WAUSAU, Wis. A man suspected of stealing a plane in Canada and flying erratically across three states was trying to commit suicide, hoping he would be shot down by military fighter planes, a state trooper said Tuesday. Suicide by F-16? That's different.
Adam Dylan Leon, 31, was arrested at a convenience store in Ellsinore, Mo., shortly after landing the single-engine, four-seat Cessna on a rural Missouri road Monday night, ending a six-hour flight, police said.
The plane was tracked as a flight safety issue and was not believed to be a terrorist threat, Mike Kucharek, spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said in a telephone interview from Colorado Springs.
The Missouri state trooper who arrested Leon said on ABCs Good Morning America that the pilot told him he had hoped to be shot down. He made a statement that he was trying to commit suicide and he didnt have the courage to do it himself. And his idea was to fly the aircraft into the United States, where he would be shot down, Trooper Justin Watson said on ABC.
Watson said Leon apparently hitched a ride to the convenience store after landing on a highway and taxiing the plane to a side road. He didnt appear surprised when the officer entered the convenience store to arrest him. Leon said he didnt have any ID, but he was the person we were looking for, Watson said. He said Leon gave me no indication that it was anything other than he was having personal problems and was in an attempt to end his life. He did state that he thought at one time he was getting shot down, but apparently the Air Force were just shooting flares, the trooper said.
Leon was in the Butler County Jail on Tuesday in Poplar Bluff, Mo.
The plane was reported stolen Monday afternoon from Confederation College Flight School at Thunder Bay International Airport in Ontario. It was intercepted by F-16 fighters from the Wisconsin National Guard after crossing into the state near the Michigan state line.
The pilot was flying erratically and didnt communicate with the fighter pilots, Kucharek said at the Aerospace Defense Command. The pilot acknowledged seeing the F-16s but didnt obey their nonverbal commands to follow them, Kucharek said.
The planes path over Wisconsin prompted a brief, precautionary evacuation of the Wisconsin capitol in Madison, although there were few workers in the building at the time and the governor was not in town.
The Cessna 172 continued south over Illinois and eastern Missouri before landing near Ellsinore, about 120 miles south-southwest of St. Louis.
The plane landed about six hours after the reported theft, and had enough fuel for about eight hours of flight, NAADC officials said. We tailed it all the way, Maj. Brian Markin said. Once it landed our aircraft returned to base.
FBI spokesman Richard Kolko told CNN that Leon was a native of Turkey who changed his name from Yavuz Berke and became a Canadian citizen last year.
#1
They let a unknown cessna piloted by a Citizen of Turkey, a muslim country, go unmolested for hours? And simply tailed it after an evac of Madison, even though he purposely ignored their commands?
Am I the only one who thinks he should have been shot down the moment he acknowledged but ignored them?
Posted by: Charles ||
04/07/2009 11:42 Comments ||
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#2
Do us a favor next time Adam/Yavuz. Tie yourself to the Trans Canada Railway tracks. It's a very Canadian way to go.
Posted by: ed ||
04/07/2009 15:25 Comments ||
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They tailed it and made sure they could intervene if the pilot did something stupid like aim himself towards a sensitive location. There was no need to shoot him down otherwise.
Can you imagine the headlines and the Daily Kos if the AF had shot the dummy down and the plane had crashed into a kitten farm?
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/07/2009 16:11 Comments ||
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#4
"Can you imagine the headlines and the Daily Kos if the AF had shot the dummy down and the plane had crashed into a kitten farm?"
Also, why punish the innocent plane, and the flight school, if it's not necessary?
It is too bad he didn't try something really stupid....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/07/2009 16:30 Comments ||
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It is too bad he didn't try something really stupid....
#6
The plane was tracked as a "flight safety issue" and was not believed to be a terrorist threat
Hmmm there were still F-16s over the big lake long after he hit Wisconsin airspace. I suspect, no matter what NORAD says they werent taking any chances.
#7
I wonder if this guy didn't run out of fuel? The range on a Cessna 172 is around 610 nautical miles. The distance from Thunder Bay to Poplar Bluff is given as 700 nautical miles.
#8
At least now the Jihadis know they don't need to bother getting by TSA security, they can just Hijack Canadian planes instead.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
04/07/2009 20:51 Comments ||
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#9
And THAT is why he should have been smoked at the earliest possible opportunity. After all, they might be able to shoot him down if he heads for something like a mall, but what's suspicious about approaching an airport? I'd hate to have to be the person that makes that call. Is he landing or going to crash into the terminal?
Posted by: Mike N. ||
04/07/2009 20:56 Comments ||
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U.S. District Judge Thomas Phillips rejected Nasir Ehmood Alkhallefa's contention that although he knew looking at any form of pornography could draw physical punishment in his homeland, he believed the United States was far more permissive.
