Just before the sentence was read out and in line with Islamic law, the judge asked the driver's family whether they forgave the defendants, sought compensation from them, or wanted to see the death penalty enforced.
They opted for the latter.
"Sudanese law does not provide for" a life sentence for murder, said Granville's mother, Jane Granville, in a statement.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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#1
that sentence will stand until the next Ramadan "amnesty"
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/25/2009 20:17
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[Geo News] Reiterating its concern over the drone attacks, Pakistan on Wednesday said it was in regular contact with the US and serious concerns on the recent strikes have been put across strongly.
In response to a question regarding the recent drone attacks, Foreign Office Spokesman Abdul Basit said, "it has been Pakistan's consistent position that drone attacks are a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and must be stopped".
"Pakistan's own law enforcement operations are proceedings satisfactorily and the nation's determination to eliminate the scourge of terrorism remains unshakable", the spokesman stressed.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Former Dubai Department of Finance director-general Nasser al-Shaikh has been removed from all government positions, United Arab Emirates state news agency WAM reported on Wednesday.
Shaikh resigned earlier this week from several government-linked positions, including Dubai Islamic Bank and its affiliate Deyaar just a month after he was replaced as head of the emirate's finances.
At the time, he was moved to the position of assistant to the director of the Ruler's Court for Foreign Affairs.
WAM cited a statement from the media office of Dubai's ruler and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum.
The report did not reveal why Shaikh had been removed. "I don' wanna talk about it!"
Shaikh's surprise dismissal from the finance department, a day after outlining the emirate's handling of the financial crisis and its recovery plan at the World Economic Forum, has triggered questions and fuelled rumors among some investors as Dubai and its constellation of government-controlled companies attempt to restructure and meet looming debt needs.
During his brief tenure, Shaikh earned a measure of respect from investors as head of the department for his efforts to navigate the difficulties created in the former boom-town following a liquidity crunch and collapse in real estate markets.
It was not immediately clear how the decision would affect his chairmanship of Islamic mortgage lender Amlak.
Posted by: Fred ||
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A monkey urinated on Zambian President Rupiah Banda as he spoke to reporters outside his State House offices on Wednesday. "You have urinated on my jacket," a startled Banda told the monkey, one of many that makes their home in the trees outside his offices.
"I will give this monkey for lunch to Mr Sata," he joked, referring to opposition leader Michael Sata, who Banda defeated in last year's elections.
Banda devoted much of his second news conference as president to reassuring Zambians over the dramatic economic slowdown resulting from plunging prices for copper, the country's main export.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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#1
Stupid creature, got the wrong country's president, should have shifted south a little ways.
In its current issue, The Harry Schultz Letter (HSL) reports rumors that "Some U.S. embassies worldwide are being advised to purchase massive amounts of local currencies; enough to last them a year. Some embassies are being sent enormous amounts of U.S. cash to purchase currencies from those governments, quietly. But not pound sterling. Inside the State Dept., there is a sense of sadness and foreboding that 'something' is about to happen ... within 180 days, but could be 120-150 days."
Why would the embassies need a year's worth of local currency?
In case the local country no longer accepts US currency for the stuff the embassy buys locally ...
#5
a NORK hit on, say, Japan or an Israeli strike on Iran would almost certainly cause the dollar (and gold and the British pound) to go way up in value (and equities would take a major hit, except maybe Boeing, Lockheed, etc.).
Chinese upward reevaluation of their currency (yuan) would likely have about the opposite effect.
Posted by: Lord garth ||
06/25/2009 8:26
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#6
I smell Soros. He thrives on chaos and gets rich when things collapse.
#10
Everyone recognizes the value of a common reserver currency
But it doesn't mean you have to have one. A system where countries kept their reserves in a trade weighted basket of currencies would work perfectly well. Although at the cost of more currency volatility.
If the USD gets highly volatile then the point of a reserve currency largely dissapears.
#11
This is some fucking speculator trying to move the needle on a slow news day.
That being said, I'm doing my damnedest to buy something tangible with my savings before the dollar drops like a rock. It doesn't have to "implode" like Douchebag J. Speculator claims to still lose a fuckload of value in the next three and a half years of raging socialism.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
06/25/2009 15:39
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#12
Denninger over at market-ticker thinks it's preparation against flu pandemic. It's now flu season in the S. hemisphere and apparently Argentina's healthcare system is feeling the strain.
#13
I own 1000 shares of GMGMQ (bankrupt GM,) it's hovering around 1.10 to 1.25 and i plan to sell if it gets to 1.25 or better, and yes I CAN afford to lose one grand if necessary, I personaly think Ford is a good longterm, but I trade.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
06/25/2009 20:33
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#14
I forgot to mention I stock a very large pantry, and can stand an extended power outage if needed. that olus a grand in cash and I can weather nearly anything , als o 5 gallons of gas put away, (my truck gets 22 mpg)
(If anyone plans to steal my reserves, I'm also well armed, don't try it.)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
06/25/2009 20:37
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#15
Soros needs to drop dead of a massive cerebral hemorrhage or similar. Real Soon.
The Iranian authorities have ordered the family of Neda Agha Soltan out of their Tehran home after shocking images of her death were circulated around the world.
Neighbours said that her family no longer lives in the four-floor apartment building on Meshkini Street, in eastern Tehran, having been forced to move since she was killed. The police did not hand the body back to her family, her funeral was cancelled, she was buried without letting her family know and the government banned mourning ceremonies at mosques, the neighbours said.
"We just know that they [the family] were forced to leave their flat," a neighbour said. The Guardian was unable to contact the family directly to confirm if they had been forced to leave.
Parents of young woman shot dead near protests are banned from mourning and funeral is cancelled, neighbours say
The government is also accusing protesters of killing Soltan, describing her as a martyr of the Basij militia. Javan, a pro-government newspaper, has gone so far as to blame the recently expelled BBC correspondent, Jon Leyne, of hiring "thugs" to shoot her so he could make a documentary film.
Soltan was shot dead on Saturday evening near the scene of clashes between pro-government militias and demonstrators, turning her into a symbol of the Iranian protest movement. Barack Obama spoke of the "searing image" of Soltan's dying moments at his press conference yesterday.
Amid scenes of grief in the Soltan household with her father and mother screaming, neighbours not only from their building but from others in the area streamed out to protest at her death. But the police moved in quickly to quell any public displays of grief. They arrived as soon as they found out that a friend of Soltan had come to the family flat.
In accordance with Persian tradition, the family had put up a mourning announcement and attached a black banner to the building.
But the police took them down, refusing to allow the family to show any signs of mourning. The next day they were ordered to move out. Since then, neighbours have received suspicious calls warning them not to discuss her death with anyone and not to make any protest.
A tearful middle-aged woman who was an immediate neighbour said her family had not slept for days because of the oppressive presence of the Basij militia, out in force in the area harassing people since Soltan's death.
The area in front of Soltan's house was empty today. There was no sign of black cloths, banners or mourning. Secret police patrolled the street.
"We are trembling," one neighbour said. "We are still afraid. We haven't had a peaceful time in the last days, let alone her family. Nobody was allowed to console her family, they were alone, they were under arrest and their daughter was just killed. I can't imagine how painful it was for them. Her friends came to console her family but the police didn't let them in and forced them to disperse and arrested some of them. Neda's family were not even given a quite moment to grieve."
Another man said many would have turned up to show their sympathy had it not been for the police.
"In Iran, when someone dies, neighbours visit the family and will not let them stay alone for weeks but Neda's family was forced to be alone, otherwise the whole of Iran would gather here," he said. "The government is terrible, they are even accusing pro-Mousavi people of killing Neda and have just written in their websites that Neda is a Basiji (government militia) martyr. That's ridiculous -- if that's true why don't they let her family hold any funeral or ceremonies? Since the election, you are not able to trust one word from the government."
A shopkeeper said he had often met Soltan, who used to come to his store. "She was a kind, innocent girl. She treated me well and I appreciated her behaviour. I was surprised when I found out that she was killed by the riot police. I knew she was a student as she mentioned that she was going to university. She always had a nice peaceful smile and now she has been sacrificed for the government's vote-rigging in the presidential election."
Posted by: ed & Frozen Al ||
06/25/2009
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Is Zero meeting with Dinner Jacket to exchange campaign tips?
[Geo News] Qari Zainuddin, rival of Baitullah Mehsud has been laid to rest in Dera Ismail Khan, Geo News reported Wednesday.
Earlier, his body was brought here from Abbotabad for burial. His body was put in CMH Abbotabad in view of security apprehensions.
In the morning, the body was taken to his uncle Maulvi Sher Muhammed's house situated in Jangi Saeedan here, where his (Qari's) wife, mother and other family members cast a last glance at his face.
In the meantime, the secret security agency's personnel put security cordon around the area. Later on, his body was transported to Frontier Force Regiment Center by an ambulance.
After security clearance, his body was moved to Dera Ismail Khan, where he was laid to rest in Chah Syed shah Munawwar Graveyard near Madina Colony.
During the burial, police continued strict security cordon around the areas.
Posted by: Fred ||
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In a live interview on CNBC today, Warren Buffett said there has been little progress over the past few months in the "economic war" being fought by the country. "We haven't got the economy moving yet." While the economy is a "shambles" and likely to stay that way for some time, he remains optimistic there will eventually be a recovery over a period of years.
One hopes the gentleman has a more detailed analysis he is keeping to himself. After all, even I could come up with something more profound than the statement above, and my understanding of matters financial worries Mr. Wife exceedingly.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Best part is the 'economy sucks' message but the government guys are great. Go figure.
Relatives of several detained protesters have confirmed that the interrogation of prisoners is now being headed by Saaed Mortazavi, a figure known in Iran as "the butcher of the press". He gained notoriety for his role in the death of a Canadian-Iranian photographer who was tortured, beaten and raped during her detention in 2003.
This man needs killin'. If we had a CIA that could keep its mouth shut, I would have a job for it.
“The leading role of Saeed Mortazavi in the crackdown in Tehran should set off alarm bells for anyone familiar with his record,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East and North Africa director of Human Rights Watch.
As prosecutor-general of Tehran since 2003 and as a judge before that, he ordered the closure of more than 100 newspapers, journals and websites deemed hostile to the Establishment. In 2004 he was behind the detention of more than 20 bloggers and journalists, who were held for long periods of solitary confinement in secret prisons, where they were allegedly coerced into signing false confessions.
Mr Mortazavi has also led a crackdown in Tehran that has seen women arrested for wearing supposedly immodest clothing.
Earlier this year he oversaw the arrest and trial of Roxana Saberi, the American-Iranian journalist sentenced to eight years for spying, and his name has appeared on the arrest warrants of prominent reformists rounded up since the unrest started, such as Saeed Hajarian, a close aide of Mohammad Khatami, the reformist former President. With more than 600 people now having been arrested, including dozens of journalists, many fear the worst.
Mr Mortazavi became notorious for his role in the death of Zahra Kazemi while in Iranian custody on July 11, 2003. Kazemi, a freelance photojournalist with dual Iranian-Canadian nationality, was arrested while taking photographs outside Evin prison, Tehran, during an earlier period of reformist unrest in the city, also ruthlessly repressed.
#1
Gee, remember when there was a time that the USA was the lead in pressing such brutality? But now it's "meddling" until which time the polls show you're wrong.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Nearly 2,000 Muslims in Britain have signed a petition against a proposed sex education curriculum, protesting the government's push for compulsory sex-ed for children as young as five.
