The Golden State's political class comes unglued in the face of a citizens' revolt a fairly reasonable analysis at the link of our State's ills - they forecast the future of America if not stopped
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/07/2009
20:51 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[24 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Along the same veign in a way, I wanted to share with the people here why the Dallas Tea Party drew so many people vs other locations. It is rather simple.
MSM feels it has taken control of its outlets, but in Dallas - Ft Worth, there is an AM station (pretty cheap compared to the FM stations to start up) that is dedicated to airing conservative talk show personalities both locally and nationally 24/7/365.
The local personalities on that little AM channel are the ones who rallied 37,000 people to show up at South Fork Ranch in Dallas. This needs to be duplicated throughout America. This needs to be done before Obama and the Socialists in DC get a chance to prevent this as well via the Fairness doctrine. If not done quickly enough, there will not be enough support to stop the fairness doctrine that will shut even a small AM station down.
#2
I'm truly surprised CNN airs this story. Besides the parts where the taliban take in children, feed them, give them an education and their first job.
Posted by: ed ||
07/07/2009 19:56
Comments ||
Top||
#3
Some of the children are as young as 11, the officials say
Other sources have said as young as 7. Sorta like the XY chromosome version of Aisha.
Posted by: ed ||
07/07/2009 19:57
Comments ||
Top||
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
07/07/2009 21:43
Comments ||
Top||
#3
I remember a sandstorm in San Antonio when I was a kid visiting my grandparents. It probably wasn't this bad, but I do remember sand sifting in around the closed windows. I don't think it lasted too long.
For a kid from the Virginia mountains, it was a real kick. (For my grandparents, not so much, I suspect.)
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
07/07/2009 21:46
Comments ||
Top||
Women who say they don't need a man may well be right -- after human sperm was created in the lab. The breakthrough could give hope to infertile couples and men left unable to have children after having cancer treatment.
But don't worry guys, the scientists who created the sperm using stem cells don't plan to take you out of the baby-making process just yet.
'While we can understand some people may have concerns, this does not mean that humans can be produced in a dish and we have no intention of doing this,' said researcher Prof Karim Nayernia. 'The work is a way of investigating why some people are infertile and the reasons behind it.
'It could also allow men who are currently infertile the chance to have a child which is genetically their own but this will be many years away -- at least a decade.'
While scientists at Newcastle University and the NorthEast England Stem Cell Institute insist 'fully mature, functional sperm' was produced, other experts cast doubt on their findings.
Prof Azim Surani, from Cambridge University, described the lab samples as 'a long way from being authentic sperm cells'.
And the MRC Institute of Medical Research said: 'Although they find some of the sperm cells have tails and can swim, this is not evidence of normality.'
Nonsense. Labs would be absolutely no fun at all....
By the way, women who say they don't need men should live without them - completely.
Why not? There are women doctors, dentists, mechanics, electricians, carpenters, firefighters, cops, pilots, farmers, truckers, even garbage haulers. You don't need men? Then get ALL your goods and services from women.
Or STFU.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
07/07/2009 20:29
Comments ||
Top||
#4
Men are fun. Who'd want a world without them? As for lab-made sperm, Nature usually has good reasons for organizing things the way she does. We could all be like that mushroom mite which mates with sons never born, and gives birth to daughters who do the same.
#1
FTA "Mr Obama insisted that America "will not seek to impose any system of government on any other country, nor would we presume to choose which party or individual should run a country""
Learning at the University of Colorado will go on without Ward Churchill.
On Tuesday Chief Denver District Court Judge Larry Naves denied Churchill's motion for reinstatement of employment as well as any "front" pay. It was part of a decision where Naves granted CU and the Board of Regents immunity from being sued, which vacates the jury verdict from April of this year.
Churchill essentially got nothing.
We believe the judge appropriately applied the law to recognize the Board of Regents role as a quasi-judicial body. This ruling recognizes that the regents have to make important and difficult decisions. The threat of litigation should not be used to influence those decisions, said University of Colorado President Bruce D. Benson on Tuesday.
The ethnic studies professor had sued CU in an attempt to regain his teaching post.
Churchill was fired in 2007, following a two-year investigation into allegations Churchill fabricated some of his scholarly publications.
But a Denver jury in April 2009 ruled the school had only fired him after controversy erupted surrounding an essay he'd written in September 2001, comparing the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to a Nazi leader.
That ruling included only a symbolic damage award of $1.
In court last week, Churchill testified that money was not his motivation for this lawsuit.
On Tuesday, Naves ruled "because quasi-judicial immunity was a 'defense that would have been applicable to any of its officials or employees' it is a defense available to the University and the Board of Regents. In this case, it is clear that the Board of Regents performed a quasi-judicial function and acted in a quasi-judicial capacity when it heard Professor Churchill's case and terminated his employment."
"Based on the foregoing, it is hereby ORDERED that Defendants are GRANTED quasi-judicial immunity as a matter of law from Professor Churchill's second claim for relief. As a result, the jury's verdict in this matter is hereby VACATED, and judgment is hereby entered in favor of Defendants on Professor Churchill's Second Claim for Relief."
Naves went on write: "If I granted reinstatement I believe there is a substantial likelihood that there would be future disputes about the propriety of Professor Churchills academic conduct... Under these circumstances and recognizing that the Universitys faculty must have the ability to define the standards of scholarship, I am persuaded that reinstatement is not an appropriate remedy in this case... The same 'sharply conflicting evidence' about Professor Churchills job performance and the fundamental disagreements between the parties lead me to conclude that 'an absence of mutual trust' makes reinstatement unfeasible."
#2
"But a Denver jury in April 2009 ruled the school had only fired him after controversy erupted surrounding an essay he'd written in September 2001, comparing the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to a Nazi leader."
#5
wanna buy a pic of me in a Che beret, wayfarers, and an AK47? Way cool! Only a buck, man. I'll autograph it for a quarter, "Little Eichmann's" for 50 cents
When the soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division penetrated the insurgent-ridden Tangi Valley in the heart of Wardak Province, they braved rockets and roadside bombs. They succeeded in erecting a small outpost overlooking the lush, fertile dale in what is one of the most dangerous areas in the province.
Then they set about their main task: winning over the locals. They called a shura, or council, with the local elders here, to introduce themselves and take requests from the villagers.
"But to be honest, they didn't want us here," recalls 1st Lt. Christopher Wallgren, who commands the company of soldiers stationed in the Tangi, in eastern Afghanistan. "They all just asked us to leave. They didn't want us to interfere with their lives."
As thousands of US soldiers pour into Afghanistan this summer and push into uncharted territories, such an environment of mistrust will be one of the many challenges they will face in attempting to secure the country.
Early this year, nearly 1,500 troops landed in Wardak, which neighbors Kabul Province to the south, in a move that prefigured the larger influx this summer. Officials in Washington are hoping that the troop increase can reverse the growing insurgency. Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently told reporters that the military buildup was "absolutely necessary" and that the new soldiers will have to force a dramatic turnaround in the security situation over the next 12 to 18 months.
In the areas where new forces landed this winter, violence has increased just as officials in Washington predicted. In Wardak, the number of insurgent-initiated attacks so far this year has jumped by more than 300 percent from the same period last year, according to statistics provided by analyst Sami Kovanen of Tundra Security.
Convincing Afghans not an easy task
For the troops here in the Tangi, the key to a turnaround lies in convincing the locals that they are here to protect them. But the soldiers say that this has been difficult. While they are welcomed in some areas in Jalrez district, for example, where the insurgency has weakened in the past year, children regularly greet soldiers with waves and smiles they have had a different reception in other parts of the province.
On a typical vehicle patrol through the Tangi valley, which is part of Sayadabad district, soldiers closely watch the villagers who line the streets and stare at the passing convoy.
"Okay, we're heading into a bazaar," says one soldier over the radio to his comrades.
"Roger, heading into the bazaar. There's people all around," comes the reply from another vehicle in the convoy.
"These people out here don't like us, so keep your eyes open," the first soldier says.
Suddenly, a dull thud resounds in the vehicle. Then another. "They are throwing rocks at us!" shouts one soldier over the radio.
Children by the roadside scurry into the shops, while the adults avert their eyes.
Soldiers here recount instances when they have handed out candy to children, only to have it hurled back at them. When they recently killed a leading Taliban commander in the area named Mohebullah, a nearby town closed its bazaar for hours in remembrance of the fallen insurgent.
When they ask locals for information about insurgents operating in the area, they often get evasive answers or lies.
"I don't know why, but people there just don't seem to like us," says Pfc. Christopher Sues. "Maybe they are happy with the way they live."
In the absence of government, Taliban rules
According to locals, US intelligence officials, and analysts, the troops are facing local resistance for a variety of reasons.
"In Wardak, most of the insurgents are locals," says an American intelligence officer associated with the forces here, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
"Every second or third house has a son or a brother in the Taliban," says Roshanak Wardak, a member of parliament from Sayadabad district of Wardak.
Even when locals don't support the insurgents, they are often reluctant to side with the troops out of fear of Taliban reprisals, he continues.
"Sometimes we'll meet some locals on a patrol and they will be very friendly," says Pfc. Jeremy Grimm. "But we'll come another day and those same people will be very cold to us because someone is watching."
Over the years, the central government has been nonexistent in most of the province.
"The government sphere of influence is limited to Maydan Shahr [the provincial capital] and Jalrez [where the insurgency has weakened this year]," says the American intelligence officer. The Taliban has enjoyed a de facto control of such districts as Sayadabad, Chak, and Jaghatu for more than a year. During that time they established a parallel government, which dealt with local disputes and sometimes even collected taxes.
Some locals viewed this as the lesser of two evils when compared with the distant and corrupt Kabul administration.
In one recent shura held in Sayadabad district, elders asked the Americans to leave, saying that they were happy with Taliban rule, which limits crime, and complaining that the troops "cause the price of everything to increase," according to one participant of the meeting.
Insurgency limited by ethnic appeal
But such sentiments may not be universal, says Habibullah Rafeh, policy analyst with the Kabul Academy of Sciences.
"The Taliban's appeal is limited to their own ethnic group, and also has a strong tribal dimension," he says.
In some areas in the east, for example, there are anti-Taliban tribes that regularly cooperate with Western forces. Parts of Wardak made up of the Hazara minority, for example, are strongly in favor of the troops. And most in urban areas such as Kabul don't identify with the rurally based insurgents.
But here in Wardak, and in some of the places farther south where US troops will be heading this summer, the insurgents often share the same ethnicity, tribe, culture, and worldview as the communities in which they are embedded, says Mr. Rafeh.
#1
Not complex at all. The Pashtuns favor the Taliban, and the non-Pashtuns don't. And you can generally tell the Pashtuns from the non-Pashtuns just by looking at them.
#2
"The Taliban's appeal is limited to their own ethnic group, and also has a strong tribal dimension," he says.
So you arm every other ethnic group to the gills, train them, and then let those tribes 'police' the recalcitrant, making sure the participating tribes never forget the pain and suffering brought into their homes by the Taliban.
The Islamic Republic created its own version of the Commisars, of which Khamenei is one of the originals.
Like we said a day or two ago, they took the 'islamic' out of the 'Islamic Republic'. Just as the ardor of the members of the CCCP faded, leaving the leaders, the apparatchiks and the ChekaNKVDKGB RSF, you now have the leaders, the Revolutionary Guards and the Basiji.
The merger of the military/security man and the clergy was intensified when clerics were dispatched to the war fronts, and became ideological commissars of the new regime. They spied on officers and tried to convert them to the new politicized Islam. What happened, in reality, was the conversion of the clergy to a military-security ethos, not the other way around.
Clerics such as Khamenei, Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani and Hassan Lahooti were among the first cadres put in charge of military personnel and commissioned by Ayatollah Khomeini to create the IRGC, a security apparatus designed to run parallel to the state's army, navy and air force. Khamenei quickly learned where the center of the state's gravity rests, and consequently, never left the security forces. Today Khamenei knows more about military and security issues than about traditional Figh and Shi'ite narratives. After the election ...
Ahmadinejad addressed a meeting with the employees of the Judiciary with these words: "Communism, liberalism and democracy are all dead; it is high time for [the rise of an] Islamic State." What he did not spell out was this: The Islamic State wears boots and parades in military fatigue.
Large segments of the clerical establishment came out against the election results. They are all rightfully anxious about what seems to be the end of clerical hegemony as they know it. The clerical rupture that followed the June events is quite telling. The entire body of the moderate clerics militated against what they felt was a mortal blow to Islamic republicanism.
Sensing the death knell of the clerical state, even hardline Ayatollahs such as Nasser Makarem-Shirazi distanced themselves from the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad-IRGC coalition. This article does not mention that officers of the IRGC are frequently antagonistic to the Mullahs. In the last 4 years the IRGC has been muscling on the Mullahs' financial turf.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
07/07/2009
15:14 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[16 views]
Top|| File under:
River Liberty was described as an operation. But it had the feel of an invasion. U.S. Marines were moving, as an expeditionary force, into the homeland of their enemy, the Taliban.
At 4:30 a.m. one day last week, the company with whom my writer son, Carlos, and I were embedded, Golf Company, 2/8 Marines, stepped out of the U.S. base at Hassan Abad, in southern Helmand province, and headed south into certain trouble.
The Taliban were determined not to let Golf Company just walk south through the Helmand River Valley unchallenged. Within an hour of the initial push, we saw dirt kick up in front of us, then the crack of automatic weapons fire. We dove for cover in this, the first of eleven ambushes Golf Company encountered during the first two days of the operation.
Remarkably, in the face of the resistance, the Marines, who have a reputation as hard chargers, rarely fired back. They wanted to, but their command had warned the young Marines that even one civilian casualty could negate the No. 1 objective of this operation -- winning the trust and respect of the farmers of the Helmand River Valley.
Also, along our path, the Taliban had set 12 improvised explosive devices - not on roads, but mostly in the open farm fields in which we walked. Nine were discovered before they could be detonated. Three others exploded as Marine patrols passed. Two Marines suffered concussions. Mark it up to the random chance and luck of the battlefield that no one died.
There was one more enemy out there that the Marines could not push past or kill -- HEAT. The word "hot" doesn't do justice to the temperature. It sucks the life out of a normal person on a normal day. The Marines carrying heavy packs, ammunition, body armor, helmets, food and water are not normal and this was not a normal day. It was war and by the end of each day, it was a victory to just put one foot in front of the other in the difficult terrain.
On a map, walking south through flat farmlands seemed easy. The map, though, doesn't reveal the difficulty in traversing fields criss-crossed with hundreds of irrigation ditches -- some too wide to leap across. Most Marines marched miles in wet boots and socks each day even though one of the world's driest deserts was only a mile away.
On the third day of the operation, we finally reached our objective -- Koshtay, a farming village on the banks of the Helmand River and at the heart of the poppy and opium trade that funds the Taliban. Golf Company expected a tough fight here, but the Taliban either retreated or hid their weapons and melted into the local scenery
So far, the Marines can count the trip south as a success. Now the hard part begins, convincing the Afghans to reject the Taliban and embrace a U.S.-supported Afghan government.
A lot is riding on the young shoulders of U.S. Marines. Young men reputed for their brute force must now display a soft touch.
"Neither the Pentagon nor the British Ministry of Defence will win Afghanistan through firepower. The strategy of "hearts and minds plus" cannot be realistic, turning Afghanistan into a vast and indefinite barracks with hundreds of thousands of western soldiers sitting atop a colonial Babel of administrators and professionals. It will never be secure. It offers Afghanistan a promise only of relentless war, one that Afghans outside Kabul know that warlords, drug cartels and Taliban sympathisers are winning."
When the locals see the American Infidels appear to be running from the Mighty Taliban they will be convinced about who's winning.
#2
"The strategy of "hearts and minds plus" cannot be realistic, turning Afghanistan into a vast and indefinite barracks with hundreds of thousands of western soldiers sitting atop a colonial Babel of administrators and professionals."
thats not the plan. See Iraq. we dont have hundreds of thousands there, and dont intend to. Enough to clear out a province, free the locals from fear of the talibs, and build local administration (with the cooperation of local tribals) to keep the talibs from coming back (and get locals who used to work as talibs to be turned and stay turned)
Posted by: liberal hawk ||
07/07/2009 16:03
Comments ||
Top||
#4
Ironically as heck, I am in favor of the minimal shooting approach at first, but for odd reasons.
First of all is acclimatization. The assumption is that these Marines are "green". They haven't been in country long enough to get used to the place and the people. They cannot assume that everyone with a gun is a bad guy. They also have to get used to the weather.
Second of all, the bad guys know the place. They also know that if they can convince the locals that the "new guys" are nasty or trigger happy, it will be hard as hell to convince them otherwise. The Taliban have made themselves very unpopular, so the Marines want to keep it that way, not have to start from scratch.
Third is that the Marines are crystal clear that the support they get from Washington is minimal, and that the politicians will double cross them in a heartbeat--so no sticking your necks out.
#5
Then why send the Marines? Send in a marching band: The have great uniforms, the locals will like the music and there is little chance they will shoot at the Taliban.
#6
Third is that the Marines are crystal clear that the support they get from Washington is minimal, and that the politicians will double cross them in a heartbeat--so no sticking your necks out.
Is that any way to maintain morale. The next thing we know there will be the fraging of superiors who order them to go on senseless, no win missions. Been there, seen that.
#8
Uncle Sam's Misguided Children took 7 KIA on Monday alone. If casualties continue at this pace, Iraq is going to look like a cakewalk in retrospect.
#9
And let us not forget the spelled backwards "Yes my retarded ass signed up" US ARMY are also bullet catchers for Unc. Sam too often lately for innane reasons. And before people get all bent, I was in the Army so there.
#10
I wonder if these newfangled rules of engagement are the break the Taliban have been waiting for - they may be an open season permit on Marines (with no bag limit) for the Taliban.
#12
#7 Yea, like take the Humvee out for reconnaisance, park it, and smoke cigs in place for 3 hours, turn around and come back. Happens.
Posted by GirlThursday
...or get captured by the Saddam's Republican Guard, lol.