#1
Huh? The Bukhari Hadith says that the muslim "prophet" married the daughter of his successor, abu-Bakr, when the girl was 6; the marriage was consummated when she turned 9. The "prophet" was 55 at the time.
[Straits Times] AN INDONESIAN court sentenced to death a man who confessed to killing 11 people, including his lover whose mutilated body was found in a suitcase. Verry Idam Henyasyah, who has bragged of plans to make a pop album about his crimes, held his head in his hands after the Depok District Court handed down its verdict, then smiled and waved to reporters as he was escorted out.
The five-month-long trial revolved around the murder of the 30-year-old's partner, Heri Santoso, whose dismembered body was found in a suitcase in the southern outskirts of the capital, Jakarta, in July.
Separate trials will be held for the other killings, which Henyasyah said occurred between 2006 and mid-2008. Those victims were found in shallow graves in the backyard of his parents' house in East Java province. They include a woman and her 3-year-old daughter.
'He's a sadist ... who has never shown remorse for his actions,' presiding judge Suwidya told the court, sentencing the defendant to death for premeditated murder.
Henyasyah's lawyer said he would appeal.
A group of female admirers have zealously attended many of the baby-faced Henyasyah's court hearings, asking for autographs and requesting him to sing. The former Koran recital teacher, who claims he used to be a model, has said he intended to record a pop album in prison titled 'My Last Performance.'
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04/07/2009 00:00 ||
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Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, but Syria is taking fellow-Arab nation Libya to court over alleged jamming of Syrias satellite signals. Nilesats Salah Hamza, without naming any parties involved has diplomatically confirmed that there have been some instances of satellite interference lately. However, it seems Eutelsat may be in the firing line because of its carriage of the Syrian signals.
BBC Monitoring is reporting that a senior source at Syrias Zannubya Satellite Channel, which is said to be a close affiliate of former Syrian Vice President Abd-al-Halim Khaddam, has revealed plans to file a lawsuit in French and European courts against the Libyan Government for jamming the channel's transmissions.
In statements to London-based Quds Press, the channel's general director, Jihad Abd-al-Halim Khaddam, spoke of evidence that Libya has been jamming the channel's transmission and said: "Our channel's transmission via [Eutelsats] Hotbird satellite was jammed four times in a row. He added that the independent Association for International Broadcasting, which monitored the situation, reported that the jamming activity originated from Tripoli. Therefore, we are in the process of filing a lawsuit in French courts and the European Court [of Justice] against the Libyan Government and Hotbird's operators because they [Eutelsat] dropped our channel from their transmission list.
Al-Khaddam explained that Libya's jamming of Zannubya is consistent with efforts to activate security ties he described as deep between Syria and Libya.
[Al Arabiya Latest] A man stripped down to nothing but a strategically placed sock at a Tel Aviv supermarket in protest at its decision to sell bread over Passover in violation of Jewish religious laws, Israeli news websites Ynet News reported on Monday.
Police led away Arieh Yerushalmi, 28, after he shed his clothing in the store on Sunday -- one year after he staged a similar protest at another supermarket.
Yerushalmi wanted to protest against the store's decision to continue selling bread and other leavened products during the Passover week that begins on Wednesday. Jewish law forbids the use of such products during the holiday.
Leaders of the ultra-orthodox community, meanwhile, have written to dozens of stores and restaurants in Jerusalem urging them to reverse a decision to sell leavened food during Passover, according to media reports.
"At the last minute, refrain from doing this and declare that you will not burn your souls for a one-moment pleasure as well as financial profit," the ultra-Orthodox rabbinical Court of Justice said, according to Ynet. "The punishment for the blasphemy expected to hit the Holy City is extremely severe, and you will be the ones responsible for this," their letter said.
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04/07/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Yeru-salami? Say it ain't so.
And I suppose just this once we can do without the obligatory photos.
Birkat Hachamah is a special prayer recited once every twenty-eight years. The Talmud1 explains that at these times the Sun returns to the position that it had when the Universe was first created. The next date set is April 8, 2009...
#2
Bright Pebbles, I had no idea you were that old. Or is your fact just something that we must all pretend is true just because you read it in a book.
#3
Personally, I think the sages of the Talmudic era figured that since the 7th year is the sabbatical year and the 49th year is about the jubilee year (which is 50 years) then 28 (the arithmatic mean of 7 and 49) must be the sun year (that there is a sun year is referred to briefly in the Mishna which was compiled about 200 years before the talmud was compiled). But this is just my theory.
[Al Arabiya Latest] A powerful earthquake struck central Italy as residents slept on Monday morning, killing at least 150 people and leaving 1,500 injured.
"Some towns in the area have been virtually destroyed in their entirety," a somber Gianfranco Fini, speaker of the lower house of parliament, said before the chamber observed a moment of silence.
The Italian news agency Ansa, quoting rescue workers, said the death toll had reached 92 nearly 12 hours after the quake struck.
