Superman is giving up his once-promising career in journalism.
Alter ego Clark Kent is resigning from the post of star reporter at the Daily Planet, the Metropolis newspaper where he has worked since the first Superman comics were published in the 1940s.
DC Comics, which publishes the Superman stories, says Kent will walk out in protest that hard news has given way to too many "soft" entertainment stories.
The move has been prompted by the Daily Planet's takeover by a conglomerate.
The publisher has hinted that the Man of Steel might even go the way of many journalists and become a blogger, in an effort to get his views across to a wider audience.
"Why am I the one sounding like a grizzled ink-stained wretch who believes news should be about, I don't know, news?" says a disillusioned Kent, according to a leaked panel from Wednesday's edition of the comic that appeared on the Newsarama.com website.
New Superman writer Scott Lobdell told USA Today newspaper: "This is really what happens when a 27-year-old guy is behind a desk and he has to take instruction from a larger conglomerate with concerns that aren't really his own."
#2
..or with his super hearing and super vision was able to ascertain that the paper was hemorrhaging like gored matador and that corporate was only using the old girl as a tax write off till the Bush tax cuts ended in January. Sauve qui peut!
Posted by: Barbara ||
10/23/2012 19:10
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I read Clark was going to dev the hots for Wonder Woman due to his relationship wid Lois becom stale and "iffy", wid Lana Lang watching on the outside???
A strip club in New York state cannot claim a tax exemption for the performing arts because lap dances do not promote culture in a community, the state supreme court has ruled.
But the panel of judges was split 4-3.
Some justices noted there was no legal distinction between "highbrow dance and lowbrow dance", and the case raised "significant constitutional problems".
Albany strip club Nite Moves had argued that admission fees and private dances should be exempt from sales tax.
But the majority of judges said the taxes applied to businesses in the entertainment industries, such as amusement parks and sports events.
Nite Moves had not sufficiently proved that its activities were "promoting cultural and artistic performances in local communities", they added.
Lawyers representing the club said their client was very disappointed by the court's ruling.
"We thought they were listening, and some of them were," lawyer W Anderson McCullough told the Associated Press news agency.
The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance has maintained throughout the legal proceedings that the strip club did not qualify under the current exemptions for dramatic and performing arts.
They came after those scientists who failed to predict the earthquake and no one stopped them. They came after those scientists who keep predicting gerbil worming disasters...well you can dream!
The head of Italy's disaster body, Luciano Maiani, has resigned in protest at prison sentences passed on seven colleagues over the 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila.
Six scientists and an ex-official were convicted of multiple manslaughter for giving a falsely reassuring statement.
Prof Maiani, a physicist, said the Serious Risks Commission could not work "in such difficult conditions".
The 6.3-magnitude quake killed 309 people and left the city in ruins.
Prof Maiani's decision to quit was announced by the Italy's Civil Protection Department, which said the commission's vice-president, Mauro Rosi, and emeritus president Giuseppe Zamberletti had also tendered their resignations.
"The situation created by yesterday's sentence... is incompatible with running the commission's work in a calm and efficient manner and with its role of giving high level advice to the organs of the state," Mr Maiani said in a statement on the department's website.
"A scientific committee has to give in its own judgement... The advice may be wrong. Or it may be imprecise. But if you have such a heavy punishment the committee will not act properly," he later told the BBC's Newshour.
"A committee will tend to be, always, on the very, very conservative side. I think there is a definite danger that scientific communities will refrain from giving advice to the government."
Prof Maiani, a world-renowned physicist who was director general of the Cern nuclear research centre in Switzerland from 1999-2003, said the possibility of being judged for your scientific judgement was a "serious problem".
"In this condition, and with this precedent, I would not take the job," he added.
One of the first clues the intelligence community had about the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was when a Tunisian national posted an update on social media about the fighting shortly after it had begun. How long before Eric Holder wants him sprung?
The post from Ali Ani al-Harzi, who is now suspected of participating in the attacks, was what helped U.S. intelligence locate him and track him down after he fled Libya for Turkey, according to four U.S. officials familiar with the unfolding investigation.
These people say Turkish officials held al-Harzi for less than a week at the behest of the U.S. government, then sent him to Tunisia. Notice that apparently the Turks didn't want to send him to the U.S., or alternately, that we didn't ask for him then. Wonder why...
There, he was kept in military custody until last week, when he was transferred to a jail in preparation for a court trial. It's unclear what role he might have played in the attacks or what he might be charged with. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. intelligence community are working with Tunisian authorities, but there has been no deal yet on whether to send al-Harzi to the U.S. or keep him in Tunisia where he could be charged under the country's own counterterrorism laws. The Tunisians have also not yet allowed U.S. officials direct access to the suspect. Sad to say, that might be for the best...
Al-Harzi is a member of violent extremist networks in North Africa, one U.S. intelligence officer told The Daily Beast. This person added that he was also connected to jihadist organizations in the Middle East and was headed to Syria when he was detained in Turkey.
The investigation into what happened on the 11th anniversary of Sept. 11 in Benghazi is complicated by a number of factors. It's an election season, and Republicans have accused Democrats of trying to cover up a terrorist attack and misleading the public. Democrats have countered that Republicans and Mitt Romney have attempted to politicize a national tragedy. But most everyone in both parties agree that Champ, Hillary, Foggy Bottom and the White House were stunningly incompetent...
The latest CIA view of the attack sent Friday to Congress says the attack on 9/11 was "opportunistic" rather than being planned days or weeks in advance. This assessment is based in part on a review of intercepts collected before 9/11 in and around Benghazi. A U.S. intelligence official told The Daily Beast that the review of collected intelligence found "there was nothing that would have given us some indication that an attack was being planned or imminent." That sounds like CYA at its best. It happened on 9/11, and al-Qaeda and its minions are known for some rudimentary knowledge of operational security. Just because you didn't HEAR about it doesn't mean they weren't planning the operation...
This resonates with what James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said earlier this month at an intelligence conference in Orlando known as GEOINT: "If people do not emit or discuss their behavior, it's hard to find out what they are going to do." Right -- but it doesn't mean you can conclude that they weren't planning anything...
The CIA's latest assessment also says once and for all that the assault didn't start as a protest against an anti-Islam Internet video. In the first eight days following the attacks, the Obama administration cited that video as the primary cause of the assault.
Yet the FBI knew there was no protest as early as Sept. 14, according to U.S. officials familiar with the investigation. These people say that's when FBI agents interviewed four of the five diplomatic security officers who were at the consulate during the attack. The officers were interviewed at Ramstein Airbase in Germany, where they had been evacuated. They told the FBI that there was no protest outside the consulate on 9/11 and that the men who showed up that evening were there to assault the compound. Too bad Mittens decided not to pound this point home last night.
Information like this "is ordinarily transferred back to Washington, given to John Brennan in the White House, so the president and White House would be aware of the progress in the investigation," said Fran Townsend, a former White House homeland security and counterterrorism advisor to President George W. Bush who now serves on the CIA's external advisory committee. So John, did you hear about this or not?
It's unclear when the FBI related this information to the White House, and both the FBI and the White House National Security Council declined to comment for this story. Two U.S. intelligence officials, however, say the FBI's information didn't make it into the intelligence community databases used by analysts until Sept. 20.
Romney maintains momentum in the final debate of 2012.
Who "won" the debate is a question instantly asked in the aftermath of these televised rituals, but with just two weeks left to go, the real question is, who will win the election? And after Monday night's meeting in Boca Raton, Florida, the answer to both questions appears to be the same: "Not Obama."
This has been Mitt Romney's challenge from the outset, to make himself acceptable to the millions of Americans who want to vote for "Not Obama," and his performance in the final debate of the 2012 campaign did nothing to disqualify him. As a result, the Republican challenger remains on a trajectory toward victory on Nov. 6.
Conservative blogger Elizabeth Price Foley summarized President Obama's debate performance in four words: "Snarky, condescending, peevish and small." If undecided voters were eager to embrace whichever candidate could best exemplify smug self-congratulation, Obama won by a landslide. After Romney had referred to the president's "apology tour going to various nations in the Middle East and criticizing America," Obama shot back: "Nothing Governor Romney just said is true, starting with this notion of me apologizing. This has been probably the biggest whopper that's been told during the course of this campaign. And every fact checker and every reporter who's looked at it, Governor, has said this is not true."
That was the point at which a group of uncommitted voters, doing an instant dial-meter reaction for CNN, recorded its lowest mark for the Democrat incumbent. And despite the emphatic stridency of Obama's denial, as Foley pointed out, the Heritage Foundation has documented Obama's tendency to strike an apologetic posture abroad, as when he went to France in 2009 and declared that "America has shown arrogance and been dismissive," failing "to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world."
Fact-checkers, policy wonks, and spinners for both parties will rate the point-by-point accuracy of each candidate's statements, but such particulars will not change the general impression of Obama as pompously indignant when challenged, lecturing Romney pedantically and often on the verge of dislocating a shoulder while trying to pat himself on the back. It is well known that Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry has been the president's main debate coach, but at times Monday, it seemed that Obama was mimicking the same stuck-up attitude that made Kerry ultimately unacceptable to voters in 2004. Indeed, in trying to portray Romney as a George W. Bush clone, Obama at times seemed to be recycling the Left's anti-war arguments of four or even eight years ago. If Michael Moore, Sean Penn, and Janeane Garofalo were typical of undecided "swing" voters in Ohio, the president's re-election would be assured. Obama was one scream short of being Howard Dean.
The morning shows and cable-news networks are sure to spend a lot of time today replaying the weirdest moment of the debate, when Romney said -- quite accurately -- that the U.S. Navy "is smaller now than at any time since 1917," with fewer ships than the Navy says it needs. To this, Obama replied: "Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. And so the question is not a game of Battleship, where we're counting ships. "
What in the name of John Paul Jones was this? Did the president sincerely think Romney needed to be told what submarines and aircraft carriers are? Fact-checkers were quick to point out that the Marine Corps still trains with bayonets, but the implication of Obama's remark -- that naval ships are as obsolete as 19th-century horse cavalry and bayonet charges -- was certainly not likely to win him many votes in such swing-state Navy towns as Norfolk, Virginia, and Pensacola, Florida.
There were numerous criticisms of Romney's performance, of course. The GOP challenger was seemingly eager to avoid the appearance of excessive hawkishness. Democrat strategists had signaled their intent to portray him as a warmonger, and Romney refused to help them. And judging from the reaction of liberal commentators in post-debate panels at MSNBC and CNN, Romney also flummoxed Democrats by frequently agreeing with Obama. It seemed obvious that Romney, believing he came into the final debate with sufficient momentum to win, was running the equivalent of a "prevent defense," willing to yield ground and avoid risky confrontations. Thus, Obama was on the attack most of the night against an opponent who, while steadily maintaining his criticisms of the president's policies, refused to be baited into unnecessary fights.
A CNN instant poll of debate viewers showed they graded the match a narrow win for Obama, 48-40, even while the debate had no net impact on survey sample's election preferences. My own method of analysis was to switch over to MSNBC for their post-debate discussion and, as I remarked on Twitter, "Chris Matthews isn't giddy. That means, Romney won."
Does anyone disagree with that assessment? Never mind. Two weeks from now, my opinion will be moot, and the same will be true for all the commentators and moderators and other TV talking heads who have been running their mouths in debate previews and post-debate wrap-ups for the past three weeks. If they were willing to put their money where their mouths are, however, I'd be willing to bet any of them that on Election Day, when the voters have their chance to speak, they'll choose "Not Obama."
Posted by: Au Auric ||
10/23/2012
09:41 ||
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It seemed obvious that Romney, believing he came into the final debate with sufficient momentum to win, was running the equivalent of a "prevent defense," willing to yield ground and avoid risky confrontations
Or he and Mr. Ryan are finally getting intel briefings.
> Horses, or perhaps more accurately Mules + Donkeys, were invaluable during WW2 in both the Italian + SOuth Pacific theaters, going where Jeeps + Trucks could not go in high ridge or high mountain latitudes.
> When engaged in close-in or hand-to-hand fighting, many Army-Marine grunts want the option of using their combat rifles as effec "clubs" or "spears".
The US must be able to respond to changes in enemy tactics + strategies as due to changes in American tactics and strategies, i.e. COUNTER-CHANGE.
E.G. "TOP GUN" = where in a scene the movie character "Viper" brings up the subject that post-WW2/Korean War US reliance on techy LR standoff missles in air-to-air combat resulted in a loss or decline of US dogfighting skills such that enemy air forces were able to significantly lower their loss rate agz US fighter aircraft, E.G. VIETNAM WAR WHERE THIS TREND WAS NOT REDUCED UNTIL AFTER US AIR COMBAT PILOTS RECEIVED IMPROVED TRAINING IN DOGFIGHTING TACTICS.