I have to agree with the objection to the bottom age boundary, and I went to a public school so progressive I had sex ed units in nine of the twelve years I attended classes there.
Classes about personal, social and health matters including sex and relationships will be compulsory for all schoolchildren aged five to 16 when the new school year starts as part of the Sexual Relationship Education (SRE) curriculum in all of Britain's schools according to a government report currently released for public consultation.
The curriculum, proposed by the government as a solution to the country's growing rate of teenage pregnancy, the highest in Europe, is currently open for public consultation. And Muslims are taking advantage of the comment period to tell the government that they oppose teaching sex in school.
Sex, true history, Western philosophy, the usual subjects objected to.
The government has also called for more school-based clinics to provide contraception while Britain's Department for Children, Schools and Families has urged schools to begin teaching sex-ed earlier age.
That I object to, too. Let them buy condoms at the corner shop like everyone else.
Posted by: Fred ||
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The 5-to-16 year old girls need these courses. They might learn to resist having parts of their bodies cut off.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
06/25/2009 1:01
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Eric, unfortunately for some of the girls, five might be too late.
#4
Maybe ZANU-Labour could teach the kids that being a single mother at 16 does not qualify one for Council Housing, and that they and the father will be staying at the girl's parents abode until they can afford to move on. Oh, and until Muslims agree to wash their hands in hospitals to the standard required, anything they say should be ignored. Even then, it would all be taqiya.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
06/25/2009 13:44
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#4
They have this Persian Picnic in Irvine, CA for the Persian New Year. Our church allows picnickers to park in our lot for a fee to raise money for our youth programs.
I volunteered for two reasons:
First, my kids were in the youth program.
Second, the Persian women are FREAKINGORGEOUS and it was a target rich environment.
Yes they are indeedydo beautiful women.
Too bad the mad mullahs want to make them all wear those Burkha things.......its a waste a terrible waste of beautiful women to make them hide their glory under sack cloth.
Posted by: James Carville ||
06/25/2009 16:04
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#5
James Carville:
Have you seen the demonstrations on Culver? Amazing.
A man calling himself a deputy of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Baitullah Mehsud told AFP on Wednesday that his commander had ordered the killing a day earlier of a key tribal rival. Qari Zainuddin -- a young rising tribal leader who was increasingly critical of Baitullah's use of suicide bombings targeting civilians -- was shot dead at a house in Dera Ismail Khan early on Tuesday. "We killed Qari Zainuddin because he was a traitor, he was killed on the orders of Baitullah," said Waliur Rehman, who called an AFP reporter in Peshawar from an unknown location. "Anyone who works against us will face the same fate," he added. Zainuddin spilt from the TTP about nine months ago.
This article starring:
Baitullah Mehsud
TTP
Qari Zainuddin
TTP
Waliur Rehman
TTP
Posted by: Fred ||
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Fighting between rival tribes in Kurram Agency has intensified, with at least seven people killed in the latest clash on Wednesday. At least 31 people have been killed in clashes over the last seven days. Tribesmen are said to have used heavy weapons in the latest clash in Danishkhel. Locals claim that Taliban who have fled Swat and the Tribal Areas are responsible for the unrest in the agency.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Top|| File under: Takfir wal-Hijra
Secretary General of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Abdullah Al-Badri on Wednesday warned OPEC members of the use of oil and energy terminology that does not correspond with the organization's policies.
Some common phrases in oil and energy-related media reports are used to question the organization's leading role in achieving stability in global markets, he viewed, expressing regret that the media outlets of OPEC member states were using them.
Bringing up an example, he mentioned the word "cartel," which is a combination of independent business organizations formed to regulate production, pricing, and marketing of goods by the members.
Despite being a production regulator, Al-Badri noted that OPEC has never been a price regulator, and that global supply and demand have forever been the main factor behind the rise and fall of prices.
Stop laughing, now. Have you ever tried to say the phrase "OPEC has never been a price regulator, and that global supply and demand have forever been the main factor behind the rise and fall of prices" without any lips? It ain't easy, nosirree...
Here they are, I found them where they'd fallen behind the radiator.
[Maghrebia] Mauritanian authorities identified the American shot and killed by two young assailants during a botched kidnapping Tuesday (June 23rd) in Nouakchott as Christopher Leggett of Tennessee. ANI reported. "The American put up very strong resistance, forcing one of his attackers to the ground, who shot him in the head three times," AFP quoted a witness as saying.
According to a statement from the Interior Ministry, the 48-year old taught classes in El Kasr and worked with Noura, a charitable organisation dedicated to supporting women's NGOs. The ministry said it "vehemently condemns and expresses its deep regret at this event [and] presents its deepest condolences to the family of the victim, his family, the people and Government of the United States".
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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#1
The lesson: never fight your captors. Christopher Leggett of Tennessee will be remembered as an idiot who didn't value his own life, instead of a man who refused to surrender his liberty and instead preferred resistance. These are the forbidden tropes, those which must not be spoken.
#2
That's certainly one lesson, gromky. But given the percentage of captives tortured and/or killed by their Muslim kidnappers around the Ummah, how much better is it to surrender immediately instead of attempting escape?
Mostly background information on CurrentTV, media trends and the two journalists.
SAN FRANCISCO -- With backing from Al Gore, Current TV was launched four years ago as a mix of traditional journalism and viewer-produced content meant to create an open exchange with its audience.
But the plight of its reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee, imprisoned after being arrested on the North Korean border, has put the independent cable channel at the center of the news and raised questions about reporting tactics of new media.
While U.S. officials and family members have publicly called for the release of the women, Current TV has remained resolutely silent. The media outlet has not commented or reported on the situation and has even taken the unusual step of deleting messages of support posted to its Web site.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/25/2009
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[3 views]
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#1
yet Big Ol' Al managed to avoid discussing this and traveled to Washington to spread his snake oil on Glowball Wormening. Lying M-F'er. Charlatan, con man and despicable hypocrite...
/I'm just getting started on this bag of sh*t
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/25/2009 20:26
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North Korea threatened Wednesday to wipe the United States off the map as Washington and its allies watched for signs the regime will launch a series of missiles in the coming days.
Off China's coast, a U.S. destroyer was tailing a North Korean ship suspected of transporting illicit weapons to Myanmar in what could be the first test of U.N. sanctions passed to punish the nation for an underground nuclear test last month.
The Kang Nam left the North Korean port of Nampo a week ago with the USS John S. McCain close behind. The ship, accused of transporting banned goods in the past, is believed bound for Myanmar, according to South Korean and U.S. officials.
The new U.N. Security Council resolution requires member states to seek permission to inspect suspicious cargo. North Korea has said it would consider interception a declaration of war and on Wednesday accused the U.S. of seeking to provoke another Korean War.
"If the U.S. imperialists start another war, the army and people of Korea will ... wipe out the aggressors on the globe once and for all," the official Korean Central News Agency said.
Tensions have been high since North Korea launched a long-range rocket in April and then conducted its second underground atomic test on May 25.
Reacting to U.N. condemnation of that test, North Korea walked away from nuclear disarmament talks and warned it would fire a long-range missile. North Korea has banned ships from the waters off its east coast starting Thursday through July 10 for military exercises, Japan's Coast Guard said.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported Wednesday that the North may fire a Scud missile with a range of up to 310 miles (500 kilometers) or a short-range ground-to-ship missile with a range of 100 miles (160 kilometers) during the no-sail period.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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#1
They send one missile, you shoot it down, and we send 50 to destroy everything they have. You should know this already.
#2
Nonsense, newc. They send one missile, Bambi immediately apologizes to North Korea, sends food aid.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
06/25/2009 5:36
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From the horse's mouth...
U.S. Imperialists, Provoker of Korean War
Pyongyang, June 24 (KCNA) -- The Korean people still bear a deep grudge against the crimes of the U.S. imperialists, the provoker and criminal of the Korean war (June 25, 1950-July 27, 1953) though more than 50 years have passed since the war.
The U.S. imperialists who decided to take the DPRK as the first target of attack for realizing the wild dream of world domination after their illegal occupation of south Korea worked out a plan for the Korean war and made all preparations for it.
They desperately armed the south Korean puppet army with modern war means and raised its war capabilities to use it as the shock force for the war of aggression against the DPRK.
According to an official document released by the U.S. Congress, they handed over more than 145,000 rifles, some 2,000 machine guns and submachine guns, over 2,000 pieces of various calibers, 4,900-odd vehicles, 79 warships and others to the south Korean puppet army in 1949 alone.
The number of the south Korean puppet troops who were armed with such war equipment and means and trained in the American way reached more than 100,000 as of September 1949.
The U.S. imperialists deployed most of the south Korean puppet army on the front along the 38th parallel and incessantly perpetrated armed provocations against the DPRK.
They built or expanded airfields, harbors, roads and others in south Korea in an extensive way. At the same time, they worked out a prearranged plan to conceal the armed aggression after the outbreak of the Korean war in an attempt to shift the responsibility for the war provocation on the DPRK.
As seen above, the Korean war was a war of aggression started by the U.S. imperialists with full preparation.
The U.S. magazine Life disclosed the fact that it was the first since the beginning of history that the Korean war had been fully prepared before its start.
The historical facts evidently show that the U.S. imperialists are the provoker of the Korean war and the heinous enemy who imposed dreadful holocaust upon the Korean people.
Nevertheless, they, who resorted to every conceivable trick to shift the responsibility for the outbreak of the Korean war to the DPRK while distorting the history, are running amuck to provoke another Korean war today.
The United Nations Security Council, at the instigation of the U.S., adopted a "resolution on sanctions" against the DPRK on June 12, taking issue with its second nuclear test.
This is another foul product of the U.S.-led international oppression to disarm the DPRK and to suffocate it economically for forcing the Korean people to give up their idea and system.
If the U.S. imperialists start another war, ignorant of the ignominious defeat they had sustained in the past Korean war, the army and people of Korea will determinedly answer "sanctions" with retaliation and "confrontation" with all-out confrontation, the counter-measure based on the Songun idea, wipe out the aggressors on the globe once and for all and achieve the cause of national reunification without fail.
#4
Tu - I beleave that is what they teach their own people (local consumption). I've heard that many North Korean escapees were shocked to find out the truth about the Korean war.
[Quqnoos] Three German soldiers were killed Tuesday in the relatively peaceful Afghan northern province of Kunduz, German Defence Ministry said
Taliban militants attacked a convoy of German troops, throwing hand grenades and their vehicles heading to the provincial centre, Kunduz city.
The soldiers were killed after one of the jeeps was capsized.
A spokesman for the provincial government, Mahbubullah Sayedi confirmed the incident that took place in Chahar Dara district, north of Kunduz city.
The soldiers were killed after their vehicle was drowned into a ditch in the district, a German paper Spiegel reports.
Quqnoos' Basir Samadi in Kunduz said the troops were killed after a ferice fighting with the Taliban militants.
A purported Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, immediately claimed responsibility for the attack said a dozen of German troops were killed and two vehicles were destroyed in the firefight.
The stable northern region of the country has been suffering a record level of insurgency over the past three months, ahead of the crucial Afghan elections.
Germany a strong NATO ally in the Afghan mission has lost 36 soldiers in Afghanistan -- mostly in the north -- since the beginning of the US-led war in 2001.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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#1
Germany's lost 36 - one wonders how many they would have lost had they been allowed to actually fight back.