This murder is Racism of course; the widespread criminality brought by muslim migrants in Europe, or the way those protesting egyptians treat their coptic neighbours, is... not.
Fury and sorrow in Egypt: the murder of a pregnant Egyptian woman in a German courtroom last week has sparked protests in Egypt with mourners chanting "Down With Germany." The woman was stabbed to death in a racist attack.
A brutal murder in Germany last week has caused shockwaves in far-off Egypt. Thousands of mourners took to the streets of Alexandria on Monday to protest at the funeral of a pregnant Egyptian woman who was stabbed to death inside a German court in a crime that has provoked fury in her home country.
Egyptian newspapers have given strong coverage to the death of Marwa al-Sherbini (32), describing the veiled woman as a "Martyr in a headscarf" and suggesting the killer was motivated by a hatred of Islam.
Mourners chanted "Down with Germany" Well, killer was russian, but, hey an infidel is an infidel, right? They're all the same.
and scuffled with police predictably after prayers in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria for al-Sherbini, who was murdered on July 1 in a courtroom in Dresden, eastern Germany, by a German man of Russian origin.
"We will direly revenge her death," al-Sherbini's brother, Tarek al-Sherbini," told the Associated Press. He said Muslims faced Racism and Discrimination in the West.
Al-Sherbini, mother to a three-year-old child and three months pregnant, was stabbed 18 times by the man she was testifying against during an appeal hearing, German prosecutors said.
'He Wasn't Blond, so They Shot Him'
Her killer also stabbed her husband, who German police then mistook for the attacker and shot in the leg, prosecutors added. The husband is in hospital and has awoken from a coma. "They thought that he had to be the attacker because he isn't blond and then they shot him," Tarek told Egyptian TV.
The killer, named only as Alex W., was appealing against a conviction for insulting Sherbini by calling her an "Islamist," "terrorist" and a "slut" when she asked him to make space for her son to go on the swings on a playground in Dresden, prosecutors said.
He had been fined 780 and last Wednesday's court session had been called to hear his appeal against the ruling.
State prosecutor Christian Avenarius described him as a man driven by hatred of Muslims. "It was clearly a racist attack by a fanatical lone wolf," he said. W. had moved to Germany from Russia in 2003 and had already expressed his contempt for all Muslims at the start of his court case, the prosecutor said.
Al-Sherbini's body was flown to Cairo on Sunday, and met by her family and the German ambassador. Her funeral was attended by members of parliament, a minister, a representative of Egypt's Coptic Christians and others.
Al-Sherbini moved to Germany in 2005 with her husband Elwi Okaz, a genetic research scientist. They lived in Berlin at first and moved to Dresden in 2008 where Elwi had a research position at the Max-Planck-Institute.
Members of the Muslim Brotherhood parliamentary bloc, Egypt's most powerful opposition group, have called for MPs to discuss the killing, the group's Web site said.
German Consulate Under Police Protection
More protests are planned in front of the German consulate in Alexandria on Thursday. Egyptian newspapers reported that police had been put on alert and would deploy to protect the consulate. The city council plans to name a street after al-Sherbini, Daily News Egypt reported on Tuesday.
Hundreds of Arabs and Muslims demonstrated in Berlin on Saturday. The Egyptian Pharmaceutical Association has called for a boycott of German-made drugs -- al-Sherbiny was a pharmacologist and a member of Egypt's national handball team from 1992 to 1999.
The General Secretaries of Germany's Muslim and Jewish Councils, Aiman Mayzek and Stephan Kramer, visited al-Sherbini's husband in hospital on Monday. "You don't have to be Muslim to oppose anti-Muslim behavior, and you don't have to be Jewish to oppose anti-Semitism," said Kramer. "We must stand together against such inhumanity."
German government spokesman Thomas Steg said Chancellor Angela Merkel had reacted "very emotionally" to the incident. "If there's a Xenophobic, Racist background to this case, the government of course condemns it in the strongest terms," he said.
Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, Egypt's most senior cleric, called the attacker a murderer and said al-Sherbiny was a Martyr. But he appealed for calm and said he hoped the murder wouldn't harm the Dialogue between the West and Islam. "It was an isolated case," he said.
#1
"Well, killer was russian, but, hey an infidel is an infidel, right? They're all the same."
and scuffled with police predictably after prayers in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria for al-Sherbini, who was murdered on July 1 in a courtroom in Dresden, eastern Germany, by a German man of Russian origin.
Er, seems they have a better idea of the way national identity is supposed to work in the West than you do.
Posted by: liberal hawk ||
07/07/2009 13:26
Comments ||
Top||
#2
The Germans are allowing millions of foreign immigrants into their country. How racist can they be? When Egypt allows millions of Indians into their country, then they might have the moral standing to accuse Germany of racism.
#4
Oc course the mass murders of westerners in Egypt (Luxor, Sharm el Sheik, blown up airliners, tourist bus attacks, tourist boat attacks, random street attacks) well that's just business, infidel.
Hey Euro's, learn to spend your money elsewhere, like Croatia or Columbia, and kick the muslims the hell out. As an American I'd also appreciate you not hosting terrorists that mass murder thousands of my fellow citizens.
Posted by: ed ||
07/07/2009 14:54
Comments ||
Top||
#5
On the other hand . . .
How did the defendant smuggle a knife into the courtroom? Why wasn't there an armed police officer present to prevent something like this?
Call me a hick from flyover country, but in most courts I've been in, there are one or more armed police officers to maintain order. In fact, in Texas, the Judges are armed too. There are also metal detectors when you enter the building.
Obviously I am not as enlightened as my European betters.
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
07/07/2009 16:58
Comments ||
Top||
#6
LH - lighten up on the hypermoral authority
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/07/2009 18:38
Comments ||
Top||
#7
I happen to own a "Executive letter opener ' it's actually a carbon fiber dagger completely immune to Xrays and such, Metal detectors can't "See" it.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/07/2009 23:40
Comments ||
Top||
Al Gore today compared the battle against Global Warming climate change with the struggle against the Nazis.
The former US Vice President said the world lacked the political will to act and invoked the spirit of Winston Churchill by encouraging leaders to unite their nations to fight climate change. He also accused politicians around the world of exploiting ignorance about the dangers of global warming to avoid difficult decisions.
Speaking in Oxford at the Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment, sponsored by The Times, Mr Gore said: "Winston Churchill aroused this nation in heroic fashion to save civilisation in World War II."
He could ask for the Churchill bust his dear friend President Obama returned not long ago.
He added: "We have everything we need except political will but political will is a renewable resource."
Mr Gore admitted that it was difficult to persuade the public that the threat from climate change was as urgent as the threat from Nazi Germany.
That's 'cause it isn't as urgent. Of course, climate change isn't a threat either, but rather a promise, and one we can do absolutely nothing to affect on a global level. Locally, small changes can be made by replanting forests -- perhaps Mr Gore should suggest to his English listeners that they give up their lovely village cottages for flats in the city, and replant the vasty woodlands the Robin Hood tales made famous.
"The level of awareness and concern among populations has not crossed the threshold where political leaders feel that they must change.
"The only way politicians will act is if awareness raises to a level to make them feel that it's a necessity."
Mr Gore, who brought the issues around climate change to a mass audience with the 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Lie Truth, said the great hope for the future lay in a high level of environmental awareness among young people. He said sceptics who refused to believe dramatic cuts in carbon emissions could be delivered
(plant more trees!)
Mean global temperature has dropped since he showed that movie. Perhaps he should make another movie.
should consider the example of the young scientists in the NASA team which put a man on the moon on 1969. "The average age of scientists in the space centre control room was 26, which means they were 18 when they heard President Kennedy say he wanted to put a man on the moon in 10 years. Neil Armstrong did it eight years and two months later."
He said future generations would put one of two questions to today's adults. "It will either be 'what were you thinking, didn't you see the North Pole freezing melting before your eyes, didn't you hear what the scientists were saying?' Or they will ask 'how is it you were so stupid to believe Al Gore able to find the moral courage to solve the crisis which so many said couldn't be solved?'."
Gosh, why would so many say such a thing?
Sir David King, the Government's former chief scientist and now director of the Smith School, also berated politicians for failing to follow up their statements on climate change with a clear programme of action. "I do think it's relatively easy for a prime minister to make a speech on climate change which sounds committed and very much more difficult for that prime minister to persuade the Treasury to put the finance behind that commitment to make it a reality.
"There is a long distance in government between saying what you think needs to be said and then doing in terms of taxing people to death making budgets available."
Indeed. That's because the politicians are the ones who have to face the voters who actually pay for your pie-in-the-sky projects, Sir David.
Sir David expressed disappointment that no senior British politician had taken up his invitation to address a conference attended by the world's top climate scientists, senior business leaders and the presidents of the Maldives and Rwanda. The Maldives and Rwanda are the vanguard of enlightenment regarding Global Warming?
Since they've refused to think about more important issues, they can devote themselves to such trivialities.
#3
He's right about the parallel to the struggle against totalitarian fascism; he's just a bit confused about which side of the debate is the totalitarian fascist one.
Posted by: Mike ||
07/07/2009 13:32
Comments ||
Top||
Jobs. A study by Redefining Progress found that, if properly implemented, the governors recommendations and/or AB 32 could create as many as 200,000 jobs in Californiaenough to lower the state unemployment rate by 15 percent. This is more than twice the estimatebased on only a partial implementationproduced by the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA).
Savings. When fully implemented, these initiatives could provide the average California household with net savings greater than $750 per year, the equivalent of a 20 percent cut in the state income tax. Properly directed, these savings would be especially beneficial in assisting low- and moderate-income families, communities and small businesses overcome financial barriers to energy efficiency.
Exhaustive research of climatological data going back millions of years carried out by Lee Gerhard, senior scientist with the Kansas Geological Society, reveals an entirely different picture of the forces driving the myriad changes through which the earth's climate has passed. Gerhard dismisses the notion that human emissions of carbon dioxide are a significant driver of climate and refutes the idea that climate change rates and today's slight global warming are unprecedented. "They are not," he flatly states. Instead, Gerhard makes two key points:
* Climate naturally changes constantly, from warmer to cooler and from cooler to warmer, and at many levels of intensity over time at many scales.
* Variation in solar activity closely correlates with global temperature variations, suggesting that the amount of solar energy reaching the surface of the earth is a primary climate driver at the time scale of decades to millennia.3
"Overall," Gerhard says, "the earth's climate has been cooling for 60 million years, but that is only an average -- temperature goes up and down constantly."4 Addressing a September 20 Capitol Hill briefing sponsored by the Center for Science and Public Policy, Gerhard, in a power point presentation, showed the highly variable nature of the earth's climate over the past 16,000 years and, in more detail, during the last 2,000 years. "Depending on the period in earth's history that is chosen," he said, "the climate will either be warming or cooling. Choosing whether earth is warming or cooling is simply a matter of picking end points."5
Gerhard, whose research took place under the auspices of the Kansas Geological Survey and was not funded by industry, points out that the geological record shows that rises in greenhouse gases do not precede rises in temperature. Indeed, CO2 levels actually rose prior to the advent of the Little Ice Age (circa 1400).6 Moreover, CO2, the greenhouse gas most prominently cited as contributing to global warming, represents only about 1/4 of 1 percent of the total greenhouse gas effect, "hardly a device to drive the massive energy system of earth's climate," he says.
Gerhard's conclusions are supported by findings released Sept. 29 by CO2 researechers Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso. "[E]arth's mean near-surface air temperature is nowhere near the peak level of what it was a million or so years ago," they write. "Neither is it as high as it was during the mid-Holocene [circe 5,000 years ago], which was itself much cooler than all four of the interglacials that preceded it. In fact, it's not even as warm now as it was a mere 900 years ago, when the atmosphere's CO2 concentration was fully 100 ppm (parts per million) less than it is today..."
#6
Winston Churchill refused to make peace with Germany after the fall of France, when the war had clearly been lost and there was no further reason to continue it. But Churchill refused to accept anything but Victory. "We shall never surrender" what kind of peacenik would support a stance like that? I'd be careful about liberals quoting Churchill, it's a dangerous precedent to set.
#1
It should be noted that this is the Han attitude towards all foreigners. This is "foreigner" used in the Chinese sense - non-Han. The Chinese word for Chinese person is Zhong Guo Ren, or China person. The word for foreigner is Wai Guo Ren, or outside person. Thus, even when Chinese come to our countries, they call us foreigner.
You'll also notice that they're fired up by false online rumor-mongers and hate-filled TV shows. The provocateurs know exactly what they're doing, and the #1 desire is to humiliate the foe and prove the superiority of the Han culture and race. Memorize these themes because you're going to see a lot of them in the next 10-20 years.
#2
gromky, if a Chinese calls you Wai Guo Ren, take it as a compliment. It is the Politically Correct term for foreigner. Generally it is laowai, old foreigner, which they will explain means respected foreigner. But they use it in the same way that we use Wog (Worthy oriental gentleman) as in stupid bloody wog. One of the nice things about China is that it hasn't been corrupted by PC fanatics. And yes they can take it as well as disk it out.
#3
Lao Wai generally means white foreigner. I get called that about fifty times a day. Wai Guo Ren is the more generic term for anyone who ain't one of us. They certainly don't call Uighurs laowai.
#4
And yes they can take it as well as disk it out.
Actually, the Chinese can dish it out, but they definitely can't take it. And in the Chinese psyche, they shouldn't have to, since fairness and the Chinese point of view are one and the same.
#6
Creepy when you start to think about the staggering amount of people that have been killed over the centuries to maintain the un-naturally selected populus.
#7
Is there any countries that muslims dont cause trouble when they live with non muslims?
They are the only religion that are taught to have nothing to do with other religions/communities!!!!
The Chicoms conquered the Uighurs in 1946, at a time when Western countries were *leaving* the lands they had ruled for hundreds of years. You will find, as China's territorial extent increases along with its military power, that a lot of people of other religions won't get along with Chinese occupation troops and the tens of millions of settlers they bring with them.
Right now California's economy is moribund, and the prospects for a quick turnaround are not good. Unable to pay its bills, the state is issuing IOUs; its once strong credit rating has collapsed. The state that once boasted the seventh-largest gross domestic product in the world is looking less like a celebrated global innovator and more like a fiscal basket case along the lines of Argentina or Latvia.
It took some amazing incompetence to toss this best-endowed of places down into the dustbin of history. Yet conventional wisdom views the crisis largely as a legacy of Proposition 13, which in effect capped only taxes.
This lets too many malefactors off the hook. I covered the Proposition 13 campaign for the Washington Post and examined its aftermath up close. It passed because California was running huge surpluses at the time, even as soaring property taxes were driving people from their homes.
Admittedly it was a crude instrument, but by limiting those property taxes Proposition 13 managed to save people's houses. To the surprise of many prognosticators, the state government did not go out of business. It has continued to expand faster than either its income or population. Between 2003 and 2007, spending grew 31%, compared with a 5% population increase. Today the overall tax burden as percent of state income, according to the Tax Foundation, has risen to the sixth-highest in the nation.
The media and political pundits refuse to see this gap between the state's budget and its ability to pay as an essential issue. It is. (This is not to say structural reform is not needed. I would support, for example, reforming some of the unintended ill-effects of Proposition 13 that weakened local government and left control of the budget to Sacramento.)
But the fundamental problem remains. California's economy--once wondrously diverse with aerospace, high-tech, agriculture and international trade--has run aground. Burdened by taxes and ever-growing regulation, the state is routinely rated by executives as having among the worst business climates in the nation. No surprise, then, that California's jobs engine has sputtered, and it may be heading toward 15% unemployment.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
07/07/2009 14:35
Comments ||
Top||
#4
Half-right maybe. The spawn of Allan were invited/accepted into the UK to breed and seethe, leading to Dire Revenge®, so maybe the British are responsible for not looking ahead, at all. Leadership, vision, a plan? Hell, to start a 5 grand business, I had to have a plan.
btw, the memorial for those that died that day was unvieled to-day in Hyde Park, I heard, reminiscent of standing girders. I heard the mo-fo bombers were to be commemorated as well. Let us hope it is not there.
President Obama went to Moscow desperate for the appearance of a foreign-policy success. He got that illusion -- at a substantial cost to America's security. The series of signing ceremonies in a grand Kremlin hall and the litany of agreements, accords and frameworks implied that the United States benefited from all the fuss. We didn't. We got nothing of real importance. But the government of puppet-master Vladimir Putin (nominally just prime minister) got virtually all it wanted. In Moscow, this was Christmas in July.
Ignore the agenda-padding public-health memorandum and the meaningless "framework document on military cooperation" (we've had such agreements before; the Russians always just stiff us). The main course in Moscow was arms control. President Obama's ideological bias against nuclear weapons dates back to his undergraduate years. Yet those weapons kept the peace between the world's great powers for 64 years. A few remarks about deterrence notwithstanding, Obama just doesn't get it. He agreed to trim our nuclear-warhead arsenal by one-third and -- even more dangerously -- to cut the systems that deliver the nuclear payloads. In fact, the Russians don't care much about our warhead numbers (which will be chopped to a figure "between 1,500 and 1,675"). What they really wanted -- and got -- was a US cave-in regarding limits on our nuclear-capable bombers, submarines and missiles that could leave us with as few as 500 such systems, if the Russians continue to get their way as the final details are negotiated.
Moscow knows we aren't going to start a nuclear war with Russia. Putin (forget poor "President" Dmitry Medvedev) wants to gut our conventional capabilities to stage globe-spanning military operations. He wants to cut us down to Russia's size. Our problem is that many nuclear-delivery systems -- such as bombers or subs -- are "dual-use": A B-2 bomber can launch nukes, but it's employed more frequently to deliver conventional ordnance. Putin sought to cripple our ability to respond to international crises. Obama, meanwhile, was out for "deliverables" -- deals that could be signed in front of the cameras. Each man got what he wanted. President Obama even expressed an interest in further nuclear-weapons cuts. Peace in our time, ladies and gentlemen, peace in our time . . . We just agreed to the disarmament position of the American Communist Party of the 1950s.