#1
Just ignore this and listen to MSNBC's Matthews. Romney supporters are the ones that are racists. Just ignore the racist tweets. Nothing to see here....
Seriously, these idiots riot give them a whiff of grapeshot. Maybe they will learn something about cause and effect.
#2
Oh very pretty please DO riot! PLEASE give us a reason and justification to give you that whiff of grapeshot that DV mentioned.
Oh, and we are NOT racist, since we want to prove that we are capable of learning even from Obama and Alinsky the principle of not letting a crisis go to waste....
#3
Not only have Obama voters been making open threats that they will riot and cause mayhem, they have also been caught making direct threats to assassinate Mitt Romney
#4
You recall the last time people* carried out their threats** if the election didn't go their way didn't quite get the results they were looking for. Then again, they don't teach real history anymore, just 'studies'.
* who just so happen to be Donks too.
** bombarding a federal military installation also didn't turn out well for the Japanese 80 year later.
#7
Boeserker, I had no idea that phase of history happened. None whatsoever, though it explains Detroits current state rather well. They gave the rioters the keys.
Posted by: Charles ||
10/23/2012 13:56
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Has links to the original newspaper reports. Lore has it neighborhoods banded together and set up check points.
From the comments: Hey, this is the KC Chamber of Commerce calling. Quit posting all this negativity about the City of Fountains. It's not like we're Detroit...
#11
The 1967 Newark riots were a major civil disturbance that occurred in the city of Newark, New Jersey between July 12 and July 17, 1967. The six days of rioting, looting, and destruction left 26 dead and hundreds injured.
Same time, different place. I was actually there in the Central Ward when it started; buying some drum kit stuff at the music store that all the surrounding schools used. Thought someone had left over fire works, found out different.
#13
I was in D.C. in the days following the riots after Martin Luther King's assassination. Whole blocks in flames. Huge amount of lawlessness.
However, I noticed that the blocks the rioters burned were in their own neighborhoods. When we went up to the area around the National Cathedral to pick up another volunteer for one of the relief centers (which were on the edge of the burned-out area), you would have thought nothing had happened - nice sunny Palm Sunday, people walking around like normal. In the burned-out areas and around the federal buildings, an armed soldier on every corner.
I'm pretty sure that's the way it will happen the next time, too - at least in the states where it's legal for people to own guns. Anybody tries to come set my house on fire, they're going to get a fat surprise from my friends Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson.
Posted by: Barbara ||
10/23/2012 19:01
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#14
I noticed that the blocks the rioters burned were in their own neighborhoods
I suspect any rioting will be confined to Blue areas, although you wouldn't want to be on the fringes. This may be a way for Detroit to get some urban renewal and more land for urban farming at the same time.
#15
History suggests that any anti-Romney black protests will be autonomous + limited to Watts, Harlem, + LA-style destructive riots.
OTOH, anti-Obama white protests or white militias will not only riot, BUT ARE LIKELY TO START SHOOTING AT US GOVTCRITTERS, be it Obama, Congress, andor Papercrats - IOW, TO DE FACTO ATTEMPT TO OVERTHROW THE GOVT???
This is what happens when Political Elites hide too many things too often from the electorate, e.g. installing OWG + "Global Federal Unions", etc. widout bothering to ask the Voters or Mainstream, lest we fergit aka "the People", iff they want it or to vote for same in popular referendums. POLITICO "HINTING" AT GLOBAL GOVT. IS NOT THE SAME AS DE FACTO "DESCRIBING" GLOBAL GOVT.
"SMART POLITICS" IS NOT ALWAYS PROPER OR GOOD LEADERSHIP, REPRESENTATIVE OR OTHERWISE REGARDLESS OF THE MERITS.
Cites CBS poll on CNN because it favors Obama more
CNN pundit and prospective Secretary of State appointee Fareed Zakaria gushed over President Barack Obama's foreign policy debate performance on Monday night.
"[Obama] quite effectively pointed out that Romney was indecisive or waffled on an issue or gone back and forth ... and he kept saying being commander-in-chief, being president is about being consistent," Zakaria said.
Zakaria later overlooked CNN's own instant poll of debate watchers by citing a CBS poll that showed a larger margin of victory for Obama.
"The gap for Obama is much higher; I think they are exactly right," he said.
Zakaria, who has criticized America's democracy, backed containment on a nuclear Iran, and expressed hostility toward Israel, is being floated as a high-level diplomat in a second Obama administration and has even been touted as a potential successor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. That did not prevent CNN from giving him a platform as a nonpartisan pundit in its post-debate analysis.
Posted by: Au Auric ||
10/23/2012
09:11 ||
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Farid is a shafi'i Sunni rat from India...what kind of squeals can you expect from the bilge?
A year-long investigation by the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) has found that scores of known radical Islamists made hundreds of visits to the Obama White House, meeting with top administration officials.
Court documents and other records have identified many of these visitors as belonging to groups serving as fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and other Islamic militant organizations.
The IPT made the discovery combing through millions of White House visitor log entries. IPT compared the visitors' names with lists of known radical Islamists. Among the visitors were officials representing groups which have:
Been designated by the Department of Justice as unindicted co-conspirators in terrorist trials; Extolled Islamic terrorist groups including Hamas and Hizballah;
Obstructed terrorist investigations by instructing their followers not to cooperate with law enforcement;
Promoted the incendiary conspiratorial allegation that the United States is engaged in a "war against Islam"-- a leading tool in recruiting Muslims to carry out acts of terror;
Repeatedly claimed that many of the Islamic terrorists convicted since 9-11 were framed by the U.S government as part of an anti-Muslim profiling campaign.
Individuals from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) visited the White House at least 20 times starting in 2009. In 2008, CAIR was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorist money laundering case in U.S. history -- the trial of the Holy Land Foundation in which five HLF officials were convicted of funneling money to Hamas...
Posted by: Au Auric ||
10/23/2012
09:00 ||
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Agent-of-Influence (def.): a well-placed, trusted contact who actively and consciously serves a foreign interest or foreign intelligence services on some matters while retaining his integrity on others.
On August, 19, 2011, during the heat of the Obama Administration's trade negotiations with China, Vice President Joe Biden huddled with his top trade advisors at the St. Regis Hotel in Beijing, China. One seat away from Mr. Biden sat Robert Roche.
Mr. Roche is a mysterious figure, an American expatriate and Obama bundler living in Shanghai, China. Mr. Roche's company, Acorn International, is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange and is in partnership with Hu Jintao's government.
The importance of this partnership was exemplified at the 2011 State Dinner for Chinese President Hu Jintao (above), where something rare and virtually unprecedented in American politics occurred.
Three living presidents--Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter--all attended the event and were seated at the head table. Also seated at the power table were Sen. John Kerry and his billionaire wife, Theresa Heinz Kerry; General Electric chief Jeffrey Immelt; Coca Cola Chairman and CEO Muhtar Kent; and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Joining them was Robert Roche--a man whose inconsequential infomercial business hawks everything from cell phones, to exercise equipment, to breast enhancement products.
Telegraphing his influence, Mr. Roche received the most coveted honor of all, a seat just one seat away from President Obama. Left in the cheap seats were former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and numerous other titans of politics, finance, and business with billions of dollars in assets in China, including JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, CEO of Disney Robert Iger, and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein...
Posted by: Au Auric ||
10/23/2012
08:50 ||
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I reviewed the preliminary plans for this railroad in the early 1980's.
Owners of a proposed railroad serving southeastern Montana's coal fields have applied to the federal government to build an 83-mile line carrying up to 20 million tons of fuel annually.
Tuesday's application to the Surface Transportation Board comes after a federal court said in December that prior approvals for the long-stalled Tongue River Railroad were outdated. It would stretch from Miles City south to Ashland, where Arch is seeking to mine a 1.5 billion ton coal reserve.
Construction of the line would take three years and cost $490 million. BNSF spokeswoman Suann Lundsberg says it is up to federal officials when work could begin. I guess they're expecting more Trunks to get elected next month.
Landowners along the route vow to stop the project.
Posted by: Bobby ||
10/23/2012
08:17 ||
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BNSF is owned by Warren Buffet's group. They would profit from their share of the hauling. Thus there are players on both sides.
Posted by: lord garth ||
10/23/2012 9:11
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No need for coal iff the Perts are going to argue there is no "Peak Oil/Energy/Resources" Crisis, correct???
Also, AFAIK the Fed is still planning to design + dev a "COMMON/UNIVERSAL CARRIER" for all the tranportation modes - Air, Rail, Truck, + Ocean.
ALL THE MAJOR UNIONS WILL NEED THEIR MEMBERS TO BE RE-EDUCATED, RE-TRAINED, + CERTIFIED IN OPERAT + MAINTAINING SUCH, + LEARNING TO PRONOUNCE "VESSEL" AS "VEASEL/VEESEL" LIKE STAR TREK:TOS' ENSIGN CHEKOV.
IIUC, a "high school dropout" of today + earlier generations will the equivalent of a Master's or Doctoral, or post-Doctoral-level "space college/university" dropout in the future.
The focus of the last of their three debates was supposed to be foreign policy, but both Romney and Obama used their time to talk about the issues most important to voters: jobs, the economy and the budget. They talked about the auto bailout, school class sizes and Romney's tax plan. At several points, CBS's Bob Schieffer, who served as moderator, tried to bring them back to foreign affairs and national security, but sometimes to no avail.
Romney appeared cautious, especially during the early stages of the debate, but grew more assertive as the evening went on. Throughout the debate, Obama seemed eager and ready to take the fight to his opponent, drawing on his experience to draw contrasts with the challenger. At times, as Romney offered pointed criticism of his policies, Obama glared directly at him. The nerve! He's President, you know!
Romney's central critique was that Obama had been weak in the face of "a rising tide of chaos" and tumult in the world. When Obama charged that Romney has been "all over the map" in his policies, the challenger responded by saying, "Attacking me is not talking about how we're going to deal with the challenges that exist in the Middle East." But the tactic might get him re-elected. But Obama pressed his case that Romney's worldview as well as his prescriptions for the domestic front were not just wrong but also rooted in the past. "When it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s," he said. Clever, catchy, and tough to refute in 25 words or less. Also meaningless.
Although the two had argued at last week's debate about what happened in Libya and whether the administration had been slow to identify the attack as an act of terrorism, the issue never got a full airing on Monday. And not much of an airing in the WaPo, either.
At one point, Romney argued that he would not support budget cuts to the military, pointing out that the U.S. Navy had reduced its fleet of warships to the lowest number since the early 1900s. "Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets," the president countered, "because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines." Who writes this stuff, the ghost of Johnny Carson?
White voters side with Romney by a 15-point margin (56 to 41 percent), while non-whites break heavily for the president, 78 to 19 percent. Among African Americans, the margin is overwhelming: 94 to 2 percent. What an interesting observation!
The seesawing battle for voters now has Obama with the edge on the enthusiasm front: 64 percent of Obama's backers say they are "very enthusiastic" about his candidacy, higher than the 58 percent of Romney's who are that engaged behind his run. Still, Obama's popularity trails his 2008 levels. That's the best news in this article!
Posted by: Bobby ||
10/23/2012
05:55 ||
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We are zero for four consecutive seasons and ticket sales continue to decline. Time for a new coach. We shall see who gets the "heel" in a few short weeks.
#2
I thought Obama looked rambling, all-over the board in his comments, petty, snarky, and not in touch. Since he has been campaigning non-stop for the past two years, it is very likely he is not in touch with the day-to-day affairs of government and really does not have a clue of what's going on.
#3
The last two debates have been pretty much draws. Obama made his followers comfortable with voting for him, Romney didn't scare independents and his base. I'll bet the current poll trend stays the same while the MSM trumpets that O thrashed everyone in front of him.
#4
I think I would have preferred to see Newt in this debate. Romney made some good points. I particularly enjoyed his comment about how Putin would find more backbone after the election, as opposed to more flexibility. But overall, I didn't see as much difference between the candidates as I wanted to see. Granted, I'm the kind of individual who wanted to hear Mitt say he was gonna nuke the Mad Mullahs and the Paks too. But there were too many times, for my liking anyway, when he admitted that he agreed with the president. I thought he was also way too lenient with the Chinese when he made the assumption that they don't want war. Well, maybe they don't but the way they've been building their navy and threatening their neighbors you could have fooled me.
#5
I agree with what you state EU6305, but I think Joe Average is either unaware of or likes our current foreign policy, so in that regard it would be Hi, I'm Mitt Romney, and I will be consistant with our current foreign policy with the exception of a working domestic policy, I will not bow to foreign kings, and I have better hair.
#6
Romney does have better hair. One thing I noticed when they shook hands before the debate started is that Romney is an inch or two taller, appears to be healthy and vigorous and has a full head of hair. This is not insignificant.
