Three British soldiers have been wounded, two of them seriously, by a roadside explosion in Afghanistan. The Defence Ministry says the three had been on patrol in the southern province of Helmand when the explosion hit their Land Rover on Monday. They have been flown to hospital for treatment.
"It is suspected that the explosion was caused either by an improvised explosive device or by a landmine," a spokesman said. "Until we establish [the cause] we can't say whether it was a hostile action or whether it was unexploded ordnance. One of the injured is walking wounded. Regrettably, the other two soldiers received serious injuries and continue to receive treatment."
My guess would be Pakistanis.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2006 00:00 ||
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The death toll in a rocket attack on a primary school yard in Afghanistan has risen to seven young children with more than 30 wounded. Deputy police chief Mohammad Hassan Farahi says two rockets were fired into Asadabad, the capital city of Kunar province, and one hit a school in the grounds of a mosque, killing six students aged between seven and 10. Another child died later in hospital. Thirty-three other children and a teacher were wounded, mostly by shrapnel. The second rocket did not cause casualties.
The children were studying in the open because they did not have a school building. It was not clear if the rocket was targeted at the mosque complex, which is close to an Afghan army base and a compound for international troops. Mr Farahi says the rockets were fired from across the border in Pakistan and blamed the attack on the "enemies of Afghanistan", a term Afghan officials often use to refer to remnants of the Taliban regime ousted in late 2001 and their Al Qaeda allies.
Taliban fighters were also blamed for another bombing on Tuesday (local time), with five people, including a 10-year-old child, wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in eastern Jalalabad city, the capital of Nangarhar province that borders Kunar. The bomb ripped through a station-wagon in a crowded main road about a kilometre from the city centre.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2006 00:00 ||
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Paris - Following fresh rebel attacks in Chad, France placed its troops in the central African country on full alert Wednesday and announced that reinforcements were on their way, according to senior military sources in Paris. A company of 150 soldiers would be moved to Chad from Libreville in Gabon, the sources said. Until now, the number of French troops in Chad was 1,200. The soldiers had remained in their barracks 'except for patrols to assess the situation' and had not become involved in the fighting, the French military in Paris said. Paris condemned 'every attempt to seize power with violence,' the Foreign Ministry reported.
Owing to its central location in Africa, Chad plays an important role for the stability of the continent, the ministry said, adding that the 1,500 French troops in Chad had to be protected. France was providing the 'rightfully elected government' of President Idriss Deby with data from reconnaissance flights over the area where fighting was taking place.
In recent days, the United Front for Democratic Change (FUC) took control of Haraze-Mangueigne garrison near the border with the Central African Republic and the village of Koukou in the east. On Tuesday, the FUC said it had taken control of the town of Mongo, 400 kilometres to the east of the capital Ndjamena, and the village of Bitkine on the way to the capital. The Defence Ministry in Ndjamena claimed that it had taken Mongo back from the rebels.
The FUC was formed in the border area next to the Sudanese civil- conflict region of Darfur. There are 200,000 Sudanese refugees in the border area, and the number of attacks on refugee camps has been increasing. Chadian generals are believed to have defected to the rebels in recent months, and there were rumours of an attempted coup d'etat in March. Deby hopes to be re-elected after 16 years as head of state in elections on May 3.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006 14:37 ||
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#1
You add this one to the list of LOSSES.Hell they can't even win w/ thier own people!!! Chirac CAVES AGAIN!!
#5
The French play as rough as necessary in africa. Forget the surrender monkey stupidity, if they think one of their clients is going to go down, they'll fight.
April 11, 2006: The U.S. admitted that it was backing, with cash, equipment and weapons, a coalition of Somali warlords that are fighting the militia of the Islamic Courts movement for control of Mogadishu. The Islamic Courts are something like the Afghan Taliban. The Islamic Courts enforce Islamic law in order to bring some sense of peace and stability to the country. The Islamic Courts are run by Islamic conservatives who are friendly with Islamic terrorists and al Qaeda. This prompted the U.S. to back clan leaders and warlords who oppose the Islamic Courts (which are dominated, in turn, by a few clans and tribes). American Special Forces have been inside Somalia collecting information, and is certain that the Islamic Courts provide al Qaeda with an opportunity to establish bases in Somalia. It's believed that some high ranking al Qaeda leaders have already taken refuge in Somalia, and are protected by the Islamic Courts.
Some members of the pro-U.S. (or "Counter-terrorist) militias were flown to Kenya to receive some military training, and more equipment. These clan leaders were probably also briefed on the high ranking al Qaeda believed to be in Somalia, and the multi-million dollar rewards for the capture or killing of these al Qaeda big shots.
In an April 9 story about U.S. involvement in Somalia, The Associated Press erroneously reported that a U.S. official said the United States was backing Somali militants fighting Islamic extremists for control of the lawless nation's capital. In fact, the official said only that the U.S. had met with a wide variety of Somali leaders in an effort to fight international terrorists in the country.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006 09:44 ||
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#1
Now this is how it is done!
Any bets on how long before there is an expose from the MSM that makes this sound like the second coming of the "Pheonix(sp?) Program"?
Posted by: N guard ||
04/12/2006 10:04 Comments ||
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But you don't understand. I want those virgins. How dare you arrest me and put me in prison for 40 years. This is an outrage and very anti-Islamic!
Chadian rebels have raided the town of Mongo, about 400 kilometres east of the capital N'Djamena, in their boldest attack so far in a campaign to disrupt elections next month. President Idriss Deby's Government, which accuses neighbouring Sudan of supporting the insurgents, says the raiders have succeeded in entering Mongo. But it denies a claim by a rebel group that its fighters have captured the town.
Information Minister Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor says government forces have repulsed the latest rebel strike in the landlocked central African oil producer.