The Russians also enjoyed our president's empathy for their position on missile defense. Apparently, Eastern Europe really does belong to the Kremlin's sphere of influence. Not least, Obama fell for the sucker offer of the year: The Russians will generously allow us to fly our troops and weapons through their airspace to Afghanistan. This ploy is utterly transparent: Putin intends to lull us into dependency on a trans-Russia supply route -- giving him a free hand in Georgia, Ukraine and elsewhere. By Putin's calculus, we'll complain about further aggression on Russia's frontiers, but take no action that would jeopardize our new supply line. Meanwhile, we serve as the Kremlin's proxies, protecting its sphere of influence in Central Asia against Islamist influence from the south and working on the Russians' Afghan heroin problem.
What did our president get in return? Russia will import more American meat products (which Russia needs). And we can re-open our Moscow office investigating the cases of POWs and MIAs from yesteryear's wars. Well, I served in that office 16 years ago. Even during the Yeltsin-era "thaw," the Russians stonewalled us. And Putin's no Boris Yeltsin. Our president also got some generalizations about North Korea and Iran, but no hard commitments. Russia -- which designed many of Iran's nuclear facilities -- wouldn't even promise to permanently deny Iran the sophisticated air-defense systems that would make it harder to hit Tehran's nuke sites.
And you could read something else in President Medvedev's imperious bearing behind his podium yesterday: Moscow longs for the world to view Russia and the United States as equals again, as joint arbiters of a global condominium, reviving the Kremlin's Cold-War status (for which Russians feel passionate nostalgia). They got that, too. And we got nothing, nothing, nothing. Unless you think trading our military superiority for hamburger sales is a winner.
There's been a debate in the Obama administration between veterans who learned the hard way not to trust the Russians and the new, unblooded idealists. Now we know who won. Great news for the Russian Federation. Bad news for America. Until an adoring media spins it, of course.
#1
Whoever said a picture was worth a thousand words was correct, that picture says it all about Zero, his policies, and his followers.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
07/07/2009 14:29
Comments ||
Top||
#2
Raplph Peters get it. Not only did Comrade Obama give away the farm but locks the USA into a position of inferiority. This agreement does nothing about the hundreds of Russian aircraft and short range missiles (and hundreds of Chinese IRBMs) that form a large part of their nuclear strike capability. A force that puts into range most of their likely targets (China, Europe, Iran, Pakistan) saving all of their ICBM and SLBM assets for use against the USA. While US nuclear forces must be split amongst all possible targets.
He agreed to trim our nuclear-warhead arsenal by one-third and -- even more dangerously -- to cut the systems that deliver the nuclear payloads. In fact, the Russians don't care much about our warhead numbers (which will be chopped to a figure "between 1,500 and 1,675"). What they really wanted -- and got -- was a US cave-in regarding limits on our nuclear-capable bombers, submarines and missiles that could leave us with as few as 500 such systems
The Russians can't afford to maintain their current nuclear triad while ours are a small part of the budget. Their large land based based ICBMs are coming to end of life. Even if they were in good shape, the Russians won't have time to launch before a Chinese first strike wipes out the missile fields thanks to tech transfer and espionage courtesy of Bill and Hillary Clinton and a few well placed Chinese campaign contributions. Why do you think the the Soviets were so eager to eliminate IRBMs once the US began deploying Pershing 2 to Europe? To have any chance at survival, Russian ICBM must be mobile and they are very expensive and reliability is uncertain. And real time space based surveillance is improving all the time.
The Russians SLBMs are in even worse shape and they can't afford more than a few new boomers, even if they could get them working. The Russians are still living off their decrepit cold war bomber force and can't even think about designing and building new ones.
Moscow longs for the world to view Russia and the United States as equals again
Why would Americans treat dictatorships as equals, let alone allow to lock in a position of nuclear superiority? Esp one with 140 million and rapidly declining population whose GDP equals Spain's. The Russians are in real deep shit and Comrade Obama just volunteered America to bail out his soulmates.
Posted by: ed ||
07/07/2009 15:49
Comments ||
Top||
#3
Yalta II. Lucky us, Russia's weaker than Stalin's Soviet Union, and we're bigger than FDR's America.
For now.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
07/07/2009 15:51
Comments ||
Top||
#5
My take away was indeed Medvedev(Putin) was after parity between our warheads and their own. Also what struck me as interesting was how even as Medvedev was getting what he was after, he managed to look angry and put out up there on the podium while Obama was speaking. Obama in typical fashion looked uncomfortable on the podium and almost apologetic at times. Hes apologetic for our strength--what an imbecile.
EL SEGUNDO -- Former Three's Company star Joyce DeWitt is facing DUI charges.
The 60-year old sitcom actress was arrested Saturday, July 4th at 4:19 p.m. after DeWitt drove around a barricade at Pine Avenue and Sierra Street near the city's annual fireworks show, El Segundo police Sgt. Dan Kim said.
Witnesses said DeWitt pulled up in a black sports car, parked, and staggered toward a police officer standing in uniform next to his motorcycle. Officers say DeWitt appeared to be intoxicated, so they administered a field sobriety test.
DeWitt, who played Janet Wood on the popular 1970's hit TV show, failed the field sobriety test and was taken to the El Segundo jail. She was cited and released at 1:20 a.m. Sunday on $5,000 bail.
Political rivals have accused him of being a neo-liberal and a ditherer, but Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has emerged as the favourite ahead of today's Indonesian presidential poll. The former general and incumbent is widely tipped to be re-elected in the first round of voting when as many as 176 million Indonesian voters cast their ballots.
It has been a campaign largely devoid of penetrating discussion of the many pressing issues facing Indonesia. Even so, there have been moments of colour and drama, including an intriguing claim on Friday by President Yudhoyono that black magic spells had been cast against him and his campaign team.
"Many are practising black magic. Indeed, I and my family can feel it," he was quoted as saying by Antara, the official Indonesian news agency. "It's extraordinary. Many kinds of methods are used. I have come to the conclusion that only prayers can defeat black magic attacks. For instance, last night I kept praying all the way to the venue of the [candidates'] debate along with my wife, aides and driver." The comments caused a stir amid accusations Dr Yudhoyono was being "irrational". However, the belief in supernatural spirits remains deeply entrenched in Indonesia, notwithstanding that most of its population are adherents of Islam.
There has also been an alleged dirty tricks campaign to portray the wife of Dr Yudhoyono's running mate, Boediono, falsely, as a Catholic. It remains unclear whether this so-called black operation was launched by supporters of Dr Yudhoyono and attributed by them to the rival party Golkar, or actually carried out by cadres of Golkar. Either way, Golkar's candidate, Jusuf Kalla, has run an extensive advertising campaign featuring his wife - and the spouse of his running mate, the former general Wiranto - proudly wearing the traditional Islamic headscarf. The wives of Dr Yudhoyono and Mr Boediono do not wear the scarf, known here as the jilbab.
Dr Yudhoyono's other rival, the former president Megawati Soekarnoputri, has run on a populist, nationalist platform of rapid economic expansion and largesse for poor villagers, without actually saying how she would generate the promised 10 per cent GDP growth or pay for the handouts. She and her running mate, Prabowo Subianto (another former general), have regularly labelled Dr Yudhoyono a pro-foreigner "neo-liberal" who has created an "errand boy" economy for Indonesia.
The President, meanwhile, has campaigned on his record of bringing economic stability to Indonesia, crushing terrorism at the same time as attacking the country's endemic culture of corruption. Dr Yudhoyono's imposing lead has, in part, driven many loud complaints from his opponents about deep flaws in the election commission's list of registered voters. But a decision on Monday by the Constitutional Court to allow people to vote if they show a valid identification card has taken the heat out of accusations of a rigged poll.
Radical Muslim preacher Abu Izzadeen has been returned to prison after breaching the terms of his release, BBC News understands.
Izzadeen, also knows as Omar Brooks, was released from prison in May after his four-and-a-half-year sentence for inciting terrorism was cut on appeal. He was found guilty in 2008 of urging worshippers at a London mosque to fight US and British troops in Iran. Izzadeen, 34, once heckled former home secretary John Reid at a meeting.
On appeal, Izzadeen's sentence for terrorism fundraising and incitement was cut by one year, leading to his release on licence in May. Izzadeen had been released under tight restrictions, which included a curfew and monitoring arrangements involving both police and probation officers.
A Muslim convert, Izzadeen was convicted along with five others of supporting terrorism in speeches made at London's Regent's Park mosque on 9 November 2004. The speeches came as US troops were engaged in a fierce battle in the Iraqi city of Falluja. Clips of the men speaking about jihad, Osama Bin Laden and prejudice towards Muslims were played at their 2008 trial, including one during which Izzadeen said that Allah had given mujahideen (holy warriors) a "chance to kill the American".
Izzadeen defended his actions, saying he and other British Muslims had "no other weapon than our tongue" to fight against what they saw as a "massacre" of Muslims by Western forces in Iraq.
His lawyers argued on appeal that his sentence should be reduced because of his pre-trial time in custody. Four of the other men convicted alongside Izzadeen also had their sentences reduced.
US President Barack Obama on Tuesday strongly denied that the United States had given Israel an approval to strike Iran's nuclear facilities.
Asked by CNN whether Washington had given Israel a green light for such an attack, Obama answered: "Absolutely not." In the interview, which was broadcast from Russia, where Obama is on an official visit, he added: "We can't dictate to other countries what their security interests are.
"What is also true is, it is the policy of the United States to try to resolve the issue of Iran's nuclear capabilities," Obama said. This would be achieved "through diplomatic channels," he added.
On Sunday, US Vice President Joe Biden was asked on ABC's 'This Week' whether the US would stand in the way militarily if the Israelis decided they needed to take out Iran's nuclear program. The US "cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do," he said. "Israel can determine for itself - it's a sovereign nation - what's in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else," he said.
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly, however, denied that the vice president was giving Israel American approval for an attack on Iran. "I certainly would not want to give a green light to any kind of military action," Kelly said, while at the same time reiterating Israel's right to determine its security needs as a sovereign state. "We're not going to dictate its actions," Kelly added. "We're also committed to Israel's security. And we share Israel's deep concerns about Iran's nuclear program."
Earlier Tuesday, The Washington Times reported that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his top deputies had not formally asked for US aid or permission for a possible military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, since they feared the White House would not approve. The report quoted two unnamed Israeli officials.
An anonymous senior Israeli official was cited by the Times as saying that Netanyahu was determined that "it made no sense" to press the matter after the negative response former US president George W. Bush gave the prime minister's predecessor, Ehud Olmert, when he asked early last year for US assistance for possible military strikes on Iran. "There was a decision not to press this because it was probably inadequate for the engagement policy and what we know about Obama's approach to Iran," he said.
Israel is unlikely to attack Iran without at least tacit US approval, in part because it would require cooperation from the United States. At the very least, Israel would most likely have to fly over Iraqi airspace, which is still effectively controlled by the US Air Force. However, a Sunday Times report claimed that talks conducted by Mossad head Meir Dagan resulted in Saudi Arabia agreeing to let IAF jets fly over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran's nuclear facilities.
White House officials have declined to comment on the substance of discussions between US and Israeli officials on Iran.
#2
They told me that if I voted for McCain-Palin, we'd end up with a dangerously stupid loose cannon just a heartbeat from the presidency. I voted for them anyway.
Look what happened!
Posted by: Mike ||
07/07/2009 14:42
Comments ||
Top||
Gov. Sarah Palin was coy about her presidential aspirations but criticized both President Obama and the Republican Party in her first interview since announcing she was stepping down as governor of Alaska.
Standing astride a fishing boat she would later climb aboard to haul in fishing nets and salmon, Palin expressed bitterness at bloggers who peppered her with ethics accusations, whom she said brought government in Alaska to a grinding halt. "The critics want to put you on a course of personal bankruptcy, so you can't afford to serve," she said, calling the attacks "bull crap." The Newt Gingrich treatment. (Newtered)
The governor made the remarks in an interview with FOX News in Dillingham, where she was fishing with her husband, Todd, and daughter Piper. Reporters from three other networks were also in attendance.
Palin said she has started a legal defense fund to raise money for legal fees.
She said Obama is taking the country in the wrong direction, and while she wouldn't reveal her future plans, indicated she has fight left in her. "Average, hard-working Americans need to be able to get out there, unrestrained, and fight for what is right," she said. "Fight for energy independence and national security, fight for a smaller government instead of this big government overgrowth that Obama is ushering in."
Palin also offered criticism of the Washington, D.C., political establishment, and even the Republican Party, which nominated her to be vice president last year. "Obsessive partisanship" has hurt the party, she said, striking a more independent beat than the partisan tune she sang on the campaign trail. "We have so many people who offer advice, but I'm going to continue to be, whether some of them like it or not, pretty darn independent, and not get wrapped up into a strong political machine that hasn't been extremely successful in some ways."
Palin also decried the state of the American media and said news coverage of her children was unfair. "Most candidates, most public officials get to look into a camera and say, 'you better leave your hands off my kids,'" she said. "Well I haven't been able to say that. And that double standard that's been applied, that's been a little bit frustrating."
Asked if she wanted to be president, she repeated she did not know what her future holds. "I want to work, right now, for people who are going to work either in office or out of office for the right things. Those principles that build up America, those who are inspired by the values of America, and will not deride or apologize for the values we hold as Americans."
Palin had cited attacks on her family and multiple ethics complaints that had forced her family to rack up hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills. As a result, it's unlikely she'd run for president in 2012, suggested Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele. "Not having talked to the governor, I take 2012 off the table right now simply because given everything she's going through personally, dealing with the financial mess that all these ludicrous investigations have put her and Todd in, at the moment, I think she's trying to focus on getting her house in order, her personal house in order," Steele told FOX News. "I look forward to welcoming her out and helping us in our campaigns this fall if and when shes ready to do that. Sarah Palin will be the ultimate arbiter of when she will engage and how she will engage," he said.
As Palin spoke, she and her husband Todd Palin loaded four news crews into two small fishing boats and headed into Bristol Bay from Dillingham. The Palin family -- Todd's sister, mother and father, as well as nieces and at least two children, had picked the journalists up at the airport in Dillingham and shuttled them to Bristol Bay in old pickup trucks and SUVs.
On the bay, Sarah Palin showed how they spent time each summer hauling up pre-placed nets, emptying them of captured salmon, and tossing them back into the water.
Todd Palin was all smiles as he captained the fishing boat in Bristol Bay out to nets filled with Sockeye. He grew up commercial fishing these waters and Sarah Palin has been making the summer trip to Dillingham for many years. She joked that even though she's been helping her husband haul in fish for decades he still yells at her for doing it wrong. The governor and another hauler lifted the nets out of the water and pried the salmon out.
It was tough work. She wore rubber gloves, knee-high boots and waders. This was a portrait of the moose hunter and folksy hockey mom that emerged soon after she was picked by Sen. John McCain to be his running mate.
#1
I see the MSM can't stop getting their digs in.
I guess it's in their blood.
Except for Lightworkers, of course.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/07/2009 10:31
Comments ||
Top||
#2
On the bay, Sarah Palin showed how they spent time each summer hauling up pre-placed nets, emptying them of captured salmon, and tossing them back into the w
I've been fishing for decades, recreationally not commercially, but I never realized I was "capturing" fish all this time. I guess this makes the stringer the Abu Ghraib of fishdom.
#2
You can't cut-and-paste because its an image. I won't hot-link the image but the gist of it is....
(any spelling errors are probably my typos...)
The use of air-to-ground munitions and indirect fires against residential compounds is only authorized under very limited and prescribed conditions (specific conditions deleted...)
Any entry into an Afghan house should always be accomblished by Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), wiht the support of local authorities, and account for the unique cultural sensitivities toward local women.
No ISAF forces will enter or fire upon, or file into, a mosque or any religious or historical site except in self-defense. All searches and entries for any other reason will be conducted by ANSF.
So how is becoming a running joke going to help us win hearts and minds?
#4
There is a tactical case to be made for harshe rules of engagement, and for less harsh depending on conditions on the ground, including political conditions. Some folks on left and right like to opine for one or the other without respect to local conditions.
I dont know the local conditions well enough to say whether this is right or wrong. I also dont know how much the military is onboard with the new policy, though it sounds like it would fit so some degree with Petraeus and counterinsurgency doctrine.
Posted by: liberal hawk ||
07/07/2009 11:49
Comments ||
Top||
#5
"Any entry into an Afghan house should always be accomblished by Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), wiht the support of local authorities, and account for the unique cultural sensitivities toward local women."
This makes sense. IIUC it is based to a considerable degree on experience in Iraq.
Posted by: liberal hawk ||
07/07/2009 11:50
Comments ||
Top||
#6
"No ISAF forces will enter or fire upon, or file into, a mosque or any religious or historical site except in self-defense. All searches and entries for any other reason will be conducted by ANSF.
No ISAF forces will enter or fire upon, or file into, a mosque or any religious or historical site except in self-defense. All searches and entries for any other reason will be conducted by ANSF."
IOW - if we are being fired on from a mosque, we will fire back. If we are not being fired on, but suspect a weapons cache, etc, we will surround the place and call on the friendlies to go in and do the search.
Again, I dont think this policy is as weak as some seem to think.
Posted by: liberal hawk ||
07/07/2009 11:52
Comments ||
Top||
#7
What was the rule prior to TD6?
Posted by: lord garth ||
07/07/2009 12:21
Comments ||
Top||
#9
General McKiernan's relief after less than one year was done shabbily and with little regard to truth on the ground. General McChrystal is the new administration darling. He's been appointed the Afghani Zsar and been given a mandate by Gates and Barry to play softball. The natural overreaction and safe-siding of this directive at all levels will surely get soldiers and marines killed. Fold the tentage and close the club USAF, you're done. They never liked CAS anyway. UAV's are early as unpopular
The preceptions of bad guys on the ground are KEY! The enemy, if it is still the Taliban, will joyously celebrate TD6 I assure you. Marines and soldiers, not so much. Particularly as the KIA numbers rise.