#7
No, you didn't want to see Newt. Newt would have been a terrible candidate -- it's the one that Champ could beat.
Newt has a number of good qualities, but he's undisciplined as all get out, and his time as a Speaker was a disaster for the Pubs. He's an ideas guy, not a process or policy guy, and ideas guys don't make good Presidents (see Wilson, W., for details).
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/23/2012 14:58
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Sincerely hope you're right. We'll find out on Nov. 6.
#9
"you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s"
US foreign policy was successful beyond the wildest imagination of any 'rational' political observer.
Freedom was expanding then, no sane person proposed that the West adopt civil rights restrictions based on communist doctrine.
The President of the United States did not apologize for the denigration of the Soviet Union, he denigrated the Soviet Union and its political ideology.
Obama apparently thinks that this policy was wrong, perhaps not in spite of bringing down the Soviet Union but because it brought down the Soviet Union.
Fox News Although moderator Bob Schieffer of CBS News raised the topic of the Sept. 11 attack in Libya in his first question onstage Monday in Boca Raton, Fla., Romney and then Obama instead responded by broadening the topic to Al Qaeda, the Arab Spring and the Middle East. Perhaps he misunderstood the question.
Romney only mentioned Libya once, saying that the attack was carried out "apparently by, I think we know now, by terrorists of some kind against our people there." He went on to "congratulate (Obama) on taking out Usama bin Laden and going after the leadership in Al Qaeda. But we can't kill our way out of this mess. We're going to have to put in place a very comprehensive and robust strategy." Well, dronexecution has some advantages compared to a trial in New York City.
"Governor Romney came in here tonight and showed he was presidential," Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said after the debate. "The president was small. ... Only Mitt Romney spoke and acted like a president." I'll watch it this evening, on the DVR.
Joe Trippi, a former campaign manager for Democrat Howard Dean, told Fox News that Romney's strategy was "not to let Obama paint him as the reckless guy who's going to take us to war." That seemed to work in the first debate, when folks found out Romney only had one head and two eyes.
"I just want to call this debate the 'big hug,'" Trippi said, noting examples in the debate of Romney agreeing with Obama's foreign policy. "But I think the president had the edge." WaPo gave O the "edge" in the front-page headline.
Posted by: Bobby ||
10/23/2012
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#1
Far too tame. The comment by Willard on the isolation and "treatment" of diplomats of the former apartheid government of SA was revealing, disappointing, and an unstudied denial of very unsavory historical outcomes. Israel had no stronger friend on the continent than that of South Africa. Unfortunately, that friendship was long ago jettisoned by the ANC in favour of a total embrace of Islam.
I would also make sure that their diplomats are treated like the pariah they are around the world. The same way we treated the apartheid diplomats of South Africa.
#2
Horses & bayonets? Factual statement that there are fewer than 1915, but the tone is like nails on a chalkboard.
And ships that go underwater? They are ones that were sunk by the undersea boats.
Those of us old enough remember the civil disturbances of the late 60s/early 70s. The AZ National Guard conducted an 'on site' experiment with crowd control. Troops were deployed without bayonets, with bayonets but sheathed, and with cold steel [bayonets exposed]. It was only in the latter instance that crowds would back off from the guardsmen. It is still in the inventory for a reason. As for horses, didn't they just unveil a monument to modern horse soldiers recently?
#6
we still fix bayonets. KABARs still get issued w/every M-4 or M-16 in the USMC inventory as a bayonet attachment. We still do bayonet drills in our MCMAP system. The Brits did a bayonet charge a while back in one of the sand boxes. Champ is good at semantics w/out substance and comments w/out a context.
Country: United Kingdom
Branch: Army, 16th Air Assault Brigade
Type: One of six Scottish line infantry regiments
Role: Air assault-Light role
Motto: Nemo Me Impune Lacessit
Simple, well known pop culture references that bayonets did not go out of style after WWI. Heck, back before I started a family there is no telling how many times I was virtually bayonetted in various video games, even hand out award points in some.
Crude submarines go back to the 18th century. First naval aviation strike, 1914 Japan vs. Germany.
If he was trying to show his prowess of military matters, it came off like somebody lecturing me on hand washing when he has toilet paper stuck to the bottom of his shoe.
#10
I felt sort of blah watching the debate. I kept noticing Romney missing opportunities to attack. The morning commentaries seem to indicate that Romney's strategy worked as only those already decided were bothered by his approach.
Still, we'll never know what the numbers might have been if he'd really gone on the offensive on a number of things instead of letting Obama avoid answering on Russia and allowing a pass on Libya, etc.
#11
I am hopeful he'll work over those opportunities on stump speeches. Which maybe Fox will cover.
Posted by: Bobby ||
10/23/2012 15:28
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#12
Barry squirmed around Russia again (did so in '08 but one could presume a lack of knowledge; this time around though...).
I had the SF/STL game on mute. They were showing a replay and I faded out from IIRC a question about Pahkistahn and come back in, he was talking about math teachers.
#13
Still, we'll never know what the numbers might have been if he'd really gone on the offensive on a number of things instead of letting Obama avoid answering on Russia and allowing a pass on Libya, etc.
A good executive knows how to delegate. Have you checked out the ads the Rs are running today? No coincidence they attack where Romney was more judicious.
#14
I would have liked an actual fistfight, but that would have been a win the battle/lose the war scenario. Romney appeared presidential, unlike that other guy. And as lotp says, he has other forces to send on the attack missions.
[Ma'an] Fatah has not been invited to meet Qatar's emir who is due to visit the Gazoo Strip on Tuesday, a Fatah leader said Monday.
Yahya Rabah told Ma'an that Fatah received no invitation from Qatar or the Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason,-led government in Gazoo to meet Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.
Rabah, who is based in Gazoo, said Fatah was not informed of the reason for the visit or any of the arrangements but said the trip raised questions.
Hamas government front man Taher al-Nunu said Hamas had invited Fatah to participate in the welcoming ceremony for the emir and his wife. Al-Nunu said Fatah official Atef Abu Saif responded with an official apology saying that party representatives would not attend.
Sheikh al-Thani will become the first head of state to enter the blockaded Gazoo Strip. He is officially visiting the enclave to inaugurate reconstruction projects worth over $250 million to rebuild the war-torn enclave.
The emir had been expected to drive from Egypt's el-Arish airport to the Rafah crossing, but due to security concerns he will fly by military helicopter to the Egyptian border, an Egyptian military official told Ma'an on Monday.
The Qatari official is traveling with a 61-person delegation, including his wife and ministers. Egyptian security forces are on high alert in Sinai because of the visit, the military official added.
Sheikh al-Thani's trip will be loaded with political symbolism. The emir will be the first foreign leader to go to Gazoo under the rule of Hamas, an Islamist movement that is outlawed by Israel and the West as a terrorist organization, but whose influence and aspirations in the Middle East conflict may be hard to ignore.
Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh ...became Prime Minister after the legislative elections of 2006 which Hamas won. President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Haniyeh from office on 14 June 2007 at the height of the Fatah-Hamas festivities, but Haniyeh did not acknowledge the decree and continues as the PM of Gazoo while Abbas maintains a separate PM in the West Bank... issued a statement confirming the visit and urging "our people to express their good hospitality in welcoming the great visitor of Gazoo".
Some residents put up Qatari flags in the streets of Gazoo city. Others attacked the visit on social networks, questioning Qatar's intentions. Some posted pictures on their Facebook pages of the emir side-by-side with Israeli President Shimon Peres.
The Paleostinian Authority's Wafa news agency said President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... was told of the Qatari visit in a phone call from the emir in Doha.
Sheikh al-Thani "told him of his desire to visit Gazoo Strip to inaugurate some projects to reconstruct the strip", Wafa said.
"The president welcomed the effort by Qatar to support Gazoo Strip, stressing on the unity of Paleostinian land and ending division," the agency added. It said Abbas urged Hamas to implement signed agreements for the reconciliation of the two rival movements.
But Gazoo and West Bank analysts say reconciliation is not on the cards. Hamas is shifting its ties away from Shiite Mohammedan Iran and wooing Egypt's Moslem Brüderbund, its true spiritual mentor, which now runs the country.
Analysts say Hamas will use this major injection of Qatari aid and the visit of the emir to demonstrate that it has powerful friends, despite its isolation by the West.
Abbas and Fatah, by contrast, have reached a dead end in efforts to revive peace talks with Israel that were suspended two years ago, and have been weakened politically.
(Sh.M.Network)--Somalia piracy attacks against merchant shipping fell to the lowest in six years in the third quarter as armed guards on vessels and naval patrols cut attempted hijacks on the trade route linking Asia and Europe.
One ship was attacked compared with 36 in the same quarter a year ago, the London-based International Maritime Bureau, which has been tracking incidents since 1991, said in an e- mailed report today.
That's the fewest since the same period in 2006, when no attacks were reported, Assistant Director Cyrus Mody said by e-mail.
Governments spent almost $1.3 billion last year on military interventions including naval patrols, the One Earth Future Foundation, a Broomfield, Colorado-based non-profit, said in February.
Attacks cost the industry and governments $6.9 billion last year, it estimated. Fourteen out of 28 ships briefed by the U.K.'s Royal Navy in the week to Oct. 19 were carrying or recently carried armed guards, U.K. Maritime Trade Operations said in an e-mailed report Oct. 20.
"We welcome the successful robust targeting of pirate action groups by international navies in the high-risk waters off Somalia," IMB Director Pottengal Mukundan said in the report. "There can be no room for complacency. These waters are still extremely high-risk and the naval presence must be maintained."
Trade worth $952 billion transited the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean in 2009, according to a 2011 report for the U.K.'s Chamber of Shipping and the London-based Oil Companies International Marine Forum.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/23/2012
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#1
I thought armed guards was going to result in baby bunnies and darling duckies killed all over the place as the gun-crazies shot anything that moved?
Posted by: Bobby ||
10/23/2012 6:10
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#2
Gun control on ships, gun control in Chicago. Always the same excuses to refuse to arm the citizenry. Same escalation in crime. Introduce properly trained armed men with robust authority to act into the population an amazing event occurs. Generally, if a theory is substantiated by repeated similar behavior and outcome its usually considered a law. Unfortunately, scientific law is checked by the priest of the church of law, lawyers and their brethren judges.
[An Nahar] The army carried out raids in Beirut's Tariq al-Jadeedah neighborhood on Monday to restore order and detain gunnies on the streets while heavy gunfire was reported in the area.
According to the National News Agency, the army was carrying out patrols and raids in various areas in Tariq al-Jadeedah and nearby areas, including Qasqas, Barbir, Corniche al-Mazraa and Cola.
Voice of Leb radio (93.3) reported that the army exchanged fire with gunnies in the area.
Later on Monday, the Army Command's Orientation Directorate issued a statement saying a Paleostinian gunman was killed in an exchange of gunfire with army troops.
"At noon, Paleostinian nationals Ahmed and Abed Qwaider opened fire from light assault rifles at an army patrol in the Qasqas area, prompting the patrol's members to shoot back, which left Ahmed dead after he succumed to his wounds," the statement said.
"The Army Command reiterates what it had mentioned in its previous statement that its military units will deal firmly and forcefully with anyone who tampers with the security of citizens or attacks army troops, whatever their affiliation might be," it added.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/23/2012
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Army chief Prayuth Chan-ocha is calling on government agencies to help security forces win support from the people in the far South. Gen Prayuth's plea followed the latest spate of violence in the far South over the weekend resulting in the deaths of at least two soldiers and injuries to more than 10 people, including a nine-year-old girl.
Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra yesterday expressed concern over the latest wave of southern violence and ordered all agencies involved to monitor the situation closely.
National police chief Adul Saengsingkaew yesterday arrived at the southern border police operations center to follow up on the attacks in Narathiwat province over the weekend. Pol Gen Adul said he ordered police officers to step up efforts to investigate and track down the attackers and bring them to justice.
Navy chief Adm Surasak Rounroengrom said yesterday the navy promoted the two officers attached to the navy's marine corps, who were killed in a bomb blast in Bacho district Saturday. Petty Officer 1st Class Nadi Champawan was promoted to a commander and his family will receive more than 2.4 million baht in compensation while Petty Officer 1st Class Issarawut Polsak was promoted to a lieutenant commander and his family will receive about 2.1 million baht in compensation.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul said during his visit to Egypt yesterday that Egypt's top Muslim cleric Sheikh Ahmed El-Tayeb had condemned the violence in the southern provinces.
The violence continued yesterday in Pattani and Narathiwat provinces.
In Pattani's Muang district, Somchai Homklinchan, a gardener at a local hospital, was riding a motorcycle to work. He was followed by two assailants on another motorcycle until a pillion-riding gunman shot him. The man was taken to a nearby hospital where he died.