Most of the dead were in L'Aquila, a 13th-century mountain city about 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Rome, and surrounding towns and villages in the Abruzzo region.
Houses, historic churches were demolished and some 15,000 buildings were declared off limits in the worst quake to hit Italy in nearly 30 years.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2009 00:00 ||
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Rwandan President Paul Kagame has accused the international community of cowardice during a speech marking the 15th anniversary of Rwanda's genocide. He told a rally of 20,000 people in the capital, Kigali, UN troops abandoned their posts without firing a shot.
Thousands of candles were lit at the stadium, spelling out the word 'hope'.
Mr Kagame also led commemorations at Nyanza, where more than 5,000 people were slaughtered after peacekeepers pulled out.
Some 800,000 people were killed within 100 days by ethnic Hutu militia after the assassination of the president. The genocide began when Juvenal Habyarimana's plane was shot down on 6 April 1994 and came to an end when Tutsi-led rebels under the current president took control.
The massacre at Nyanza took place after Belgian troops withdrew following a Rwandan militia attack that claimed the lives of 10 peacekeepers on 7 April that year.
The BBC's Geoffrey Mutagoma in Kigali says the site of the former peacekeepers' base is seen as a symbol of the UN's failure 15 years ago.
We've had plenty of symbols of UN failure both before and after ...
President Kagame said: "We are not like those who abandoned people they had come to protect," reported AFP news agency. "They left them to be murdered. Aren't they guilty? I think it is also cowardice. They left even before any shot was fired.
"We are not cowards. They [the international community] are part of that history and the root causes of the genocide."
He laid a wreath at the hill site in Nyanza and lit a torch in memory of the victims.
Posted by: john frum ||
04/07/2009 17:33 ||
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April 7 (Bloomberg) — A soldier of the French Foreign Legion serving in Chad killed three of his colleagues and is on the run, a military command spokesman said. The man killed two other legionnaires of the French military force and a soldier from the African state of Togo.
He fired at his comrades in an irrational act and is now on the run, Lieutenant Colonel Francois-Marie Gougeon, spokesman for the French Army said over the telephone. The priority is to find him. Gougeon said he didnt know whether the soldier left with his weapon.
The troops were killed in the military Camps des Etoiles, near the town of Abeche in eastern Chad, he said.
The French Foreign Legion soldiers who were killed and the one who shot them are part of a European peacekeeping force in Chad. The Togolese soldier was part of the United Nations force that is taking over operations from the Europeans, Gougeon said.
France has 2,100 troops in Chad, he said. There are about 5,200 peacekeepers as part of the U.N.s MINURCAT mission in Chad, Agence France-Presse reported. They are charged with protecting refugees from Sudans Darfur region and others fleeing rebel insurgency in Chad and the northern Central African Republic.
PARIS (AFP) European peacekeepers on Tuesday launched a manhunt for a "deranged" French Foreign Legion officer who killed two comrades, a Togolese UN peacekeeper, and a civilian in Chad.
"Gunshots were heard in the (military) camp and then the two legionnaires were found and then a little further away the body of the Togolese soldier was discovered," said Captain Christophe Prazuck.
It appeared that the soldier, an officer he described as "deranged," opened fire with his service weapon and then escaped from the scene, Prazuck said.
A local official told AFP on condition of anonymity that the legionnaire had later shot and killed a Chadian civilian after he resisted the fugitive's attempt to steal his horse.
#2
As I understand it officers are all French born.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
04/07/2009 16:23 Comments ||
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French news agencies say nothing aboiut his rank but the terms seem to point that he is a private. For info Frenchmen _are_ allowed to serve in the Foreign Legion. Non-French are allowed but it is not a requirement.
#5
For most of its existence, the Legion was officered by Frenchmen but the enlisted were all non-French. Only fairly recently have Frenchmen been allowed to legally enlist.
While I cannot recall the term right now, there is a "madness" well known to the Legion that strikes in these isolated postings.
[Mail and Globe] Zimbabwe's new power-sharing government will relax the country's harsh media laws and improve prison conditions as part of reforms to be implemented within 100 days, a minister told state media on Monday.
"There was an agreement to review the media policy so as to create a climate where divergent voices will be heard," Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa told the state-run Herald newspaper, after a three-day ministerial retreat in the resort town of Victoria Falls over the weekend. "We want to see a multiplicity of media houses."
In 2002 President Robert Mugabe's government introduced stringent media laws, which banned foreign reporters and privately-owned daily newspapers, including a famously critical local paper.
Chinamasa said the government would also address the plight of prisoners. "We want to improve the justice delivery system including the restoration of prisoners' rights," he said.
Last week, a television documentary filmed secretly by a South African investigative news programme showed shocking conditions inside Zimbabwean jails. Pictures of emaciated prisoners suffering from malnutrition-related diseases, highlighted the plight of the hundreds of thousands prisoners starving inside prisons.