WASHINGTON -- Rep. Patrick Kennedy said he's "feeling healthy and strong" and plans to return to Congress Tuesday after receiving treatment at a Maryland addiction treatment center. The Rhode Island Democrat said Monday he was looking forward to returning full-time to his congressional duties. "The support and words of encouragement I have received over the past few weeks certainly help to support my efforts in recovery which I take seriously every day," Kennedy said in a statement.
The congressman, who has struggled with depression, alcoholism and addiction for much of his life, checked into the Father Martin's Ashley in Havre de Grace, Md., last month. The son of Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., has called his treatment "a lifelong process." "Addiction" to what, women, power and/or drugs? If he was a trunk we not only know the dirt on the "addiction" but he would be hounded out of Congress. Does Packwood ring a bell?
The congressman spent the July 4 weekend on Cape Cod visiting his father, who is battling brain cancer.
Kennedy previously sought treatment after an early morning car crash near the Capitol three years ago.
#5
There was a story years ago that Teddy took it upon himself to be the Kennedy clans children's drug dealer, keeping a stock of whatever they wanted to try on hand.
However, this backfired, as the older generation had stuck to liquor for the most part. They assumed that everything from pills, mescaline, LSD, ecstasy, and whatever, was just as harmless as alcohol. They were mistaken in this belief.
Pat Kennedy will probably be lucky to make it to 60 before his liver implodes.
The state will pay $335,000 to settle a lawsuit stemming from a crash involving former state Sen. Carole Migden.
Migden lost her Senate seat last year. She is now on the state's waste management board.
Supervising Deputy Attorney General Steven Gevercer said Monday state officials have agreed to pay the sum to 33-year-old Ellen Butawan. Butawan sued Migden and the state after suffering injuries when Migden rear-ended her in May 2007 in Solano County.
Witnesses reported Migden talking on the phone and driving wildly in her state-owned SUV before the crash. The San Francisco Democrat said she didn't remember the ride and suggested medication may have been to blame. She pleaded no contest to reckless driving.
Butawan's attorney said his client was fine with the settlement.
Migden lost her Senate seat last year. She is now on the state's waste management board.
They always take care of their own ...
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
07:41 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[11 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
The article forgot to add that "Mad Madamn Midgen" has had a few accidents over the years, smokes pot, and is rumored to like other drugs. Now knowing this the CHP neglected to give her any kind of blood or urine test AFTER the crash. She claims to be on prescription drugs but we still dont know what kind (can you guess?). Also she claimed to be on state business but we never found out what that business was at the time (on a Sunday and out of her district). But now she is ensconsed in an appointed job that meets four times a year and pays six figures.
In February 2004, she married Cristina Arguedas, a criminal defense attorney and her partner since 1985, in a ceremony at Sha'ar Zahav San Francisco City Hall officiated by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. That marriage was later annulled by the California Supreme Court.
#3
The people of state voted her into office, they get what they asked for, a dope smoking, drug taking, law breaking idiot, but then our reps are supposed to be reps of the people and for San Fran she is. They get what they deserve.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
07/07/2009 13:21
Comments ||
Top||
#4
She is now on the state's waste management board.
President Obama's campaign to bring change to the nation's capital hasn't kept him from continuing the Washington tradition of handing out ambassadorships to political friends and fundraisers.
An old college roommate, the head of an entertainment production company and a lawyer whose family made its money selling vacuum cleaners are among more than a dozen people who have won ambassadorships after raising a total of at least $4 million for Mr. Obama's presidential campaign, according to public records.
The practice has been common for both political parties.
Since the Kennedy administration, presidents have given political appointees about 30 percent of the roughly 170 ambassadorships globally. While analysts say it's too early to say how Mr. Obama's administration will compare, government watchdog groups contend that the practice seems at odds with the president's populist rhetoric against "special interests."
"Awarding ambassadorships and other government posts to major campaign donors highlights the systematic corruption in privately financed campaigns," said Craig Holman, a spokesman for Public Citizen, a nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog group. "It is reprehensible that any government positions in the United States are awarded based on money rather than merit."
Mary Boyle, spokeswoman for Common Cause, another watchdog group, said, "The reality is big givers expect something back, and candidates typically reward big givers."
White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said Mr. Obama's nominees are qualified.
"The president said in January he would nominate extremely qualified individuals like [John] Roos, former Congressman Tim Roemer and Miguel Diaz, who didn't necessarily come up through the ranks of the State Department but want to serve their country in important diplomatic posts," he said in a June 30 e-mail.
Mr. Roos, a lawyer, is the nominee for ambassador to Japan. Mr. Roemer was nominated to be ambassador in India. Mr. Diaz, a theology professor at St. John's University, was nominated as ambassador to the Vatican. All three are political appointments, but only Mr. Roos was a fundraiser for Mr. Obama.
Asked whether appointing fundraisers to ambassadorships squares with Mr. Obama's pledge to bring change to Washington, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that the president is appointing a mix of qualified people.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
07:39 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
When Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania suddenly became a Democrat in April, it seemed he had virtually ensured his re-election to a sixth term in 2010.
The veteran senator had the backing of President Obama, top state Democratic leaders such as Gov. Edward G. Rendell and Sen. Bob Casey and was all but assured of the Democratic nomination in a state that has been trending heavily Democratic in recent elections.
However, a new set of obstacles stands in the way of the senator, who switched parties in the face of polls showing he could not win the Republican Party's renomination.
Rep. Joe Sestak, a relatively little-known two-term House Democrat who senses that much of his party's base is uncomfortable with Mr. Specter, confirmed last week, "I am going to get into the race against Arlen Specter." Recent polling shows Democrats cooling toward Mr. Specter's candidacy amid doubts raised by his long history as a Republican warrior who took positions and cast votes sharply at odds with those of his new party.
A Franklin & Marshall College Poll (formerly the Keystone Poll) of Pennsylvania voters reported last week that 28 percent said he deserves re-election, down from 40 percent in March. While it showed he was holding on to 43 percent of Democratic voters, just 24 percent of independents and 11 percent of Republicans questioned by the pollsters supported keeping him in office.
"In every poll we did asking does he deserve to be re-elected, he seems stuck at about 30 percent support. In other words, he has not been able to establish dominance," said G. Terry Madonna, director of the poll, conducted by Franklin & Marshall's Center for Opinion Research.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
07:32 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
SELF SERVING P.O.S. We can only hope he goes right down the tubes!!
Finally joining the Senate, Democrat Al Franken envisions playing the "people's proxy" during Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court hearings. Franken, awaiting "an awfully emotional" Tuesday when he is sworn in, is joining the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is to begin hearings next week on President Barack Obama's first nominee to the high court.
"As someone who will have been in the committee a grand total of six days and isn't an attorney I kind of see myself fulfilling a certain role for Americans watching the hearings," Franken said Monday in an interview with The Associated Press.
"So I kind of see myself as people's proxy, not that the other senators aren't, but certainly that's the kind of role I want to play," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
07:26 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[12 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
but certainly that's the kind of role I want to play," he said.
Always with the role playing. Maybe he should try playing Mr. Smith goes to Washington instead of Bozo the Clown.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
07/07/2009 9:53
Comments ||
Top||
#2
Franken eyes role as 'people's proxy' in hearings
Rarely does the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights vote unanimously on anything.
A partisan divide has made the commission contentious in recent years. Yet the Department of Justice's decision to forfeit its voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party and three individual defendants drew a 6-0 vote with one abstention by the commission. What unified the commission was outrage at the Justice Department for letting the Black Panthers off the hook.
The Civil Rights Commission has sent two letters -- on June 16 and June 22 -- to Loretta King, acting assistant attorney general for the civil rights division, asking for an explanation, but it has not received a response. Rep. Frank R. Wolf, Virginia Republican, sent a June 8 letter demanding an explanation, but the congressman told us he has yet to receive an answer from the department one month later.
The Civil Rights Commission's first letter expressed its "great confusion" over the department's decision. After all, "defendants were caught on video blocking access to the polls, and physically threatening and verbally harassing voters during the November 4, 2008 general election." The video showed "one of them actually brandished a nightstick in plain view of voters and poll observers ... defendants 'made statements containing racial threats and racial insults.' "
The commission's letter quoted "Veteran of the civil rights movement, Bartle Bull" calling the defendants' actions "the most blatant form of voter intimidation I have encountered in my life in political campaigns in many states, even going back to the work I did in Mississippi in the 1960s."
The commission summed up the case in its June 16 letter to Ms. King: "Though it had basically won the case ... the [Department of Justice's Civil Rights] Division took the unusual move of voluntarily dismissing the charges .... In its notice of dismissal, the Division cites as its rationale only the fact that defendants failed to appear and respond ... the Division's public rationale would send the wrong message entirely - that attempts at voter suppression will be tolerated and will not be vigorously prosecuted so long as the groups or individuals who engage in them fail to respond to the charges leveled against them."
Lenore Ostrowsky, a commission spokesman, told us, "It is rare for a letter from the commission over the last four years to be sent out without any dissent." There's good reason for today's unanimity. One of the Black Panther defendants, Jerry Jackson, is an elected member of Philadelphia's 14th Ward Democratic Committee and was a credentialed poll watcher for Barack Obama and the Democratic Party when the intimidation occurred. We agree with the concern at the Civil Rights Commission. The Justice Department needs to explain why it is not pursuing charges against these thugs.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
07:25 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[13 views]
Top|| File under:
Duty. Honour. Country.
Thank you for standing up to be counted.
Two Canadian soldiers and another from the NATO coalition in Afghanistan died Monday in a helicopter crash that may have been caused by mechanical failure or human error.
Does Afghanistan get dust storms like Iraq?
The Canadians were Master Cpl. Patrice Audet, 38, and Cpl. Martin Joannette, 25. Three other Canadian soldiers, whose names weren't disclosed in keeping with military policy, were injured. Two of them have already returned to work while the third one was in stable condition at the hospital at the Kandahar Airfield.
Let us wish for quick healing and little pain.
The home country of the third coalition soldier was not identified. The crash occurred at about 1:50 p.m. local time at an American forward operating base in Zabul province, about 80 kilometres northeast of Kandahar city, and was not related to insurgent activity, the military said. The Zabul base is outside Canada's main sphere of operations, but the crew was apparently on a transport mission.
The crash comes after the deaths of two other Canadian soldiers, one of whom died Friday following the explosion of a roadside bomb and another who succumbed Saturday to wounds sustained last month. "It has been an extremely difficult week here in Kandahar," Canadian commander Brig.-Gen. Jonathan Vance said early Tuesday. "We all are feeling a great sense of loss."
Cpl. Martin Joannette died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan that was not the result enemy fire, but may have been caused by mechanical failure or human error. Cpl. Martin Joannette died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan that was not the result enemy fire, but may have been caused by mechanical failure or human error.
The latest deaths bring to 124 the number of Canadian soldiers who have died as part of the Afghan mission since 2002.
The deadliest in a recent spate of terror attacks in Algeria killed at least 43 people and injured another 38 Tuesday, when a suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives outside a police academy while scores of new recruits lined up to register for training. The strike in the town of Boumerdès, about 22 miles east of Algiers, came just hours after reports that an ambush by Islamist extremists on Sunday killed 12 people in eastern Algeria. That assault followed two earlier attacks in August that left eight dead and over 50 injured. Though the extremist Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has only claimed responsibility for one of those massacres, experts fear they were all part of an escalating campaign of terror activity by the organization, which may be aiming to make the approaching holy month of Ramadan particularly bloody.
Algerian officials warned the early victim count in the strike in Boumerdès was a "preliminary estimate," meaning its record-setting death toll will likely rise in the coming days. But even the current toll from Tuesday's blast surpassed the impact of a double suicide bombing in Algiers last December, which killed 41, including 17 United Nations workers. It also outstripped the 33 mortalities in similar attacks on government and police buildings in central Algiers in April, 2007. Responsibility for both was eventually claimed by AQIM, which vowed upon taking the al Qaeda name in 2006 that it would intensify its jihad against the Algiers regime even as it widened attacks towards foreign enemies, notably France and the U.S.
French counter-terrorism officials take threats of exported violence to European soil seriously, but so far AQIM has waged its jihad largely within Algeria's borders. In July, for example, the group executed an attack targeting employees of a French company, killing one French engineer. A second blast detonated 30 minutes later killed a dozen Algerian medical and rescue workers who had flocked to the site (a technique the plot's authors took from international jihad's playbook).
The December strikes near U.N. offices in Algiers bore a similar Al Qaeda earmark, experts say: while targeting foreigners, it maximized the death toll by claiming as many people from the local Muslim population as possible. By contrast, while the eight people killed and 19 injured in the August 10 suicide car bombing in the coastal town of Zemmouri el Bahri were all Algerian, AQIM claimed responsibility for the attack by describing its victims as "the sons of France and the slaves of America". The message being that anyone not supporting the AQIM cause foreign or Muslim represent the same enemy.
Even before this month's crescendo of strikes sounded its loudest note Tuesday, French security officials aired concerns AQIM may be planning to again turn the Ramadan holy month, which starts September 1 this year, into a season of blood-letting as jihadists in Algeria and elsewhere have in the past. "Radicals feel that because they're waging holy war, there's actually something sanctified in killing foreign infidels and people they consider 'bad Muslims' during Islamic holidays," one French intelligence official told TIME prior to Tuesday's attack. "And since everyone who is not with them is an infidel or 'bad Muslim' to the extremists' mind, they see a perverse religious and terror logic to inflict as much death and injury as possible during Ramadan."
The recent spree of strikes have also been significant by brazenly attacking police and army forces, indicating AQIM fighters may now feel as well-organized and -armed as Algeria's security services. According to unconfirmed Algerian media reports, last Sunday 40 AQIM attacked a convoy of elite army and police units in eastern Algeria, killing 12 of its members including the region's security chief, Lieutenant Colonel Rahmouni Mohammed. Similarly, a suicide bomber took out a police station in the Kabyle town of Tizi Ouzou August 3; though no one was killed, 25 people were injured, including four officers.
"AQIM seems to have become more sophisticated and flexible in the kinds of terror attacks it conducts, and as a result seems to feel assured enough of success that it can now blend soft, civilian targets with direct assaults on the armed forces," the French intelligence official says. Meanwhile, another French counter-terrorism official reacted to Tuesday's strike by harking back to terrorist violence that spilled out of Algeria and into France in the 1990s by AQIM's predecessor, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA). "It was only after the GIA reached the summit of its strengths in Algeria that it exported terrorism to France meaning if history is repeating itself, we may be at a very dangerous place."
ISLAMABAD -- Suspected U.S. missiles slammed into a training camp ran by Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud on Tuesday, killing at least 12 militants in the latest in a flurry of strikes against him and his followers, intelligence officials said.
The attack took place in the Makeen area of South Waziristan close to the Afghan border, four officials told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media. The missiles were believed launched by unmanned American planes.
"Our initial reports from agents in the field say at least 12 to 14 Taliban have died in today's American missile attack," said one official, adding several militants were also wounded. Mehsud was not among the victims, the officers said.
The United States has launched more than 40 missile strikes against targets in the border area since last August.
Tuesday was the fourth in two weeks against Mehsud and his followers in his stronghold of South Waziristan.
Pakistan's army is deploying troops in South Waziristan and launching regular air strikes of its own to try and kill or capture Mehsud, who is blamed for organizing many of the bloodiest suicide attacks in Pakistan over the last few years.
Washington does not directly acknowledge being responsible for launching the missiles, which kill civilians as well as militants and contribute to anti-U.S. sentiment in Pakistan.
Islamabad officially protests the strikes as violations of its sovereignty, but most experts believe the government secretly endorses them and likely provides the United States with intelligence on possible targets.
Hat tip, Instapundit
Half a dozen members of the Senate Democratic Conference pose the biggest threat to President Obamas agenda, giving Senate Republicans a fighting chance to block the administrations major expansions of government.
GOP leaders have begun reaching out to these centrists, hoping they will buck their party on Obamas two biggest initiatives: healthcare reform and climate change legislation. IMO, the difference is no longer between Republicans and Democrats but between these who already understood what Obama represents and these who don't understand yet.
[ADN Kronos] A landmine exploded in southeastern Turkey on Monday killing four construction workers and injuring nine others. The state news agency, Anadolu, said a bomb struck a vehicle transporting the workers to a dam and roads under construction in the southeastern province of Sirnak, near the border with Iraq on Monday.
The news agency said that the vehicle struck the landmine which authorities said was planted by the separatist militants, the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK).
The city of Sirnak has been at the centre of conflict between the Turkish military and the PKK.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[14 views]
Top|| File under:
Changchun, China -- A North Korean inside source has relayed news that the North Korean authorities, as the June 25th commemoration of the Korean War approached, used a secret recorded lecture to emphasize to frontline military units that they would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against anti-regime forces inside North Korea.
One source in North Pyongan Province said in a phone conversation with The Daily NK on the 30th, "With June 25th approaching, the North Korean authorities sent a secret recorded lecture to the border patrol and general military units."
"In this lecture, the soldiers were most surprised by the indication that nuclear weapons are a shield which can resolutely and swiftly punish the 'maneuvers of enemies trying to destroy our Communist state from the inside.'"
Nah, they're not too paranoid ...
Such recorded lectures are facilitated by gathering an audience in one place and listening to CDs containing the contents which are dispatched from Pyongyang. The North Korean army stationed in North Pyongan Province listened to the contents of the CD at a "temporary lecture meeting" organized for both the regular "Lecture Meeting Day" and "War against the U.S. Month" (June 25th~July 27th).
The distribution of the 40-minute long CDs was done by the Border Patrol Brigade Guidance Division and classified as "Broadcast Politics" under the title "Let us preserve the honor of the unification solders of the military-first era and continue the line of the Kim Il Sung socialist Fatherland."
The lecture proclaimed, "Our universe today revolves around Chosun, a Juche socialist and nuclear power. We have now risen to the level of a nuclear power and an independent, universally strong state."
It also estimated, "We have become the world's finest military state, with an impressive military capability which can crush any enemy on earth if we just put our minds to it. This has been the desire of our 5,000 year history, accomplished in the Kim Il Sung socialist era by the Mankyungdae family."