In Narathiwat's Si Sakhon district, Sukanya Permsap, the owner of a grocery, was gunned down in his shop. Soldiers and police were at the scene when terrorists militants hiding nearby detonated an explosion by radio signal. There were no casualties.
Security officers found Sukanya's body in the shop after the blast. She had been shot in the head. A bomb crater marred the shop. Debris was strewn about the shop including remnants from the homemade bomb. A pistol and a spent bullet case were also found.
General (Ret.) Sonthi Boonyaratglin (Thai: สนธิ บุญยรัตกลิน, RTGS: Sonthi Bunyaratkalin) is the muslim rat who is the effective dictator of Thailand, hiding behing the Royal buffoons...Buddhists are slowly exterminated and will be treated like the vile muslim scum intend to treat the Jews.
Sonthi comically threatened to go to war against Singapore over the satellites Singapore had purchased from Thailand...
Like all muslim led armies, Thai military is only brave against unarmed demonstrators...Sonthi have evacuated the south of Thailand to let islamic terrorists massacre the Buddhist civilians...
[Tolo News] The family of a woman stabbed to death by her husband in western Herat ...a venerable old Persian-speaking city in western Afghanistan, populated mostly by Tadjiks, which is why it's not as blood-soaked as areas controlled by Pashtuns... province on Friday has called for him to be punished with the same death that he dealt his wife.
The man, Anwar, who has been tossed in the clink Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! at Herat police headquarters, killed his wife, Kolsoom, allegedly because he was angry that she worked at an office for an NGO, according to police officials.
"Preliminary investigations show that Kolsoom was working in a private company. There was a verbal fight between the woman and her husband, and following that the woman was killed by her husband using a knife," said Herat police front man Col. Noorkhan Nikzad.
However, some people are alive only because it's illegal to kill them... Kolsoom's family claim that Anwar killed her after she hid their seven-year-old daughter at Kolsoom father's house because he was a drug addict who wanted to sell the daughter for money.
Kolsoom, 30, was stabbed at least eight times in front of her mother at her parent's house. She was rushed to Herat local hospital but died a short time later because of the seriousness of the wounds.
Kolsoom's family including her only daughter called for Anwar to receive the highest punishment under the law.
"We want that just as he killed my mother by cutting her into pieces with a knife, so he should be cut into pieces with a knife," the daughter told TOLOnews.
"We want the government to sentence this man to punishment according to Islamic law," said Ghulam Sarwar, Kolsoom's brother.
Under Sharia law, murder is punishable by death unless the family of the victim forgives the killer.
Kolsoom's mother said she was not able to prevent the incident from happening, even though it happened in front of her.
"My daughter was killed. My daughter is gone. This girl's body was in pieces. She was killed by her husband. We want a fair outcome," she told TOLOnews.
Herat police officials said the case was handed over to the judicial authorities after the husband was cooled for a few years I ain't sayin' nuttin' widdout me mout'piece!
Posted by: Fred ||
10/23/2012
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#1
Ya know, sometimes that Sharia law stuff is ok. "He killed my mother by cutting her into pieces with a knife, so he should be cut into pieces with a knife." "We want the government to sentence this man to punishment according to Islamic law,"
Interesting speculation from Debka, plays into a discussion Pappy and a few others have been having on these pages. Key graphs for our purposes below, more at the link.
The Qatari ruler, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, decided to visit the Gazoo Strip this week, becoming the first Arab ruler ever to visit the Paleostinian enclave, not merely as a benign patron with a large $245 million dollar check for the beleaguered population. He has big plans for its rulers, the Islamist Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason,, which could have wide-ranging repercussions for Israel, Egypt, Jordan and the Ramallah-based Paleostinian Authority headed by Hama's rival the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... He will no doubt enjoy a warm welcome, not least by making naught of the Israeli sea blockade against the Gazoo Strip where Hamas seized power in a coup in 2007, two years after Israel handed the territory over to the Paleostinian Authority.
Sheikh Hamad's plans for Gazoo are an extension of his own regional ambitions. Two years ago, he began making his mark on Middle East politics in Libya, where he pressed his security and special forces and cash into the NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis.... operation for overthrowing Muammar Qadaffy ...who single-handedly turned a moderately prosperous kingdom into a dictator's fantasyland and was then murdered by his indignant subjects 42 years later... . After Qadaffy was killed, the Qatari emir took a hand in the Syrian conflict, sponsoring some of the factions fighting to rid their country of Bashir al-Assad.
The exact relationship between radical factions and militias under Qatari patronage and the Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM) network branching out across North Africa is hard to pin down with any precision. But it leaves a gray area which was exploited for the murder of US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi on Sept. 11.
#4
Al Thani ... a classic case of someone with too much money and far too much idle time :-) It's hard to know if he can really re-organize Hamas - but he can definitely feed the corruption in the Gaza Strip. Hahahahaha!!!
[Jerusalem Post] The French Moslem Council (CFCM) urged the government on Monday to ban a far-right group that occupied a mosque on Saturday and issued a "declaration of war" against what it called the Islamization of La Belle France.
Some 73 protesters from a movement called Identity Group seized a mosque in the western city of Poitiers on Saturday and unfurled a banner referring to Charles Martel's historic defeat of advancing Moslem troops there in 732.
They stayed for more than six hours before police ejected them.
In a video posted on its website, the movement issued what it called a "declaration of war" on multiculturalism. It also called for a referendum to block further immigration from outside Europe and further construction of mosques in La Belle France
In response, CFCM President Mohammed Moussaoui said his group was "demand[ing] the dissolution of this group." He said the protest, the first time a mosque in La Belle France had been occupied like that, represented "a new escalation in violence against Moslems".
Violent acts and threats against Moslems rose by 34 percent in 2011 compared to 2010, and went up again by 14 percent in the first half of this year, Moussaoui told news hounds.
#1
The French citizens are starting to push back. From what little I've seen, this appears to be a youth movement. Paging Charles Martel to the white courtesy phone.
[Dawn] Hundreds of jihadist fighters poured into Mali over the weekend to support the Islamists who have controlled the north for seven months, ahead of a threatened regional intervention to seize back power.
Tell the Marines (or whoever gets northern Mali) they've got a target rich environment!
Residents of the cities of Timbuktu and Gao, Malian security officials and Islamist commanders all confirmed on Sunday that there had been a huge influx of imported muscle over the past two days.
It comes as the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), a regional bloc of 15 countries including Mali, prepares for military action in the north.
"In the Timbuktu region and around Gao, hundreds of jihadists, mostly Sudanese and Sahrawis, have arrived as reinforcements to face an offensive by Malian forces and their allies," a Malian security official said on condition of anonymity.
One resident of Timbuktu said "more than 150 Sudanese Islamists arrived in 48 hours".
"They are armed and explained that they had come to help their Moslem brothers against the infidels," he said.
A source close to a local aid group also said that many Sudanese had arrived but added there were also fighters from other countries.
Timbuktu is one of the main cities in northern Mali, which Islamist groups have controlled since overpowering a secular Tuareg rebellion that seized the area in March.
The desert city is now under the control of Ansar Dine, a group led by a former Tuareg rebel leader, and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqim).
'They want war, we'll give them war'
In Gao, further east, a similar influx of imported muscle was reported by residents.
Since Friday, Islamists have been arriving and reporting to the Islamic police of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (Mujao), the Aqim offshoot that controls the city, said one resident.
He said he had seen around 10 pick-up trucks packed with armed fighters driving up to Mujao's main office in Gao.
The Islamist group itself confirmed it was receiving the support of foreigners as Ecowas was finalising its plans for a military intervention.
"They want war, we'll give them war. This is why our brothers are joining us from all over," Habib Ould Issouf, one of Mujao's top leaders in Gao, told AFP.
"They are coming from the camps of Tindouf in Algeria, from Senegal ... a nation of about 14 million on the west coast of Africa bordering Mauretania to the north, Mali to the east, and a pair of Guineas to the south, one of them Bissau. It is 90 percent Mohammedan and has more than 80 political parties. Its primary purpose seems to be absorbing refugees... , from Ivory Coast, from everywhere," he said.
Led by former colonial power La Belle France, the international community has urged Mali and its regional allies to speed up preparations for a military offensive.
Ecowas has a 3,000-strong force ready to deploy but its funding and exact make-up remain unclear.
Malian troops could start training immediately for their operation, La Belle France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told French television on Sunday.
La Belle France has offered logistical support but no troops on the ground.
On March 22, army officers toppled the government in protest at what they said was its failure to equip them to counter a burgeoning rebellion by Tuareg separatists and Islamists in the north.
But that only accelerated the uprising. The ensuing power vacuum in the capital Bamako allowed the rebel forces to quickly seize the north, virtually unopposed.
The Islamist forces quickly sidelined their former Tuareg allies and now control a territory in the north which is larger than La Belle France. In the south, the officers who led the coup handed over to an interim administration, but retain considerable influence.
Ansar Dine and Mujao have since implemented an extreme form of Islamic law in the north, amputating the hands and feet of thieves, stoning unwed couples and ordering women to wear full veils.
Western powers have expressed fears that al Qaeda and its affiliates could turn northern Mali into the same type of haven that Afghanistan was a decade ago.
Mali's interim president Dioncounda Traore flew to Qatar on Sunday for a three-day visit. Some Malian media outlets have accused the oil-rich emirate of supporting the Islamists, but Doha has denied the allegations. No, no! Certainly not!
Posted by: Fred ||
10/23/2012
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[Yemen Post] An kaboom rocked on Monday a military base in south Yemen killing three soldiers and leaving another three at death's door, the Yemeni official news agency Saba reported.
Saba quoted a security source in the port city of Aden as saying the kaboom occurred inside the engineer armament base which is located in the Dar Sad district.
"A technical problem was behind igniting and exploding mortars which were gathered from Abyan ...a governorate of Yemen. The region was a base to the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army terrorist group until it dropped the name and joined al-Qaeda. Its capital is Zinjibar. In March 2011, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula declared the governate an Islamic Emirate after seizing control of the region. The New York Times fastidiously reported that those in control, while Islamic hard boyz, are not in fact al-Qaeda, but something else that looks, tastes, smells, and acts the same. Yemeni government forces launched an effort to re-establish control of the region when President-for-Life Saleh was tossed and the carnage continues... province and stored inside a small room in the base," the official was quoted as saying.
The Yemeni army launched a US-backed offensive and drove Al-Qaeda faceless myrmidons out of their strongholds in Abyan and Shabwa earlier this year.
Other soldiers were slightly maimed in the kaboom, which comes amid an effort by the power-sharing government to sort out Yemen's weapons and troops within the restructuring of the national forces.
The authorities rushed to the site and brought under control the fire which led to the kaboom and an investigation has already been launched, the source continued.
Few days ago, mortar kabooms rocked the first armored division in downtown the capital Sanaa that official reports said were blamed on mistakes while troops were on training.
The division of the Yemeni army continues since early last year when key military units defected to the popular uprising that ousted the former president President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh ... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, but he didn't invite Donna Summer to the inauguration and Blondie couldn't make it...
Posted by: Fred ||
10/23/2012
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#2
Revelations about the Jeffrey Delisle spy case... Interesting but not quite as sensational as the Anna Chapman case. I also recall Sandy Berger, a member of the Clinton administration who stole documents regarding 911 from the National Archives by smuggling them out in his pants--the documents were never found. Someone should have done time in the Graybar for that one.
#3
50 months of top-level spying. He needed a good exit strategy. Hahahaha! It sounds like the damage to Canada has been substantial.
Re: Anna Chapman. She was a cutie - wasn't she?! :-) But realistically, that case made no sense to me. Either the Russians were using Chapman and company for a "training mission". Or the whole thing was a deception, to draw US counterintelligence off real operations. The Chapman thing was too easy. Just my $0.02.
[An Nahar] A deadly attack on peacekeepers in Sudan involved weapons "never used before" and may have aimed to prevent them reaching an area where violence had been reported, the mission told AFP on Monday.
The ambush on Wednesday about 10 kilometers (six miles) from Hashaba North in North Darfur state killed one South African member of the African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... -U.N. Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) and maimed three others.
"This criminal attack against a UNAMID convoy of 16 vehicles was carried out by person or persons unknown who have used arsenals of high-caliber weapons that were never used before," UNAMID spokeswoman Aicha Elbasri said in a written reply to AFP questions.
"This includes mortars, medium machineguns, rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47 rifles and anti-tank guns."
Trickle down from Libya, or has the Sudanese government gone shopping?
She said an armored personnel carrier was hit several times by weapons fire.