"We have agreed to meet the basic needs of all prisoners in terms of food, clothing, bedding and health within the next 30 days," said Chinamasa.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2009 00:00 ||
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It's a trap!
/Admiral Ackbar
Posted by: ed ||
04/07/2009 15:58 Comments ||
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[Mail and Globe] Fifteen years after the Rwandan genocide -- in which about 800 000 died -- prosecutors say hundreds of suspected perpetrators are still at large.
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04/07/2009 00:00 ||
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[Bangla Daily Star] The ruling Awami League (AL) plans to change the leadership of its student wing Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) to pull the organisation out of the mire of factional feuds. The recent spate of violence in educational institutions over control of campus, extortion and tender manipulation has tainted BCL so much that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has stepped down as its constitutional head.
"Sheikh Hasina is considering reorganising Chhatra League to get it back on track," said AL Joint General Secretary Obaidul Quader.
Talking to The Daily Star yesterday, he said the party high command wants BCL to go through some radical changes to ensure its leaders and workers desist from extortion, tender manipulation and illegal trade over admission to schools, colleges and universities.
The AL high-ups will work out ways to confine the BCL activities to issues of student interests. He however did not elaborate on the prospective measures.
Sources said the top echelons of different organisational units including the central committee would be changed. Committees down to the grassroots level would be reorganised in strict adherence to the 29-year age limit.
The AL president set the age bar to rid the organisation of non-students and promote young leadership. It was first applied to election of the current central leadership including BCL President Mahmud Hasan Ripon and General Secretary Mahfuzul Haider Roton in April 2006. But the provision was not much in use as Ripon-Roton committee could not yet form BCL units at the other levels using the age criterion.
This left the two faced with the task of dealing with district and university committee leaders many years their senior. As a result, they failed to have a commanding presence and ensure order and discipline within the organisation.
Observers say the central leadership's failure to assert themselves caused the chain of command to fall apart, leading to factional clashes in different educational institutions. "The chain of command must be restored through reorganisation of the student body," observed Quader, also former BCL president.
He said the party chief should form a team of recently-retired student leaders to see to BCL politics. Quader used to take care of matters relating to BCL on behalf of the AL chief before formation of the present central committee in 2006.
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04/07/2009 00:00 ||
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[Bangla Daily Star] Four people were killed and 16 others injured as a band of armed men launched an attack on their rival group over the control of a pond at Chatrar Mayagari village of Peerganj in Rangpur in the early hours of Monday.
The dead were identified as Saiful, 30, son of late Moyezuddin, Rezwan, 30, son of Abdus Samad, Quddus, 55, son of Kafil Uddin, and Nazrul, 30, son of Yusuf Miah. All of them hailed from Mayagari Satgara village. Saiful died on the spot while the rest at Rangpur Medical College Hospital yesterday morning.
The rivalry over the ownership of Harin Singh Dighi has been going on for a long time. The feuding groups are known as 24-party comprised of 24 families and 100-party of 100 families, locals said.
Police and witnesses said, the members of 24-party led by Dula Miah and Abdur Rahman armed with sticks, machete, axe and other sharp weapons allegedly attacked Mayagari Satgara village at around 3 am. Emdad Hossain and Golam Master, president and general secretary of the 100-party, said when the people of their group were sleeping at night the armed miscreants of the 24-party swooped on them.
President of the 24-party Dula Miah said as members of his organisation went to fish in the Harin Singh Dighi at night armed people of the rival group attacked them. He refused to make further comment.
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04/07/2009 00:00 ||
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About 200 worshippers marched Sunday to protest the government's destruction of "Death Saint" shrines, saying Mexico's fight against drug cartels has veered into religious persecution.
"We are believers, not criminals!" the protesters chanted as they marched from a gritty Mexico City neighborhood to the Metropolitan Cathedral downtown.
At shrines, chapels and small churches across the country, tens of thousands of people worship the Death Saint, which is often depicted as a robe-covered skeleton resembling the Grim Reaper.
It is popular with drug traffickers, and soldiers often find shrines to the saint during raids on cartel safe houses. But in crime-ridden neighborhoods, people of all walks of life believe the "Santa Muerte" protects against violent or untimely deaths. Devotees often use elements of Catholic rites, leaving offerings of candles or praying to the folk saint for protection.
Mexican law enforcement won't say it is targeting the "Santa Muerte." But last month, army troops accompanied workers who used back hoes to topple and crush more 30 shrines on a roadway in the city of Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas. Many were elaborate, one-story, marble-clad constructions with electric lighting and statues of the skeletal Death Saint.
The sect's archbishop, David Romo, denounced the destruction as religious persecution and demanded a meeting with President Felipe Calderon.
Protesters carried statues and pushed makeshift shrines to the saint. Some brought their children, and one marcher carried a white puppy.
"Sometimes people look down on us because we believe in her, but my faith is bigger than somebody looking down on me," said America Melendez, a 24-year-old street vendor marching with a red-robed statue of the saint.