So, it emphasized, "Our soldiers should hold onto their resolve to open the door to a socialist, strong nation through the unification of the fatherland and load the last shot which can annihilate the enemy. There is no other method or means to achieve the historic feat of connecting the divided Fatherland and it is the clear and firm position of our Party and revolutionary forces that we cannot hand down a divided fatherland to our future generations."
Through the lecture, the authorities in particular suggested that it could use nuclear weapons to maintain the North Korean internal regime, insisting, "Our nuclear weapons are a precious sword which can shatter the suffocating, disintegrating, anti-Communist aggressive schemes of the imperial ideologues and are the revolutionary shield which can punish these forces."
In addition, the lecture pointed out, "Our nuclear state will be strengthened for the future of the world where the Kim Il Sung socialist Fatherland flourishes independently, and we will continue to make even stronger weapons. Even if the earth breaks to pieces a hundred times over, what we can trust and follow is the unfailing belief that there is no one like our Supreme leader, our military and our land which carries this unrivaled sword. Thus, we must safeguard a hundred and a thousand times the gains of the revolution."
The source analyzed the lecture, "Our state puts forward military-first ideas, but it also seems to fear the military the most. Consequently, the recorded lecture was played only to the military."
He added, "Until now, the authorities have educated the soldiers countless times to become bombs for the safety of the General, but it is the first time that the idea of using nuclear weapons against anti-regime forces has been heard. Most of the soldiers listened to the warning half-heartedly, but some of them have been talking apprehensively among themselves."
Then, he assessed, "The implication is that were a coup d'etat to be attempted, the North Korean authorities would resort to nuclear weapons. It seems to be proclaiming that our nuclear weapons, which were supposedly developed to enable the North to become a match for the U.S., could ultimately be used domestically."
Utterly amazing. This kind of thing brings out colonels' revolutions.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[15 views]
Top|| File under:
#2
Uhm, I believe someone misunderstood this. North Korea always talks about Korea as one nation. What seems to be taken as a use of nuclear weapons against counter-revolutionary domestic forces appears to me aimed at South Korea.
There is no other method or means to achieve the historic feat of connecting the divided Fatherland and it is the clear and firm position of our Party and revolutionary forces that we cannot hand down a divided fatherland to our future generations."
That is clearly a reference to the South/North division. What they are saying is that nuclear weapons are their means to achieving unification of the Koreas. They are talking about nuking South Korea, not themselves. But in an odd sort of way, to them, nuking South Korea IS nuking themselves because the rhetoric is of one nation.
"Our nuclear weapons are a precious sword which can shatter the suffocating, disintegrating, anti-Communist aggressive schemes of the imperial ideologues and are the revolutionary shield which can punish these forces."
Again, I read that as a reference to nuking South Korea who are governed, in their view, by "disintegrating, anti-Communist aggressive schemes of the imperial ideologues"
They didn't threaten to nuke themselves, they directly threatened to nuke South Korea and someone is trying to spin this off in a different direction to keep us from getting upset about that.
#3
Umm, no, Cross, I don't read it that way. They're making very, very clear to the military that they'll use a nuke to stop any internal rebellion. That keeps a general in a backwater province from getting ambitions.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/07/2009 7:53
Comments ||
Top||
#4
IIUC the prospect of nukes being used domestically during a coup was raised theoretically during the late cold war - Never used during cult rev, but China had few nukes and they were carefully controlled. Not sure what was the case during the 1991 USSR coup.
Posted by: liberal hawk ||
07/07/2009 11:55
Comments ||
Top||
#5
Interesting that they're even thinking about the possibility of this happening in the People's Paradise.
#6
last I hear, they'd had two fizzles out of two tries, big deal.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/07/2009 13:27
Comments ||
Top||
#7
Let me reiterate ... in North Korean rhetoric an attack on South Korea IS domestic use of nuclear weapons. They view South Korea as a rebel region of one overall country.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Iranian police announced Sunday the release of an Iranian employee of the British embassy even as the judiciary head called for the prosecution of people working for anti-government satellite TV channels and websites.
The comment followed a statement by a pro-reform clerical group Saturday protesting the disputed presidential June 12 election and the new government as "illegitimate" and blasting the official electoral watchdog, the Guardians Council.
" Most of the detainees have been or are being either released on bail or simply freed "
Esmail Moghaddam, Iranian policeman
Iran's chief of police said on Sunday authorities have released most of the people detained in the post-election violence that rocked Tehran after official results gave hardliner incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second four-year term.
Esmail Ahmadi Moghaddam said of the 1,032 people arrested, "two-thirds have been freed," the official IRNA news agency reported. "Most of the detainees have been or are being either released on bail or simply freed," he said, although the information could not be independently verified because foreign media are largely banned from reporting in Iran.
They were arrested during weeks of violent street protests in support of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi in which at least 20 people were killed in the worst crisis to hit the Islamic republic since the 1979 revolution.
British embassy staff to be released
Iran is also set to release Sunday the eighth of nine British embassy staff arrested on accusations stirring trouble and interfering in Iranian internal affairs. "There have been developments overnight in respect of the eighth person who had been arrested," Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Sunday adding that "the good news is that...the eighth person would indeed be released today [and] that the papers have been signed and that there would not be a court process or charges."
Unofficial TV channels
Meanwhile, the head of Iran's judiciary called for the prosecution of people working for increasingly influential anti-establishment satellite TV channels and websites. "The daily growth of anti-regime satellite channels and ... websites needs serious measures to confront this phenomenon," state television quoted a circular issued by Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi as saying.
For the first time in Iran, foreign-based satellite TV channels and blogs played a significant role in providing news and commentary about the election, especially following a ban on foreign media. Iran has said this amounts to interference in its internal affairs.
Mousavi and reformist cleric Mehdi Karoubi said the government wants to force Iranians to rely on state-run media, which they say favor Ahmadinejad.
Both men issued statements on their websites saying Ahmadinejad's new government would be "illegitimate" -- even though Khamenei, the Islamic Republic's ultimate arbiter, has upheld the result and thrown his weight behind the president.
Split in the ranks
" How can one accept the legitimacy of the election just because the Guardian Council says so? Can one say that the government born out of the infringements is a legitimate one "
Assembly of Qom statement
In a controversial development, the pro-reform Assembly of Qom Seminary Scholars and Researchers blasted Saturday the Guardians Council, which formally endorsed Ahmadinejad's re-election.
The independent assembly said the unelected electoral watchdog no longer had the "right to judge in this case as some of its members have lost their impartial image in the eyes of the public," its first public stance on the disputed elections. "How can one accept the legitimacy of the election just because the Guardian Council says so? Can one say that the government born out of the infringements is a legitimate one," it said, adding that it had not paid adequate attention to the complaints filed by the defeated candidates.
Former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, met with the families of detainees arrested in the aftermath of post-election protests and admitted that the unrest in the country has caused "bitterness," but denied there was a split at the top of Iran's establishment. "The election scene was a competition within the system and should not be considered by some as a power struggle or crack in the system," he was quoted as saying in ISNA news agency.
Rafsanjani added that the current crises will be wisely solved and that the regime has to be kept intact on the long run. He also met with the families of the detained.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[23 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
A ship suspected by the U.S. of carrying weapons-related materials on Monday returned to North Korean territorial waters in the West Sea after days of being trailed by an American ship.
Since leaving Nampo Port on June 17, the Kangnam had been under close surveillance in waters off China and Southeast Asia. The Kangnam spent 20 days on a slow chase without finding a port to stop at. Even Burma, the suspected destination of the ship, said it would search the vessel on port, and the Kangnam turned tail in the South China Sea near Vietnam on June 28.
The U.S. State Department had urged China and all ASEAN nations to actively implement the resolution, and the U.S. Defense Department had tracked the Kangnam around the clock with a KH-12 reconnaissance satellite, P-3C maritime patrol aircraft, and Aegis destroyer USS John McCain.
A major achievement was persuading the Burmese junta, which has resumed friendly relations with North Korea, not to permit the Kangnam to stop there. Burma was apparently swayed by fears of hurting relations with Japan, which gives huge amounts of aid to Burma, and South Korea, which has invested in developing resources there.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[17 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Wow, big one if they got the consignee to go along with the inspection regime! "Let's see, are these the illegal weapons we ordered?"
[Iran Press TV Latest] At least fourteen people have been injured in a fresh wave of bomb attacks which has plagued Iraq's third largest city, Mosul.
The fourteen were wounded on Monday as a car bomb attack targeted a police vehicle patrol at Wadi Hajar district in the southern part of the city. Three policemen were among the wounded, according to a security source speaking on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, a traffic officer was injured on Monday, when unidentified armed men opened fire on him in Mosul. A local police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Voices of Iraq news agency that Brigadier Safaaldin Mahmoud from Nineveh's traffic police department was wounded while on duty at al-Darkziya district in the eastern part of the disrupted northern Iraqi city.
Elsewhere on Monday, a civilian was killed when gunmen shot him dead in Tamouz district in western Mosul. The assailants fled the scene after the fatal incident, witnesses said.
Mosul and its surrounding areas remain the scenes of constant bombings and havens for the al-Qaeda-linked insurgents in the war-wracked Iraq. Mosul, the capital city of Iraq's Nineveh province, is situated some 396 km (250 miles) northwest of Baghdad.
Also on Monday, Iraqi security forces claimed that they had arrested two prominent al-Qaeda members during a raid on several houses in al-Suweira district some 20 km (13 miles) south of Kut -- which is in the southern Iraqi province of Wasit bordering Iran.
Later in the day, unknown gunmen attacked a US patrol vehicle in east of Dalouiya, in Salah al-Din province. There have been no reports of casualties. "Unknown armed men fired a rocket propelled grenade (RPG) on a US patrol vehicle in al-Mashrouaa village, east of Dalouiya," a source told Voices of Iraq news agency.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[16 views]
Top|| File under: Iraqi Insurgency
Article in Spanish. Computer translation with cleanup by me.
The undersecretary of Foreign Affairs, Lourdes Aranda Bezaury, said in the event that the deposed president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, requested asylum in Mexico, the government of Mexico would consider it. In a press conference, he clarified that the chancellor of Honduras, Patrician Stems, did not ask asylum or refuge to Mexico.
The official of the Office of the secretary of Foreign Affairs (SRE) added that "Mexico will continue seeking that be by means of the dialogue and the coordination, and not traveling through actions of violence, like this theme can be resolved".
In the meantime he assured that Mexico will continue [follow?] closely the resolution adopted by the OAS in which the right of Honduras is suspended to participate in this regional agency.
Aranda Bezaury said that is a priority for Mexico that the facts in Honduras do not result in more acts of violence, and regretted what happened last Sunday. It emphasized that the country will continue working in multilateral mechanisms and also through the Grupo de Río to reach a negotiated solution to the problem.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[12 views]
Top|| File under:
(AKI) - Italian MP and Muslim women's rights activist Souad Sbai has received the support of hundreds of moderate Moroccan immigrant and Muslim groups after she received threats in an Internet video message by an alleged Al-Qaeda supporter in Italy.
"In the last few months, we have seen an outbreak of aggressive, extremist and terroristic Islam which is particularly dangerous," said a statement signed by numerous immigrant and Muslim associations in support of Sbai."To try and hit the PdL (People of Freedom) MP is the equivalent of hitting all of us. That is why today we want to express our solidarity, but make it known that we are all Souad Sbai."
Souad Sbai, MP for the ruling conservative People of Freedom party, went to court in June to defend herself against death threats, after a 'fatwa' or religious edict was issued against her.
"The intention to intimidate, slander and put in danger Souad Sbai, represents an evident attack against all of us, Muslim moderates, who have been for years working for the assertion of a culture of dialogue," said the statement.
Sbai is also president of the Moroccan Women's Association in Italy.
Police in Mianwali are feeling the heat of several Taliban-related shootings, bomb attacks amid the arrest of several terror suspects in recent months, and is considering ways to curtail the threat, including a plan to develop local militias to fight terror.
Rugged mountains separate Mianwali from the NWFP, where the army is engaged in an offensive against the Taliban and the local police force is struggling to face the fallout of the battle across the mountains.
The ill-equipped and understaffed force was trained to fight crime, not to counter insurgencies.
District Police Officer Akbar Khan is trying to rise to the challenge by constituting a special police force, which he said would be made up of locals, but with the same powers as the police. Their main role would be to assist the police in anti-terror efforts.
The recruits will be issued guns licensed by the government and will be authorised to use them while pursuing terror suspects.
"Their prime task is anti-terrorist action," Khan told BBC.
Trust-building: "Giving them guns is a message of trust, that we know that you are with us, that you are patriots and you are able to defend yourself until the time we come to you."
Khan said the recruits would have the same protection as a police official in case they killed a suspect while tending to their duties.
"If that [person] is an outlaw and they're doing it in the line of duty, they will have the same protection as a police officer does if his own life is threatened."
The new plan is in an embryonic phase and requires government approval, but there is a provision for such a force in the constitution.
But the whole idea of civilians taking up arms raises concerns, as Ali Hassan, senior South Asia researcher for the Human Rights Watch group thinks.
"On the one hand, the government can raise any kind of armed force provided it has the mandate of the state - and it operates under legal authority and safeguards," he said. "But there is a problem with the idea of government-backed vigilante groups, as the Taliban once were. That's in contravention of international law and not something to be encouraged."
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[18 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
[ADN Kronos] A United States trained Pakistani scientist accused of links to Al-Qaeda and shooting at FBI agents may be forced to appear in a New York court on Monday. Aafia Siddiqui may have to appear by video or in person in federal court in Manhattan at a hearing to decide if she is competent to stand trial, defence attorney Dawn Cardi said.
Siddiqui was believed to have been captured in Afghanistan and held at the US military base at Bagram, outside Kabul, before being transferred to the United States to stand trial. In August 2008, Siddiqui was charged in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York with assaulting and attempting to kill US personnel while in detention in Afghanistan. Siddiqui has reported seeing her children in her prison cell and has claimed she was strip-searched.
Prosecutors have accused Siddiqui of having ties to Al-Qaeda and that she grabbed a US army officer's M-4 rifle in Afghanistan, pointed it at an army captain and cried 'Allahu Akbar,' or 'God is great.' They said she fired at US soldiers and FBI agents before she was shot and wounded by an army officer.
A defence attorney has disputed that account and said the US government's claims were wrong.
Siddiqui, a specialist in neuroscience who trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brandeis University, appeared in court twice after she was brought to the US last August but has refused to attend proceedings since that time. She's charged with attempted murder and assault.
US District Judge Richard Berman entered a not guilty plea for her. But the judge signed an order several days ago permitting authorities to take her to court against her will, Cardi said. "Her choice is not to come," Cardi said. "I don't want her traumatised any more than she has to be, being strip-searched and all."
Mental health professionals who have evaluated Siddiqui over the last year will be questioned by lawyers on both sides during the competency hearing. A trial is set for October 19.
Aafia Siddiqui refused to appear in a New York court on 4 September 2008, to protest against the humiliating treatment which she claims to have suffered and because of her physical, mental and emotional condition.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[19 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda
#1
She certainly has an impressive education for a mentally incompetant person with legal maneouvering savvy. Player. How about we shoot her full of tranqs and strap her on a gurney in a padded cell? Does that sound good?
#2
She has one thing going for her and her plea of mental incompetency - she's a muslim. That may be sufficient, but the judge should lock her up anyway. She is DEFINITELY a "menace to polite society". Actually, she's a menace to any society other than a muslim one - and possibly even there.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/07/2009 17:29
Comments ||
Top||
Two American journalists who were sentenced in North Korea to 12 years of hard labor will probably be sent to the Pyongsong Special Camp near the capital.
North Korean sources say ordinary convicts are sent to labor camps, unlike political prisoners who are sent to concentration camps. There inmates are forced to do backbreaking labor such as felling trees, moving rocks from riverbeds, and working in mine pits. Observers speculate that if Euna Lee and Laura Ling are sent there, the international outcry will be so severe that it would be more trouble for North Korea than it is worth, even if it is using the two as a bargaining chip in dealings with the U.S.
Instead, they will probably be sent to a special camp originally built to accommodate ranking members of the Workers Party and other figures thought to merit special treatment. Special camps are better furnished than general camps, and inmates reportedly do relatively light work.
Oh lucky them ...
There are apparently two special camps, one in Pyongsong, South Pyongan Province and one in Wonsan, Kangwon Province. A source speculated that Pyongsong is the likelier option because it is easier for visitors to meet them not far from Pyongyang, while it is also more difficult for outsiders to get a glimpse of the North Korean reality from there.
You wonder how well our special forces have mapped this area ...
I wonder how well interested civilians like Old Patriot have mapped this area.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[17 views]
Top|| File under:
#2
Still no word from Al Gore about his two employees. It's almost as if they are an embarrassment to him.
He knows what he has to do, go to Pyongyang, grovel and kiss Kim Jong Il's ass. That's all it would take.
But I doubt he'll do it, too busy making bazillions of dollars from the gerbil worming hoax.
#5
I wonder how well interested civilians like Old Patriot have mapped this area.
I haven't mapped it at all since I became a quasi-"civilian", TW. Haven't had to...
Being in a "special camp" won't be a picnic for these two. I hope Al Gore goes to bat for his employees and tries to get them released. If not, perhaps we can fly one last SR-71 sortie over the area, wide open. The shock wave will surely rattle a few (empty) heads.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/07/2009 21:33
Comments ||
Top||
Five people including a prayer leader and two brothers were killed in separate incidents of sectarian violence in Dera Ismail Khan, a private TV channel reported on Monday. According to police, unidentified people shot dead a Shia rickshaw driver in Gali Bagh Wali. He was identified as Bakht Wadha, a resident of Dinpur village, Online reported. Meanwhile, two Shia brothers were killed when unidentified men on a motorbike fired at them. The police said the brothers were at their shop on Grid Station Road. They were identified as Azmat Ali and Muhammad Ali. Also, two people, including a prayer leader, Amanullah, were killed when unidentified men opened fire on four people sitting at a shop near Wanda Mouchian Wala area. The other two were injured and rushed to the District Headquarters Hospital. The channel said traders shut down their businesses in the city following the incidents.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[27 views]
Top|| File under: Takfir wal-Hijra
[Quqnoos] At least 4 NATO and two Afghan troops were killed Monday in a roadside bomb in Kunduz province, officials said
A roadside bomb struck a vehicle of NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Khan Abad district of the relatively stable Kunduz province, provincial police chief said. Two local children are reportedly wounded in the powerful blast that hit a joint ISAF-Afghan convoy, patrolling the district, about 25 km east of the provincial capital.