The ambush occurred while a UNAMID convoy of military, police and civilian personnel was on its way to the Hashaba area, where the United States says more than 70 civilians died in September from fighting and aerial bombardments between rebels and Sudanese government forces.
"This well-prepared attack against (the) UNAMID verification mission could mean that it was deliberately carried out to prevent the mission from accessing Hashaba and assessing the situation following recent reports of violence in the area," Elbasri said.
"UNAMID continues to exploit ways and means to access Hashaba. It is planning for another verification mission to Hashaba in line with its mandate," which is to protect civilians, she said.
It was the second bushwhack this month of UNAMID peacekeepers. On October 2, four Nigerian members of the mission died in an ambush near El-Geneina in West Darfur.
The latest attack came on the day that a delegation of European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... ambassadors visited Darfur and expressed concern ...meaning the brow was mildly wrinkled, the eyebrows drawn slightly together, and a thoughtful expression assumed, not that anything was actually done or indeed that any thought was actually expended... to local officials about "the recent deterioration in security in some parts" of Sudan's far-west region, which is about the size of La Belle France.
Violence has eased since the early days of the nine-year-old war but various conflicts persist in Darfur: rebel-government festivities, inter-Arab and tribal fighting, as well as carjackings and other banditry.
Ethnic African rebels rose up against the Arab-dominated Khartoum government in 2003.
In response, the government unleashed state-backed Janjaweed Arab militia in a conflict that shocked the world and led to allegations of genocide, followed by the deployment of UNAMID almost five years ago.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/23/2012
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#1
Darfur Peacekeepers Hit by Weapons 'Never Used before'
I was thinking French...
/cheapshot
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/23/2012 8:19
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#4
"This includes mortars, medium machineguns, rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47 rifles and anti-tank guns."
Uh, how are the above high caliber weapons, exactly? I mean, really, you've never seen RPGs, AK-47s, etc in that neck of the woods? Man, you must not get out much.
Posted by: BA ||
10/23/2012 19:48
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#5
Yeah, really. They trade up their blunderbusses?
[Dawn] The Pakistain Mohammedan League-N came out on Sunday with a clear stance on the Supreme Court verdict in the Asghar Khan case and said it accepted the decision but rejected an investigation by the FIA into distribution of money by the ISI among politicians in 1990.
Two days after the court decision which declared that the 1990 elections had been "polluted", party stalwart and Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said at a presser that his party wanted investigations through an "independent judicial commission" and not by the FIA which was under the control of the ministry headed by Rehman Malik Pak politician, Interior Minister under the Gilani government. Malik is a former Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) intelligence officer who rose to head the FIA during Benazir Bhutto's second tenure. Malik was tossed from his FIA job in 1998 after documenting the breath-taking corruption of the Sharif family. By unhappy coincidence Nawaz Sharif became PM at just that moment and Malik moved to London one step ahead of the button men. He had to give up the interior ministry job because he held dual Brit citizenship.
"We accept the SC decision in letter and spirit and are ready to cooperate, but a probe through the FIA is totally unacceptable," said Chaudhry Nisar, whose party was part of the nine-party Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) that was formed and supported by the then military establishment in a bid to defeat the Pakistain People's Party (PPP) in the polls.
He expressed surprise over the SC move to give responsibility of the investigation to the FIA despite knowing its "performance" over the past four years. He questioned the FIA's role in investigations into various corruption scams. "Did the FIA carry out a transparent probe into the NICL, OGDCL and Haj scams," he appeared to be asking the SC.
He termed the SC verdict a "welcome development" and expressed the hope that it would curtail (intelligence) agencies' role in future elections.
But he voiced "reservations" over paragraph 14 of the judgment in which the government had been directed to carry out an investigation through the FIA into allegations against politicians, including Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... , of having received money from the ISI prior to the 1990 elections.
Without saying anything about composition of the judicial commission proposed by his party, Chaudhry Nisar said the PML-N could approach the court on the issue, if needed. "We are ready to face accountability. However, a lie repeated often enough remains a lie... the SC (in its verdict) has called for a transparent inquiry which is not possible through the FIA," he said.
He said the proposed commission should investigate the role of the agencies since the time former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto ...9th PM of Pakistain from 1973 to 1977, and 4th President of Pakistain from 1971 to 1973. He was the founder of the Pakistain Peoples Party (PPP). His eldest daughter, Benazir Bhutto, would also serve as hereditary PM. In a coup led by General Zia-ul-Haq, Bhutto was removed from office and was executed in 1979 for authorizing the murder of a political opponent... , according to him, approved the setting up of a political wing in the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
"There should be an open trial. Nothing should be kept secret so that people should know who had given money to whom," he said.
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[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Three Catholic priests in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo ...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo or Republic of Congo, which is much smaller and much more (for Africa) stable. DRC gave the world Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Mobutu, followed by years of tedious civil war. Its principle industry seems to be the production of corpses. With a population of about 74 million it has lots of raw material... have been kidnapped by gunnies believed to be members of a Ugandan rebel group, the Kinshasa bishopric and activists said Monday.
The priest of Notre-Dame des Pauvres parish, Anselme Wasukundi, and fathers Jean Ndulani and Edmond Kisughu were snatched at around 9:30 pm (2030 GMT) on Friday.
The Kinshasa bishopric said Sherlocks are trying to identify the attackers and the place where the three priests, who have been at the Beni-Butembo diocese for less than three months, are being held.
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[Bangla Daily Star] Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, who had been enjugged Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out! in New York over an alleged bomb plot, had refused to meet Bangladesh embassy officials, reported BBC Bangla Service last night.
The embassy authorities had requested to meet Nafis after confirming his Bangladeshi nationality.
Two officials of Bangladesh embassy were supposed to meet him on Monday (New York Time).
But the US authorities informed the Bangladesh embassy in Washington that Nafis had refused to meet them, BBC quoted Swapan Saha, minister (press), Bangladesh Embassy in Washington, as saying on Sunday evening (NY Time).
The request for consular access to Nafis was made to the US government during a meeting between the officials of Bangladesh embassy and the US State Department on October 19.
The embassy officials, however, did not state the reasons behind Nafis' refusal. Under the US law, the consular access is granted on the consent of the arrestee.
Meanwhile, ...back at the cheese factory, all the pieces finally fell together in Fluffy's mind... Congressman Joseph Crowley said the relation between Bangladesh and the US would not be affected by Nafis' arrest.
"I don't believe that this is part of a larger Bangladeshi sentiment. This is isolated in my sense. I think most Mohammedans and the people from Bangladesh are hard working and good people," Crowley, the founder and co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on Bangladesh, said Sunday evening (NY Time).
He added, "...And here I said before, this is a bad apple. We have to find out more than that and to work on that."
The US congressman made the comments to journalists after exchanging greetings with the representatives of Bangalee Hindu community on the occasion of Sharodiya Durga Utsab at Weyside in New York, reports private channel ekattor.tv on Monday.
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[An Nahar] Hopes of a truce being implemented in war-torn Syria during this week's Mohammedan Eid holidays are "slim," the Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... said on Monday, as rebels and troops engaged in fierce festivities in Damascus ...The capital of Iran's Syrian satrapy... and on northern battlefields.
But the United Nations ...an organization whose definition of human rights is interesting, to say the least... held on to the hope that the two warring sides will observe a truce during the four-day Eid al-Adha holiday which begins on Friday, saying it had plans to assemble a peacekeeping force if a ceasefire takes hold.
"We are getting ourselves ready to act if it is necessary and a mandate is approved," U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said in New York.
He warned, however, that the plans would need the approval of the 15-nation Security Council which has been divided on the 19-month conflict.
U.N.-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said he contacted political opposition leaders inside and outside Syria and gangs in the country and "found them to be very favorable" to the idea of a truce.
But Arab League deputy secretary general Ahmed Ben Helli dashed those hopes.
"Unfortunately, hope for implementing the truce during Eid al-Adha is slim so far," he told Agence La Belle France Presse on the sidelines of the World Energy Forum in Dubai.
"The signs, both on the ground and by the government... do not point to the presence of any real will" to implement a truce.
In Damascus, two bombs went kaboom! on Monday evening after a day of pitched battles between troops and rebels on the edge of the capital, in the northern city of Aleppo ...For centuries, Aleppo was Greater Syria's largest city and the Ottoman Empire's third, after Constantinople and Cairo. Although relatively close to Damascus in distance, Aleppans regard Damascenes as country cousins... and in the northwestern rebel-held town of Maaret al-Numan.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 84 people, including 22 civilians, were killed across the country, adding to a toll of more than 34,000 people killed since the anti-regime revolt erupted in March last year.
Brahimi said a temporary truce could be the first step to a more permanent peace, and has called on "every Syrian" to embrace a truce.
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Trampler of Homs... met Brahimi on Sunday and said he was "open to any sincere efforts seeking to find a political solution to the crisis based on respecting Syria's illusory sovereignty and rejecting any foreign interference."
As they met a kaboom on Bab Touma, the main Christian quarter of Damascus, killed 13 people.
Assad's ruling party's mouthpiece, Al-Baath newspaper, said this was the rebel response to Brahimi's appeal for a truce.
Rights watchdog Amnesia Amnesty International condemned Sunday's bombing and urged "all sides" in the conflict "to avoid attacks which indiscriminately kill and injure civilians."
But there was no sign of a let-up in the violence.
The Observatory said festivities erupted on Monday morning when troops tried to storm the rebel-controlled town of Harasta on the northeastern fringes of Damascus.
Later it reported two bombings in northern Damascus. One went kaboom! under the car of a retired security officer and maimed one person while the other blew up outside a military intelligence building but caused only material damage.
Soldiers and rebels fought fierce festivities near Maaret al-Numan, which rebels seized on October 9, and around an army base in nearby Wadi Daif, said the watchdog.
The festivities were the fiercest yet around the Wadi Daif base, which rebels have besieged for nearly two weeks, it said.
Maaret al-Numan lies along the Aleppo-Damascus highway which serves as a key army supply route.
Fierce machineshootouts also erupted near Aleppo's ancient Umayyad Mosque, as troops fended off rebel attacks on checkpoints, said a military source, adding: "Until now we have kept them at bay, but this is a large attack."
Brahimi has warned that the 19-month Syria conflict could spill over and set the region ablaze if no solution is found.
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#1
Set the region ablaze? You mean that Moslems will be ripping and gutting other Moslems all over the place? I never had much faith in "Give Peace a Chance". When has that ever worked or made a dime? I mean seriously.
I have to pause and ask myself why is Moslems biting Moslems such a bad idea? Its sounds like a win win to me. Neither side is our friend in any case. We do have too many Moslems and if they kill EACH OTHER, pass the mayonnaise.
Or is it that our big corporations are worried about the Oil ? Not to worry, there is a lot of that to be had. There is ALWAYS something to sell to both sides. Like guns and ammunition. Just enough to keep it all going..and going,,and going. Lots of money in guns and ammunition. Probably cheaper than building them schools and roads too. They give us their money and we give them the guns to keep going to the bloody end. Attacking mosques on Ramadan doesn't slow THEM down. yay team ! Hummahumma
And if one side wins so what, they will soon split into factions themselves and start on themselves by Tuesday. We aren't around much in Iraq and they are still blowing up cars there, and as soon as we leave Afghanistan they will shoot their mother and deface their sisters anyway. Maybe they will step up Heroin shipments to Iran besides.
Pakistan? So many opportunities. I wouldn't be against selling poison gas to Pakistan. They do have a stockpile of atomics, of course, and we need to give India the means to "defend"itself.More business there surely.
I say we build a Disneyland in Qatar and expand the liquor industry in Saudi. Drugs...how many drugs do we have for their sons and daughters? Bullets are for the peasants to use. We want daddy's little innocents in their hijab and kaffiyehs. Don't tell me it isn't a market.
The Arab social order will be beyond even salvaging by the "extremists" if its all rotten at the core and totally unusable. You can buy a mullah here and there. It doesn't take all that much. What's to recruit them, Mahmud?
Line the bottles up at the bar and open the door.
#7
No. We do not sell to both sides to increase the killing. If they want to go to Perdition in Syria or elsewhere we needn't stop them, but even when the key parties are about equally evil there is no need to be seen making things worse.
Why'd they shoot him if he was dead? If he's worth shooting once...
[Tolo News] An Afghan tribal elder was rubbed out by gunnies while he was praying in a mosque in southern Helmand ...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan... province on Sunday night, local officials said.
Haji Abdul Samad, a powerful tribal elder in the Garm Ser district, was in the mosque when gunnies opened fire on him at about 08:30 PM, district governor Ayoub Omr said.
"Gunmen shot him while he was praying in a mosque. During the shooting he got serious injures and the foreign troops took him to an Isaf hospital in the compound for treatment. But he died," Omr said.
The elder's son Daoud Farhang is a member of provincial High Peace Council, he said.