The raid on Mongo, a regional administrative centre halfway between N'Djamena and the Sudan border, is the closest to the capital so far by rebels who have vowed to try to oust Mr Deby, who is standing for re-election in a May 3 poll.
The attack follows a series of hit-and-run raids in the last three days in which mobile columns of rebels travelling in pick-up trucks have attacked government forces in the east, briefly occupying at least one village and a refugee camp. Mr Doumgor has given no details of casualties in the Mongo attack but says the assailants have caused "some damage". "These strikes are aimed at sowing panic among the population and above all at disrupting the ongoing presidential election campaign," he said.
The rebel United Front for Democratic Change (FUC), which has claimed responsibility for a series of attacks in eastern Chad since Sunday, says in statements posted on a Chad opposition website that it has captured Mongo and nearby Bitkine. Mr Doumgor says the rebels control no towns in the country and FUC forces have in the past quickly withdrawn from towns and villages they initially claimed to have occupied.
UPDATE: Chad's government says it has regained control of the town of Mongo, 400km (250 miles) east of the capital, after it was raided by rebels. The government had previously denied a claim by United Front for Change (Fuc) rebels that they had captured Mongo. The fighters opposed to President Idriss Deby say they are advancing towards the capital on three fronts.
Mongo is the nearest the rebels have come to N'Djamena, which is tense, since the six-month rebellion began. "Since yesterday afternoon our defence and security forces took total control of the town of Mongo," an unamed military official told Reuters news agency.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2006 00:46 ||
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I was just about to post this under the headline -
CAIRO - Police in boats and on the quay guarded the Queen Elizabeth 2 as it docked in the north Egyptian port of Alexandria on Thursday after a security threat against the British-built cruise liner. The ships owners, Cunard, and Britains Transport Department said in separate statements Tuesday they had received information concerning the security of the Queen Elizabeth 2, but they declined to disclose the type of threat.
I'm guessing it's not iceburgs
We believe there is no cause for alarm, said Julie Benson, the US-based director of public relations for Cunard. As a precaution, we have placed the ship on to a higher level of security as it passes through this area. We treat all such information very seriously and the United Kingdom, United States and Egyptian security authorities have been kept fully informed, said Benson in a statement issued in Miami, Florida.
Police boats followed the QE2 as it sailed northwards through the Suez Canal on Tuesday. And police guarded the ship Thursday on land and water when it berthed in Alexandria harbor for the day, Egyptian police officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the press. The ships passengers were allowed to disembark in Alexandria for sight-seeing. The port is within three hours drive of the pyramids outside Cairo.
The 70,300-ton liner was launched in 1967 and carries up to 1,750 passengers and 1,000 crew. In 1972 a security threat against the QE2 led to British bomb disposal specialists parachuting into the Atlantic Ocean next to the ship. The threat turned out to be a hoax.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006 09:30 ||
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Interior Minister Prince Naif announced yesterday that thousands of people have been released after it was confirmed that they were not involved in any crime or terrorist act. We have set free thousands as we keep only those people who are either convicted or sentenced by court ... and this releasing process will continue, the Saudi Press Agency quoted him as saying.
Speaking to reporters after attending a ceremony marking the release of a UNICEF report in Riyadh, Prince Naif said the launch of the UNICEF report was recognition on behalf of the United Nations of the Kingdoms humanitarian efforts.
While speaking at the Cabinet meeting, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah has told Saudis and non-Saudis to sponsor children orphaned by the tsunami and other calamities, he pointed out.
Prince Naif, who is supervisor of the Saudi Relief Committee, voiced the Kingdoms readiness to sponsor orphans in Indonesia, Pakistan and Palestine. We have done this before, he added.
Asked about the fate of those detainees whose role in terrorist operations have been proved, he said, All of them will be taken to court. We are just waiting to complete the procedures.
He also said that the formation of the state security court would be announced shortly. The minister confirmed reports that some Saudis had provided financial and material support to Al-Qaeda terrorists. He disclosed that interior ministers of countries bordering Iraq would meet in September.
He also promised tough punishment against those who try to smuggle children into the Kingdom. We will send back the intruders, he added.
Prince Naif said the King Khaled Cultural Center was wrong when it allowed mixing of men and women. We cannot blame others when they criticize wrong actions, he said while answering a question.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2006 04:02 ||
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A BRITISH man who allegedly crippled US defence systems in the "biggest military computer hack of all time" could be sent to Guantanamo Bay if he is extradited, his lawyer argued today.
Edmund Lawson told Bow Street Magistrates Court in central London that Washington wanted "administrative revenge" on his client, Gary McKinnon, because he had exposed embarrassing weaknesses in its IT security.
Mr McKinnon, who was described by his lawyer as a "40-year-old computer nerd", is wanted in the United States for allegedly infiltrating systems at the Pentagon, Army, Navy and space agency NASA from his bedroom in north London.
He is alleged to have caused $US700,000 ($956,480) damage to defence systems and rendered computers inoperable at a naval weapon station at a critical time following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Mr Lawson argued that US President George W. Bush was unlikely to be bound by an "unsigned and anonymous" diplomatic note the lawyer had received from the US Embassy in London guaranteeing Mr McKinnon would not be treated as an "enemy combatant".
As such, Mr McKinnon - who was inspired by the 1983 film WarGames - was still vulnerable to a "Military Order Number One", the legal mechanism by which the US president can order a suspect's detention indefinitely, he said.
That risk meant it would be a breach of his human rights to extradite him, he added, noting that even if he was not sent to the US military camp for security suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, he was still likely to face a stiffer jail sentence.
Proceedings began last year when lawyers for the US Government called Mr McKinnon's alleged activities "the biggest military computer hack of all time".
Referring to the diplomatic note today, lawyer Mark Summers said there was no precedent for Washington reneging on its pledge and urged the matter to be taken on "faith".