Roberto Sanchez, a 28-year-old carpenter, said he became a believer after praying to the Death Saint for the recovery of a sick nephew. He carried a sign reading "I believe in you Santa Muerte and I am not a narco."
"If we are not doing anything to them, they shouldn't be doing this," he said of the shrines' destruction. This is problematic. The SM cult may have as many as 2M members, and get considerable funding from the drug gangs. An Aztec throwback, they could become very menacing if pushed too hard.
#2
While the drug traffickers support SM, it is a decentralized cult with no strong leader, and the drug gangs get no support from the rank and file out of the deal.
Death cults have their own dynamic, precisely because they are not looking for salvation, or even to avoid death. This nihilistic outlook can easily turn homicidal in a big way.
Imagine the chaos inflicted by tens of thousands of ordinary looking people, who are suddenly inspired to look for an opportunity to kill others, at random, and walk away from it. These were the Thuggee.
This could cause tremendous panic throughout Mexico, because people could no longer trust their fellow citizens. Imagine going through your day not knowing if some random person is looking at you with an eye to murder.
It's difficult not to warm to John Prescott. As part of a Labour Government that lived from headline to headline, he added a dash of authenticity. He may have been oafish, but he was reassuringly human.
Prescott is trying to fabricate a row out of my interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, in which I warned Americans against adopting a socialist healthcare system along British lines. You can watch the old bruiser here. (If you're an American who likes to imagine that the British are eloquent, please ignore that last hyperlink.)
I wonder whether anyone still falls for this sort of stuff. For a long time, Labour politicians had two slogans which they would trot out whenever healthcare came up: "Envy Of The World" and "Free At The Point Of Use". These phrases were not intended to be arguments. Rather, they were ways of playing your trump, of closing down the debate.
Prezza uses both (or, rather, a mangled version of each). The NHS, he says, is Britain's "greatest creation". Really? Greater than parliamentary democracy? Greater than penicillin? Greater than the discovery of DNA, or the abolition of slavery, or the common law? John, the NHS produces some of the worst health outcomes in the industrialised world. Britain is the Western state where you'd least want to have cancer or a stroke or heart disease. Ours is now a country where thousands of people are killed in hospitals for reasons unrelated to their original condition. If this is our "greatest creation", Heaven help us.
As for the second slogan, which Prezza renders as "need and not ability to pay", there is no health system in Europe or North America that leaves the indigent untended. What is at issue is not whether we force poor people to pay, but whether we prevent wealthier people from doing so. The British system treats everyone equally, it's true: we queue equally, we wait weeks for operations equally, we are expected to be equally grateful for any attention we get.
Outside Westminster, the old incantations are losing their magic. Envy Of The World is no longer a charm to ward off criticism. People can see for themselves that Britain has become a place where foreigners fear to fall ill. Yes, all three parties are committed to the NHS: I am a humble backbencher, and speak only for myself. But I wonder whether, as on tax and borrowing, public opinion hasn't overtaken the Westminster consensus.
Let me put it like this. Imagine that, in 1945, we had created a National Food Service. Suppose that, in the name of "fairness" and "need and not ability to pay", sustenance had been rationed by the state. Conjecture that every citizen had been allocated one butcher, one baker, one café and so on. We all know where that would have led: to bureaucracy, to duplication, to surpluses in one field and scarcity in another, to racketeering, to hunger. No one, not even Prescott, is suggesting that we socialise food distribution - even though food is at least as basic human need as healthcare. As those Americans of whom you seem so contemptuous might put it, John, go figure.
[Iran Press TV Latest] A one-time insider in the Bush administration suggests that former vice president Dick Cheney has a strong say in the Obama White House policies.
"He still has people in the Obama administration, in the bowels of the bureaucracy and he is still impacting the American policy. . . This is a supreme operator," claimed former chief of staff to ex-US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson speaking to Russia Today on Sunday.
He described Cheney as the time's "very powerful vice president backed by a very naïve president who went along mostly with what the vice president said."
Wilkerson is the second official to recently torpedo the former second-in-command's reputation after investigative journalist Seymour Hersh suggested that Cheney was supervising an 'assassination ring'.
Wilkerson took Hersh's allegations a step further, suggesting that Cheney was a principal director of the brigade.
"This is nothing new that someone would pour covert operations into the White House and Cheney was the perfect person to do it. He had the mindset for it. He had the dark-side philosophy for it and so forth. I have no problem believing that. They wanted their own intelligence and so you get the transfer of CIA-blessed techniques over to the Pentagon."
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2009 00:00 ||
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former chief of staff to ex-US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
04/07/2009 6:11 Comments ||
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#3
"Wilkerson is the second official to recently torpedo the former second-in-command's reputation after investigative journalist Seymour Hersh suggested that Cheney was supervising an 'assassination ring'."
Gee, the mullah tools say that like it's a bad thing. See-more Hersh is not an "official," btw (unless he holds some secret rank in the Soros Legion).