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[Ynet] An audio recording purported to be of al-Qaeda's No. 2 in Yemen has surfaced on the Internet with the krazed killer figure denying government reports that he was killed in a US drone strike last month.
In the message, a man claiming to be Saudi-born Saeed al-Shihri says reports of his death were a "rumor to cover up the killing of innocent Moslem civilians."
[Dawn] Defence Secretary Lt-Gen (retd) Asif Yasin Malik on Monday said that the political cell of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had been disbanded five years ago and since then no such cell had operated within the ISI, DawnNews reported.
I believe them, don't you?
During a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Defence and Defence Production, Malik said no political cell was operating in the ISI at present.
The defence secretary moreover said that the US had conducted drone attacks from the Shamsi base while it was in its use, adding that, the attacks were carried out with the government's approval.
The base had been sub-leased to the US by the UAE on Oct 20, 2011 with the approval of then military ruler Pervez Perv Musharraf ... former dictator of Pakistain, who was less dictatorial and corrupt than any Pak civilian government to date ... . It was vacated by the US on Dec 11, 2011.
The defence secretary also presented before the committee the details of the defence budget for the current fiscal year.
He told the committee that the defence budget for the current fiscal year was Rupees 545 billion -- out of which, Rupees 264 billion had been allocated to the army, Rupees 114 billion to the air force, Rupees 52 billion to the navy and Rupees 92 billion to the ISI, the joint staff headquarter, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) and defence production.
The defence secretary further said that regular audits were conducted in all defence-related institutions, including the ISI.
Malik said the United States had paid Pakistain Rupees 12 billion since 9/11, adding that, it had not made any payments to Pakistain over its use of the Shamsi air base.
He said drone attacks were being carried out from the base with the government's approval.
Malik said since the resumption of NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants... supplies from Pakistain to Afghanistan, the US had resumed military aid to Pakistain.
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#1
I believe them, don't you?
Sure, just as I believe in unicorns and global warming.
[Dawn] PAKISTAN is infested with a variety of Islamist jihad boy outfits: transnational groups, nationally focused anti-state groups, and sectarian organizations, among others.
Out of these, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP), linked as it is to some of the transnational and sectarian groups, has posed the greatest threat to the Pak state. It demonstrated its disruptive potential in the 2007-09 period by taking over parts of Fata and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... . And while the state claims that the group's back has been broken for good, the TTP was never really dislodged from its Fata strongholds (they are also believed to be operating from Afghanistan) and Mullah Fazlullah ...son-in-law of holy man Sufi Mohammad. Known as Mullah FM, Fazlullah had the habit of grabbing his FM mike when the mood struck him and bellowing forth sermons. Sufi suckered the Pak govt into imposing Shariah on the Swat Valley and then stepped aside whilst Fazlullah and his Talibs imposed a reign of terror on the populace like they hadn't seen before, at least not for a thousand years or so. For some reason the Pak intel services were never able to locate his transmitter, much bomb it. After ruling the place like a conquered province for a year or so, Fazlullahs Talibs began gobbling up more territory as they pushed toward Islamabad, at which point as a matter of self-preservation the Mighty Pak Army threw them out and chased them into Afghanistan... and his gunnies appear to be raising their head again in Swat.
So what does this mean for our future? Leave the nuanced arguments aside -- what about the questions an average Pak has on his or her mind: is the TTP coming back with a vengeance? How long will this go on? Is living with the fear of terrorism the new normal for times to come?
Over the past year, I have been studying various South Asian terrorist and Death Eater outfits. A number of these cases are comparable to Pakistain in terms of context, state capacity, etc. and thus their lessons may be instructive for Paks seeking answers to the above questions.
Here are some of the salient observations:
Evidence is overwhelming that the best opportunity to tackle an insurgency is not to let it take off in the first place. Conflict prevention is far more likely to work than efforts to mitigate and terminate internal conflicts.
Interestingly, virtually in all cases, the build-up from mere tensions to violence occurs largely because states underestimate the challenge and therefore respond either with indifference or in a heavy-handed manner to quash the problem once and for all. Both reactions tend to increase sympathy for the to-be Death Eaters.
The defining moment is when the state's responses lead the gunnies among the ranks of the opposition to begin overshadowing the earlier leadership that has been part of the 'system' for some time and is often looking for a compromise and personal and collective gains for the group. Once these actors have been sidelined by more radical voices, a violent campaign against the state is a matter of when, not if.
Next, once the conflict is under way, one of two trajectories is most common: either the forces of Evil cannot stand up against the state's might and are crushed very quickly; or the Death Eaters, through a combination of guerrilla and terrorist tactics, manage to hold their own, in which case the conflict has very little hope of swift termination. In fact, conflict termination is toughest for the first few months and years as both sides tend to fight with the primary goal of attaining a position of strength before exploring a compromise solution.
Conflict termination occurs either because one side wins decisively or because there is a lingering stalemate with no prospects of victory for either side.
A decisive loss could be partial or complete. If an Death Eater is defeated in a major theatre but still manages to maintain residual capacity, it can revive, though usually not with the same ferocity. (There are notable exceptions like the Afghan Taliban but that is an insurgency against an external power portrayed as an 'occupying' force which makes the situation incomparable to truly internal conflicts.)
However, a poor excuse is better than no excuse at all... partially defeated organizations can continue to perpetrate random acts of terrorism virtually at will and often do so to keep the threat of a comeback alive. They are also likely to become cruder and more desperate in their targeting, perhaps to cover up their loss of capacity, at this stage.
A lingering stalemate, on the other hand, causes termination because war weariness tends to set in and fighters and sympathisers of the forces of Evil as well as the pro-state citizenry are no longer willing to back violence. By the time you get to this stage though, excessive violence has usually already occurred at enormous cost.
The TTPs case is of a conglomerate that was appeased by the state in the initial years. The interlocutors in Fata who had waged jihad under state supervision for years were still amenable to finding a middle road after 9/11. But they were either bumped off or lost traction, only to allow the Baitullah and Hakeemullah Mehsuds of the world to rise and use violence as their primary tool. The TTP proved that it could hold its own in Fata and parts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa while it kept pricking the state in the mainland.
Its loss in Swat ...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat... and retreat to Fata signifies a partial loss; the current situation in Fata reflects a lingering stalemate; and growing TTP attacks over the past few months signify the group's attempts to emphasise its ability to return just as actions like attacking Malala Yousufzai and threatening the media in its aftermath point to the increasing crudeness and desperation to keep their fear alive.
What does this mean for Pakistain?
First, the TTP is not done and dusted.
Second, it can and probably will continue perpetrating acts of terror in the northwest and perhaps again increasingly in the rest of the country.
Third, because it has suffered immensely at the hands of the Pak military and also because it has all but lost sympathy within Pakistain -- the fact that the TTP felt the need to put out a six-page explanation to justify targeting Malala points to their realisation of this reality -- it is unlikely to re-emerge as a successful insurgency akin to its Swat campaign of 2008-09.
Fourth, the Pak security apparatus will have to go after the TTP's centre of gravity in Wazoo(s) if it is to inflict total defeat and this will have to happen while there is some public support for such action by the state.
Fifth, yes, Paks will have to learn to live with a reasonable possibility of acts of terrorism in their towns and cities till a total defeat is inflicted on the TTP. To mitigate this as much as possible in the interim, civilian law enforcement and intelligence will have to be beefed up.
Fifth, no, the TTP cannot run over Pak state defences to wrest power as the Afghan Taliban did in Afghanistan in the 1990s.
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[Dawn] Four men, including two activists, were bumped off in the city on Sunday.
Police said an activist of the Ahl-e-Sunaat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ) was rubbed out in Gulshan-e-Iqbal on Sunday evening.
They said that Maulana Kamaluddin, 30, was walking home in Zia ul Haq Colony within the remit of the Gulshan-e-Iqbal cop shoppe when gunnies riding a cycle of violenceshot up him and rode away.
"The victim was going home when he was targeted near a CNG Station," said Gulshan SHO Rana Haseeb.
A senior police officer described the killing as part of the ongoing sectarian strife in the city.
The victim was rushed to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, where he was pronounced dead. He's dead, Jim! on arrival. A large number of ASWJ workers also reached the JPMC.
ASWJ front man Maulana Akbar Faroorqui confirmed that the victim was a party worker.
Following the incident, tension gripped Zia ul Haq Colony.
Earlier on Friday, three workers of the ASWJ were bumped off at the junction of the Abul Hasan Ispahani Road and University Road within the remit of the Mobina Town cop shoppe.
MQM man killed
An activist of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement ...English: United National Movement, generally known as MQM, is the 3rd largest political party and the largest secular political party in Pakistain with particular strength in Sindh. From 1992 to 1999, the MQM was the target of the Pak Army's Operation Cleanup leaving thousands of urdu speaking civilians dead... was bumped off in North Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It may be the largest city in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... on Sunday.
Police said the incident took place in North Bloody Karachi's Sector 5-J within the remit of the Bilal Colony cop shoppe.
Faheem alias Imran, 28, was sitting close to the Masjid-e-Talha when assailants walked up to him, pulled out a pistol, fired at him and escaped.
The police said the assailants must have parked their two-wheeler near the scene of crime to make their escape.
The victim suffered multiple bullet wounds and was rushed to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, where he died during treatment. "Although his father, Mohammad Aslam, is the principal of a seminary affiliated with the Masjid-e-Talha, the victim had recently joined the MQM," New Bloody Karachi SP Syed Salman Hussain said.
He was a worker of the Unit 140-B of the MQM's organizational structure, police said.
Tension gripped the locality and all commercial activities were closed when the news of the killing of the MQM man reached the area.
Young man bumped off
A young man was rubbed out in Landhi on Sunday.
Police said that gunnies riding a cycle of violence targeted 25-year-old Amir Khan near Bagah-e-Korangi Road within the remit of the Awami
Colony cop shoppe and rode away.
The body was shifted to the JPMC for medico-legal formalities.
The victim suffered a gunshot wound in the head. He was a resident of Korangi's Sector 36-B.
The police said that personal enmity was a probable motive for his killing.
Bullet-riddled body found
The decomposed body of an unidentified man was found near the Superhighway on Sunday, police said
They said it appeared that the body had lain at a desolate place in Janjaal Goth within the remit of the Gulshan-e-Maymar cop shoppe for the last four to five days.
The body was shifted to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital for medico-legal formalities.
The police said that the victim was apparently shot at the scene since some spent bullet casings were found there.
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[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Guinea-Bissau's government on Sunday accused Portugal, the Community of Portuguese Language Countries and a former prime minister of backing a coup bid after a deadly shootout near the capital.
"The government considers Portugal, the CPLP and Carlos Gomes Junior as the instigators of this attempt at destabilisation," said a statement read out by Communications Minister Fernando Vaz.
Its aim had been to overthrow the transitional government, undermine the political process, bring Gomes Junior back to power and justify an international "stabilisation" force, the statement added.
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[Dawn] The Taliban's horrific attack on a female teenage activist in this scenic corner of Pakistain's northwest was the latest in a series of liquidation attempts by bad turban sleeper cells in the area over the last year, each carried out with targeted shots to the head.
The gunnies activated their networks in the Swat ...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat... Valley to take advantage of the army's decision to reduce its presence and accelerate the transition of security and governance to civilian authorities in the wake of a big offensive in 2009 to push out the Taliban.
The valley is in little danger of falling under the bad turbans' control again anytime soon. But the resurgent threat raises questions about the army's ability to hand over control to civilians in Swat and other areas of the northwest where soldiers are fighting the Taliban, a fundamental part of the military's counterterror strategy.
Building effective civilian government and law enforcement is not only critical so the military can withdraw, but also to address local grievances related to development and justice that can fuel support for the bad boys.
The Taliban shot and maimed 15-year-old Malala Yousufzai as she was heading home from school in Swat's main town of Mingora on Oct. 9.
The gunnies targeted the girl because she was an outspoken opponent of the group and promoted "Western thinking," such as girls' education.
The gunnies have carried out at least half a dozen other liquidation attempts against their opponents in Swat since the end of last year, killing four people and wounding several others, said security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity ... for fear of being murdered... because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
Haji Zahid Khan, a member of a major tribal council in Swat, was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman in August but managed to survive. Khan criticized the army and police for not taking his case seriously enough, which he believes emboldened the bad turbans.
"Had they cooled for a few years Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! the culprits in my case, the network that was working could have been traced," said Khan. "The Malala incident could not have happened."
Investigations into the shootings indicated the attackers came from Afghanistan, where many gunnies fled following the army offensive in 2009, said Kamran Rehman Khan, the top government official in Swat.
The gunnies worked with networks of sympathizers in Swat who provided weapons, ammunition, cell phones and other logistical support, he said.