A purported Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, in a phone interview from an undisclosed location, claimed responsibility for the bomb attack that according to him, 5 German troops were killed and two others were harmed.
Kunduz Police Chief, Brig Gen Abdul Razaq Yaqubi, said the blast took place in Char Toot village of Khan Abad, where presence of insurgents has been recently reported. The nationality of the foreign troops is not confirmed yet but a large number of German troops are leading ISAF's Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in the northern Afghan province. A spokesman for the provincial government, Mahbubullah Sayedi said the four foreign victims were US trainers.
This article starring:
Zabihullah Mujahid
Taliban
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[16 views]
Top|| File under: Taliban
Free Patriotic Movement leader Gen. Michel Aoun on Monday expressed regret that the formation of a national unity government has shifted from and internal to an external role. "The general scene is negative. There is no role for the Lebanese people in the formation of their government," Aoun said in an interview on Al-Manar TV. "Where are those who claimed to be keen on sovereignty and independence?" he asked.
"We tell the Arabs that it's fine if they had a role in (efforts) to create a government," Aoun said. "But having a government set up by the Arabs is not desirable."
"We are the axis of evil as they claim. We demand Lebanon's soverienty and independence," he added. "We demand that (Cabinet) formation be made in Lebanon. No one can marginalize us."
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[14 views]
Top|| File under: Hezbollah
#1
""We tell the Arabs that it's fine if they had a role in (efforts) to create a government," Aoun said. "But having a government set up by the Arabs is not desirable.""
IOW
"tell em Saudi and egyptian types to stop meddling in Lebanon. Only my Syrian and Iranian pals should get to meddle in Lebanon"
Posted by: liberal hawk ||
07/07/2009 11:59
Comments ||
Top||
Media buyers said they have written a few deals with cable networks, which also compete for upfront dollars, but there have been no confirmed deals on the broadcast side of the business.
The upfront has been sluggish for weeks because of an impasse over price. Despite lower ratings, competition from cable and the recession, the broadcast networks, which usually lead the market, are seeking to raise ad rates as they have done for years. What a crazy idea, a product that is worth less, costs less. Amazing concept, that. No wonder the media has a problem getting their heads around it.
Sitting across the table, media buyers are adamant that their recession-plagued clients won't pay higher ad rates and want to see price rollbacks. At one point, media buyers were talking about double-digit decreases but now it appears they would be satisfied with something in the single digits.
Typically, the broadcast networks sell as much as 80 percent of their primetime spots in the upfront market. Whatever is left is sold later in the "scatter" market, where prices vary depending on demand. There is talk that the networks would rather book less upfront business, gambling that they can unload their spots later at higher prices, rather than cut rates. So, their master plan is: ignore our huge repeat customers and try to sell our overpriced crap later in dribs and drabs to people who walk in off the street. Brilliant, I say, it's no wonder that television is in the fine financial shape it is today.
#1
Does anyone under the age of 55 watch TV anymore? When I get the urge to watch it, I can find nothing to watch. Now I usually pop in a DVD and watch that instead.
#2
True story: I'm an expatriate who never watches American TV. When I get home, once or twice a year, I like to relax with a beer and get reacquainted with an old friend called "television." It takes 24-48 hours before I get totally bored with the constant repeats and insipid shows, and I'm ready to not watch for another year. A pity, my father has this totally sweet home theater setup with risers and everything, couch potato heaven. 550 channels and nothing's on.
#5
Just like the folding of the Big Three advertising has hammered a number of the dead tree media, the ripples are finally reaching broadcast. You know they're elites when they act the same. The legislature in California can't get its head around the fact it has to live in budget and neither can these execs. Your product is overpriced for the market. You have to cut expenses on everything to include leveling the management structure.
BTW, I think Deadliest Catch, Dirty Jobs, and a number of other programs on sat/cable access are well worth the viewing. If you want to get a good laugh you should have caught the last couple minutes of After the Catch which featured the captains seeing their program in international release and themselves dubbed. Salty Bering Sea Captain(tm) just is not the same in French.
#6
I've reverted to DVD's. Watched Daniel Craig in Defiance for the 5th time last evening. I keep looking for Judith Dench to arrive in a Dakota resupply drop, but no luck. A good training film selection for the upcoming Obamageddon. Highly recommend it.
#7
Pink Floyd's comment was thirteen channels of shit to choose from - a lot in the broadcast days. Bruce Springsteen added 57 channels and nothing on in the cable TV 80s. Funny how the number of choices increases, but the quality remains the same.
#8
Unless there is a national emergency kinda thing (and no, Michael Jackson's demise doesn't count even if the networks think it does), what's the point of watching live TV if you have a DVR and can skip the ads?
#14
I use an online movie service named Graboid, for 5 bucks a month I can download about 5-6 movies, Depending on size) and watch them whenever I wish(They stay on computer so you can re-watch at your pleasure), Then next month, 5 more and so on.
I highly recommend WALL-E.(SCI FI Animation)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/07/2009 14:05
Comments ||
Top||
#15
I do watch TV - HGTV, that is. Also Food Network and some programs on Discovery, Discovery Health (Dr. G's interesting, though I wish they wouldn't blur the gory stuff), and the like.
If it weren't for cable, I'd never turn on the TV except for the local news. What frosts me is I'm paying for sports channels, since it's part of the "basic" subscription. Several years ago, Comcast called me to try to convince me to pay them even more money for HBO, et al. I told them I'd rather they took away all the sports channels and charged me less.
Haven't heard from them since.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
07/07/2009 14:15
Comments ||
Top||
#16
If some of those sports channels are hunting and fishing shows, Barbara, they might come in handy over the next few years in an instructional way.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
07/07/2009 15:36
Comments ||
Top||
#17
I'm in my later thirties now, and about a third of my peers have cable. It's easier to just buy dvds & wait until the few decent shows' seasons pop once a year.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
07/07/2009 15:39
Comments ||
Top||
#18
TV networks trying to raise ad rates as viewers stop watching
I think the TV execs deserve some credit for their totally genius spin on the traditional "If we're losing money on every sale, we can always make it up on volume". It's the kind of marketing ingenuity that has made the American economy what it is today.
#19
OK, I'll take the mocking - I just got hooked on "Gary Unmarried" with Jay Mohr. About the only network show I watch, but it's pretty damn funny (I DVR it to skip the ads, k?).
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/07/2009 18:53
Comments ||
Top||
#20
Do what, Frank?
Never even heard of it. Mercifully.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
07/07/2009 19:40
Comments ||
Top||
#21
jeebus. Fredman makes it hard to reset your nic after sockpuppetting
[Al Arabiya Latest] At least 156 people have been killed in the worst case of ethnic unrest the capital of China's northwestern region of Xinjiang has seen in years, prompting the government to shut down the Internet Monday and blame exiled Muslim separatists.
Hundreds of rioters have been arrested, the official Xinhua news agency reported, after rock-throwing Uighurs, who are Muslim, took to the streets of Urumqi Sunday, some burning and smashing vehicles and confronting ranks of anti-riot police.
The United States "deeply" regreted the deaths caused by the ethnic violence in the region, a state department spokesman said.
A stern note is the next step, which will be equally impactful.
Urumqi residents were unable to access the Internet, several said. "The city is basically under martial law," Yang Jin, a dried fruit merchant, said by telephone. "Since yesterday evening I haven't been able to get online," store owner Han Zhenyu told Reuters by telephone. News of the apparent outage was also spread by messages on social networking services like Twitter and its Chinese competitors.
It sounds like blocking the internet has not had the effect Chinese authorities had hoped for.
The unrest underscores the volatile ethnic tensions that have accompanied China's growing economic and political stake in its western frontiers.
A senior official swiftly delivered the government claim that the unrest was the work of extremist forces abroad, signaling a security crackdown in the strategic region near Pakistan and central Asia.
Li Zhi, the Communist Party boss of Urumqi told a news conference that the death toll from the rioting had risen to 140, the semi-official China News Agency said. Xinhua said 816 people were injured and hospitalized. "Police have tightened security in downtown Urumqi streets and at key institutions such as power and natural gas companies and TV stations to prevent large-scale riots," Xinhua quoted Xinjiang police chief Liu Yaohua as saying. Police rounded up "several hundred" who participated in the violence, including more than 10 key players who fanned unrest, Xinhua said, and are searching for 90 others.
The riot in Urumqi, a city of 2.3 million residents 3,270 km (2,050 miles) west of Beijing, followed a protest against government handling of a June clash between Han Chinese and Uighur farm workers in southern China, where two Uighurs died in Shaoguan.
Extremist forces abroad
The government's English-mouthpiece China Daily put the number of protesters at 300 to 500 while the exiled Uighur American Association (UAA) gave estimates as high as 3,000. "After the (Shaoguan) incident, the three forces abroad strived to beat this up and seized it as an opportunity to attack us, inciting street protests," Xinjiang governor and a Uigur himself, Nuer Baikeli, said in a speech shown on Xinjiang television. The "three forces" refer to groups the government says engage in separatism, militant action and religious extremism.
An unnamed Chinese official said the "unrest was masterminded by the World Uyghur Congress led by Rebiya Kadeer," according to Xinhua. "This was a crime of violence that was pre-meditated and organized," said the report. Kadeer is a Uighur businesswoman now in exile in the United States after years in jail, and accused of separatist activities. She did not answer calls for comment.
But exiled Uighur groups adamantly rejected the Chinese government claim of a plot. They said the riot was an outpouring of pent-up anger over government policies and Han Chinese dominance of economic opportunities. "They're blaming us as a way to distract the Uighurs' attention from the discrimination and oppression that sparked this protest," said Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress in exile in Sweden.
Conspiracy theory
The government's claims of conspiracy by pro-independence exiles echo the handling of rioting across Tibetan areas in March last year, which Beijing also called a plot hatched abroad.
Xinjiang is the doorway to China's trade and energy ties with central Asia, and is itself rich in gas, minerals and farm produce. But many Uighurs say they see little of that wealth.
Chinese state television showed rioters throwing rocks at police and overturning a police car, and smoke billowing from burning vehicles. "I personally saw several Han people being stabbed. Many people on buses were scared witless," Zhang Wanxin, a Urumqi resident, said by telephone. The UAA's Alim Seytoff, in Washington D.C., emailed pictures showing hundreds of locals confronting police in Urumqi, armored riot-control vehicles patrolling streets, wounded and bloodied civilians lying on streets, and ranks of anti-riot police with shields and clubs.
Almost half of Xinjiang's 20 million people are Uighurs and most are most of Urumqi is Han Chinese. The city is under tight police security even in normal times.
This year marks 60 years since communist Chinese troops entered Xinjiang and "peacefully liberated" the region. Advocates of independence for the area have maintained the move was an invasion.
Everyone knows "peaceful liberation" is the Communist term for invasion. This is merely a vocabulary discussion.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[21 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
The Uighurs had resisted outside domination for centuries. The Communists came in and slaughtered them with airplanes - nowhere for groups of horsemen to hide on the open plains.
#3
But exiled Uighur groups adamantly rejected the Chinese government claim of a plot. They said the riot was an outpouring of pent-up anger over government policies and Han Chinese dominance of economic opportunities. "They're blaming us as a way to distract the Uighurs' attention from the discrimination and oppression that sparked this protest," said Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress in exile in Sweden.
The Uighur Muslims have blood on their hands because of their repeated butchery and harassment of Christians in their community. But they're Mr. Nice Guys compared to the discrimination and harassment they have faced at the hands of the Han. The Chinese Government has built up cities in all ethnic areas and sent large numbers of Han into the ethnic territories. The Han get the jobs, the perks, and the benefits; the locals get screwed.
#6
" Notice that the Chinese don't get all mealy-mouthed about it, either. Straight up "Muslims".|
actually theres no straight up quote like that in the above article.
Posted by: liberal hawk ||
07/07/2009 16:05
Comments ||
Top||
#7
blame exiled Muslim separatists
correct on the quotes, pedantic one.
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/07/2009 18:41
Comments ||
Top||
#8
Uyghurs hardly resist foreign domination; embracing the arab supremacist cult of islam, was surrender to aliens. They don't pray to Beijing; they pray to Mecca.
Sympathy with Bosnian, Kosovan, Pashtun and Chechen muslims was mistaken. Let's get it right this time.
It seems it started as a satire piece with no basis in fact. The Somali Cruises website continued the joke.
As a follow-up to the discussions here when the story was posted, I submitted it to Snopes.com. They emailed me today that they'd put up an article on the topic, which was awfully nice of them.
#1
Despite being both satire and a hoax, it is still an excellent, if short-lived business opportunity. Once people start shooting back, being a pirate will be a lot less fun.
I do love the way the mainstream media got suckered, though. Praise be to Allah for their layers of fact-checkers and editors!
#2
TW --- heh -- "that was awfully nice of them" sounds like a couple of "Southern" women I know --- one from Alabama and one from Arkansas (both favorite people of mine) --- can hear each of them now... " that was......
[Kyodo: Korea] The Security Council on Monday condemned North Korea for its weekend missile launches in defiance of previous U.N. resolutions that ban such activity. ""The members of the Security Council condemned and expressed grave concern at the launches, which constitute a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and pose a threat to regional and international security,"" council president Ambassador Ruhakana Rugunda of Uganda told reporters.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[23 views]
Top|| File under:
Which makes sense given that the whole country is a slave labor camp ...
The North Korean government is directly engaged in the trafficking of slave labor, claimed Luis de Baca, the director of the U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, on Wednesday. He was peaking at a video press conference at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul. He said the regime is sending North Koreans overseas to work under exploitative contracts with Southeast Asian, Eastern European and Middle Eastern nations.
Yet another area, along with a banking squeeze, arms interdiction, stopping the money laundering and drug interdiction, where we can hurt the Norks.
De Baca said European countries no longer accept North Korean workers, citing the example of the Czech Republic which has concluded no labor contract with North Korea since 2007. But he called for diplomatic efforts to persuade countries like Mongolia, Thailand and Laos, which do import labor from North Korea, to protect the workers' rights.
You'd think Thailand and Laos for sure would have enough indigenous labor ...
One can never have too many brothel slaves, my dear, and so much better when it's someone else's daughters.
In the "Trafficking in Persons Report 2009" released on June 16, the State Department says, "While exact figures are unknown, estimates of the number of North Korean contract workers recruited by the [North Korean] regime to work overseas for [North Korean] entities and firms vary widely, ranging from 10,000 to as high as 70,000." The maximum number of 70,000 is more than four times the figure of 15,000 estimated by the 2008 report.
"There continue to be credible reports that North Koreans sent abroad are subjected to harsh conditions, with their movements and communications restricted by [North Korean] government 'minders' and facing threats of government reprisals against them or their relatives in North Korea if they attempt to complain to outside parties," the report says. "Worker salaries are deposited into accounts controlled by the North Korean government, which keeps most of the money for itself, claiming fees for various 'voluntary' contributions to government endeavors."
In the report, North Korea ranks Tier 3, the lowest, alongside Iran, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[12 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Hard to imagine pimps and madams putting up with apparachnik "minders" messing with their prostitutes. I'd imagine that their "program" leaks like a sieve. And that the minders are probably never let back into the country for the same reason that Stalin liquidated his Spanish Civil War veterans - corrupted by outside experience.
Even if that experience is human-trafficking & liasing with pimps.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
07/07/2009 15:23
Comments ||
Top||
#2
Wasn't that reporter who was arrested investigating human trafficing?
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- Honduras's interim government closed its main airport to all flights on Monday after blocking the runway to prevent the return of ousted President Manuel Zelaya. Clashes with his supporters caused the first death in a week of protests.
Police and soldiers blanketed the streets of the capital early Monday, enforcing a sunset-to-sunrise curfew with batons and metal poles. Civil aviation authorities announced a 24-hour ban on all flights at the country's main airport starting Monday morning.
Soldiers clashed Sunday with thousands of Zelaya backers massed at the airport in hopes of welcoming home the deposed leader removed a week earlier. But military vehicles and soldiers blocked the runway. Pilots of the plane loaned by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez circled the airport and decided not to risk a crash.
Mr. Zelaya instead headed for El Salvador, ...
Or Managua according to other news reports
... and vowed to try again Monday or Tuesday in his high-stakes effort to return to power in a country where all branches of government have lined up against him. But later Monday, U.S. officials said Mr. Zelaya would return to Washington where Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton planned to him on Tuesday. It would be the highest-level contact the Obama administration has had with Mr. Zelaya since he was deposed last week.
"I am risking myself personally to resolve the problems without violence," said Mr. Zelaya, who planned to fly later to Nicaragua. He urged the United Nations, the OAS, the U.S. and European countries to "do something with this repressive regime."
Mr. Insulza said he "is open to continuing all appropriate diplomatic overtures to obtain our objective." But interim Honduran President Roberto Micheletti said he won't negotiate until "things return to normal."
"We will be here until the country calms down," Mr. Micheletti said. "We are the authentic representatives of the people."
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday in Geneva he was saddened by the loss of life in Honduras and he urged authorities to protect civilians, saying they should be allowed to express their opinions without being threatened. He again called the coup unacceptable.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[10 views]
Top|| File under:
July 6 (Bloomberg) -- Manuel Zelaya, the deposed Honduran president, will attempt to re-enter the country again this week after the acting government prevented his plane from landing yesterday and several of his supporters were shot at a rally.
Honduras closed the international airport in Tegucigalpa for 48 hours today, Carlos Pacheco, a legal adviser at the airport, said in a phone interview. The closure came after two protesters died yesterday during a clash between Zelayas supporters and the military at the airport.