#4
this is too funny. The followers of The One must find this confusing. Where is the group hug from the non-white folk who suffer from America's hegemonic, imperialistic policies? All of the past was to come to an end once the beautiful words fell forth from Obama's mouth. How can those who believe in The One reconcile this deeply disturbing implication that Cheney is even more powerful than The One?
#5
All administrations leave... "stay behinds." Political appointmentees who have created or been groomed for an Executive Service (I can never be fired) position. It's a right of passage. Get over it ACORNIANS
#11
Next time I'm in Washington or Moscow in October, I'm going Trick or Treating in a Cheney mask. I'm hoping to cause cardiac arrest in Pelosi or Putin.
Posted by: ed ||
04/07/2009 15:17 Comments ||
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#12
I always thought it was Rove that was working behind the scenes.
#15
This is just a sham story put out by people who are trying to remove Bush era individuals in the federal government. Plain and simple dirty politics by the Obama adminsitration.
After complaining against Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs visit to Arunachal Pradesh, China is now learnt to have objected to President Pratibha Patils tour of the state last week that included a visit to Tawang.
While there is no official word yet, sources confirmed that Beijing has taken up the matter with New Delhi which has reaffirmed its stand that Arunachal is an integral part of the country and leaders are free to travel to any part of the state. The other side is well aware of our clear and consistent position, official sources here said.
Patil visited Arunachal Pradesh during her four-day North East tour last week and went to Tawang, which China has staked claim to several times in the past. Patil, also as the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, visited the War Memorial for Indian soldiers who died in the 1962 war with China and interacted with troops on the border.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson indicated the country was not pleased. The two sides should make joint efforts to effectively carry out the consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries, to ensure the healthy and stable development of bilateral relations, he said in Beijing, in response to questions on Patils visit.
Beijings complaint against a PM visit in February last year snowballed into a controversy, prompting External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee to reaffirm that the PM has the right to visit any part of the country.
Beijing is especially sensitive about Tawang that was briefly occupied by the Chinese Army after the 1962 war. Several senior Indian ministers, including Defence Minster A K Antony, have visited Arunachal over the past few years. While the PM avoided a visit to Tawang, Antony visited the region in March and addressed troops on the border.
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04/07/2009 16:05 ||
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President Patil tries out a weapon captured from terrorists at the Shararat Post in Tandhar sector of J&K while on a visit to forward areas in the state.
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04/07/2009 16:48 Comments ||
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Israel has signed a whopping $240-million agreement with India to build five artillery munition factories in Bihar over a period of three years. The munition factories will be built by the Israeli Military Industry (IMI) on the lines of its ordnance factory in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Hasharon, business daily 'Globes' reported.
The Israeli defence industry said that the contract was the result of its collaboration with Indian government's Ordnance Factories Board (OFB). IMI will be the chief contractor in the deal and will use Israeli and Indian firms as subcontractors.
The state-owned Israeli firm reported $660 million in sales last year, 16 per cent more than in 2007.
The firm's CEO Avi Felder said the global economic crisis would change the procurement pattern by the world's leading militaries, which would switch to upgrading existing weapons platforms on short timetables instead of massive investment in new facilities that would take a long time to develop and deliver.
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04/07/2009 00:00 ||
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[Associated Press of Pakistan] Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani has taken serious notice of cutting off the nose of a woman in Kashmore and ordered an immediate inquiry into the incident. He has asked the relevant authorities to investigate the matter and submit a detailed report. The Prime Minister has also directed that the woman should be provided best medical care whose expenses will be borne by the government.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Cause it's unislamic---you're supposed to cut off the whole head.
Senate opponents of the nuclear test-ban treaty face "a new ballgame" 10 years after they rejected the global pact, the treaty's chief said Tuesday.
If the U.S. and other key nations fail again to ratify the pact, the world will become a place with "more fissile material in more facilities with more people to handle it, representing a risk of (nuclear) terrorism," said Tibor Toth, executive secretary of the treaty's preparatory commission.
"Probably what you will have to do is revisit the benefits of the treaty from a wider perspective, from a post-2001 viewpoint," Toth told The Associated Press.
The Hungarian diplomat was in Washington to meet with Senate staff and take part in a conference on nuclear nonproliferation organized by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The conference was dominated by talk of President Barack Obama's speech Sunday in Prague, Czech Republic, laying out plans to work toward a world free of nuclear weapons. Obama said he aimed to "immediately and aggressively pursue U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty," or CTBT.
Although a 1963 treaty bans nuclear tests in the atmosphere, oceans and space, the CTBT would ban all nuclear weapons tests everywhere, including underground, both as a step toward disarmament and to block weapons proliferation.