#1
lawyer Mark Summers said there was no precedent for Washington reneging on its pledge and urged the matter to be taken on "faith".
Bullshit.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
04/12/2006 20:00 Comments ||
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he was still likely to face a stiffer jail sentence.
And he should be in a slammer until he turns blue or repays the damage, whichever comes first.
Of course computer systems/networks have vulnerabilities, but the correct way to go about it, if one is so inclined to hacking, is to notify the target party of the security problems they have. Else it is cracking and (I am a peacefull man, but there are limits) that deserves reciprocal cracking of the offender's cranium by steel core truncheons.
THE UK Home Office intends to appeal against a court decision allowing Australian Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks the right to British citizenship.
In London last night, the Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the terror suspect, supporting last December's High Court judgment that the UK government cannot refuse to register Hicks' citizenship, which he is entitled to because his mother was born and raised in England.
The Home Office has until April 25 to lodge a fresh appeal to the House of Lords - via the Court of Appeal - with a decision expected in early May.
If that is denied, the Home Office then has the option of directly petitioning the House of Lords for a hearing, which would be held late this year or early 2007 if granted.
Adelaide-born Hicks, 30, has been held by US authorities at Guantanamo Bay since he was captured with Taliban forces in Afghanistan in late 2001.
He has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit war crimes, attempted murder and aiding and abetting the enemy.
He has sought British citizenship because the UK government, unlike Australia, has successfully fought for the release of its nationals from Guantanamo Bay.
His father Terry said the Court of Appeals decision is pleasing, but there is still a long road ahead.
"I was certainly pleased, certainly," Terry Hicks said last night.
"I think it's a positive step but, as I say, I think there's a long way to go yet."
Mr Hicks said he suspected the government would appeal to the House of Lords, but was hopeful of a similarly favourable decision there.
"I think their outlook is a lot different from the actual government and they might look at David's case and think that four years is too long (in Guantanamo Bay without conviction)."
Terry Hicks said his son was most likely oblivious to the development and would not know of it for about three weeks, when his lawyers are able to visit to tell him.
Terry Hicks said his son was most likely oblivious to the development and would not know of it for about three weeks, when his lawyers are able to visit to tell him.
Hicks' US military lawyer, Major Michael Mori, said Hicks would never renounce his Australian citizenship and he did not believe a dual citizenship would harm his client.
"I just wish the British government would get on with it and go down to Guantanamo and formalise David's citizenship," Major Mori told ABC Television.
A firefight between police and suspected militants on Tuesday left one officer and two rebels dead, officials said, as violence continued to afflict the region surrounding Chechnya.
Two other policemen were hospitalized in a grave condition and a third suspected rebel was wounded, said Roman Shchekotin, spokesman for the Interior Ministrys branch in southern Russia. The armed clash took place in Nazran, the main city in Ingushetia.
The official said ammunition and automatic weapons had been discovered in the militants hideout - a house near a school.
He identified the two dead suspected militants as brothers Umar and Magomed Barchishvili, residents of Ingushetia, who were wanted for their involvement in several attacks. The third gunman, named as Ali Gazgireyev, was under guard in a hospital, the official said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2006 04:09 ||
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The death toll from an explosion at a hospital complex in northern China rose to at least 33 on Tuesday amid reports that explosives stored in a garage may have caused the tragedy. Rescuers found a total of 33 bodies amid rubble after the Monday morning blast at the Xuangang Coal Power Company's staff hospital in Shanxi province, China Central Television (CCTV) reported in its evening news.
The first report of the blast which emerged on Monday afternoon said 15 were killed. Various state-run media reports said that between 40 and 200 people were injured in the explosion, some of whom were nearby villagers whose houses have been damaged. The powerful explosion, which occurred in a garage in a building in the hospital complex, flattened that building and six other houses nearby, the CCTV report said. It caused damage within one square kilometre of the blast site, with one end of a five-storey residential building for hospital staff completely destroyed. The blast site was less than 500 metres from the main building and the patients have since been moved to other local hospitals. Some of the windows of the main hospital building, which can accommodate 300 patients, were smashed.
The cause of the blast remained unknown, according to police contacted by AFP. But official press reports said investigators were looking into the possibility that explosives stored at the site were responsible.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2006 00:00 ||
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#4
Gasses used in anesthesia are usually explosive, also whether or not the gasses blew, they always have Pure Oxygen.
In the presence of Pure Oxygen even a charcoal briquette becomes explosive. Those "NO SMOKING" signs are not just beaurocratic whim.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
04/12/2006 20:07 Comments ||
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It seems to be carelessness with explosives: The explosion in a storeroom below a ground-floor garage destroyed a small hostel and damaged other buildings at the staff hospital run by the Xuangang Electricity and Coal Co. in the Shanxi province city of Yuanping.
Think "company hospital", like in the old mine company towns in the eastern US.
'Local police have found large quantities of detonators and blasting fuses at the incident spot and are further investigating the cause of the explosion,' the agency said. Hospital staff said drivers held keys to the storerooms under the garage and that explosives and butane gas tanks may have been stored there. The hospital is very close to one of the company's coal mines, where explosives are used regularly, a hospital administrator said.
Storeroom under garage at rooming house right next to hospital, not in hospital itself.
A visitor to the hospital reported seeing a fire in the garage about one minute before the explosion, a hospital security officer told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa by telephone on Monday. The agency showed photographs of the flattened garage and the extensive damage to one end of a five-storey apartment block used by hospital staff. The explosion also destroyed six one-storey buildings that were used as a hostel and were 'full of people' early Monday, it quoted eyewitnesses as saying. A local government official said the hostel was used mainly by migrant workers.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006 21:47 Comments ||
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A Spanish judge indicted 29 people Tuesday for alleged roles in the deadly 2004 Madrid train bombings and concluded that the attack was carried out by a local radical Islamic cell that was inspired but not directed by al-Qaeda.