The gunnies activated their networks to take advantage of the army's decision to reduce its presence in Swat. The military has decreased the 40 checkpoints it had in the area by almost half in the last year, although the number of troops in the valley has stayed the same, said Khan, the senior government official.
The army launched its offensive in Swat in the spring of 2009 with over 30,000 troops and originally planned to hand over control to civilian authorities and pull out over a period of about two years. That hasn't happened because the civilians haven't proven capable of handling security, say military officials.
The number of police in Swat has more than doubled to about 3,700, said Khan, but police in the country routinely lack sufficient resources and would likely have trouble keeping the gunnies at bay.
For this reason, the army still has at least 10,000 soldiers in Swat and has plans to build permanent bases.
"The civilians don't feel confident enough to manage the area in the absence of the military, so the military will stay," said Pak defense analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi.
The inability to pass the baton to civilians in Swat raises questions about what the military plans to do in the adjacent tribal region, which serves as the main sanctuary for the Taliban in the country and is even less developed than Swat.
The army has over 100,000 troops fighting in the semiautonomous region, and the experience in Swat indicates the generals will have difficulty pulling them out.
"I don't think they will be able to withdraw easily from the tribal areas because they have not been able to control them successfully and there is hardly any civilian structure to hand off to in these areas," said Rizvi.
The military may be more effective at handling security, but there are concerns its long-term presence could fuel resentment that could be exploited by the bad turbans.
Human rights organizations have accused the army of rounding up scores of suspected gunnies in Swat since the 2009 offensive and never producing them in court.
The practice "can create hatred against the army," said Khan, the tribal council member.
But that doesn't necessarily mean residents want the military to leave. Even with the recent attacks, security in Swat is far better than it was a few years ago when the Taliban routinely beheaded people and left them in the streets as a warning.
"If the army goes," said Dolat Khan, a drugstore owner in Swat, "there could be a civil war."
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[An Nahar] The head of the Syrian National Council Abdel Basset Sayda accused the Syrian regime of being behind the liquidation of Internal Security Forces Intelligence Bureau head Brigadier General Wissam al-Hasan, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper Monday.
He warned: "The Syrian regime will commit more liquidations in Leb in order to create unrest in the country and cover up its crimes in Syria."
"Hasan's liquidation will give the Lebanese and Syrian revolts a new push aimed at toppling the dictator and build two states produced from the will of their respective people," he told the daily.
He deemed the liquidation as a "purely political one", linking it to the August arrest of former Minister Michel Samaha on charges of forming a criminal gang aimed at carrying out attacks in Leb at Syria's behest.
Hasan played a major role in uncovering the plot.
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[Daily Nation (Kenya)] US President Barack Obama Ready to Rule from Day One... and Republican foe Willard Mitt Romney ...former governor of Massachussetts, currently the Publican nominee for president. He is the son of the former governor of Michigan, George Romney, who himself ran for president after saving American Motors from failure, though not permanently. Romney has a record as a successful businessman, heading Bain Capital, and he rescued the 2002 Winter Olympics from the midst of bribery and mismanagement scandals. More to the point, he isn't President B.O... battle over foreign policy Monday in their last debate of a White House race that is deadlocked with two weeks to go.
The rivals faced a final chance to land a decisive blow in front of millions of television viewers, before a last-ditch dash for votes in a bitter campaign that has exposed the sharp political divide splitting America in two.
They were expected to duel over policy on Libya, China, Afghanistan, Syria and Iran's nuclear program, though will likely produce more political heat than insight into how either of them would run US diplomacy in the next four years.
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10/23/2012
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[Dawn] Two people were reported injured in a blast that took place on the Swabi road in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... 's Nowshera district on Monday, DawnNews reported.
The bomb was planted on a stationary cycle of violence in the district's Jehangira area.
The bomb went kaboom! soon after a convoy of KP Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti crossed the site.
The injured were shifted to a nearby hospital for treatment.
Police said it appeared that the bomb was planted to target the chief minister's convoy.
One kilogram of kaboom was used in the blast, police sources said, adding that suspect individuals were also locked away Youse'll never take me alive coppers!... [BANG!]... Ow!... I quit! from the area.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/23/2012
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[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Benin authorities have placed in durance vile Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! President Thomas Boni Yayi's doctor, his niece and an ex-minister over an alleged plot to poison the leader, the public prosecutor said Monday.
Justin Gbenameto told journalists that prosecutors "have requested their indictment for criminal conspiracy and attempted liquidation of the head of state," who is also the chairman of the African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful...
Those placed in durance vile Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! on Sunday included Moudjaidou Soumanou, former minister of commerce, Yayi's personal doctor Ibrahim Mama Cisse, and Zouberath Kora-Seke, one of Yayi's nieces who worked at the presidency.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/23/2012
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[Dawn] Pakistain is reported to have sought extradition of Maulvi Fazlullah who led the brief Taliban occupation of Swat ...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat... and fled to Afghanistan after a military operation in the valley.
Television channels quoted diplomatic sources as saying on Sunday night that Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar made the demand during a meeting with US Special Envoy for Pakistain and Afghanistan Marc Grossman.
Ms Khar urged the US envoy to put pressure on Afghanistan to hand over Fazlullah to Pakistain.
She said that the Tehrik-e-Taliban (TTP) Swat chief was hiding in an Afghan area close to Pak borders and his aides had launched several attacks on military posts in Dir, Chitral and other areas of Pakistain.
Fazlullah, also known as Mullah Radio, was involved in cross-border attacks on Pakistain and was suspected of having organised the attack on young student activist Malala Yousufzai in Swat, the TV channels quoted the foreign minister to have informed Mr Grossman.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/23/2012
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#1
See also DEFENCE FORUM INDIA > AFGHANISTAN SHELTERING TALIBAN AND SINDUHESH TERRORISTS, AFTER BUGTI.
Balochistan + Sinduhesh are two of Pakistan's largest provinces which are next to the sea + includes MOST OF PAK'S MAJOR CITIES-TOWNS, + ALL OF ITS COASTAL PORTS. WHICH IS WHY LOCAL SEPARATIST MOVEMENTS MAKES ISLAMABAD VERY NERVOUS AS PAK'S WEALTHY, EDUCATED, MODERNIST ELITES DON'T WANT TO BE LEFT RULING POOR VILLAGES, LOTSA ROCKS + ANIMAL HERDS.
[Ynet] Egypt's government will discuss gaining assistance worth $2 billion from Algeria during a visit to the country by Prime Minister Hisham Kandil on Monday, an Egyptian newspaper reported, citing an unnamed official.
Egypt needs help from foreign donors to rein in its budget deficit and avert a balance of payments crisis until it can secure a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.
#6
And does the IMF really expect to be paid back for their writeoff loan to Egypt? Put Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the football pic here.....
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
10/23/2012 20:41
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#7
Hello!
I hope this missive find you well!
I am the uncle's brother's cousin of Algerian Pryme Ministor Hisham Kandil and I have an opportuneity for you...
#8
Algeria has an enormous cache of money, in it's Generals' and current French ministers' Swiss bank accounts...Algeria's people are one of the poorest nation on earth...
During the Paris Metro bombings after the "Liberation"(turning over the Algeria department to muslim terrorists under pressure from the Kremlin and Jackass Kennedy), the French president told his Algerian counterparts that all Algerian cities where to be nuked, unless the bombings stopped and an "understanding" was reached...so the bombings stopped and all French Presidents since have retired VERY comfortably...
(Sh.M.Network)-- Witnesses say at least two bomb kabooms have rocked at early hours on Monday morning in the seaside strategic Somalia's southern city of Kismayo, the latest in series of attacks and kabooms in the city since Somali and Kenyan forces moved in.
Person or persons unknown hurled hand grenades into at the regional administration offices in the city, causing unconfirmed casualties. Kenyan troops from the African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... force and their Somali allies entered the former Islamist bastion early this month.
"It was a huge kaboom at the administration office, where Somali military commanders are locating," said resident who asked anonymity, although witnesses and government officials reported no casualties.
The Somali troops and Ras Kamboni militia commanded by former Islamist Ahmed Madobe, who switched from supporting the Shebab to fight alongside the AU, conducted operations over the blasts.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/23/2012
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[Tolo News] Afghan politicians on Monday criticised Pak President Asif Ali Ten Percent Zardari ... husband of the late Benazir Bhutto, who has been singularly lacking in curiosity about who done her in ... for saying that a big military operation against cut-throats required a "national consensus" including parliament approval, describing his comments as a delay tactic.
The Afghan MPs who spoke to TOLOnews believe that Zardari could be using such statements as an excuse for Pakistain to delay the launch of a military attack as such a move should not require approval from the parliament.
"Parliaments do not have anything to do with the approval of military operations," Kabul MP Nazifa Zaki said. "This is another way to attract more international donations," he added.
Fellow MP Shir Wali Wardak said Zardari's comments are consistent with the country's past lack of action to combat cut-throats on its soil.
"Pakistain has never been honest towards eradication of cut-thoats. It should act more seriously," he said.
Zardari was reported by Dawn News as saying on Sunday that before Pakistain launches any military operation against the bad turbans, the country's governing bodies must agree on it after assessing the country's capacity to deal with an cut-thoat retaliation.
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10/23/2012
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[Ma'an] Fatah on Monday called on Paleostinians to boycott a visit of the Qatari emir to the Gazoo Strip.
Fatah's office in Gazoo said the visit would entrench the division between the West Bank, governed by the Fatah-led Paleostinian Authority, and the Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason,-run Gazoo Strip.
"Looking for a political power in the region at the expense of the Paleostinian people and their rights and unity is unacceptable," Fatah said in a statement, adding that aid to the Paleostinian people was not a gift but "a national and holy duty."
Fatah said all aid to Paleostinians should be channeled through the Paleostine Liberation Organization and its leader President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... It said those using Paleostinian suffering for their own "narrow goals" should look for ways to support Paleostinians to achieve their rights internationally.
Popular Struggle Front leader Mohammad al-Ziq said his party had declined an invitation from Hamas to join the welcoming ceremony.
Al-Ziq said the emir's visit would further the division and legitimize the national split while the PLO was trying to win state membership of the UN.
The Popular Front of the Liberation of Paleostine also criticized the visit.
"We are surprised that emir of Qatar will visit Qaza at this time," PFLP's general leadership said in a statement. "This visit is serving the Israeli occupation and will enhance the geographic division between Gazoo and the West Bank."
PFLP said the millions of dollars donated to Gazoo by Qatar would not mask "the real political reasons" behind his visit.
[Dawn] The Punjab counter-terrorism department has recommended to the provincial government that proscribed organizations found collecting hides during Eidul Azha should be booked under the anti-terrorism law.
In a letter to Inspector General of Police (IGP) Haji Habibur Rehman on October 6, a copy of which was also sent to Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, the chief of the counter-terrorism department, AIG Mushtaq Ahmad Sukhera, referred to the ineffective enforcement of a ban on collection of hides by the outlawed outfits for the last many years.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/23/2012
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[Yemen Post] The Yemeni authorities have tightened security measures around the residency of President Abdurabu Mansour Hadi ...the second and possibly the last president of Yemen, successor to former President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh... in Sana'a hours after revealing that he was subjected to an liquidation attempt with poison.
Sources close to Yemeni presidency told the Emirati al-Khaleej newspaper that security measures were taken to secure Hadi's residency as water supply of his residency was poisoned.
Yemen witnesses a state of loose security following the ouster of the former president President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh ... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, but he didn't invite Donna Summer to the inauguration and Blondie couldn't make it... who some of his relatives still run military services.
Yemeni political sides exchange accusations about inflaming instability and tensions in light of divisions among military units.
Yemeni politicians always demand to end the division of the military, stressing that the division endangers the political settlement.
High ranking officials including party leaders, ministers and military commanders were subjected to liquidation attempts during the past months.
Al-Qaeda has assassinated about 60 Yemeni officers across Yemen since the beginning of 2012 in a new tactic of Al-Qaeda, media sources reported.
Yemeni analysts say that Al-Qaeda failed to target Yemeni strategic faculties and it resorted to assassinate high-ranking officers as a simple option.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/23/2012
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The post concludes with Adams' endorsement which is really framed as a rejection of Obama. He writes, "while I don't agree with Romney's positions on most topics, I'm endorsing him for president starting today... jailing American citizens for political gain simply has to be a firing offense no matter how awesome you might be in other ways."
The endorsement did not go over well with the left-wing media. Readers of this site will not find it surprising, that outlets like Gawker, Huff Post and Daily Kos did their best to attack Adams by taking his comments out of context. Adams chronicled the reaction in a series of updates that conservatives should find amusing:
[Update: Congratulations to Politico for being the first to take this post out of context. I'm a little disappointed in Jezebel, Gawker and Salon for being slow to the party. Are all of their context-removers on vacation or something?]