In 1999, the Republican-controlled Senate rejected the pact almost entirely along party lines with a 48-in-favor, 51-against vote. Approval requires a two-thirds majority. Opponents objected to the treaty's monitoring system being unable to detect a cheater's small underground nuclear test, and that the soundness of the U.S. nuclear arsenal would come under question if tests could not be conducted.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, said March 27 he has begun the process of bringing the treaty back before the Senate.
Appearing on Tuesday's conference panel with Toth, physicist Sidney Drell, a longtime U.S. government adviser on nuclear weapons issues, noted that the government's weapons laboratories have since determined that the weapons' plutonium "pits" have a lifetime, "conservatively," of 85 to 100 years. "That concern, having weapons more than 20 years old, has been removed in the past 10 years," Drell said.
As for verification, Toth pointed out that his organization's monitoring system detected North Korea's very small nuclear test in 2006, and has since strengthened its capabilities. "No test of military significance can go undetected," the treaty chief said.
Meanwhile, "on the proliferation side, it is a totally new ballgame. There is a terrorist nexus," Toth told the AP. Treaty proponents point to fears that Pakistan's developing nuclear arsenal might fall into extremist hands in an increasingly unstable nation.
Pakistan and the U.S. are two of nine nations whose ratification is still required for the test-ban treaty to take effect. The others are China, North Korea, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran and Israel. Proponents believe a U.S. ratification could lead to these other "dominos" falling into line.
Otherwise, a total of 180 nations have signed the treaty and 148 have ratified it, including nuclear weapons powers Russia, Britain and France.
Posted by: john frum ||
04/07/2009 17:55 ||
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#1
"must" huh?
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/07/2009 18:55 Comments ||
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#2
Treaty proponents point to fears that Pakistan's developing nuclear arsenal might fall into extremist hands in an increasingly unstable nation.
And the treaty will be respected by extremists?
#3
The CTBT has nothing to do with the security of Pakistan's arsenal or lack thereof.
If Pakistan were to sign it, it would simply not test weapons anymore.
This would not affect weapons falling into the hands of jihadi elements of the Pak military.
Posted by: john frum ||
04/07/2009 19:32 Comments ||
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BAGHDAD An Iraqi court has reduced the prison sentence for an Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at former President George W. Bush from three years to one. Court spokesman Abdul-Sattar Bayrkdar says Tuesday's decision was made because the journalist had no prior criminal history.
Muntadhar al-Zeidi was sentenced to three years in March after a quick trial. Al-Zeidi had pleaded not guilty to a charge of assaulting a foreign leader and said his action was a "natural response to the occupation."
The journalist's act during Bush's last visit to Iraq as president turned the 30-year-old reporter into a folk hero across the Arab world, where the former U.S. president is reviled for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Al-Zeidi faced up to 15 years.
JERUSALEM -- Israel successfully tested an anti-missile system designed to protect the country against Iranian attack, the Defense Ministry said, perfecting technology developed in response to failures of similar systems during the 1991 Gulf War. The intercept of a dummy missile was the 17th test of the Arrow system, a U.S.-Israeli joint venture. Israeli defense officials said the interceptor was an upgraded Arrow II, designed to counter Iran's Shahab ballistic missile.
Interesting, isn't it: Israel is full-speed ahead on missile defense. So is Japan. So is India. While we Americans are pulling back from missile defense.
Israel has identified Iran as its biggest threat, citing the country's nuclear program and its development of long-range ballistic missiles. Those fears have been compounded by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's repeated calls for the destruction of the Jewish state.
Israel believes Iran is developing nuclear weapons that could pose a threat to its existence. Israel has threatened military action, and Iran has said it would strike back, warning last month that Israel's own nuclear facilities were within missile range. Iran's Shahab-3 missiles have a range of up to 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers), putting Israel well within striking distance. Iranian officials were not available for comment on the Israeli test.
In a statement, the Defense Ministry said the interceptor shot down "a missile simulating a ballistic threat in especially challenging conditions." It called the test "an important step in the development program and the development of operational abilities to counter the growing threat of ballistic missiles in the region."
Defense Minister Ehud Barak watched Tuesday's intercept from a military helicopter, the ministry said. According to the Israeli Embassy in Washington, Pentagon representatives also were present. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has made the Iranian threat a top priority of his administration, congratulated defense officials for the successful test. "While we are for peace, we will know how to defend ourselves," he said.
In an interview Tuesday with CNN, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was asked how worried he is that Israel, under Netanyahu, will launch a strike to take out Iran's nuclear facilities. "I don't believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu would do that," Biden said. "I think he would be ill-advised to do that. And so my level of concern is no different than it was a year ago."
The Arrow project is being developed by Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. and Chicago-based Boeing Co. at a cost of more than $1 billion. It was spurred largely by the failure of the U.S. military's Patriot missiles to intercept Iraqi Scud rockets that struck Israel in the 1991 Gulf War. Several batteries of Arrow missiles are already operational. But Israel has been working to perfect the system to deal with increasingly complicated threats, such as missiles that strike at extremely high speeds from high altitudes and could split apart as they approach their targets.