After a two-year investigation, Judge Juan del Olmo handed down a 1,471-page report and the first indictments, charging six people with 191 counts of terrorist murder and 1,755 attempted murders. The 23 other people were charged with collaborating in the plot.
Explosives-filled backpacks were detonated by cell phones on the morning of March 11, 2004, ripping apart four rush-hour commuter trains. One hundred ninety-one people died and 1,800 were injured in what remains Europe's second-worst attack by terrorists after the 1988 downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
The bombers' alleged ideological leader and six other men blew themselves up three weeks after the attack as police closed in on their Madrid apartment hide-out. But several of the people indicted Tuesday are described as senior members of the conspiracy.
They include Jamal Zougam, 32, a Moroccan. He is accused as a material author of the synchronized attack and charged with murder, attempted murder and membership in a terrorist group.
According to the indictment, Zougam supplied the cell phones that detonated the 10 backpacks used in the attacks. In addition, four witnesses identified him as having placed dark blue bags under different seats on trains that blew up.
Youssef Belhadj, Hassam El Haski and Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed -- known as "Mohamed the Egyptian" and currently on trial in Italy on separate terrorism charges -- are also accused of membership in a terror group, murder and attempted murder.
Jose Emilio Suarez Trashorras, a former miner who allegedly provided the bombers with plastic explosives stolen from a mine in northern Spain, was charged with 192 murders. They included that of a policeman who was killed during the attempt to arrest suspected bombers at the Madrid apartment.
The judge discussed the local nature of the conspiracy at length in his report. "If it is true that the operative capacity of al Qaeda has lessened in the past few years, it is not noticeable in a sustained decrease in its activity," del Olmo wrote. "From the point of view of the threat, regional networks and local groups have acquired greater importance."
Del Olmo highlighted a trend of Moroccans and Algerians working together in radical Islamic groups in Spain. "It is a very noteworthy change, given that until relatively recently Algerian groups in Spain were homogenous in so far as nationality, and the relationship between Moroccan and Algerian jihadists was scarce," he wrote.
The 29 indicted people include 15 Moroccans, one Algerian, one Egyptian, one Lebanese, one Syrian and one Syrian with Spanish nationality. Also indicted were nine Spaniards, most on charges of having helped the bombers obtain their explosives.
According to Del Olmo, the bombers studied a report posted on the Web site of the Global Islamic Media Front in which a committee of al-Qaeda experts suggested an attack in Spain before the general elections of March 14, 2004. At the time, Spain had 1,300 troops in Iraq as part of the U.S.-led forces.
The indictment details Spanish intelligence warnings to then-Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar that Spain was one of a group of European countries at high risk of an Islamic terrorist attack.
The bombings took place three days before the election. Aznar initially blamed the Basque separatist group ETA. But as evidence mounted of Islamic involvement, Spanish voters turned against Aznar and unseated his Popular Party. The Socialist Party, led by Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, won the election and quickly fulfilled a campaign promise to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq.
Some people in Spain have speculated that ETA helped the bombers in some way. The indictment draws no such link. "The judge has only addressed what evidence there is," a court spokeswoman said.
A trial is likely to begin next year.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2006 03:52 ||
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So much for the "no al-Qaeda link" that was being touted awhile back ...
A Spanish judge indicted 29 people on Tuesday in connection with the Madrid train bombings two years ago, suggesting that the group attacked Spain for its support of the American-led invasion of Iraq and for its increasingly aggressive police investigations of Islamic radical groups.
The indictment, part of a long-awaited report about the attacks running nearly 1,500 pages, did not assert directly that the plotters had been motivated by anger at the policies of Spain's government. But the judge who wrote the report, Juan del Olmo, noted that the timing of the attacks, March 11, was just three days before Spain's general election.
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of the Socialist Party won that election in a surprise victory and fulfilled his campaign pledge to withdraw Spanish troops immediately after taking office in April.
Five of the men indicted Tuesday were charged with carrying out or conspiring to carry out the attacks, done with 10 strategically placed bombs that exploded on four commuter trains, killing 191 people and wounding about 1,800.
A sixth man was accused of acting as a "necessary collaborator," while the rest were charged with belonging to or aiding a terrorist group, or contributing to the attacks through support roles like providing explosives or falsifying documents.
The trial is expected to begin next spring.
Judge del Olmo's report largely summarized provisional findings he had made in filings over the past two years. It asserted that the cell that carried out the attacks was made up mostly of Moroccan radicals, several with ties to Al Qaeda and to the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, a militant organization seeking to establish an Islamist state in Morocco.
Spanish investigators have said that the cell came together in Spain initially under the guidance of a Syrian named Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, also known as Abu Dahdah, who was convicted in September by a Spanish court for conspiring to commit the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States and for leading a Qaeda cell in Spain. He was sentenced to 27 years in prison.
After Mr. Yarkas and several followers were arrested in 2001, investigators have said, the group reconstituted itself under the leadership of Sarhane ben Abdelmajid Fakhet, a former Tunisian graduate student in economics who in 2003 began calling for an attack on Spain in part because of its support of American policies toward Iraq.
There is no indication in Judge del Olmo's report that Mr. Fakhet or Jamal Ahmidan, a Moroccan identified as the operational head of the cell, had any direct links to the top leadership of Al Qaeda.
But in explaining the major influences on the group, Judge del Olmo cited a document posted on a Web site run by Global Islamic Media Front, a group widely seen as a front for Al Qaeda.
The document, apparently posted in late 2003, called for attacks on Spain before the general elections in March, saying they would help drive a wedge between the Spanish public, which overwhelmingly opposed the invasion of Iraq, and the government of former Prime Minister José María Aznar, who supported the invasion and contributed troops.