[Iran Press TV Latest] Tehran mayor says there are some 'problems' in Iran's election law which have caused difficulties during both the election process and the counting of votes.
"The fact is that there have long been problems in our country's electoral law, which has never been reformed," Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf said in a Tuesday interview with IRIB channel two.
He added that the execution of the law in the June 12 presidential election was also flawed.
Qalibaf also criticized what he called 'the absence of a proper system to informing the public' about the election results, saying this created doubts mong the people.
Presidential contenders Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi have called for the nullification of June 12 presidential election result, which declared incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the winner with almost two-thirds of votes.
Both Mousavi and Karroubi have filed complaints about 'widespread vote rigging' -- an allegation denied by electoral watchdog, the Guardian Council, and the Interior Ministry.
Tehran's mayor also criticized the live TV debates between presidential candidates before the election, saying the debates were used by the candidates for 'defaming each other and making accusation against people who were not present'.
Qalibaf, however, said that the TV debates contributed to the massive turnout in the election, adding that it would have been much better if the debates had continued after the election.
According the Guardian Council, 85 percent of the 46 million eligible voters participated in the election.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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#2
so the q is, is this someone distancing himself from the regime, or a sign the regime is stepping backward? I say the latter, if only because it was carried on firmly controlled PressTV. Take that with Khameni offering 5 more days for the 'recount'.
My gut judgement, for what its worth. Rafsanjani is making headway with the Mullahs in Qom (who may not a country run by the IRGC instead of the mullahs, and who may fear the long run deislamization of a good part of the population (much as church collaboration with fascism contributed to the dechristianization of much of Europe)
To head that off, Khameni may offer a rerun of the election.
Posted by: liberal hawk ||
06/25/2009 16:37
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#3
Pardon.
To head off a vote in Qom to remove him as supreme leader, or gut the office of supreme leader.
Posted by: liberal hawk ||
06/25/2009 16:38
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According to the channel, Baitni was addressing the gathering at the funeral of Qari Zainuddin. He said he had parted ways with Baitullah because the latter started to carry out suicide attacks on Pakistani civilians. Baitni said a meeting would soon be called to announce Zainuddin's successor.
Separately, Mehsud's men attacked an office of Baitni in Tank, but no casualties were reported. Also in Tank, two Taliban were killed and one injured in a clash between fighters of Baitullah and Abdullah Mehsud, the channel said. It said security forces had cordoned off the area and started an operation against the Taliban.
This article starring:
Abdullah Mehsud
TTP
Baitullah Mehsud
TTP
Qari Zainuddin
TTP
Tarkistan Baitni
TTP
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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SEOUL, June 25 (Yonhap) -- North Korea on Thursday vowed a do-or-die labor campaign to build a strong, prosperous nation by 2012 under the baton of leader Kim Jong-il, amid growing outside skepticism about the North's economic plans.
North Korea has been dependent on international food aid, mainly from South Korea and China, to feed its 24 million people. But the conservative Seoul government cut off its decade-long rice and fertilizer aid to the North last year, which also faces new U.N. sanctions over its recent nuclear test.
Get the World Food Programme, etc. to cut off the rest of the food aid. It only goes to party cadres and the army. The people starve anyway. North Korea needs to implode, and soon.
State media said Kim has visited about 100 places over the past six months since Dec. 24, when he revived an aged labor movement with a trip to a steel factory. The so-called Chollima movement was launched in 1958 by his father and North Korean founder Kim Il-sung to rebuild the country out of the rubble of the Korean War and continued through the early 1970s.
"The forced march of Great Comrade Kim Jong-il ... is a great journey (showing) his endless devotion to the nation, the revolution and the people," the Korean Central Broadcasting Station, a state-run radio, said, calling the labor campaign an "all-out do-or-die battle of the entire people."
North Korea seeks to build a "strong, prosperous and powerful nation" by 2012, the centenary of Kim Il-sung's birth and when Kim Jong-il turns 70.
They're in their fiftieth year of their five-year plan ...
Adding to the labor campaign, North Korea has set a span of 150 days -- from late April to September -- to further labor productivity. State media regularly report how workers in machinery factories, coal mines and farms are outpacing their production plan under the so-called "150-day battle."
"In the flames of the all-out battle, the movement of socialist competition is gearing up with vigor and energy to achieve the production goals commissioned to each unit by all means," Radio Pyongyang said.
According to the Unification Ministry, Kim has made 77 public outings so far this year, compared to 50 during the same period of last year. The increase was notable in economic and art-related areas, it said.
Analysts see few good signs for the North's economy, with the fall in outside aid and new U.N. sanctions, which entirely banned North Korea from weapons exports as well as related financial transanctions. Some say the financial pressure made North Korea think again over an industrial complex jointly run with South Korea, which it might have considered shutting down as a means of retaliation for Seoul's conservative policy. South Korean firms operating at the park paid more than US$26 million in wages last year to the North Korean government.
North Korea's gross national income in 2007, the latest data available from South Korea's central bank, was $26.7 billion, a mere 2.5 percent of South Korea's $1.5 trillion.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/25/2009
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#1
Do or die. Yikes. Would suck to be a North Korean right about now. Actually it would suck most other times, as well. Maybe they'll really do it this time and become prosperous in 2012? It's like a koala crapped a rainbow in my brain.
#2
Gromky, why did you let a koala get into your head?
Posted by: Steven ||
06/25/2009 11:36
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#3
You know, if China wants to keep a mad dog in the front yard, they can bloody well pay for the dog food.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
06/25/2009 15:22
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#4
South Korean firms operating at the park paid more than US$26 million in wages last year to the North Korean government.
Very telling chose of words there. Almost an admission the the people doing the actual work are slaves of the North Korean Government.
I think when North Korea falls people are going to be shocked at what they find there and what the North Korean people had to suffer for their 'dear leader'.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Afghan soldiers have killed 48 Taliban fighters in two operations in southern Afghanistan aimed at clearing Taliban strongholds ahead of presidential elections in August, officials and the army said Wednesday.
Local troops backed by NATO-led international forces stormed a Taliban stronghold in the southern province of Uruzgan on Tuesday, killing 23 insurgents, Afghan army General Sher Mohammad Zazai told AFP.
"We had an operation in Chinarto area last night during which we located a Taliban hideout. We killed 23 enemy fighters," Zazai said.
" We had an operation in Chinarto area last night during which we located a Taliban hideout. We killed 23 enemy fighters "
Sher Zazai, Afgan Army General
Fighter jets from the NATO force took part in the battle close to the provincial capital of Tirin Kot and near the Pakistan border, he added.
The operation was part of an anti-insurgent drive recently launched to dislodge Taliban fighters from their strongholds ahead of the August 20 presidential elections, the general said.
The Afghan defense ministry reported separately that troops had killed 25 "terrorists" in a three-day clean-up operation that ended on Tuesday in the southern province of Helmand.
Helmand, the main producer of Afghanistan's illegal opium, sees some of the worst of the insurgency, with a handful of districts said to be under insurgent control.
U.S. national security adviser James Jones visited the province on Wednesday as part of a tour of Afghanistan to assess implementation of a new U.S. strategy against the Taliban that promises more troops, money and development.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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#1
The Taliban headcount seems to be rising almost exponentially on both sides of the border. And the Taliban dead are not being rolled into the civilian death count (Don't want to embarrass The Won I suppose).
I commented that he was an apologist, and comment response was that he performed adequate penance in risking getting his coconut cracked. Note that hasn't happened. Here's a comparison of this MSM lib getting his credibility lanced while doing the "Duranty-Twist" suckup to a Islamic Thugocracy
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/25/2009
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You ever notice that when it comes to 180's or flip-flops that the liberals are more professional in that aspect than anyone.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
06/25/2009 13:16
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Police claim to have arrested at least 43 suspected terrorists from various parts of the province as part of a countrywide crackdown against militants. On Wednesday, officials revealed they had arrested 25 suspected Taliban from Islamabad, some of who were plotting attacks on foreign targets.
Most wanted: "We have arrested 25 Taliban and recovered suicide jackets from them. Six of the men arrested had been on the most wanted list," Islamabad police chief Kaleem Imam said. "These terrorists, who hailed from Swat and Waziristan, were planning sabotage activities in Karachi, Lahore and other big cities," he added. "Their targets mostly were law enforcement agencies, vital installations and foreign dignitaries," the police chief said.
Confirming the threat, the Swedish Foreign Ministry has claimed that one of the men arrested had told investigators he had been preparing for attacks on embassies, including the Swedish mission.
Also on Wednesday, Punjab Inspector General Tariq Saleem Dogar told a top-level meeting in Lahore that the 18 terrorists had been arrested in from Punjab and suicide jackets recovered over the past month and a half.
Hijratullah alias Shakirullah alias Pattanga alias Sher Khan
al-Qaeda in Pakistan
Malik Naeem Haider alias Waqas alias Vikki alias Haji
al-Qaeda in Pakistan
Muhammad Akhtar Naeem alias Shah Jee
al-Qaeda in Pakistan
Muhammad Zubair
al-Qaeda in Pakistan
Muhammad Zubair alias Naik Muhamad
al-Qaeda in Pakistan
Qari Asim
al-Qaeda in Pakistan
Qari Muhammad Arshad
al-Qaeda in Pakistan
Qari Muhammad Ismaeel
al-Qaeda in Pakistan
Qari Sanaullah
al-Qaeda in Pakistan
Rizwan Abdul Qadir
al-Qaeda in Pakistan
Rizwan Mehmood
al-Qaeda in Pakistan
Said Ahmad alias Mujahid
al-Qaeda in Pakistan
Saleem Zaman
al-Qaeda in Pakistan
Shahbaz Ali Khalid alias Abdulla
al-Qaeda in Pakistan
Shujat Ali alias Tikka
al-Qaeda in Pakistan
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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#1
"We have arrested 25 Taliban and recovered suicide jackets
Cases like that need a speedy trial and a rapid, public execution - perhaps by their own suicide vest. Just make sure the public is out of range when you remotely detonate.
#2
I hope it's not Vicky, possessor of the Bosom of Desire. I don't think I could take that. But it's probably not. That was a long time ago, in a convertible far away...
Former Queens Assemblyman Anthony Seminerio pleaded guilty today to fraud charges.
Seminerio, who resigned yesterday, could face up to 13 years in prison when he is sentenced in Manhattan federal court on Oct. 20.
He remains free on bond.
Seminerio, 74, who has been an assemblyman for over 30 years, allegedly took $1 million from various companies doing business with the state, creating a fake consulting firm in 2000 to hide those payments.
Seminerio, a Democrat, also faces as much as a $175,000 fine for his involvement in the alleged wrongdoing.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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#1
A Democrat? From New York? And crooked on top of it?
The sun rose in the west this morning.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
06/25/2009 12:54
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#2
Seminerio, 74, who has been an assemblyman for over 30 years, allegedly took $1 million from various companies doing business with the state, creating a fake consulting firm in 2000 to hide those payments.
A million in 30 years? That's probably the tip of the iceberg.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Many Iraqis, inured to violence after years of slaughter between Shiites and Sunnis, seem more worried about the corruption that has crept into every corner of life and is eating away at Iraq's nascent public institutions.