Zelaya is still in San Salvador and he will return to Honduras on July 8, Luis Roland Valenzuela, housing minister under Zelaya, told reporters today in Tecucigalpa.
They deceived us, Valenzuela said, citing an agreement with Micheletti that would have allowed Zelaya to land. He wanted to land and Micheletti had said that it was fine.
I doubt that seriously ...
The U.S. State Department called for the restoration of democratic order in Honduras, and for Zelayas reinstatement. We deplore the use of force against demonstrators in the countrys capital of Tegucigalpa, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said at a news conference today in Washington.
How about violent demonstrators?
The exiled leader will head to the U.S. tomorrow, Kelly said. He spent last week touring Central America and the U.S. gathering support and winning a unanimous vote at the Organization of American States to suspend Honduras.
Micheletti put out an arrest warrant and vowed to block Zelayas return, warning his arrival could trigger violence.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under:
SEOUL, July 6 (Yonhap) -- The U.S. Navy's top admiral indicated Monday his forces will continue to track North Korean ships suspected of carrying weapons banned under a U.N. resolution.
"As circumstances arise in the future, we will continue to support the resolution," U.S. Admiral Gary Roughead said in a roundtable meeting with journalists in Seoul. "We will conduct operations in support of that."
A North Korean freighter, the Kang Nam, sailed back home Monday afternoon after apparently failing to reach Myanmar while being tracked by a U.S. Navy destroyer. "What recently happened with the Kang Nam is a very effective way of stopping proliferation," Roughead said, adding that the U.S. Navy is working to build a "maritime domain of awareness."
"Even though we had a ship in proximity to the Kang Nam, there are many other means by which we monitor, track and account for contacts of interest," he said. "It's more than just one ship on one ship."
"Every dimension of the United States Navy is part of building that maritime domain of awareness picture," he said. "That is what our forces in the western Pacific are here to do."
Roughead declined to comment on how his forces would react if North Korean ships reacted violently, because it could provide Pyongyang "an undue advantage" in strategic information. "I think it is incumbent on all who sail on the seas to do all they can to minimize events like that," he said. "Our commanding officers and sailors are trained and exercised to be able to control events and situations."
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
See also WORLD NEWS > ELEVEN MISSLES FIRED BY NORTH KOREA PROPELS THEIR CAPABILITY TO THREATEN THE UNITED STATES.
#2
#1 See also WORLD NEWS > ELEVEN MISSLES FIRED BY NORTH KOREA PROPELS THEIR CAPABILITY TO THREATEN THE UNITED STATES.
Posted by: JosephMendiola 2009-07-07 00:33
Which can end abruptly when 50-60 tactical nukes explode in sequence down the DMZ. North Korean troops can cross radioactive ground, but they won't be effective after about 36 hours. Even a tank won't completely protect you from "hot" ground.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/07/2009 21:17
Comments ||
Top||
The Crime Investigation Department (CID) of the Sindh police arrested an activist of the banned outfit Jesh-e-Mohammad Pakistan from Hyderabad, on Monday. Abid Hussain was an absconder in the assassination case of a Hindu businessman Gardesh Kumar since 2007. CID SP Mazhar Mashwani told Daily Times after killing Kumar, the culprit had managed to flee during an encounter with the police during a raid in Hyderabad in 2007. Since then, he went into hiding, while the police arrested his father and brother, who pointed out the location where Kumar's body was buried. The CID official said his police team raided a house located in Kotri area following a tip-off, and arrested Hussain.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[15 views]
Top|| File under: Jaish-e-Mohammad
Aswat al-Iraq: Eight persons on Monday were injured when a booby-trapped car exploded in Mosul city, according to a local police source. "Today, a car bomb detonated in Wadi Hajar area, southern Mosul, wounding eight persons," the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. The blast did not target security personnel, the source noted.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[20 views]
Top|| File under: Iraqi Insurgency
[Al Arabiya Latest] A Yemeni court sentenced Monday seven Shiite rebels to death for their role in a series of gun battles against the security forces near the capital last year that left hundreds of people dead or wounded.
The court convicted the seven of "belonging to an armed gang in 2008 to carry out a collective criminal project." It sentenced seven other defendants to jail terms of between 12 and 15 years. "Death to America and death to Israel," the defendants cried out from the dock after the sentences were announced. What the hell'd we do? Those people are crazy.
What do Israel and America have to do with Yemini security forces?
They are all expected to appeal.
A total of 190 suspected rebels are being tried in batches over the deadly fighting with the security forces that raged in Bani Hoshaish, northeast of the capital Sanaa, between March and June last year. The rebels, whose stronghold is in Saada in the far northern mountains, want to restore the Zaidi imamate that was overthrown in a republican coup in 1962.
The insurgents are known as Huthis after their late commander, Hussein Badr Eddin al-Huthi, who was killed by the army in September 2004. Hussein was succeeded as field commander by his brother Abdul Malak.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[14 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
The Yemini security forces defeated/captured rebels who were 'doing god's will,' so the leadership must be under the influence of CIA/Mossad mind control.
Also, "death to America/Israel" is a lot easier to memorize and pronounce than "death to the Bavarian Illuminati" or "death to the trilateral commission."
[Al Arabiya Latest] Sudan's president said on Sunday sanctions could not block development in his country, as he unveiled its first home-manufactured aircraft -- a $15,000 training plane that runs on car fuel.
President Omar Hassan al-Bashir spoke at the latest in a string of defiant rallies mounted after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against him in March, to face charges of masterminding atrocities in Sudan's Darfur region.
" Sudan has its own military industry. It makes tanks, missiles and many types of guns, all made by Sudanese hands "
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir
Bashir has repeatedly sought to highlight his government's development record since the court ruling, speaking this year at the opening of a hydroelectric dam, a new bridge in Khartoum and Sudan's first ethanol plant, among other projects.
On Sunday he spoke at the launch of the Safat-01 aircraft, a two-seater propeller plane produced at Sudan's state Safat Aviation Complex, part of the country's Ministry of Defense, according to its website.
"Sudan has its own military industry. It makes tanks, missiles and many types of guns, all made by Sudanese hands," Bashir told hundreds of supporters outside the plant in Wadi Sayidina military area, north of the capital. "Today, Sudan has entered a new industry -- aviation," he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[10 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Sudan
Twenty-five explosive-laden vehicles have reportedly entered various major cities of the country, as the intelligence services launched search operations across all four provinces, a private TV channel reported on Monday.
According to the channel, the vehicles could target sensitive government installments and other important buildings.
The channel cited a notification issued by the Interior Ministry stating that suicide bombers along with the vehicles had entered Peshawar, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Quetta and Karachi.
The ministry ordered provincial authorities to immediately conduct search operations and impound the vehicles before any terrorist incident took place. The channel said the explosive-laden vehicles included a Shehzore pick-up van, an ambulance, a blue Pajero and seven Toyota Corollas.
The NWFP inspector general has ordered the provincial police to thoroughly check every vehicle entering or exiting Peshawar that matched the given description. Also, swiftly acting upon the IG's directive, Peshawar police seized two explosive-laden vehicles from Budhbeer area of the provincial capital and a jeep from Lakki Marwat loaded with explosives.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[18 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Pakistan
#1
How is it they always know the count ahead of time but don't seem to be able to get the perps until it's too late?
#5
3dc: probably a heads-up from somebody involved in the VBIED factory - either someone getting a head-count out of the garage, or who handed over a vehicle-purchase list, or something else like that?
I'd guess that somebody busted a chop-shop and found way more than he was expecting.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
07/07/2009 14:23
Comments ||
Top||
#6
I'm soooo envious---why doesn't Paleos blow each other up?!
They shoot one another in the feet instead, g(g)romgoru. Some subsequently die because they refuse to seek medical attention in Israel.
[Geo News] The leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) Imran Khan has warned government that ongoing military offensive in Swat and Malakand Division will take out people on streets in protest if it did not get halted as late as July 31. Addressing to a gathering of party activists here, Imran accused self seeking elements of bagging billions of US dollars in exchange of military operation in Swat and Malakand Division, which resulted in deaths of several innocent people and displacements of millions of others. We have rented our military out to US in exchange of mere 1.5 billion dollars while US is spending sixty billion dollars on its army comprising 55,000 troops in Afghanistan, he concluded.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[10 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
Why is the U.S. not supporting the rule of law? By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
Hundreds of emails from Hondurans flooded my in-box last week after I reported on the military's arrest of President Manuel Zelaya, as ordered by the Supreme Court, and his subsequent banishment from the country.
Mr. Zelaya's violations of the rule of law in recent months were numerous. But the tipping point came 10 days ago, when he led a violent mob that stormed a military base to seize and distribute Venezuelan-printed ballots for an illegal referendum.
All but a handful of my letters pleaded for international understanding of the threat to the constitutional democracy that Mr. Zelaya presented. One phrase occurred again and again: "Please pray for us."
Hondurans have good cause for calling on divine intervention: Reason has gone AWOL in places like Turtle Bay and Foggy Bottom. Ruling the debate on Mr. Zelaya's behavior is Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, who is now the reigning international authority on "democracy."
Mr. Chavez is demanding that Mr. Zelaya be reinstated and is even threatening to overthrow the new Honduran president, Roberto Micheletti. He's leading the charge from the Organization of American States (OAS). The United Nations and the Obama administration are falling in line.
Is this insane? You bet. We have fallen through the looking glass and it's time to review how hemispheric relations came to such a sad state.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[12 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
If Washington does not reverse course, it will be one more act of appeasement toward an ambitious and increasingly dangerous dictator.
I kinda sorta lost track here. Are we talking Zelaya or Obama?
#3
tyhe fact is simple, Obama desperately wants a precedent where a democraticly elected presodent can violate both the law and the constitution, and get away clean.
THAT'S WHY THIS IS LIED ABOUT. IT'S OBAMA'S DRECT ORDER TO THE STATE DEPT.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/07/2009 8:31
Comments ||
Top||
#4
Hillary is to meet with Zelaya today.
Maybe together they can bow to a statute of Chavez as part of the meeting.
Posted by: Lord garth ||
07/07/2009 8:38
Comments ||
Top||
#5
Ditto to what SteveS said. I saw on the news the ANTI Zelaya supporters are taken to the streets to confront the pro dictator rabble.
[Iran Press TV Latest] The French Foreign Ministry says it has summoned the Iranian ambassador over the arrest of a French academic on espionage charges.
The ministry did not disclose the woman's name but said that it had called for the Iranian envoy on Monday to demand her release, AP reported. Paris claims that the woman was arrested last week as she was about to leave Iran after spending five months in the country studying. The ministry claimed that the French envoy in Tehran had also objected to the woman's detention and the charges brought against her.
In a Monday evening interview with France Info radio, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, also commented on the issue, claiming that the charges were "absurd".
"The spying charges put forward by the Iranian authorities do not pass the test," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Monday, AFP reported. The ministry says it is in close contact with the family of the detained woman.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[18 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
Does the lady have dual citizenship? That so often seems to be the situation in these cases.
[Al Arabiya Latest] A senior Iranian official slammed Monday statements by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden that Israel has a sovereign right to decide what is in its best interest in dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions and said Tehran would respond "in a very full-scale and very decisive way" if attacked.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signaled his agreement with U.S. President Barack Obama's end-of-the-year deadline for progress in efforts to engage Iran diplomatically to resolve dispute over its nuclear program.
" We cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do when they make a determination, if they make a determination, that they're existentially threatened "
VP Joe Biden
In an interview on ABC's "This Week" Sunday interview program, Biden said Israel can determine for itself how best to deal with the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.
"We cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do when they make a determination, if they make a determination, that they're existentially threatened," Biden said.
Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, said neither the U.S. nor Israel could allow Iran to gain a nuclear weapon.
"The U.S., like Israel ... has determined unequivocally that Iran must not have nuclear military capability," Ayalon told Israel's Army Radio.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[18 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
TOPIX > AS ISRAEL GEARS UP FOR WAR, US DIVIDE APPEARS [ e.g. ADM Mullen comments versus VPOTUS Biden's]; + RUSSIA: ISRAEL STILL MULLS IRAN PREEMPTIVE STRIKE.
And I thought I'd never read an interesting article in Time again. Afterbirth: It's What's For Dinner
There is so much you can't know about your spouse when you get married, like that one day she will want to eat her placenta. But there are two things you don't argue about with a pregnant woman: what she eats and that being full of life indeed looks sexy. So when Cassandra told me that for $275, a woman would come to our house, cook Cassandra's placenta, freeze-dry it and turn it into capsules to help ward off postpartum depression and increase milk supply, I said, "$275 is a bargain compared with the $20,000 I'll have to spend to tear out our kitchen immediately afterward."
Most mammals, Cassandra explained, eat their placentas, to which I countered that most dogs eat their poop.
Many insect females eat their husbands after -- or sometimes during -- mating. I agree with the writer that what other animals do is not necessarily an argument that humans should, too.
I stopped arguing there, figuring that like many of Cassandra's hippie ideas -- the compost bin, rubbing lemon on her underarms instead of deodorant -- she'd give up on this in a few weeks. Even as the due date approached and she was still set on eating her placenta, I couldn't imagine that she'd remember to request it from the doctor after the most physically draining experience of her life. This is a woman who, 9 times out of 10, forgets the bag of leftovers at the restaurant. Go ahead, read the rest, you know you want to. h/t Hot Air
Ick. I thought that bunch had got past this kind of thing a couple of decades ago. But I guess the concept of recycling covers even old, bad ideas in certain circles.
#1
Joel Stein has led a sheltered life. In Chinese quack medical tradition, the placenta is a close cousin to the elixir of life. These things are sold for significant sums of money in China, which is why delivery costs are negligible there - the doctor simply recoups his costs by keeping and selling the placenta.
#8
when Cassandra's looks fade in her 50s, there's no way I'm putting up with this crap.
If you are now, you will then. The shit I put up with depresses the hell out of me.
#10
Don't most placenta eating mammals do that as a protective measure (to get rid of the birth evidence so predators will have a harder time of finding the vulnerable newborns)?
I mean, unless there are a bunch of saber-toothed tigers prowling the L&D ward, why the hell would anyone want to do this?
#12
Procopius2k, it is the same Joel Stein, the shallow Time magazine writer about Los Angeles superficialities. However, what he actually wrote about not supporting the troops was
But I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken -- and they're wussy by definition. It's as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn't to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.
This strikes me as reasonable, especially since he wrote, in the same essay but in a previous paragraph that he had to respect anyone who voluntarily signed up for eight years of danger in far away places, and that he was sure such people would be fun to hang out with -- the ultimate accolade in his circle.
#16
"All together now, Men, wid feeling, EEEEEWWWWWWW!"
Joe, as a woman, I'll say it too: Eeeeeeeewwwwwww!
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
07/07/2009 14:24
Comments ||
Top||
#17
Why am I not surprised that someone like Stein married a cannibalistic hippie chick? She's going to make a shake out of your ashes after she drives you into an early grave, Joel!
I swear I know people like these. They're usually pagan assholes of one stripe or another, but still think they ought to be able to have a Catholic Church wedding - without all the references to Christ.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
07/07/2009 15:33
Comments ||
Top||
#18
Maybe they could get together with Erin Jacob and have a party.
[Geo News] Interior Minister Rehman Malik claimed wiping out the major Taliban leadership from Swat adding that the security forces' operation in Waziristan is underway against Baitullah Mehsud only. He was worried about the possible Taliban strikes in Southern Punjab meanwhile, he announced he will be presented before UN team to be arrived here for probe into Benazir assassination. Talking to media here, Malik said the gallant Pakistan army carried out successful military offensive in Swat killing the major Taliban leadership and hoped the remaining Taliban will be wiped out soon. Some religious elements are backing Taliban but no madaris or mosque is involved in doing so, he claimed.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[23 views]
Top|| File under: TTP
#1
They seem to operate in some parallel universe, where their statements have meaning and carry weight, and where the speakers have credibility.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
07/07/2009 1:36
Comments ||
Top||
#2
They seem to operate in some parallel universe
There's an excellent book, The Arab mind, which I heartily recommend (all Muslims are honorary Arabs---because that's what Islam is: Arab customs given a quasi-religious justification).
[Al Arabiya Latest] Israel dropped out of a multi-billion dollar joint venture with a Swedish firm to develop new fighter jets for India because of U.S. pressure, according to Monday press reports.
Israel Aerospace Industries was planning to develop a new model of the Swedish-made Gripen fighter jet with its manufacturer, Saab, to compete in a tender to sell the planes to India's armed forces, the Jerusalem Post said.
But the state-owned firm backed out on the orders of the Israeli defense ministry "after the Pentagon expressed concern that American technology, used by Israel, would be integrated into the Gripen," the newspaper said.
It said Washington had likely pressured its close ally because two major U.S. aircraft manufacturers -- Boeing and Lockheed Martin -- are also participating in the tender for more than 120 aircraft estimated at 12 billion dollars.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[14 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
ION TOPIX > ANKARA: ISRAEL AFTER LOSING TURKEY IN THE DAVOS RUMPUS. IS REACHING OUT TO .......
[CAUCASUS + CENTASIA States, includ MUSLIM]?
#3
Had Saab been a Chinese firm, hundreds of millions in 'seed money' from the bailout pot would have been forthcoming. Tim Geithner and Kissenger & Associates would have seen to it.
[Geo News] The residence of banned Tehreek-e-Taliban (TT) commander by the name Nazeer Afridi was reportedly bombed by security forces here in the Bara tehsil of Khyber Agency on Monday, Geo news reported. Meanwhile, the clashes between banned religious outfits led to deaths of seven militants, sources claimed adding that security forces continued shelling suspected militants' hideouts on Monday. The bombing resulted in the destruction of the residences of Taliban leader Nazeer Afridi and his paternal uncle's amid fresh operation launched by security forces meanwhile, both the commanders received injuries, sources maintained. According to FC sources, security forces backed by choppers shelled many militants' hideouts in tehsil Landi Kotal, leaving those completely perished.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[17 views]
Top|| File under: TTP
#1
Looks like another drone strike tonite, about a dozen Talibs carbon neutral.