Judge del Olmo also suggested that the Madrid attacks were partly a response to a crackdown on Islamic radical groups by the Spanish police that began in the late 1990's. That crackdown, which included the arrest of Mr. Yarkas and the breakup of his cell in Madrid, disrupted a major logistical base for Islamic radicals in Europe, Spanish investigators say.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2006 03:51 ||
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Four men charged in Hawai'i and Michigan of conspiring to purchase aircraft equipment and weapons and export them to an Indonesian company remained in federal custody here following their arrest Sunday after arriving in Honolulu last week. The men are accused of trying to export not only the equipment and weapons from an unnamed U.S.-based company, but two also are charged with trying to get price quotes for Sidewinder missiles and aircraft ammunition.
"We consider this to be a serious and grave threat to our national security," U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy III of Detroit said yesterday. "The agencies involved in the case worked hard to arrest individuals who were ready, willing and able to buy American weapons and take them outside the country."
U.S. Attorney Ed Kubo declined to talk about the case's details, such as who would ultimately get the equipment and weapons. He said the case is still under investigation. But Kubo said the case did not involve any plot to use the weapons for terrorism.
The four include Hadianto Djoko Djuliarso, 41, of Indonesia, and Ibrahim Bin Amran, 46, of Singapore, who were charged last week in an indictment by a federal grand jury in Michigan. They are accused of conspiring to violate the U.S. Arms Export Control Act and to launder money. The other two are Ignatius Ferdinandus Soeharli, also known as "Igna," and David Beecroft, who were charged here Monday with conspiring to violate the federal export law. The conspiracy charge that they tried to purchase and export the items without a license by the Department of State carries a prison term of up to five years.
The Michigan indictment alleges a conspiracy involving an employee of a company owned by Djuliarso and Amran sending an e-mail in March last year to an unnamed company based in the United States seeking to purchase military aircraft parts for export to Indonesia. At the time, Indonesia was under a U.S. embargo that prohibited exporting those items to that country, the indictment said. In July last year, Amran also sent a message to the company asking for quotes for aircraft armaments that included 245 Sidewinder missiles and 5,000 rounds of strafing ammunition.
Djuliarso and Amran owned businesses that included Ataru Indonesia, which was identified as the company purchasing the items, according to the indictment. The two traveled to Michigan last year to meet representatives of a U.S. company, the indictment said. The two men, as well as Soeharli and Beecroft, arrived here Friday to meet with representatives of the U.S. company, a federal agent's affidavit said. All four were arrested after meetings that included a viewing of samples of MP-5 machine guns and military aircraft parts, according to the affidavit.
Federal prosecutors here were preparing to transfer the case against Djuliarso and Amran to Michigan. A hearing on that request is scheduled for tomorrow.
Defense lawyers either could not be reached for comment or said they could not say much about the case, although Amran's attorney Michael Park said his client will plead not guilty.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006 13:14 ||
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LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A leading fundraiser for an Islamic charity allegedly linked to terrorists who has spent nearly two years in federal custody should be deported to Jordan, an appeals panel has ruled. The opinion released Tuesday by the Board of Immigration Appeals overturned a judge who blocked Abdel-Jabbar Hamdan's deportation last month on grounds that he would be tortured because of his alleged ties to Hamas. The judge also had recommended that Hamdan, of Buena Park, be released from custody.
"What has happened here is that the government just doesn't like his politics," said Hamdan's attorney, Stacey Tolchin. "That's why they're trying to deport him."
Since his "politics" include raising money for Hamas, yes, we are.
Hamdan, 45, who founded a mosque in Anaheim, was arrested on immigration charges in July 2004 as federal authorities unsealed an indictment against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. The government alleged the Texas-based charity funneled millions of dollars to the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which is listed as a terrorist organization. Hamdan was accused of having ties to terrorism but was never criminally charged. Instead, he was convicted of overstaying a student visa he got 27 years ago and ordered deported.
Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the government is "gratified by the (board's) decision." Hamdan's attorneys said they would appeal the board's ruling to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is reviewing a separate petition for his release. He has been jailed for 21 months.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006 09:38 ||
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#1
He will leave behind 6 offspring who will carry on for him.
Posted by: ed ||
04/12/2006 10:17 Comments ||
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KARACHI, Pakistan - Mobs of youths rioted in this southern city for a second straight day Wednesday to protest a suicide bombing that killed at least 57 people, which a top Pakistani official said was aimed at "eliminating" the leadership of a moderate Sunni Muslim group.
Quibble: they weren't "eliminated", they were eliminated. Murdered. Stone cold dead. No need for sneer quotes.
Amid soaring sectarian tensions, hundreds of security forces blocked main roads and shut schools throughout Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, to prevent a repeat of Tuesday's riots that broke out after the suicide bombing. But a group of youths, apparently supporters of the Tehrik group, rampaged through a neighborhood, setting fire to a bus and two cars and smashing shop windows before police forces, aided by local Islamic clerics, brought the situation under control, said area police chief Shah Nawaz Khan.
Shop keepers in Multan, a Punjab provincial city 230 miles north of Karachi, closed their doors to protest the bombing, while about 150 Islamic students staged a noisy rally at a busy intersection in the capital, Islamabad. "We demand answers for the blood of these martyrs," the students chanted.
And vows of Dire Revenge(tm) can't be far off. Happy birthday, big Mo.
Police on Wednesday confirmed that a lone unidentified suicide bomber detonated an 11-pound bomb near Sunni dignitaries seated in a downtown Karachi park Tuesday at a religious service with 10,000 other worshippers. The service, to mark the birthday of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, was organized by moderate Sunni groups including the Tehrik group, whose top two leaders and a third senior official were among the 57 people killed, including the bomber. Numerous Tekrik leaders, including its founder, have been killed since forming more than seven years ago. The group promotes a moderate form of Islam and members are known to have close ties with Shiite Muslim groups. But hard-line Sunni groups are opposed to more liberal groups, like Tehrik, and their more moderate schools of thought. Simmering tensions between hard-line Sunni and Shiite groups have also been behind previous attacks.