The violence triggered by the 2003 U.S. invasion is fading and as it does, Iraqis focus more and more on the problems plaguing their daily lives, such as intermittent electricity, a lack of clean drinking water and an overwhelmed sewage system.
" I cannot move one step without bribing people. Everyone has got their mouths open as if I am feeding birds "
Adel Hamza, head of public relations at a foreign construction company
Topping the concerns of many is a pandemic of corruption, which is undermining efforts to rebuild and provide basic services and could ultimately brew so much discontent that the flagging insurgency may find rich soil in which to renew itself.
"I cannot move one step without bribing people," said Adel Hamza, who as head of public relations at a foreign construction company is responsible for getting contracts signed, stamped and authenticated by Iraqi authorities. "Everyone has got their mouths open as if I am feeding birds."
It is difficult to find someone in the government who can put a figure on the amount being embezzled or paid in bribes for government contracts, passports or other official paperwork.
One senior official, speaking on condition he not be identified, said at least $4 billion of Iraq's $58.6 billion 2009 annual budget was expected to go astray.
As oil prices surged to historic highs last year over $147 per barrel, the Iraqi economy was flooded with cash. Only Somalia and Myanmar were seen as more corrupt than Iraq in 2008, according to corruption watchdog Transparency International.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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A leading Chinese activist, jailed since last December, has been charged with subversion after calling for improved human rights in China.
Liberty is indeed subversive ...
Liu Xiaobo is a prominent scholar who has been in prison before for his support of the democracy movement. Amnesty International has condemned the arrest and called for his immediate release.
Fifty-three year old former university professor, Liu Xiaobo, was jailed in 1989 for his part in the Tiamamen Square democracy protests. He was again arrested six months ago for signing a pro democracy petition, Charter 08. He was held in an unknown location, denied access to a lawyer, and has only now been formally charged.
The police statement quoted in the official media says he has been 'engaged in agitation activities, such as spreading of rumours and defaming of the government, aimed at subversion of the state and overthrowing the socialism system in recent years'.
Amnesty International has been calling for his unconditional release since his arrest in December. Deputy Asia Pacific programme director, Roseann Rife, says Mr Liu could face years in jail.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/25/2009
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When can we expect a statement from Obama?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
06/25/2009 12:38
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#2
Sanctions?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
06/25/2009 12:39
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South Carolina GOP Gov. Mark Sanford admitted Wednesday to an affair, and resigned his position as chair of the Republican Governor's Association following a strange week in which the governor dropped off the grid and could not be located.
"I have been unfaithful to my wife. I developed a relationship with what started out as a dear, dear friend from Argentina," Sanford said in a rambling and often emotional news conference at the state capital in Columbia.
"I'm a bottom line kind of guy I'm just gonna lay it out. It's gonna hurt and I'm going to let the chips fall where they may," said Sanford, often touted as a potential 2012 presidential hopeful.
Sanford apologized to his wife, Jenny, and his children. "To Jenny, anybody who has observed her over the last 40 years of my life knows how closely she has stood by my side in campaign, after campaign, after campaign," he said.
"I've let down a lot of people, and that's the bottom line," he said.
Sanford said his family did know about the affair before his trip to Argentina, and that he had spoken with his father in law about the situation
Asked if he and his wife had separated, Sanford responded, "I don't know how you want to define that. She's there, I'm here."
"What I did was wrong, period," he said. "I spent the last five days crying in Argentina."
The governor said that his staff did not deserve blame for giving misleading statements about his whereabouts to the press - first that he was off writing and then that he was hiking the Appalachian Trail.
"I apologize to my staff," Sanford said in a statement released after the 2 p.m. news conference. "I misled them about my whereabouts, and as a result the people of South Carolina believed something that wasn't true. I want to make absolutely clear that over the past two days at no time did anyone on my staff intentionally relay false information to other state officials or the public at large. What they've said over the past two days they believed to be true, and I'm sorry to them for putting them in this position."
Soon after the press conference ended, the RGA announced that Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour - another potential 2012 candidate for the GOP - would be stepping in to fill Sanford's previous role as chairman.
"The news revealed today hurts all of us who have gotten to know Governor Sanford over the years and so it is with regret that the RGA accepted Governor Sanford's resignation as chairman," Barbour said in a statement. "While this news is deeply disappointing, I also know it's important to remain focused on the future and Governor Sanford's resignation allows him and us to do just that."
Sanford's announcement was the latest twist in a story that began as a mystery but now has turned into a fiasco for Sanford, whose staff provided a series of increasingly confusing cover stories when his whereabouts became the subject of global news coverage.
"I don't know how this thing got blown out of proportion," the governor told The State newspaper of Columbia, S.C., after he landed at the Atlanta airport Wednesday morning.
Sanford, a conservative Republican who had a promising future in national politics, is now not only the butt of jokes but has serious questions to answer about the bizarre series of events.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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...Word here in Columbia is that the state powers-that-be have told Sanford to fall or be pushed - there is zero support for him right now, and an impeachment is likely if he doesn't go quietly.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
06/25/2009 5:31
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#2
I thought the college hiking trail coordinator story that preceeded his admission was a bit strange.
#3
Governors are inherently competitive and it seemed to me that it would be difficult to top former gov Spitzer's goofy adultery. Yet here Gov Sanford has come up with a goofier adultery.
I suppose you might try adultery while parachuting or adultery while on a eco whale protection mission or before a welcoming speech at a stamp collection convention. I shutter to see what's next.
Posted by: Lord garth ||
06/25/2009 9:22
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[Maghrebia] Maghreb analysts reacting to the ongoing tensions between Iranian protesters and their government over the results of the June 12th presidential elections suggest that the political crisis may have implications beyond Iran's borders. Some see the violent clashes as a struggle between theocracy and democratisation in a new age of open and global media; others contrast the situation in Iran to that seen in Arab countries.
"We can understand from what's taking place in Iran right now that the laws of the Khomeini revolution of the 1970s are no longer suitable for governing the liberal generation of today's 'global village'," said Talib, a Mauritanian journalist. "This will inevitably lead to violence, destruction and loss of trust unless the opinions of these generations are taken into account by returning to democratic methods".
Kader Abderrahim, a researcher for the Institute of International and Strategic Relations in Morocco, said a battle has begun between religious rule and democracy. The theocracy established in 1979 now finds itself in the same situation as the Shah's feudal regime before it was overthrown. "This system is running out of puff," he said, "and if it doesn't want to come to the same end, then the only solution is dialogue."
Iranian leaders believed their society was truly closed, suggested Taj Eddine El Housseini, a Moroccan lecturer in international relations. Nevertheless, citizens used mobile telephones and the internet to reveal what is truly happening in Iran to the rest of the world. "There were many people hoping that the protests would end with the speech from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but they have just increased all the more," he said.
Omar Belhouchet, director of Algeria's El Watan newspaper, noted that something is changing in the Islamic republic: "Despite being considered a hermetically-sealed regime, the Iranian authorities have discovered, in the light of the presidential election... a new form of political challenge advanced this time by people from their entourage who until now declined to challenge them so openly."
Another Algerian newspaper, Le Temps, discussed the use of amateur video to break a local media blackout. The violence of the clashes was depicted, one journalist wrote, "in a video published online on Saturday, and seen by hundreds of thousands of Internet users, showing the bloodied face of a young woman, Neda, presented as a demonstrator shot dead".
Moez Zayoud, professor of media at the Tunisian University, said the recent election uncovered and exposed totalitarian regimes in the entire region. "Media coverage of the events in Iran showed that [these] regimes... are still unaware that tightened censorship on the modern technologies of information and communication will only lead to adverse results," he suggested.
"In the past, it was possible to besiege the few journalists who were moving against the prevailing current," Zayoud continued. "Today, it has become easy for ordinary people to take part in the production of media content."
In fact, he said, there are so many ways to disseminate information now that "it has become impossible for the eyes of censorship to reach everyone".
Zayoud concluded with a critique of the Iranian regime's response to the emerging crisis. "[T]he Iranian authorities became confused over the shaking of their image in the world, and their portrayal as election riggers and oppressors of freedom. The Iranian regime confronted that confusion with high tension... and its heightened measures of censorship on different media -- especially electronic media -- led to the circulation of a darker picture of conditions in Iran."
The professor said that Iran's premeditated closure of social networks and sites such as YouTube, Twitter, DailyMotion and Facebook was unacceptable to young people, "including those who didn't originally take part in the demonstrations... these websites have become an important part of their social lives, and it seems that the Iranian regime is still refusing to recognise these changes."
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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#1
the first boss is the last. The US screwes it up or the moslems do. Everlasting peril?
I think not.
I requested Darius. You have any better suggestions?
#2
"[T]he Iranian authorities became confused over the shaking of their image in the world, and their portrayal as election riggers and oppressors of freedom."
I doubt that. I think they were surprised by the reaction of the populace, period. Elections have always been rigged by controlling who can run, and suppressing freedom is a key part of their religious responsibility. The U.S. is the Great Satan because of the freedom to do and to promote speech and actions that the Koran forbids.
[Kyodo: Korea] Swedish Ambassador to North Korea Mats Foyer met Tuesday with two detained U.S. journalists for the first time since they were sentenced to 12 years hard labor early this month, the State Department said. Foyer, whose country represents U.S. interests in North Korea in the absence of diplomatic relations, met with journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling, department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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#1
And the 'Dance' begins.....
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
06/25/2009 8:14
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MOSCOW, June 24 (Yonhap) -- South Korea and Russia agreed Wednesday to seek concrete steps toward an envisioned five-way meeting with the United States, China and Japan as part of efforts to press North Korea to rejoin long-stalled disarmament talks.
"The two nations reached a common view to support any format (of consultations), including the five-party one for North Korea's return to the six-way talks (on its nuclear program)," Seoul's top nuclear envoy Wi Sung-lac told reporters after meeting here with his Russian counterpart Alexei Borodavkin.
The five-way event under consideration would be a temporary tool to show unity among the regional powers and help give momentum to troubled efforts to persuade the defiant North to reengage in the Beijing-based negotiations. In protest of the U.N. Security Council's condemnation of its April 5 long-range rocket launch, Pyongyang said it would never rejoin the six-party talks. It even conducted a second nuclear test, provoking harsher U.N. sanctions.
As chances are slim that the North will come back to the talks in the near future, the South Korean president proposed in his summit with U.S. President Barack Obama last week that the five parties hold their own gathering.
Borodavkin reiterated Moscow's regret over Pyongyang's decision to shun the bargaining table. "Such a decision should be reconsidered," he said. "Diplomacy should be employed to resolve the problem, and there can be no other way than dialogue. Close cooperation among relevant parties is necessary."
No other way than dialogue? From a Russian? If Bambi had any stones he'd remind Putin of that line next time they talked about Georgia ...
He added Russia is not opposed to the five-way consultations as long as they are aimed at resuming broader nuclear talks with the North.
The feasibility of the event appears to depend on China, host of the six-party forum and the North's closest traditional ally. China has neither agreed nor disagreed publicly to the move.
"The Chinese government believes the six-party talks are the best way to realize the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a press briefing Tuesday when asked about Beijing's position. China is willing to keep maintain communication and coordination with the involved parties, Qin added, maintaining diplomatic ambiguity.