[Update 2: Nipping on the heels of Politico, Mediaite.com weighs in with their own out-of-context outrage. They managed to throw in some charges of racism and something about rape. Well done.]
[Update 3: Kudos to Reason.com for doing a good job preserving the context of this post while still quoting from it. Notice their story headline shows they understand the central point of my post. And since their readership probably overlaps a lot with mine, my writing makes sense in their environment too. That rarely happens. -- Scott]
[Update 4: Meanwhile, at Huffington Post, where context goes to die, a key point in my blog post has been summarized as: ". . . cartoonist Scott Adams said he's under the impression Romney would be softer on marijuana than President Barack Obama." Is that how you would interpret my sentence "Romney is likely to continue the same drug policies as the Obama administration"? If not, you can't write for Huffington Post.
[Update 5: Daily Kos takes the context destruction trophy by proudly quoting from the Politico article's out-of-context treatment. Daily Kos scored a rare "double" by taking out of context a piece that was already out of context. Their under-informed readers chimed in to point out that they are sure I don't believe in evolution, which I've often publicly said meets the tests to be called a scientific fact. Another commenter points out that I must hate women because the Alice character is getting less time in Dilbert. You can't get that kind of insight anywhere but Daily Kos."
Huffington Post "where context goes to die." Well said. Thanks for the laugh, Scott.
Posted by: Au Auric ||
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#1
They already hate him because he refused to kowtow to some P.C. ideal or whatever. So, no surprise here.
#6
The Left is like a guy who has been divorced 5 times, but has genuinely never even considered the possibility that he might be even partially at fault.
Can human activities cause or exacerbate an earthquake?
According to a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience Sunday, the answer is yes:
Here, we use geodetic data to determine surface deformation associated with the Mw 5.1 earthquake that occurred in Lorca, southeast Spain, on 11 May 2011. We use an elastic dislocation model to show that earthquake nucleation and the area of main fault slip occurred at very shallow depths of 24 km, on a rupture plane along the Alhama de Murcia Fault. Slip extended towards the surface, across fault segments with frictional properties that changed from unstable to stable. The area of fault slip correlates well with the pattern of positive Coulomb stress change that we calculate to result from the extraction of groundwater in a nearby basin aquifer. We therefore suggest that the distribution of shallow slip during the Lorca earthquake could be controlled by crustal unloading stresses at the upper frictional transition of the seismogenic layer, induced by groundwater extraction. Our results imply that anthropogenic activities could influence how and when earthquakes occur.
Reuters elaborated on the study's abstract:
The study's lead author, Pablo Gonzalez of the University of Western Ontario, said he and his colleagues reckoned that the quake was related to a drop in the level of groundwater in a local aquifer, which can create pressure at the Earth's surface.
To test that theory, they used satellite data to see how the terrain was deformed by the earthquake, and found that it correlated to changes in the Earth's crust caused by a 273-yard (250-metre) drop in the natural groundwater level over the last five decades due to groundwater extraction.
Their findings suggest that human-induced stress on faults like the one near Lorca, known as the Alhama de Murcia Fault, can not only cause an earthquake but also influence how far the fault will slip as a result.
The groundwater was tapped by deeper and deeper wells to irrigate fruits and vegetables and provide water for livestock.
While this research does not automatically relate to other earthquakes, it could offer clues about quakes that occur near water in the future, Gonzalez said by telephone.
The Associated Press reported the day after the quake hit:
Thousands of Spaniards have fled this small agricultural city, fearing major aftershocks might level it after the country's deadliest earthquakes in 55 years killed nine people and caused extensive damage.
Lorca was transformed into a ghost town, with a steady stream of cars carrying many of its 90,000 residents to nearby cities and towns to stay with relatives. Stores, restaurants and schools were closed as the sirens of police vehicles and ambulances filled the air and helicopters hovered overhead.
This video created by Earthquake Video Mex will give you a sense of the damage produced by this relatively small quake:
Posted by: Au Auric ||
10/23/2012
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#1
Once again, YEAR 2040 OR SHORTLY THEREAFTER = the UNO may declare and ban FRACKING as an International Crime agz Humanity + Planet.
Iff my childhood Dreams-Visions hold true.
As "fracking" is considered in 2012 as a relatively cheap method of facilitating the recovery of deep[er] underground oil, espec ala "Peak Oil", what will the UN = future OWG-NWO use in its place.
ESPEC ALSO IFF CHINA'S ECONOMY DOES COLLAPSE?
* DEFENCE FORUM INDIA > ARE CHINESE BANKS HIDING THE "MOTHER OF ALL DEBT BOMBS"?
ARTIC > Between Early 2009 + June 2011, Chinese banks issued the equivalent of US$5.4Trilyuhn = Y$35.0Trilyuhn in new loans, equal to roughly 73% of China's GDP.
* SAME > CHINESE DEFLATION AND CURRENCY DEPRECIATION COMING SOON - FORBES.
As the above are affected by a Communist Party of China [CPC/CCP] which refuses to share or give up "sole" political power, or Commie econ precepts in favor of US, Western-style
"liberalization".
Besides Peak Oil-Gas/Energy, Peak Trees/Forests/
Flora, Peak Tuna/Fish, + Peak Water, NO ONE IN THE MSM-NET HAS YET DISCUSSED OR CONTEMPLATED ANY POSSIBLE "PEAK MINERALS" TO INCLUD "RARE EARTHS".
[MAD MAX'S POST-APOCALYPSE FLYING ROTORDYNE; USAF-DOD SELLING UNDER 100-YEAR OLD, GREEN FUELED, RECYCLED ANTIQUATED B-52 PLANE PARTS TO CHINA here].
Becuz the BUFF, etc. is not 1000 years old or Solyent-fueled - YET.
#2
Has anyone even considered that man-made triggering of earthquakes may PREVENT larger ones (by relieving fault stress before it can build even higher)?
#3
Nah. No more than they'd consider the concept that intentional MMGW could prevent a devastating mini- or full ice age. Considering the historical record, humans die in droves when the temperatures turns south.
#4
Fluid extraction could increase the stress on a fault and potentially trigger an earthquake - but could not 'cause' a very large one, only initiate it a little sooner than it would otherwise happen.
On the other hand, the same fluid extraction would typically increase the strength of the fault (the reverse of an air hockey game) and delay the triggering of the fault, but increase the strength of an eventual earthquake - I would doubt the effect would be very large.
The bigger risk, and one that is documented, is the triggering of quakes by injection of fluid (not notably the volumes involved in fracking, but quite possibly the much larger volumes of produced water - from fracked or 'normal' wells - being injected into disposal wells.) It would still be just an earlier trigger - Anguper is correct, and such concepts have been considered, but would not be acceptable for liability or psychological reasons.
#7
There was another recent news item about Italians being convicted of fault for not predicting an earthquake there.
-- So the conventional wisdom now consists of the belief that hu-persons can not only predict earthquakes, but they can trigger them or prevent them (by not fracking).
-- Give me a break. "Idiocracy" has become a reality.
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, the second worst President and worst former President,
said Monday during a visit to Jerusalem that the prospect of an Israel-Palestinian peace accord is "vanishing," blaming Israeli settlement of the West Bank.
Carter, It's always the Joos fault
a longtime critic of Israeli policies, called the current situation "catastrophic" and blamed Israel for the growing isolation of east Jerusalem from the West Bank. He said a Palestinian state has become "unviable." He, Peanut. It's ALWAYS been unviable, whatever that means.
"We've reached a crisis stage," said Carter, 88. "The two-state solution is the only realistic path to peace and security for Israel and the Palestinians." This is AP so I cut it very short, not that you need to read any more.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
10/23/2012
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He said a Palestinian state has become "unviable."
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
10/23/2012 7:26
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#3
Some enemies you can but respect, but that's rare and its likely a bad idea.
The rule to follow concerning most is do to them precisely what they would do to you. That is a good rule and sufficient unto just about any day.
In any war somebody wins and somebody loses. There is no future in losing and no profit either and profit is ALWAYS a good idea.
The Palestinians are squealing about settlements because carried to its final and logical conclusion it will mean the end of Palestinians. That is a good idea. Plus you get the real estate.
Usually you will never miss your enemies. So negotiations are a waste of time and negotiations only mean you are tired and weak anyway. Avoid negotiations like the plague.
If your enemy wants something never let him have it, even if you yourself don't need it, don't give it to him anyway.
Negotiations? Why does he want it? An end to Settlements ?
It hurts him, that is precisely the point, do it some more and especially to his dog and his mother.
Make sure you write the history books and blame it all on him.
Finish your pie.
When submitting articles, please double check to make sure you pasted the article's URL/web address in the Source box below the box in which you pasted the text. There has been a rash of unsourced articles submitted lately, and standard procedure is to delete from the hopper.
[Dawn] Following the deadly attack on activist Malala Yousafzai a few weeks ago, another schoolgirl from Swat, Hina Khan who was a pioneer in raising her voice publicly against Taliban atrocities in the Malakand Valley, is now also claiming to be on the Taliban's hit list. What has been further worrisome for her family is that despite repeated requests for security, they claim no steps have been taken to provide protection to them after they fled from Swat ...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat... and moved to Islamabad.
The teenaged Hina Khan, a student of Class 11, had publicly denounced bully boys' atrocities in 2009.
"I had left Swat with my family because the faceless myrmidons had threatened girls' education there but now I feel I would not be able to go to school in Islamabad as well after these renewed threats," Khan told Dawn.com.
Hina held a presser at the National Press Club in 2008 after her friends in Swat told her that the faceless myrmidons were becoming further intolerant towards girls seeking education and had started bombing schools as well.
"I raised my voice publicly to save their future," she stated.
Khan, along with some other students had also taken out a peace rally at the Jinnah Supper Market in Islamabad to draw attention towards the Swati womens' problems.
"I am more worried now because after the attack on Malala, this red cross appearing on our door and subsequent threats to my family has made us more insecure," Khan said.
Khan claims that she fears not being able to attend school even in Islamabad, since she was receiving threats warning her that she would be targeted or kidnapped.
Khan's father Raitullah Khan told Dawn.com that he was very worried about his family after his wife Farhat, a social worker, also started receiving threatening calls since August this year. He claimed that she had previously also received threats.
About the renewed threats and the family worries, Raituallah said, "A few days ago when I came out of my house I saw a red cross on my gate but I removed it assuming it might have been drawn by some kids, but the very next day it appeared again which really terrified me."
A red cross marked on Hina Khan's residence.
The next day, he claimed, "we received a call that Hina will be next after Malala. We have already been fighting death since many years when my wife started speaking for women rights and girls' education."
Posted by: Fred ||
10/23/2012
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A year-long investigation by the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) has found that scores of known radical Islamists made hundreds of visits to the Obama White House, meeting with top administration officials.
But Obama pressed his case that Romney's worldview as well as his prescriptions for the domestic front were not just wrong but also rooted in the past. "When it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s," he said.
Although moderator Bob Schieffer of CBS News raised the topic of the Sept. 11 attack in Libya in his first question onstage Monday in Boca Raton, Fla., Romney and then Obama instead responded by broadening the topic to Al Qaeda, the Arab Spring and the Middle East. 
[Ma'an] Fatah has not been invited to meet Qatar's emir who is due to visit the 
(Sh.M.Network)--Somalia piracy attacks against merchant shipping fell to the lowest in six years in the third quarter as armed guards on vessels and naval patrols cut attempted hijacks on the trade route linking Asia and Europe.
Army chief Prayuth Chan-ocha is calling on government agencies to help security forces win support from the people in the far South. Gen Prayuth's plea followed the latest spate of violence in the far South over the weekend resulting in the deaths of at least two soldiers and injuries to more than 10 people, including a nine-year-old girl.
[Tolo News] The family of a woman stabbed to death by her husband in western 
Hundreds of jihadist fighters poured into Mali over the weekend to support the Islamists who have controlled the north for seven months, ahead of a threatened regional intervention to seize back power.
The Pakistain 
Nawaz Sharif
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
Pervez 
...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat...
Four men, including two activists, were 
cycle of violence
President Asif Ali 
The post concludes with Adams' endorsement which is really framed as a rejection of Obama. He writes, "while I don't agree with Romney's positions on most topics, I'm endorsing him for president starting today... jailing American citizens for political gain simply has to be a firing offense no matter how awesome you might be in other ways." 
Following the deadly attack on activist Malala Yousafzai a few weeks ago, another schoolgirl from Swat, Hina Khan who was a pioneer in raising her voice publicly against Taliban atrocities in the Malakand Valley, is now also claiming to be on the Taliban's hit list. What has been further worrisome for her family is that despite repeated requests for security, they claim no steps have been taken to provide protection to them after they fled from 