#1
You don't fling mud without getting that on to yourself too.
When they like to hate and seeth so much, they naturally create more opportunities for the same. In their bigoted self-righteous one-way street approach to life this is what they'll reap naturally.
Karachi, 12 April (AKI) - (by Syed Saleem Shazad) - The Sunni Tehrik movement in Pakistan, whose leadership was wiped out in Tuesday's bombing at a prayer gathering in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, which killed 57 people, has given authorities 48 hours to catch the perpetrators of the attack or face the "anger of the masses."
The call was issued on Wednesday by the movement's interim chief, Shahid Ghaur,i in a news conference in Karachi. Sunni Tehrik's leader, Abbas Qadri, and several other of the religious movement's top officials, were killed in the blast in a Karachi park where thousands of worshippers had gathered for evening prayers. Police say the explosive was detonated by a suicide bomber.
"Everybody knows who the assassins are," Ghauri said. "They are the same who killed our founder, Saleem Qadri," he said referring to Qadri's murder in a 2001 ambush, allegedly planned by a rival group, the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM). "They are the same who have been killing our members and have been threatening to kill Abbas Qadri," said Ghauri, speaking at the news conference.
"We demand the resignation of the provincial government and an independent inquiry to be carried out only by the military intelligence or the inter-services intelligence. No other inquiry into the case will be accepted," Ghauri said.
Sunni Therik - originally formed as a moderate Sunni group, but increasingly taking more hardline positions - has been locked in a bitter rivalry with the pro-American MQM, which is largely made up of people whose families in 1948 moved from India to Pakistan when the latter came into being. Funeral prayers for the slain Sunni Tehrik leaders are scheduled for Thursday evening.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006 08:50 ||
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Hmm. Is the MQM getting into the suicide bombing biz? I thought that more of an MMA specialty.
Posted by: ed ||
04/12/2006 9:16 Comments ||
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#2
It is just astonishing, how fast they know for sure who did it. And yet, are unable to stop it.
No, No. The Muslim specialty is fast action, right or wrong, make more enemies who cares if we kill the wrong people, the right people will get the message. Just suprised that they don't realize that then, the wrong people will want them dead. It's they that dose'nt get the message.
Scores of people, including prominent Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal leader Haji Hanif Billo, were killed when a bomb went off at a religious gathering in Karachi late yesterday. Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao said 45 people were killed and over 100 injured but unofficial toll was put at 67. Abbas Qadri, Shah Turabul Haq and Irshad Bhatti leaders and prominent members of religious parties were seriously injured. Police later confirmed the death of several leaders.
A suicide bomber triggered off the blast when speakers were offering Maghreb prayers. Ambulances were ferrying the injured to hospital, witnesses said, adding that limbs were seen scattered in the area. Witnesses also said the blast sparked panic among thousands of people who had gathered at the citys Nishtar Park to celebrate the birth anniversary of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Soon after, angry youths, some of them armed, went on a rampage, setting a petrol station and cars ablaze and firing on police and paramilitary troops as they tried to reach Nishtar Park, in the heart of the citys commercial district.
The blast was believed to have been centered close to the stage where prayer leaders from Jamaat-e-Ahle Sunnat, had been standing. Authorities had taken tough crowd control measures yesterday, two days after 29 women and children died in a stampede at a mosque.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2006 00:00 ||
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OK, I am confused. As was mentioned yesterday, Barelvis celebrate Mo's bare nekkid day, but here are a bunch of Deobandi MMA, Sunni Tehrik, JuS bigwigs who got boomed on the stage.
In February, rumors that Maulana Abbas Qadri (wounded yesterday) was killed started riots in Karachi. Could this be revenge for that. Otherwise who should rise to the top of the suspect list when so many high value targets are in one place?
Posted by: ed ||
04/12/2006 7:47 Comments ||
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Wanted to clarify my question a bit. Both the Deobandi MMA and Barelvi Sunni Tehrik were on the same stage and both groups leaders died. Why were MMA at an Barelvi festival? Couuld it have been a ploy to get an MMA bomber past security and take out a lot of Barelvi leadership, friendly fire be damned.
Also, I take it Sunni Tehrik head Abbas Qadri later died.
Posted by: ed ||
04/12/2006 8:29 Comments ||
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#3
Details from AKI: Prominent Sunni Tehrik leaders killed in the attack included Hafiz Taqi, Haji Hanif Bilo, Abbas Qadri, Iftiqhar Bhatti and Akram Qadri. Another leader, Kokab Noorani, was injured. Eyewitnesses said that the blast occured near a stage where the religious scholars had gathered for prayers.
"It's better to ask who survived!" said one mourner, apparently referring to two former Pakistani cabinet ministers, Maulana Shah Turabul Haq Qadri and Haji Hanif Tayyab, who moved away from the stage just before the blast occurred.
Left the stage before the boom, huh? Lucky or informed?
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006 9:09 Comments ||
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The world's leading powers, including Russia and China, have joined to condemn Iran for advancing its atomic program in defiance of the United Nations.
However, Russia says force cannot resolve the dispute.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declared that his nation has produced its first batch of enriched uranium and will now press ahead with industrial-scale enrichment.
His announcement has kept Iran on a collision course with the United Nations and with Western countries convinced it seeks atomic arms, not just fuel for power stations as it insists.
United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says the UN Security Council, which last month told Iran to halt all enrichment work, should respond with unspecified "strong steps" to maintain the credibility of the international community.