South Korean officials said China remains cautious and has been informed of a rough concept of a five-way meeting. "If related countries present a more concrete plan, including agenda items, China is expected to take a clearer stance on the issue," a foreign ministry official said, requesting anonymity.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/25/2009
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[Al Arabiya Latest] Days after President Nicolas Sarkozy slammed the burka, or face veil, as "not welcome" in France, Islamic scholars said the burka was not obligatory in Islam and said every state had a right to ban the face veil.
The burka debate has been raging for a while in Europe with countries like the Netherlands banning it in universities and the British press reporting that Muslims and non-Muslims alike are calling for a ban on the face covering attire.
As for the Islamic reaction Egypt's Grand Imam, Sheikh Mohammad Tantawi, said the face veil was not compulsory in Islam and said every head of state had the right to accept or prohibit it.
" I have nothing to do with the French president's decision. Every country has its own rules "
Sheikh Tantawi
"I have nothing to do with the French president's decision. Every country has its own rules," Tantawi who heads al-Azhar University, the world's leading Sunni Islam institution, told Al Arabiya.
Tantawi added that women who wear the burka have to abide by the rules of the country they live in, especially because it is not an obligation in Islam.
"The traditional headscarf [hijab] is what is obligatory. This means covering the entire body except the face and hands and wearing clothes that are neither tight nor transparent," he said.
In a parliament session, Sarkozy supported French lawmakers' request that an inquiry be held to determine if the face veil undermines French secularism or women rights.
"We cannot accept to have in our country women who are prisoners behind netting, cut off from all social life, deprived of identity," he said. "That is not the idea that the French republic has of women's dignity."
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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#1
Please read Gordon Brown even though you are scared of the muslim community!
Personally i know the muslim community has high unemployment dont mix with other communities and are not wanted by the average Joe!
#5
The Quranic passage in Sura 24 (al-núr, "The Light"), verse 31, reads in Arabic "wa-l-yaDribna bi-KHumuri-hinna ɛalâ juyûbi-hinna", and is traditionally translated as saying that women "should draw their veils over their bosoms" (Yusufali interpretation).[1] It has been interpreted as command for women to cover themselves, and is used in support of hijab. In Luxenberg's Syro-Aramaic reading, the verse instead commands women to "snap their belts around their waists." Luxenberg argues that this is a much more plausible reading than the Arabic one. The belt was a sign of chastity in the Christian world. Also, Jesus puts on an apron before he washes the disciples feet at the last supper
[ADN Kronos] A total 26 Pakistan Air Force officials have been court martialled after being found guilty of links with terrorists. Six of the group have been sentenced to death.
The men were among over 50 PAF officials arrested on charges of having links with terrorist organisations, unnamed sources told Pakistan's Geo News.
The six PAF officials sentenced to death include two senior technicians named as Karamdin and Khalid Mehmood; a carpool technician named as Nawazish; and three junior technicians named as Niaz, Nasrullah and Adnan, sources said.
The men were among as many as 57 officials arrested in the Pakistani cities of Lahore, Kamra, Sargodha, Mianwali and Karachi, according to the sources.
Of 57 officials also included 26 officials who were court-martialled and sentenced to between three and half and 17 years in jail.
According to the sources, investigations of some of the PAF officials and their suspected terrorist links began under former president Pervez Musharraf. An unnamed high-ranking PAF official and a carpool technician named as Amir who are also wanted for suspected terrorist links remain at large.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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#1
The reason was involvement in an assassination plot on Musharraf in December 2003.
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/11-57-air-force-officials-involved-in-musharraf-assassination-attempt--il--08 (url was too long to put in field)
[Al Arabiya Latest] A Belgian appeals court decided Tuesday to hand over a Tunisian- Belgian former footballer to U.S. authorities to stand trial for his alleged ties to the al-Qaeda terror organization. American authorities want the 39 year-old Nizar Trabelsi extradited for cooperating with al-Qaeda in plotting attacks U.S. and NATO air bases in northern Belgium in 2001.
Trabelsi, played for several German teams before he was arrested in 2001, two days after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. In 2003, he was sentenced to eight years in jail for plotting to attack American soldiers and planning to bomb a U.S. airbase in Belgium. He was found guilty of arms possession and his membership in a terror organization.
Confessional reports show Trabelsi, who tried to escape several times from prison in 2007, intended to blow himself up in front of a restaurant near the base located about 160 km (100 miles) from Brussels.
The ex-footballer is reported to have met with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden on many occasions.
This article starring:
Nizar Trabelsi
al-Qaeda in Europe
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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Two U.S. Democratic lawmakers want Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to relax recently tightened standards for mortgages on new condominiums, saying they could threaten the viability of some developments and slow the housing-market recovery, the Wall Street Journal said.
In March, Fannie Mae said it would no longer guarantee mortgages on condos in buildings where fewer than 70 percent of the units have been sold, up from 51 percent, the paper said. Freddie Mac is due to implement similar policies next month, the paper said.
In a letter to the CEO's of both companies, Representatives Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Anthony Weiner warned that a 70 percent sales threshold "may be too onerous" and could lead condo buyers to shun new developments, according to the paper.
Hokay, we've got a Frank and a Weiner, now all we need is a Bean. And....we have one!
The legislators asked the companies to "make appropriate adjustments" to their underwriting standards for condos, the paper added.
In an interview with the paper, Weiner said the rules have "had a real chill on the ability to get these condos sold," at a time when prices of condos have fallen enough to attract potential buyers.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/25/2009
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#1
It worked so well last time.
Posted by: Formerly Dan ||
06/25/2009 6:42
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#2
guaranteed that this mincing twit will disavow any responsibility (AGAIN) when this fails as well
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/25/2009 8:44
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#3
Let the market work, Bawney. The market is smarter than you are.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
06/25/2009 12:52
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#4
YJCMTSU!
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
06/25/2009 12:58
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The United States and Venezuela are to reinstate ambassadors to Caracas and Washington, setting aside a diplomatic spat that soured ties last year. The two nations expelled each other's envoys last September in a dispute involving allegations by Bolivia, a close ally of Venezuela, that Washington was meddling in its internal affairs.
Clearly better to be an enemy of the US than a friend as long as Bambi is in charge ...
It would be petty and small of me to ask how long until U.S. pulls its ambassador from Israel, right?The normalisation of diplomatic ties "will take place in the coming days, and as soon as the ambassadors have resumed their functions we will move forward to a more fluid communication," Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan foreign minister, said on Wednesday.
Ian Kelly, a US state department spokesman, said it was unclear when an ambassador would return to Caracas or who it would be.
Reuters quoted state department sources as saying that Patrick Duddy, who was expelled from Caracas in September, would return there. His counterpart Bernardo Alvarez is expected in Washington this week.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/25/2009
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Misbahuddin Mehsud, the new chief of the Abdullah Group and the successor of Qari Zainuddin, said on Wednesday that his men would continue fighting against Baitullah Mehsud until he was killed. The 23-year-old said he "strongly supports" the ongoing military operation in Waziristan against. In interview with Daily Times 30 hours after the killing of his elder brother Zainuddin, Misbah said the murder of his brother would not either "demoralise" his group or "hurt its mission". "We know who killed Zainuddin," he said.
This article starring:
Misbahuddin Mehsud
TTP
Qari Zainuddin
TTP
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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#1
It was just this sort of internal violence that finally turned the tide in Iraq. I can't believe the only natives out there who are capable of violence and vengeance are all in the Taliban.
[Iran Press TV Latest] Iran's supervisory body the Guardian Council says there have been no major irregularities in the country's presidential election.
The council's Spokesman Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei told Press TV on Wednesday that the body had reviewed all complaints lodged by the presidential candidates.
The remarks came as the Guardian Council extended a deadline to endorse the results of the elections. The Iranian official said the extension of the deadline to endorse the poll was a confidence-building move and there had been no major irregularities in the vote. He concluded that the final decision of the council is expected to be declared at the end of the five-day extra time.
The influential body, which oversees the election, had a 10-day deadline to approve the June 12 election results, after looking into the complaints lodged by the presidential candidates.
The deadline was to expire on Wednesday but Ahmad Jannati, the Secretary of the Council asked the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei to extend the deadline by five days. Ayatollah Khamenei in a letter to Jannati on Tuesday agreed with the request.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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#1
Hey! If they can decide who reuns, why can't they decide who wins?
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/25/2009 6:29
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The current uprising in Iran is not merely about a fraudulent election. The simmering masses of Iran are restless for the freedom and prosperity they once enjoyed, before being straitened for decades by the strictures of religious fanaticism. The people have seized upon this election fraud to push for greater openness and such forgotten notions as womenÂ’s rights. Nothing better illustrates the awful injustices Iranian women face than a soon-to-be released film, The Stoning of Soraya M.
The film tells the grisly true story of an innocent woman who was stoned to death in Iran on charges of adultery. The events – which are described in flashback by the title character’s aunt, Zahra – take place in 1986, in the rural village of Kupayeh. Zahra recounts how years earlier her niece Soraya entered a marriage that had been arranged by her parents. She was 14 and her husband, Ali, was 20. Together they had four children, two boys and two girls. Ali was emotionally and physically abusive to his obedient wife, physically beating Soraya and openly cavorting with prostitutes.
[Jerusalem Post Middle East] Russian President Dmitry Medvedev claimed Tuesday to have secured the support of Israel and all other involved parties for a Middle East peace conference in Moscow.
Sounds like fun. Isn't Israel's foreign minister a Russian emigrant?
A "Moscow conference on the Middle East should become an important stage in our actions" toward peace talks, Medvedev said in a speech to the 22-member Arab League in Cairo. "Today we have principal agreement from all parties."
The Russian president also warned against forcing democracy on Arab states and praised US President Barack Obama's address to the Arab world, saying it showed more tolerance.
"There are things to learn from the Arab world and therefore, mentoring, forcing democracy and especially direct interference are absolutely inadmissible," Medvedev said. "Understanding of this is growing in the world. One example is President Barack Obama's speech."
Medvedev also said he supports a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital as a result of a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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According to Wikipedia, Dr. Khan started writing for this newspaper in November 2008. Let us use this opportunity to examine the caliber of thought of Pakistan's greatest living scientist.
There was a lot of publicity and great expectations about President Obama's visit to Saudi Arabia and Egypt. While not much was expected in terms of public engagements, all attention was focussed on his visit to Egypt and his address to students and faculty at the famous Al-Azhar University in Cairo. I heard that speech live and, as was to be expected, it was more rhetoric than substance.
We were given the good news that America planned to pull its troops out of Iraq by 2012. (Weren't we given the impression during his inaugural speech that the pullout would be almost immediate?) That would indeed be surprising considering that, even after 60 years, the US still has troops in Japan, South Korea and all over Europe.
Ooooh -- Mr. Khan noticed that, too.
Another "great disclosure" was that there was a need for two independent states -- Israel and Palestine. Have we also not been hearing this for the past 40 or 50 years? Just the other day the Israeli government announced that Mr Bush as president had secretly given tacit approval of expanding Jewish settlements (on Palestinian lands, of course). This makes one wonder what tacit promises President Obama has given to the Israelis. Only the future will tell. One thing he was very categorical about -- the permanent mutual bond between the US and Israel and the fact that the US was bound to ensure Israel's security and existence. (Even if this means the killing of thousands of Palestinians and the usurpation of more of their land. All this is considered justified, even though the Palestinians had nothing to do with the holocaust.)