Iran has worked hard to increase the accuracy of its missiles. In November, it successfully test-fired the Sajjil, a solid fuel high-speed missile with a range 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers). Solid fuel is considered a significant breakthrough because it increases accuracy.
Rick Lehner, spokesman for the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, said the Arrow is meant to intercept short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. "This was the most advanced version of the Arrow weapons system in terms of the ability to perform the type of intercept that would be necessary to destroy a ballistic missile target," he said. He said that in conjunction with Patriot missiles, which strike at a lower altitude, Israel has "deployed a layered defense."
Israel is also developing a system to counter short and medium range rockets of the kind possessed by Palestinian and Lebanese militants. The system, called the Iron Dome, is set to be deployed next year.
The U.S. military has conducted separate tests in recent years of different components of the defensive shield, which is slated to include Patriot air defense batteries, anti-ballistic missiles launched from Navy ships and lasers mounted in planes designed to shoot down incoming missiles. Last month, the U.S. military's ground-based mobile missile defense system successfully shot down a medium-range ballistic missile during a test in Hawaii.
It was the first time the military fired two interceptors at one target using the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, a program designed to shoot down ballistic missiles in their last stage of flight. The drill followed up on a test that was planned for last September but had to be aborted when the target malfunctioned shortly after launch.
#1
difference is: Israel India, and Japan are acting in their own self-interest, self-defense. Obama will expose us for his own selfish aggrandizement among the Anti-American Leftys and Euros. F*ck him. He doesn't care about being genuflecting to terrorists.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/07/2009 18:58 Comments ||
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#2
er...ranting, editing, ranting, editing
/damn
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/07/2009 19:00 Comments ||
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[Straits Times] MALAYSIAŽ new prime minister urged the local media on Monday to criticise the government Žwithout fear,Ž but stopped short of saying if he would remove the annual licensing system that shackles publications.
Prime Minister Najib Razak, who took office on Friday, said he wants to build a free press that is transparent, accountable and caters to the needs of all Malaysians regardless of their race.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2009 00:00 ||
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[Straits Times] A MASS grave containing the remains of 35 communist commandos killed during the Vietnam War was found in southern Vietnam, a military official said on Monday. The soldiers were rounded up and killed by South Vietnamese forces after attacking a US air base in Vinh Long province during the Tet Offensive in 1968, said Col. Vo Hieu Hoa of the provincial military command.
Authorities were tipped off about the mass grave by a former driver for the US-backed South Vietnam government, Hoa said. 'We finally found them after three days of excavation,' he said.
Thousands of Viet Cong guerrillas attacked major towns across southern Vietnam during the Tet Offensive in January 1968. Tet is seen by many as a turning point in the Vietnam War.
Meanwhile, the apparent remains of three American soldiers killed during the Vietnam War were sent back to the United States, US official Ron Ward said on Monday. The remains were recovered over the past month from sites in central and southern Vietnam. They were flown aboard a military transport plane to Hawaii on Saturday for identification.
Nearly 1,800 US servicemen are still unaccounted for throughout South-east Asia since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, when communist North Vietnamese forces overran Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam.
An estimated 58,000 Americans and 3 million Vietnamese were killed in the war.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2009 00:00 ||
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#2
This should also serve to remind us that Walter Cronkite did his level best to LIE about the Tet Offensive, to portray it as a great American defeat, and in doing so, was as important, or more important, than Jane Fonda to the anti-Vietnam War, anti-American effort.
When the old bastard finally goes to Hell, we should do our level best to remind America of the fact, so that Cronkite's memory will not be entirely whitewashed by his comrades in the MSM.
[Straits Times] THE Khmer RougeŽs prisons chief on Monday told CambodiaŽs UN-backed war crimes court that he had Žsacrificed everythingŽ for the revolution that ultimately killed up to two million people. Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, last week apologised at his trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity, saying he accepted blame for the extermination of thousands of people at the movementŽs notorious main prison, Tuol Sleng.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/07/2009 00:00 ||
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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.
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, but Syria is taking fellow-Arab nation Libya to court over alleged jamming of Syrias satellite signals. Nilesats Salah Hamza, without naming any parties involved has diplomatically confirmed that there have been some instances of satellite interference lately. However, it seems Eutelsat may be in the firing line because of its carriage of the Syrian signals.
[Al Arabiya Latest] A man stripped down to nothing but a strategically placed sock at a Tel Aviv supermarket in protest at its decision to sell bread over Passover in violation of Jewish religious laws, Israeli news websites Ynet News reported on Monday.
[Al Arabiya Latest] A powerful earthquake struck central Italy as residents slept on Monday morning, killing at least 150 people and leaving 1,500 injured.
[Iran Press TV Latest] A one-time insider in the Bush administration suggests that former vice president Dick Cheney has a strong say in the Obama White House policies. 