Asked if the council might impose sanctions on Iran, White House spokesman Scott McClellan says: "That's a possibility as well, that's one option that's available".
Russia and China, key players on the Iran issue with veto rights at the Security Council, have hitherto opposed sanctions.
Force 'no answer'
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says the use of force was no answer to the stand-off over Iran's nuclear program.
"If such plans exist they will not be able to solve this problem," he said.
"On the contrary they could create a dangerous explosive blaze in the Middle East, where there are already enough blazes."
US President George W Bush this week dismissed media reports of plans for strikes on Iran as "wild speculation".
China's UN Ambassador Wang Guangya says Iran's enrichment move is "not in line with what is required of them by the international community".
Russia's Foreign Ministry has urged Iran to stop all enrichment work.
But a senior Iranian official has ruled out any retreat.
"Iran's nuclear activities are like a waterfall which has begun to flow, it cannot be stopped," the official, who asked not to be named, said.
Annan urges sense
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has urged all parties to return to talks and "cool down the rhetoric".
Three European states behind a deal to suspend enrichment which broke down last year have weighed in with criticism of Iran.
British Foreign Minister Jack Straw says the announcement is "deeply unhelpful" and undermines confidence.
His German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, says Iran is "going in precisely the wrong direction" for a return to negotiations.
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy says it is a worrying step and Iran should stop its "dangerous activities".
The US State Department says it is unable to confirm that Iran had enriched uranium and some experts say even if Iran's assertions are accurate, it would still be years before the Islamic Republic is able to produce a nuclear weapon.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei will visit Iran on Thursday to seek Iranian cooperation with the Security Council and the IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog.
A British Air Force doctor being court-martialled for refusing a posting to Iraq said on Wednesday he believed the United States was the moral equivalent of Nazi Germany. Australian-born Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith could face an unlimited jail sentence for disobeying an order to go to Iraq last year and four orders to prepare for his deployment. The case is the first of its kind in Britain over the war in Iraq.
"As early as 2004 I regarded the United States to be on par with Nazi Germany as regards its activities in the Gulf," Kendall-Smith told the court amid a series of bitter exchanges with prosecutor David Perry.
Perry asked: "Are you saying the U.S. is the moral equivalent of the Third Reich?"
Kendall-Smith replied: "That's correct."
The judge in the case has already ruled that orders for British troops to deploy to Iraq in 2005 were legal because the British presence was covered by a United Nations Security Council resolution passed after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Speaking firmly but often emotionally, Kendall-Smith testified in his own defense as the only witness called in the case. He said he initially tried to resign on learning he was being sent to Iraq, but later concluded it was his duty to remain in the Air Force and refuse the order. "I love the Air Force today as much as the day I volunteered, sir," he said.
"I just didn't know we'd have to, you know, go to war."
The case, before a civilian judge advocate and a panel of five officers, concluded on Wednesday, and the panel will return on Thursday to consider a verdict. The judge provided no room for the panel to accept Kendall-Smith's argument that the orders were illegal. "My direction to you, gentlemen, as a matter of law, is that each of the orders was a lawful order," judge advocate Jack Bayliss said. "The defense contention that the orders were unlawful is wrong."
Kendall-Smith's lawyers have conceded that Kendall-Smith did not obey orders. But they presented him as a conscientious officer trying to carry out his duty.
"All I ask you to think about is that he is a human being, and he has wrestled with his conscience, and has taken a great moral stride," his lawyer, Philip Sapsford, told the panel.
Prosecutors described Kendall-Smith, who holds both British and New Zealand citizenship, as an aggrieved officer who had repeatedly clashed with his superiors. Kendall-Smith's belligerent testimony showed he was "an easily moved, stubborn individual, prone to displays of temper and resentment," prosecutor Perry said. "(He) would have been difficult for any senior officer to deal with."
Sounds like a liberal doctor, who perhaps joined the service to pay for medical school, or get trained as a doctor. Thought that he wouldn't see any action, or it would be a "justified, civilized war". The US had one or two who pulled the same thing during Gulf War One, if I remember. They got court marshalled as well.
A refusenik was a Soviet Jew who was refused an exit visa, in violation of international standards on human rights. To apply tht to a military deserter, represents a vile attempt to steal moral capital.
A highly competent and, by all accounts, pleasant man, Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith, is on patrol in mountainous terrain. In the course of one sadly uncontrolled explosion, an iron bar is picked up by the force of the blast and driven clean through the front part of his head. Malcom is sent flying, but, to everybody's surprise, he survives the removal of the protruding bar. As he recovers, however, it is observed that his personality has dramatically changed, though his memory and intelligence remain apparently unaffected. In 2006, a physician named Harlow from London writes about him: "His equilibrium, or balance, so to speak, between his intellectual faculties and animal propensities seems to have been destroyed. He is fitful, irreverent, indulging in the grossest profanity (which was not previously his custom), manifesting but little deference for his fellows, impatient of restraint or advice when it conflicts with his desires." The now extremely rude Malcom Kendall-Smith is an object of immense medical interest, for it seems clear, from his somewhat crude experience of psychosurgery, that one can alter the social behavior of the human animal by physically interfering with the frontal lobes of the brain.
#6
The people who repeatedly compare the United States to NAZI Germany are not only wrong, they are delusional and have no understanding of what the NAZI military did, especially in the Ukraine, Russia, and Poland. They not only greatly distort history, they completely rewrite it. This jerk should be hanged from a yardarm from that cruiser that's moored between Tower Bridge and Westminster, and left there. Lacquer the body with about 40 coats of clear varnish, irradiate it to he$$ and back to kill all the bacteria, and let him hang there until Charles' grandchildren are old men.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
04/12/2006 17:26 Comments ||
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#7
One of the many reasons we continue to hear and read of these idiotic comparisons of the United States to Nazi Germany is the mainstream media. And since we're talking about a Tommy who made such an idiotic comparison, I'd like to present to you Marshal of the Royal Air Force, the late Sir Arthur Harris:
"A journalist will say anything to earn a fast buck. I get my information from the horse's mouth, not from the rear end where they do."