Granted, Hitler's Arab connections would have liked to have had something to do with the Holocaust, but they never managed more than some murderous pogroms and a lot of radio propaganda of the white sort.
Another surprising disclosure was admitting that military action was not a solution to conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. If that is the case, then why is America sending large numbers of additional troops into Afghanistan and why is the US conducting drone attacks in Pakistan in total disregard of our sovereignty? I seem to remember our leaders saying that with the inauguration of President Obama, drone attacks would ease off. We have all seen the results -- even more frequent drone attacks and the deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians, men, women and children.
If we redefine the innocents as human shields, that would probably help you understand the results.
Of course, Iran's nuclear programme did not escape attack. Iran's peaceful programme (regularly scrutinised by IAEA inspectors)
We all know how effective IAEA inspections are...
is considered to be a threat to world peace, to the USA and to the Middle East. This while the 200 or so Israeli nuclear weapons are considered "peaceful" and are not talked about at all.
Possibly because Israel has never threatened first use to commit genocide, unlike Iran. But I could be mistaken, being only an little American housewife, unlike the so very erudite A. Q. Khan.
Have you ever heard a word by any US president against Israel's nuclear programme, its weapons or its not joining the NPT? Never! This despite the fact that Israel showed its aggressive stance in its illegal, unprovoked pre-emptive strikes on Palestinian and Lebanese civilians and on the Iraqi Osirak nuclear reactor, which was being built, under IAEA safeguards, by the French.
Clearly IAEA safeguards are neither safe nor guards. Bummer, man.
President Obama offered improved relations with the Muslim world, which I believe to be no more than a "soother." Mark my words. Nothing substantial will come of it.
We think so, too.
The rhetoric against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban will continue, and so will that against Iran's and Pakistan's nuclear programmes. We will be tied down economically to whatever conditions the World Bank and the IMF see fit to foist on us.
Here are a few ideas on what President Obama preaches and what he actually practices.
1. Withdrawal from Iraq put off for four years. (It is quite possible that he won't be there for the final act and the matter lands up in the hands of another President with his own agenda.)
2. More troops for Afghanistan, despite earlier indications to the contrary.
3. More coercion and pressure on Iran to wind up its nuclear programme despite Iran's agreement to IAEA inspections, but not a word about Israel's nuclear weapons.
4. Reneging on promises to publish photos
Oh wait. It's actually Helen Thomas...
of the shameless, illegal torture of hundreds of detainees in Iraq and at the Guantanamo prison camp, while he had previously promised on many occasions that he would expose President Bush's inhuman torture practices. One wonders what is wrong in accepting previous wrongdoings and ensuring that it doesn't happen again. The American Civil Liberties Union had already made known that these included rape, water boarding, electric shocks, hanging upside down and damaging of genitals. If there was no hesitation in showing (encouraging, as a matter of fact) the genocide committed against the Jews in Nazi concentration camps, then why not the same openness here to shake American conscience (or was that, perhaps, the reason not to)? It is even more surprising when we consider the brutality meted out to President Obama's forefathers and fellow Africans who were kidnapped, killed or sold into slavery. There was no hesitation in making those atrocities known. Painful for us is the fact that many of those kidnapped were Muslims from Kenya, Tanzania, Mali, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, etc. History has recorded the horrible conditions under which these hapless people were shipped to the Americas -- chained and half of them dying on the way. How those sold into slavery were made to work in the fields for 18 hours a day and women were raped in order to create a never-ending workforce of mulattos. It seems to be a case of disclosing the atrocities committed by others, but keeping your own hidden.
5. While President Obama is an eloquent (rhetorical) orator, but that on its own doesn't achieve anything. Hitler and Mussolini were also good orators but their actions and deeds were horrendous. Remember Napoleon Bonaparte's speech to his soldiers and the Muslim clerics of Alexandria in 1798? What conciliatory terms he used, how he eulogised Islam, Muslims, their history, their culture and their contribution to civilisation. His purpose was purely to recruit traitors to overthrow the Mameluke dynasty and to make Egypt a French colony. However, the French were defeated by Muhammad Ali Pasha within two years and left Egypt. President Obama will not be able to achieve anything because he is tied down by the course set by his predecessors, by the strong Jewish lobby and by the neocons. His promises of withdrawal of troops in 2012 will be overturned by his successor. (I strongly doubt he will be re-elected.)
I doubt, too.
If he were sincere, he would set a date of 2010 or 2011. The Palestinian problem will drag on indefinitely, and more Palestinian lands will be usurped to be included in the Zionist state, thanks to US support and the cowardice and incompetence of the Arab nations.
6. In 2002, 22 Arab states took the initiative to offer Israel full normalisation of relations in return for Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied illegally in 1967. This initiative has been put on a backburner while the Arab countries are constantly being told "to take meaningful steps and important actions to facilitate the US to take some action." Meaningful and important in this case may be taken to mean "don't talk about the return of the West Bank and the rights of the Palestinian people."
I believe that President Obama, for all his good intentions and his nice words will achieve no more than did the two Muslim presidents and the two Muslim vice presidents that India had. It will be a "puppet-on-a-string" show. As the Indian gentlemen in question could do no more than be good propaganda material for the Indian government, so Mr Obama will be for the US government. The well-entrenched establishment is too strong to be overruled and it will allow Mr Obama hardly any freedom to pursue his own policies freely. The election slogan "Change we can believe in" will soon become a forgotten page of world history. In this connection Aayats 51, 52 of Surah Maida perfectly describe the present situation. There we read: "O believer! Do not make friendship with Jews and Christians. They are friends to one another. If you make friendship with them, you will be one of them. Indeed, Allah does not guide the wrongdoers. Those who are hypocrites will rush to the Jews and Christians and say they do this lest calamity befall them. It is possible that Allah may give you victory or some commandment. They will then repent for what they have concealed in their hearts."
Posted by: john frum ||
06/25/2009
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#1
Obama does not know shit from shinola.
He spends all of his time on tv trying to be ken doll when I need a knowledgeable president. He is useless for everything. Find a time he is not on TV, and I will show you a time he is getting makeup for time to go on TV. He does not read anyting, nor has he ever, he believes he is above me in position,
but YOU ARE BELOW ME YOU BASTARD PRESIDENT.
You sill not tell the world what I think, nor shall you pass what YOU think is good.
You are screwed. You do what you are told from here on out, or else.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Riot police blocked protesters from gathering in Tehran on Wednesday, witnesses said, as Iran's supreme leader warned he will not back down in the face of unrest following the disputed presidential vote. "In the recent incidents concerning the election, I have been insisting on the implementation of the law and I will be (insisting). Neither the system, nor the people will back down under force," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said.
It was the latest indication that the clerical regime will not tolerate dissent over the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad despite a wave of public demonstrations and complaints that the June 12 election was rigged.
Iran has refused to overturn the results of the poll but Khamenei -- who has ruled over the Islamic republic for 20 years -- has extended by five days a Wednesday deadline to examine vote complaints
" In the recent incidents concerning the election, I have been insisting on the implementation of the law and I will be insisting. Neither the system, nor the people will back down under force "
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
And in a sign security forces are wasting no time to put down protests, a large presence of riot police and Basij militiamen stopped a crowd of several hundred people trying to assemble outside the Iranian parliament building, according to a witness. Another witness near parliament reported seeing police charge at passers by, who dispersed into nearby streets. Later in the evening a big squad of riot police remained deployed in the area, a source said.
Diplomatic backlash
" Iran's decision to try to turn what are clearly internal matters for Iran into a conflict with the U.K. and others is deeply regrettable and without foundation "
UK govt
In the latest diplomatic backlash over what Iran has branded Western meddling, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Tehran may downgrade ties with Britain.
His comments came after the two governments expelled diplomats in a tit-for-tat move, with Tehran increasingly pointing the finger at London over the street violence that erupted in the aftermath of the election. "We are monitoring the situation. We have noted these reports. We have always been clear that we seek a constructive bilateral relationship with Iran based on mutual respect," a spokesman for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's spokesman said.
"Iran's decision to try to turn what are clearly internal matters for Iran into a conflict with the U.K. and others is deeply regrettable and without foundation."
Tehran has accused Britain -- described by Khameini as the "most evil" of Iran's enemies -- of plotting against the election and seeking to stabilize the country. It has expelled the BBC correspondent in Tehran and arrested a British-Greek journalist working for a U.S. newspaper, one of at least two foreign reporters detained by the authorities.
Iran's interior minister also took aim at the United States, saying rioters were being funded by the CIA and the exiled opposition group the People's Mujahedeen. "Britain, America and the Zionist regime (Israel) were behind the recent unrest in Tehran," Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli was quoted as saying by the semi-official news agency Fars.
Rezaei withdraws
" Iran's political, social and security situation has entered a sensitive and decisive phase, which is more important than the election "
Mohsen Rezaei
Another defeated candidate, former Revolutionary Guards chief Mohsen Rezaei, has withdrawn his protest about election irregularities, in a blow to the opposition. "(Iran's) political, social and security situation has entered a sensitive and decisive phase, which is more important than the election," Rezaei said in a letter to the Guardians Council, the top election body.
Mousavi, who was premier in the post-revolution era, has urged supporters to keep demonstrating but to use "self-restraint" to avoid further bloodshed while another defeated candidate Mehdi Karroubi has called for a mourning ceremony on Thursday for slain protesters.
The Revolutionary Guards, the elite force set up to protect the Islamic republic, has warned of a "decisive and revolutionary" riposte to any further protests.
The last opposition rally on Monday was crushed by hundreds of riot police armed with steel clubs and firing tear gas.
The foreign media is banned from reporting from the streets under tight restrictions imposed since the unrest was unleashed, but images of police brutality have spread worldwide via amateur video over the Internet.
Mousavi's wife
Meanwhile the wife of Mousavi called on the establishment to immediately release Iranians detained at election protests and said she would continue to protest but was sure to add "legally," according to Mousavi's website. "I regret the arrest of many politicians and people and want their immediate release ... It is my duty to continue legal protests to preserve Iranian rights," Zahra Rahnavard was quoted by the website as saying. She also criticized the presence of armed forces in the streets.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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#1
Where are the voices of outrage from other Islamic countries over the violence committed by the regime in the name of allah?
#2
They are facing conflicting pressures. The authoritarian sunni states Egypt, SA, etc are happy to see Khameni have troubles. OTOH they can hardly like the example of street protests. And ultimately a democratic Iran, friendly to the west (or at the very least less unfriendly) would make the US less dependent on Saudi (and Egyptian) good will.
Posted by: liberal hawk ||
06/25/2009 16:40
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Three policemen were killed on Wednesday when a group of heavily-armed Taliban attacked a checkpost in the outskirts of Peshawar, a senior police official said. "A group of around 20 Taliban, armed with rockets, hand grenades and assault rifles, attacked Arbab Tapo checkpost. Three policemen were killed in the attack," Abdul Ghafoor Afridi, a senior police official in Peshawar, told AFP. The attackers escaped after a gunbattle, he added. The military is fighting a nearly two-month-long campaign to dislodge Taliban from the NWFP, and have said it would open up a second front in South Waziristan Agency as well.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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New Delhi: The CRPF will soon approach the ISRO for expeditious satellite imaging and video mapping of all Naxal-infested areas, so that it can carry out special operations against the Maoists with precision.