The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) on Monday said security forces killed at least 25 Taliban and arrested another four in various raids in Swat, Buner and North Waziristan Agency.
Fourteen Taliban were killed during a search operation in Mingora city's Tiligram area, the ISPR said. "The security forces engaged terrorists at Tiligram and killed 14 in a gun battle and recovered a large cache of arms and explosives, including four IEDs, a 14.5 gun barrel and 26 detonators," it said.
The ISPR said the forces also recovered 50 mules laden with arms and ammunition, medicines and food rations during a search operation in the Banjut area. Troops also apprehended a number of terrorists, it added.
The ISPR said a soldier was injured in an IED blast during a search operation in Swat's Thana area.
During a search operation in Tahirabad area of Mingora, the troops recovered surgical equipment, nine hand grenades and office furniture from the house of a suspected terrorist.
It said the forces secured Tighak Banda and Gakhe Banda areas, as two soldiers were injured in an exchange of fire with the terrorists at Pir Patai bridge.
The ISPR said the security forces impounded a vehicle at Kharkhanai Chowk in Dir and recovered 2,156 rounds of small machinegun, 9,728 rounds of light machine gun, seven hand grenades and eight small machinegun magazines.
Meanwhile, an IED planted by terrorists exploded near a vehicle parked at village Sarati Sherangal in Upper Dir, killing a child and injuring 10 persons.
Bajaur: Security forces on Monday also nsified attacks on the Taliban in Bajaur Agency, killing four of them and injuring six others in the region's Charmang tehsil.
The forces also destroyed numerous Taliban hideouts in Charmang, defused several remote-controlled bombs, arrested 15 suspects and recovered missiles from their possession.
Officials in North Waziristan Agency told AFP that seven Taliban had been killed and 12 injured when fighter jets targeted terrorists' hideouts in the area.
"Seven militants were killed and 12 injured when jet fighter planes pounded Taliban hideouts at Madda Khel and Wuchabibi," an official based in agency's main town Miranshah told AFP.
A military source in the region confirmed the attacks and death toll.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[23 views]
Top|| File under: TTP
#1
I wish I felt more secure about those numbers...
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/07/2009 17:36
Comments ||
Top||
Seoul is considering a taskforce to deal with a renegotiation of the Atomic Energy Agreement with the U.S. that would enable South Korea to expand nuclear activities. Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan on Monday said the taskforce could be led by the Foreign Ministry's special ambassador for energy and resources "in cooperation with other government agencies concerned."
Yu was speaking in the National Assembly's Foreign Affairs, Trade and Unification Committee. "The government will make preparations to begin negotiations in the second half of this year for the purpose of getting the maximum peaceful and commercial use of atomic power reflected in the agreement."
Just another subtle signal that if China can't curb its dog, the SKors reserve the right to go nuclear.
Seoul wants to revise the bilateral atomic energy pact, which expires in 2014, so it can at least reprocess its own spent nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes.
Yu said the two countries will discuss ways of reprocessing, including so-called pyro-processing at a high temperature. Unlike the more common wet reprocessing technology, pyro-reprocessing, also known as a dry recycling, offers nearly zero possibility of nuclear arms use given that it makes it difficult to extract pure plutonium.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[14 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Arms race sequence activated. Coordinates locked: Kims ugly ass. Standing by for authorization.
[Quqnoos] A suicide bomber attacked Kandahar airfield Monday, killing 2 and wounding a dozen, including four Afghan soldiers The incident occurred at about 7 am on Monday morning at the front gate of Kandahar airport, approximately 30 km south-eastern of the provincial capital, Kandahar city, a top police official said. Health status of four of the wounded people is reported critical.
The area is cordoned off by US and Canadian troops, stationed in Kandahar province, to probe the car wreckage and the powerful blast, a witness said.
Brig Gen Safiullah Hakim, police chief in southern Afghan region further said the attack also damaged five other civilian vehicles parked nearby the blast scene. Quqnoos' Mohammad Masumi in Kandahar terms it the first-ever suicide attack on Kandahar airfield -- a crowded Afghan airport with a number of domestic flights a day due to the risky road journey to southern Afghanistan. International and Afghan troops guard the airfield in Kandahar, the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban.
A militants' Web Site, quoted a purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, who accepted tge Taliban involvement behind the attack on the airfield. The attack was carried out by a Taliban militant, Abdul Hassan, the spokesman further said in the article. The Taliban spokesman claims that 16 Afghan and foreign troops have been killed in the blast.
Afghan officials in Kandahar dismissed the claim.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[12 views]
Top|| File under: Taliban
Operation Iron Net? That sounds remarkably stiff, heavy, and ineffective. Perhaps it's more frightening in the original Pashtun.
The Taliban said on Monday they have launched a guerrilla operation to thwart a major assault by the newly-deployed US Marines on their Helmand strongholds. Operation Foladi Jal would teach the Marines "a lesson". Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP by telephone from an unknown location.
The brave Lion of Islam phones it in from his secret hiding place, under his youngest wife's bed.
"You guys go ahead, I'll be there in a minute."
"Where you going, Mahmoud?"
Um .. I gotta make a phone call."
About 4,000 Marines poured into the southern province on Thursday in an operation called Khanjar (dagger) to tackle the Taliban in the region. "In response to Operation Khanjar by the invading forces, we have launched the operation," Ahmadi said. The operation would include improvised bomb explosions and "hit-and-run guerrilla attacks", Ahmadi said. "We will not engage them in front battles. We would rather hit them by mines and guerrilla attacks," he said.
Happy hunting, Marine Lions and Lionesses!
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[27 views]
Top|| File under: Taliban
#1
Teaching Marines "a lesson" sounds like a real bad idea. I don't thinks theses guys can pass an IQ test.
#2
Spoken by someone who's never faced Marines in combat. I'm sure they'll do their best, and I'm sure the Marines will kill them like flies.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
07/07/2009 12:41
Comments ||
Top||
#3
It's not an assault. It's a op aimed at attrition and wear-down.
The good thing is that there are a lot of 'lessons learned' from Iraq. The problems are that the Iraqis were a lot more sophisticated in some ways vis a vis IEDs, and the Taliban are using some tactics developed both indigenously and by Pakistanis and others.
MOSCOW -- President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a preliminary agreement Monday to reduce the world's two largest nuclear stockpiles by as much as a third, down to the lowest levels of any U.S.-Russia accord, and counter what Obama called "a sense of drift" in the countries' relations.
"We must lead by example, and that's what we are doing here today," Obama declared in a Kremlin hall glittering in gold. "We resolve to reset U.S.-Russian relations so that we can cooperate more effectively in areas of common interest."
Apparently keeping our distance from thugs isn't in our common interest ...
The document signed by the two leaders at a Moscow summit, Obama's first in Russia, is meant as a guide for negotiators as the nations work toward a replacement pact for the START arms control agreement that expires in December. The joint understanding also commits the countries to lower longer-range missiles for delivering nuclear bombs to between 500 and 1,100.
We don't need as many when what we have is more effective and more accurate.
#2
I am kind of slow here, are we still in an arms race with Russia? Seems that Reagan put this dog to sleep in the 80s. So what we have here is a ?rerun? of Presidential accomplishments?
Aswat al-Iraq: Police forces on Monday arrested two al-Qaeda-in-Iraq leaders in northern Wassit province, according to a local security source. "On Monday, forces from the information department and the National Investigations arrested Majeed Kadhem Hussein al-Ajeili and Fadel Hussein Jassem al-Ajeili, two prominent leaders in the terrorist al-Qaeda network, during a raid on several houses in al-Suweira district (135 km north of Kut)," the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. "The arrests were made in light of arrest warrants issued in accordance with Article IV of the Terrorism Law...," the source noted.
Those arrested have been involved in armed operations against civilians and Iraqi security forces, the source explained.
Kut, the capital city of Wassit province, lies 180 southeast of Baghdad.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[17 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Iraq
Mali's army and suspected Al Qaeda militants fought two gun battles over the weekend that killed dozens and left about 20 soldiers missing in a remote desert region, military sources said.
A Malian military patrol clashed with militants near Tessalit, in Mali's north, on Friday and were ambushed early Saturday morning.
Ah, but neither clash nor "ambush" would have taken place had not Malian troops been out there, wherever there is. It's a little late to wish them happy hunting, but let us wish them continued success... although preferably with fewer missing troops going forward. On second thought, are we sure the soldiers did not intentionally go off with malice aforethought, wherever it is that they went?
Mali's army confirmed firefights took place but gave no details. The violence is the latest in a series of incidents in the vast desert region which has long hosted rebels and smugglers and now increasingly is being used by militants known as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
"The army fought very deadly clashes with Islamists on July 3 and 4 northeast of (the northern town of) Timbuktu. After very heavy fighting, there were losses on both sides," the army said late on Sunday. The statement gave no details on the death toll. A military source said dozens had died in the two attacks and an army colonel was amongst the estimated 20 soldiers who went missing.
"We don't know if he is dead or has been taken hostage," the source, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. The fighting is the third such incident since Mali's security forces stepped up operations against AQIM, which last month killed a British hostage.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[10 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in North Africa
North Korea fired seven Scud-class ballistic missiles on Saturday. A South Korean government source said, "We assume that the missiles North Korea fired are two Scud-C missiles with a range of 500 km and two Rodong missiles with a range of 1,300 km -- two types that were known already -- plus three Scud extended-range missiles, no details of which were known here." The new Scud-ER with a range of 1,000 km is considered a particular threat to Japan because it is an improved version of the conventional Scuds with longer range and greater accuracy.
But the missile launch appeared "aimless and without a clear message," compared with previous provocations, a South Korean security official speculated. If it was trying to attract U.S. attention on American Independence Day, the North would have fired a long-range missile that could reach the U.S. mainland, but the only missiles fired were short- and medium-range.
North Korea in the past frequently achieved results by conducting a nuclear or missile test at a politically or diplomatically opportune time. But this year the tests apparently have nothing to do with the outside situation and carry no clear message, experts say. There is speculation that the North's constant grandstanding has caused a kind of "provocation fatigue" abroad, which led to a more tightly-knit net of sanctions and pressure on the North.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
JosephM commented just before the rollover that he saw what must have been the North Korean missiles exploding over Guam. If so, aimless is perhaps not the correct term.
#2
Might just be training rocket crews on fueling and firing missiles. They don't really need any "clear message" to perform training for crews.
Why does everyone need to read something into things? Maybe it has been a long time (if ever) since their troops ever live fired a missile and they are giving them practice.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is to visit the United States July 21, one of his advisers told AFP on Sunday, in a trip aimed at bolstering non-military cooperation amid a recent spat of violence in Mosul.
Maliki will meet United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in New York as well as President Barack Obama in Washington," said Yassin Majid, announcing the start of the visit of several days.
" We will work during the next visit to the United States to push forward bilateral relations in various areas "
Nuri al Maliki, Iraqi PM
United States Vice President Joe Biden, whom Obama has appointed as his administration's point man on Iraq, visited Baghdad at the start of July and urged Iraqi leaders to speed progress on its national reconciliation process.
Biden has repeatedly voiced concern about lingering feuds between Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities being a roadblock to political progress.
However, the Iraqi government refused a U.S. offer to intervene, describing the national reconciliation process as an internal matter and warning that outside interference could cause additional problems.
Maliki said on Friday that a June 30 U.S. troop pullback from Iraqi towns and cities signaled that the two countries had "entered a new phase."
"We will work during the next visit to the United States to push forward bilateral relations in various areas" and to work to remove sanctions imposed during the ousted regime of Saddam Hussein, Maliki said.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[13 views]
Top|| File under: Iraqi Insurgency
[Al Arabiya Latest] Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Western countries on Monday against interfering in Iranian affairs as the United Kingdom confirmed that the Islamic Republic had released an eighth British embassy staff member, leaving one still in detention.
Khameini admitted there are "differences" among Iranians following last month's disputed presidential election but told the West it would be met with a "firm fist" if it tried to exploit the unrest sparked by the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
"We strongly warn leaders of some Western countries not to interfere in Iran's internal matters, beware! The Iranian nation will react," Khameini said in a televised speech in Tehran. "The leaders of arrogant countries, the nosy meddlers in the affairs of the Islamic republic, must know that no matter if the Iranian people have their own differences, when you enemies get involved, the people... will become a firm fist against you."
Khamenei, who praised President Ahmadinejad's victory even before an official review endorsed the result, said the vote was an internal Iranian issue.
" We strongly warn leaders of some Western countries not to interfere in Iran's internal matters, beware! The Iranian nation will react "
Ayatollah Khameini
"The election was a major move ... The enemies want to create dispute among Iranians. What does it have to do with the enemies?" he asked.
Last month's election, which defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi accuses the government of rigging, led to the most widespread street protests in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Authorities say more than 1,000 people were arrested during the demonstrations, although most have been released. But human rights activists say 2,000 people, including opposition leaders, academics, journalists and students, may be still held.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[34 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
"You - obey the fist!!"
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
07/07/2009 6:08
Comments ||
Top||
#2
If he Firm Fist and the Foreign Hand had a fight, who would win?
[Quqnoos] Sixteen kidnapped de-miners were released Sunday night in Pakia province, Afghan Interior Ministry said. The Interior Ministry in a statement said police forces blocked all the routes out of the province in an extensive operation, launched late Saturday. "The operation prevented any possible chance for the kidnappers to smuggle the captive de-miners out of Paktia," the statement notes.
Local people and tribal elders supported the police operation to find out the de-miners who spent two nights in captivity, according to the MoI statement. The kidnappers have not been arrested yet, the statement further said.
No one claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid dismissed their involvement in the abduction.
The mine clearers, employed by the Mine Detection and Dog Centre (MDC), were seized by ten armed men on Saturday as they were clearing mines in a remote district of Pakia. MDC mine-clearance organisation is affiliated to the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre of Afghanistan (MACCA).
Twenty-two employees of the MDC, which has 1,800 staff working across the country, have been killed since 2001, mainly in areas where the Taliban still have influence.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[18 views]
Top|| File under: Taliban
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.
When the soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division penetrated the insurgent-ridden Tangi Valley in the heart of Wardak Province, they braved rockets and roadside bombs. They succeeded in erecting a small outpost overlooking the lush, fertile dale in what is one of the most dangerous areas in the province. 
Remarkably, in the face of the resistance, the Marines, who have a reputation as hard chargers, rarely fired back. They wanted to, but their command had warned the young Marines that even one civilian casualty could negate the No. 1 objective of this operation -- winning the trust and respect of the farmers of the Helmand River Valley. 
Right now California's economy is moribund, and the prospects for a quick turnaround are not good. Unable to pay its bills, the state is issuing IOUs; its once strong credit rating has collapsed. The state that once boasted the seventh-largest gross domestic product in the world is looking less like a celebrated global innovator and more like a fiscal basket case along the lines of Argentina or Latvia.
By Ralph Peters
EL SEGUNDO -- Former Three's Company star Joyce DeWitt is facing DUI charges.
Political rivals have accused him of being a neo-liberal and a ditherer, but Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has emerged as the favourite ahead of today's Indonesian presidential poll. The former general and incumbent is widely tipped to be re-elected in the first round of voting when as many as 176 million Indonesian voters cast their ballots.
President Obama's campaign to bring change to the nation's capital hasn't kept him from continuing the Washington tradition of handing out ambassadorships to political friends and fundraisers.
Finally joining the Senate, Democrat Al Franken envisions playing the "people's proxy" during Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court hearings. Franken, awaiting "an awfully emotional" Tuesday when he is sworn in, is joining the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is to begin hearings next week on President Barack Obama's first nominee to the high court.
The deadliest in a recent spate of terror attacks in Algeria killed at least 43 people and injured another 38 Tuesday, when a suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives outside a police academy while scores of new recruits lined up to register for training. The strike in the town of Boumerdès, about 22 miles east of Algiers, came just hours after reports that an ambush by Islamist extremists on Sunday killed 12 people in eastern Algeria. That assault followed two earlier attacks in August that left eight dead and over 50 injured. Though the extremist Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has only claimed responsibility for one of those massacres, experts fear they were all part of an escalating campaign of terror activity by the organization, which may be aiming to make the approaching holy month of Ramadan particularly bloody. 
[ADN Kronos] A landmine exploded in southeastern Turkey on Monday killing four construction workers and injuring nine others. The state news agency, Anadolu, said a bomb struck a vehicle transporting the workers to a dam and roads under construction in the southeastern province of Sirnak, near the border with Iraq on Monday.
[ADN Kronos] A United States trained Pakistani scientist accused of links to Al-Qaeda and shooting at FBI agents may be forced to appear in a New York court on Monday. Aafia Siddiqui may have to appear by video or in person in federal court in Manhattan at a hearing to decide if she is competent to stand trial, defence attorney Dawn Cardi said.
[Quqnoos] At least 4 NATO and two Afghan troops were killed Monday in a roadside bomb in Kunduz province, officials said
Media buyers said they have written a few deals with cable networks, which also compete for upfront dollars, but there have been no confirmed deals on the broadcast side of the business. 
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- Honduras's interim government closed its main airport to all flights on Monday after blocking the runway to prevent the return of ousted President Manuel Zelaya. Clashes with his supporters caused the first death in a week of protests.
[Al Arabiya Latest] A Yemeni court sentenced Monday seven Shiite rebels to death for their role in a series of gun battles against the security forces near the capital last year that left hundreds of people dead or wounded.
[Iran Press TV Latest] The French Foreign Ministry says it has summoned the Iranian ambassador over the arrest of a French academic on espionage charges. 
The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) on Monday said security forces killed at least 25 Taliban and arrested another four in various raids in Swat, Buner and North Waziristan Agency.
[Quqnoos] A suicide bomber attacked Kandahar airfield Monday, killing 2 and wounding a dozen, including four Afghan soldiers The incident occurred at about 7 am on Monday morning at the front gate of Kandahar airport, approximately 30 km south-eastern of the provincial capital, Kandahar city, a top police official said. Health status of four of the wounded people is reported critical.