With the government's thrust on flushing out Naxals, the paramilitary force will take the help of ISRO as also the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) for satellite mapping of forests and hills under control of the Left-wing militants, official sources said. Aerial videography of the forests and hills in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand is currently underway, they said.
The Global Information System (satellite mapping) will help in organising systematic and precise special operations. Both NTRO and ISRO were approached by the force a couple of years back to do the job, but now the matter has gained urgency in view of spurt in Naxal violence, described as the biggest threat to internal security by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
"Lack of knowledge of the topography is the biggest hurdle before security men who are unable to challenge the Naxals, well-versed with the terrain," they said. The Global Information System (digitalised mapping) when implemented will be a great boon for the forces, the sources said. During operations, the security men will get to know exactly where they are and where they have to go to a ttack the Maoists.
"Digital images would show the exact topography. So we will know which route to take when the terrain is rocky or heavily forested," a senior official said. Union Home Minister P Chidambaram was shown a presentation on Global Information System when he recently visited the CRPF headquarters in New Delhi.
Posted by: john frum ||
06/25/2009
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The wife of Iranian opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi called for the immediate release of detained protesters as her husband was to appear at a mass protest outside the country's parliament.
In her statement, which appeared on Mousavi's Web site, Zahra Rahnavard said it was her "duty" to continue "legal" protests and condemned the presence of armed guards in the streets, Reuters reported. "I regret the arrest of many politicians and people and want their immediate release," Rahnavard said in the Web site statement, according to Reuters.
Rahnavard has raised eyebrows in Tehran for campaigning alongside her husband in the conservative state, and emerged as an important asset in her husband's campaign.
Mousavi claims that hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole the June 12 presidential election through massive fraud. He has called for annulling the results and holding a new vote.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/25/2009
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"Let my people go!"
I read a tale that started that way, once upon a time. I seem to recall ten plagues and a drowned army ended it.
[Bangla Daily Star] Test identification (TI) parade yesterday confirmed that former deputy director (DD) of National Security Intelligence (NSI) Major (retd) Liakat Hossain supervised the offloading of ten-truck illegal firearms and ammunition.
The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) conducted the TI parade under the supervision of Metropolitan Magistrate Mohammad Mahabubur Rahman at Chittagong jail in the afternoon.
Two former police sergeants Alauddin and Helal Uddin, who share the credit for the seizure of the consignment, identified ex-NSI DD Liakat as the person who by the name Abul Hossain supervised the offloading of the consignment at Chittagong Urea Fertiliser Company Ltd (CUFL) jetty on April 2, 2004.
They identified Liakat out of 11 accused--with identical appearance and movement--lined up for the parade after examining them closely for some fifteen minutes.
Earlier, detained ex-NSI Director (security) wing commander (retd) Sahab Uddin in his judicial confession also claimed ex-NSI DD Liakat's involvement in the offloading and stated him to be the person who informed him [Sahab] of the seizure over telephone.
After his arrest on May 26, following Sahab's confession, ex-NSI DD Liakat during remand at Taskforce for Interrogation (TFI) cell confessed his involvement in the offloading and agreed to make a judicial confession. He, however, refused to make confessional statement when he was produced before a magistrate here on June 07. It prompted the investigators to go for the TI parade.
Investigation Officer of the case Muniruzzaman Chowdhury--a senior ASP of CID Chittagong zone--made the petition for arranging a TI parade on June 18.
The Chittagong court of Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Helal Uddin passed the order after hearing of the petition on June 21.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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[Mail and Globe] Scores of Somali legislators have fled violence at home to the safety of other countries in Africa, Europe and the United States, leaving the conflict-torn nation's Parliament without a quorum to meet.
Violence from an Islamist-led insurgency has worsened this month, with a minister, the Mogadishu police chief, and a legislator all killed. The government, which controls little but a few parts of the capital, has declared a state of emergency.
With reports of foreign jihadists streaming into Somalia, Western security services are frightened Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network may get a grip on the failed Horn of Africa state that has been without central government for 18 years.
Needing two-thirds of legislators present to meet, Somalia's 550-seat Parliament has not convened since April 25.
Officials said on Wednesday that 288 MPs were abroad, with only about 50 on official visits.
The rest were in neighbours Kenya and Djibouti, European nations like Sweden, Britain, The Netherlands and Norway, and the United States, the officials said.
"I cannot be a member of a government that cannot protect me," Abdalla Haji Ali, an MP who left for Kenya last week, told Reuters. "In Somalia, nobody is safe."
Parliament Speaker Sheikh Aden Mohamed Madobe has urged the MPs to return. But in Nairobi on Wednesday, they could be seen sipping tea and talking politics in various hotels and cafes. "As legislators, we have responsibility and every one of us should perform his duty in Mogadishu," one legislator, who has stayed in Mogadishu, Sheikh Ahmed Moalim, told Reuters.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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[Iran Press TV Latest] Romania says it has summoned the Iranian ambassador to express serious concerns about the latest post-election unrest in the country. Bucharest summoned Hamid Reza Arshadi on Tuesday and voiced its "concern regarding the attitude of the authorities in Tehran towards the protests in Iran," AFP reported. The Romanian government also rejected Tehran's claim of Western meddling as "unacceptable and baseless."
Meanwhile, Hungary also summoned Iran's ambassador on Wednesday to express concern over Tehran's restrictions on foreign media.
Earlier, several European countries including Britain, France, Sweden and Finland had summoned Iran's ambassadors in their countries to express their concern over the situation in Iran.
The Iranian government has lashed out at "meddling" by Western nations -- particularly the United States and Britain -- and accused the foreign media of fomenting the unrest that followed the June 12 presidential election in Iran.
At least 20 people, including 8 Basij members, have so far been killed and many others have been wounded in the country's latest unrest.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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#1
I like that romania did it.
Sends a MUCH more powerful message than any western country.
every media available, web, tweets etc should try to get the message to the Basiji, fence sitting mullahs, army types - Romania called your ambassador in.
If thats too subtle just ask them to google "securitate"
Posted by: liberal hawk ||
06/25/2009 16:50
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[Mail and Globe] Zimbabwe on Wednesday launched efforts to write a new Constitution to pave the way to fresh elections, a key step in the power-sharing pact meant to haul the country from a decade of turmoil.
"We count on our inner strength as a people and on our unflinching determination to turn a new page in our lives as Zimbabweans despite many obstacles," Parliament speaker Lovemore Moyo told foreign diplomats.
Speaking ahead of the first public meeting on the Constitution later in the day, Moyo urged the diplomatic community to support the process.
"The Constitution-making process is taking place in an environment of acute resource constraints," Moyo said. "We call upon you, your excellencies, to lend your support to this process.
We are happy with the progress made so far despite limited resources."
In April Parliament elected a 25-member committee drawn from members of President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to spearhead the process.
Under the accord that created the unity government four months ago, a new Constitution should be tabled in Parliament by February next year, with a referendum on the charter held by July.
Moyo also assured the diplomats that the Constitution-building process will be transparent, and not manipulated by politicians.
"As Parliament we want to make sure that this process is as open, transparent, democratic and as inclusive as possible in order to accomodate the views of all Zimbabweans."
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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#1
Not that the constitution matters much to important people like Bob.
FWIW, their current one is only 66 pages, and spends time defining things like the appointment of tribal chiefs and how to calculate years of experience as a lawyer (required for eligibility for some offices). There's plenty of room for invidious clauses, though it is far from the Brazilian extreme that lards the constitution with legislation.
Posted by: James ||
06/25/2009 4:17
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#2
You mean that the "Get the White Guy" program didn't work?
[Mail and Globe] The leader of a Nigerian militant group in the oil-rich Niger Delta has been arrested, lawyers and a separate rebel movement announced on Wednesday.
Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, who heads the Niger Delta People's Volunteers Force (NDPVF) was arrested on Tuesday night at the international airport in Lagos, said a lawyer and the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend).
Asari's firm of lawyers, Festus Keyamo Chambers in Lagos, confirmed the arrest. "Alhaji Dokubo-Asari was arrested last night at the airport," a senior official of the chambers told Agence France-Presse, refusing to give details. He said details would be released in a statement later on Wednesday.
Several local dailies said Asari was arrested on arrival from Germany where he had gone for a medical check-up. The reported arrest, which has yet to be confirmed by Nigerian authorities, came the day the government met with militants from the oil-producing states of the Delta to make an amnesty offer for fighters who cease hostilities in the south of the country. Mend "condemns the arrest of Asari-Dokubo by security agents at the Murtala Mohammed airport in Lagos and requests for his unconditional release within the next 24 hours," said an email sent on Wednesday to media.
Asari was in 2005 charged with treason under former president Olusegun Obasanjo for allegedly leading violent anti-government campaigns, but those charges were later withdrawn as part of a planned political solution to the Delta strife.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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Security forces killed seven more Taliban in clashes in parts of Dir and Swat on Wednesday, while six soldiers including two officers were also killed. Six Taliban were killed in a search operation at Kota in Dir, and another seven were arrested, the ISPR said.
The forces carried out a search and sweep operation at Charbagh and Mangaltan, where two officers -- Major Attique and Captain Amir -- and four soldiers died and three were injured. A Taliban was killed in a clearance operation on a tip off in Sakhra, and three stolen vehicles and weapons were seized.
Security forces have consolidated their positions in Kabal, Akhun Kalle, Dadhrah, Khazna and Gardi. The local jirga met a military commander at Kuz Laikot near Kalam and agreed to provide information to the security forces and to set up a defence committee in the area. The troops arrested local Taliban commander Alamgir and his father in Gwalerai.
This article starring:
Alamgir
TTP
Gwalerai
TTP
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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[Bangla Daily Star] The UN General Assembly kicks off a three-day high-level conference yesterday to weigh measures to help the poorest and most vulnerable countries weather the global financial and economic crisis.
Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, the organizer, said the event aimed to "identify emergency and long-term responses to mitigate the impact of the crisis, especially on vulnerable populations.
The conference will also "initiate a needed dialogue on the transformation of the international financial architecture, taking into account the needs and concerns of all member states."
Developing countries, which make up the vast majority of the 192-member assembly, argue that they are paying the price for a crisis that was created by the developed world.
"Although we were not responsible, we are suffering the collateral damage," Martin Khor, executive director for the South Center, a Geneva-based policy think tank for developing countries, said here this week.
Organizers noted that the World Bank is projecting a finance gap of up to 700 billion dollars in developing countries, resulting in additional deaths of 1.5 to 2.8 million infants by 2015 and more than 100 million people tipping over into extreme poverty each year for the duration of the crisis.
Khor stressed that the international response to the global crisis has been undertaken by exclusive clubs such as the Group of Eight (G8) or Group of 20 (G20) while most developing countries have had no say.
"This meeting leaves no doubt that the proper and most fitting venue to discuss this type of problem is the United Nations," D'Escoto said. "After all, we're talking about global problems and they should be discussed globally."
Nearly 120 UN member states are to attend the parley, including presidents Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, the vice presidents of Iran and Zimbabwe, and the prime ministers of Bosnia, Serbia, Togo and several Caribbean nations.
But in an apparent sign of lack of interest, key developed countries are sending low-level delegations.
D'Escoto, a former Nicaraguan foreign minister, said he was "relieved" that a revised outcome document due to be adopted at the end of the three-day meeting has been finalized. If the outcome document adopted at the end of the three day meeting is finalized, why have the meeting? Apparently the meeting's already been had
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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#1
Apparently the meeting's already been had
But the Show trials Must Go On!
Posted by: ed ||
06/25/2009 7:02
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#2
"Although we were not responsible, we are suffering the collateral damage," Martin Khor, executive director for the South Center, a Geneva-based policy think tank for developing countries, said here this week.
Yeah, when I think of "developing countries", Geneva's the first place I think of.
All the office space must've been full up in Mogadishu, huh, Martin?
#3
But of course, Geneva. The hotels and restaurants are simply fabulous, and one needn't encounter one's native riffraff. Besides, there's a long tradition of meeting in Geneva, situated as it is in neutral Switzerland; developing countries long to attach themselves to ancient diplomatic traditions.
[Geo News] Two people have been shot dead in Essa Nagri area located on the Saryab Road here on Wednesday, Geo news reported. According to sources, unknown armed miscreants opened fire on two unfortunate persons who lost their lives on the spot while police said they have commenced investigation.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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[Geo News] At least three people including a sub-inspector of Islamabad police Wednesday have been killed in two firing incidents here.
According to police, some unidentified miscreants shot down Muhammed Sadiq sub-inspector of Islamabad near Lal Flat on Rashid Minhas Road.
The deceased was appointed at CIA Karachi for four years. He came back from Islamabad and was living at Noman Avenue on Rashid Minhas Road.
In another incident, some armed miscreants opened fire at motorists riding a bike near Afghan Camp at Super Highway. The deceased have been identified as Nihar Bugti and Muhammed Hanieef.
Sources said both of them belong to Dera Bugi and appeared to have been killed on enmity. Police have registered the case.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama plans to return an ambassador to Syria, filling a post that has been vacant for four years and marking an acceleration of Washington's engagement with the Arab world, the White House said on Wednesday.
Presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama's decision was aimed at fulfilling his promise to show more U.S. engagement in the Arab world and not a response to any explicit policy change on Syria's part. He cited a series of meetings between Syrian and U.S. officials since Obama took office.
"This strongly reflects the administration's recognition of the role Syria plays, and the hope of the role that the Syrian government can play constructively, to promote peace and stability in the region," Gibbs said.
One of the more clueless things he's said. Syria? Constructive? As in, how many more Lebanese politicians and police will the Syrians and Hezbollah murder in the coming year?
The move reinforces Obama's determination, outlined in his Cairo speech earlier this month, to deepen America's role in the Middle East as he seeks to broker peace among Israel and its Arab neighbors and improve U.S. relations in the region.
A senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity before the announcement was made said: "The president believes that diplomatic engagement helps serve our interests, and that the current policy didn't make sense."
So let's reward the bullies and thugs and see what happens ...
Jeffrey D. Feltman, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, informed Syrian ambassador to Washington, Imad Moustapha, of the plan on Tuesday night.
Moustapha, said that U.S.-Syrian relations "were headed in the right direction" and away from the freeze during the Bush administration. Nevertheless, Moustapha said, "It is still difficult to talk about radical change in the relationship but we can talk about advancing in small, but consecutive and positive steps."
Feltman and White House official Daniel Shapiro have both visited Damascus, the Syrian capital, at least twice this year as part of talks about bettering relations with a country shunned by former President George W. Bush.
Syria remains a key to prevent establishing peace with Israel, which still occupies the strategic Golan Heights, captured from Damascus in the 1967 war.
Who started that war?
Had the Juices not been there, there'd have been no war, silly, so of course it was the Juices' fault. The logic is unanswerable.
Syria held indirect talks with Israel last year, mediated by Turkey. But the discussions were halted during the Israeli offensive on Gaza in December and January. Syria has since said it was ready to resume indirect talks with Israel's new hard-line government as long as they focus on a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan.
In return for what? What does Syria have to give, other than Hezbollah, Hamas and the PLFP? Anyone think the Syrians will do that?
Why should they, when it belongs to the Ummah by right.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the move was a matter for the United States and Syria. "We have never interfered in decisions by the Americans or anyone else. What is important is to see some kind of change in Syrian policy, and unfortunately we have not seen any change," he said. "Syria is not prepared to hold direct talks with Israel without preconditions. What should disturb us is this Syrian policy, which is not encouraging, and I don't see any signs there of a desire to see any progress or any real peace."
The U.S. withdrew its ambassador to Syria in 2005 to protest Syrian actions in neighboring Lebanon. Washington has criticized Syria and Iran for supporting Islamic militant groups such as the Palestinian Hamas in Gaza and Lebanon's Hezbollah. The U.S. also has accused Syria of not doing enough to stop the infiltration of militants to fight U.S. and allied forces in neighboring Iraq.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/25/2009
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word I have heard is this is a serious attempt to take advantage of the events in Iran to turn Syria - Assad must be getting very nervous these days.
Hamas and Hezbollah are exactly what you get (well at least Hamas - seriously, I think Abbas is more like to make peace with Israel than to give up his grip on Lebanon)
That of course is huge.
Would Assad? I dunno. If he thinks hes about to face a govt in Iran that is not so friendly, that is willing to cut a deal with the US that dumps HIM, he just might.
And failing that, even if Assad isnt about to bite, it get folks in Teheran thinking he might. Not that that will effect Dinnerjacket, or perhaps not even Khameni. But it might get some fencesitters among the mullahs and in the security forces wondering just how dangerous it is sticking with Khameni, as he gets them isolated even from Syria.
Posted by: liberal hawk ||
06/25/2009 16:47
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#2
Assad will want immunity in the Harriri case, plus some cash, plus our cooperation from Israel plus lots more .
in return he will agree to ...
Posted by: lord garth ||
06/25/2009 19:16
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[ADN Kronos] The largest mosque on the Indonesian island of Java has been blocked by local people who fear that radical Islamic militants including radical cleric Abu Bakar Bashir have been using it to promote their teachings.
Indonesian media said that people in the city of Surabaya have blocked the entrance to the Al Ihsan Sabililla mosque for three days before agreeing to reopen it.
Bashir, one of the key leaders of the Al-Qaeda linked militant group Jemaah Islamiyah, is among those who have visited the mosque recently and gave several sermons.
JI is blamed for Indonesia's worst terror attack, the 2002 Bali bombings (photo) which killed 202 people, most of them foreigners.
The group, which wants to a single southeast Asian Muslim caliphate, is also believed to be responsible for several other attacks including the 2005 Bali bombing and the 2004 attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta.
In his sermons, Bashir reportedly said Muslims who participate in state elections are 'infidels' and that the Indonesian state should not be recognised.
He was speaking ahead of Indonesia's forthcoming presidential elections taking place next month.
Local Indonesian newspaper, The Jakarta Globe, said the son of the mosque's director, Saifudin, who was jailed for having assisted in the Bali terrorist attack in 2002, was recently released.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/25/2009
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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.
President Obama uses network primetime special and overtime 'Nightline' coverage to talk for more than 45 minutes of combined 75-minute programs, revealing nothing new. 
In fact, at one point, the president went on for four minutes and 33 seconds to answer a question about government interference, the "Big Brother fear" as the questioner put it and how it would be paid for. In the next segment Gibson pleaded with the president to keep his response to the next question shorter.
Only by expanding government control of health care can we bring down its cost. That's the faulty premise of the various proposals for health reform now being batted around Washington. The claimed cost control depends on politically safe ideas such as preventive care or the adoption of electronic health records. And neither -- even according to the Congressional Budget Office -- will do much to reduce spending.
[Bangla Daily Star] Leader of the Opposition Khaleda Zia yesterday urged the government to immediately take effective steps to investigate each incident of 'repression on politicians, businessmen and citizens' during the emergency period and hold trials of the people responsible.
[Maghrebia] Algerian troops killed 11 of the estimated 60 terrorists believed to be responsible for last week's deadly al-Qaeda ambush of Algerian gendarmes in Bordj Bou Arréridj, Echorouk reported on Wednesday (June 24th). The army operation in the Al Mansoura region also uncovered weapons, uniforms, walkie-talkies and bullet-proof vests belonging to the slain gendarmes.
[Geo News] Reiterating its concern over the drone attacks, Pakistan on Wednesday said it was in regular contact with the US and serious concerns on the recent strikes have been put across strongly.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Former Dubai Department of Finance director-general Nasser al-Shaikh has been removed from all government positions, United Arab Emirates state news agency WAM reported on Wednesday.
The Iranian authorities have ordered the family of Neda Agha Soltan out of their Tehran home after shocking images of her death were circulated around the world.
[Geo News] Qari Zainuddin, rival of Baitullah Mehsud has been laid to rest in Dera Ismail Khan, Geo News reported Wednesday.
Relatives of several detained protesters have confirmed that the interrogation of prisoners is now being headed by Saaed Mortazavi, a figure known in Iran as "the butcher of the press". He gained notoriety for his role in the death of a Canadian-Iranian photographer who was tortured, beaten and raped during her detention in 2003. 
A man calling himself a deputy of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief 
Fighting between rival tribes in Kurram Agency has intensified, with at least seven people killed in the latest clash on Wednesday. At least 31 people have been killed in clashes over the last seven days. Tribesmen are said to have used heavy weapons in the latest clash in Danishkhel. Locals claim that Taliban who have fled Swat and the Tribal Areas are responsible for the unrest in the agency.
North Korea threatened Wednesday to wipe the United States off the map as Washington and its allies watched for signs the regime will launch a series of missiles in the coming days.
[Quqnoos] Three German soldiers were killed Tuesday in the relatively peaceful Afghan northern province of Kunduz, German Defence Ministry said 
[Iran Press TV Latest] Tehran mayor says there are some 'problems' in Iran's election law which have caused difficulties during both the election process and the counting of votes. 
Taliban commander 
Police claim to have arrested at least 43 suspected terrorists from various parts of the province as part of a countrywide crackdown against militants. On Wednesday, officials revealed they had arrested 25 suspected Taliban from Islamabad, some of who were plotting attacks on foreign targets. 
South Carolina GOP Gov. Mark Sanford admitted Wednesday to an affair, and resigned his position as chair of the Republican Governor's Association following a strange week in which the governor dropped off the grid and could not be located.
MOSCOW, June 24 (Yonhap) -- South Korea and Russia agreed Wednesday to seek concrete steps toward an envisioned five-way meeting with the United States, China and Japan as part of efforts to press North Korea to rejoin long-stalled disarmament talks.
Two U.S. Democratic lawmakers want Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to relax recently tightened standards for mortgages on new condominiums, saying they could threaten the viability of some developments and slow the housing-market recovery, the Wall Street Journal said.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Riot police blocked protesters from gathering in Tehran on Wednesday, witnesses said, as Iran's supreme leader warned he will not back down in the face of unrest following the disputed presidential vote. "In the recent incidents concerning the election, I have been insisting on the implementation of the law and I will be (insisting). Neither the system, nor the people will back down under force," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said.
[Mail and Globe] The leader of a Nigerian militant group in the oil-rich Niger Delta has been arrested, lawyers and a separate rebel movement announced on Wednesday. 
Security forces killed seven more Taliban in clashes in parts of Dir and Swat on Wednesday, while six soldiers including two officers were also killed. Six Taliban were killed in a search operation at Kota in Dir, and another seven were arrested, the ISPR said.
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama plans to return an ambassador to Syria, filling a post that has been vacant for four years and marking an acceleration of Washington's engagement with the Arab world, the White House said on Wednesday.