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/12/2006 19:37 Comments ||
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#12
How about the wanton destruction of whole cities populated with civilians...
By todays standards that is pretty unethical...
Nevertheless war IS messy and those engaged in it get 'dirty': on both sides.
I dont think you can be engaged in killing people and hold any moral high ground for very long.It simply does not wash. Most people see right through the propaganda BS...
I would happily compare anyone who kills another innocent human being as a Nazi...
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/12/2006 22:33 Comments ||
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#19
"I wonder why I never hear any Jews comparing the U.S. to Nazi Germany."
You haven't been listening to the "right" people, cf. Chomsky and Finkelstein.
Posted by: Ernest Brown ||
04/12/2006 22:41 Comments ||
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#20
Even the HISTORY CHANNEL as of last night proclaimed STALIN killed 25Milyuhn or more of his own people, to include the pre-war wilful starvation of the Ukraine. In any case, its the US DemoLeft and its MSM thats wilfully treating Dubya as hated despicable "Adolf BushHitler" for 2008. but whom is also an imperfect, misguided, semi/non-educated Male Brutish ideo HalfCommie HalfBrother/HalfComrade to Marx, Stalin and Mao, when it comes to the USA warring around the globe vv 9-11. The RINO agenda-less Dems are such for a reason, and that raeson entails having PC,
"PLAUSIBLE DENIAL/DENIABLE" alibis should it become necessary to have Radical Islamist Spetzlamists deliberately attack Washington andor Amer cities. incurring such levels of casualties as to continue to induce the Fed to regulate. militarize, and Socialize everything while simul justifying no American-specific overseas military retaliation for any new domestic attacks.
COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM MUST NOT RECEIVE BLAME FOR ANYTHING OR EVERYTHING PERTAINING TO AMERICA LOSING ITS SOVEREIGNTY, AND COMING UNDER OWG AND SOCIALIST-COMMUNIST WORLD ORDER, VOLUNTARILY ANDOR BY ARMED FORCE. AKA NATIONAL MILITARY DEFEAT IN WAR! The Left believes it will inevitably win becuz its ideo stands for any and every side, and no side except its own. WEIRDLY AND MYSTERIOUSLY SURVIVING GOP-CAUSED/BLAMED
"AMER HIROSHIMAS", INCLUD PC ATTACKS = ASSSASSINATION ATTEMPTS ON DUBYA AND GOP-CONGRESS = SAMEO SAMEO FOR SAVING AMERICA AND WORLD FROM GOP-CAUSED/BLAMED "NUCLEAR BRINKMANSHIP" AND NUKE WAR.
More than 90 percent of the suicide attacks in Iraq are carried out by terrorists and foreign fighters recruited, trained and equipped by al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a U.S. military spokesman said Monday.
Al-Zarqawi and al-Qaida in Iraq "are real threats to the citizens, security and stability of Iraq and we continue to conduct aggressive operations to eliminate the threat they pose not only to Iraq, but also to the rest of the region," Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said in a statement.
The Washington Post reported Monday that U.S. military was conducting a propaganda campaign to "magnify the role" of al-Zarqawi to turn Iraqis against him and to link the war in Iraq to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
According to the newspaper, some U.S. military intelligence officials believe the campaign has overstated al-Zarqawi's importance within the Iraqi insurgency.
Lynch's statement did not refer directly to the Post story but said "a recent article" had called into question the threat posed by al-Zarqawi.
"Nothing could be further from the truth," Lynch said. "The terrorists and foreign fighters that he recruits, trains and equips carry out more than 90 percent of the insidious suicide attacks against the men, women and children of Iraq attacks that have killed or injured thousands of Iraqis in the last year alone."
The Post quoted Col. Derek Harvey, who it said served as a military intelligence officer in Iraq, as telling an Army meeting at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., last summer that al-Zarqawi and other foreign fighters had conducted deadly bombing attacks but remain "a very small part of the actual numbers."
"Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature, if you will _ made him more important than he really is, in some ways," the Post quoted Harvey as saying, citing a transcript of the meeting. "The long-term threat is not Zarqawi or religious extremists, but these former regime types and their friends."
The newspaper said Harvey did not return its phone calls seeking comment on his remarks.
Lynch acknowledged that al-Qaida in Iraq represents a "relatively small portion" of the insurgency but "their impact has been ruthlessly devastating."
He cited statements attributed to al-Zarqawi on Islamist Web sites calling for foreign fighters to come to Iraq and declaring war against Shiites and coalition forces here.
In January, al-Zarqawi's group said in a Web statement that it had joined five other Iraqi insurgent groups to form the Mujahedeen Shura Council. Since then, al-Zarqawi's group has stopped issuing its own statements.
On April 2, Huthayafa Azzam, believed to have close ties to Iraqi militants, told The Associated Press that al-Zarqawi had been confined to a military role within the coalition, specifically barred from making public statements and from any political or propaganda role.
Azzam said Iraqis in the Shura Council had demanded that al-Zarqawi give up his political role _ particularly in propaganda _ because he had "embarrassed" them with statements about regional politics, al-Qaida's activities and beheading videos.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2006 04:06 ||
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I can't believe they are embarrassed over the beheading videos, unless it is because of their poor picture quality.
A booby-trapped car blew up close to a popular restaurant in the Iraqi capital after nightfall on Tuesday wounding at least nine people, a security source said. The source said the explosives-laden vehicle, parked near the restaurant, blew up at 8 p.m., shortly after arrival of policemen at the restaurant, adding that four of them were wounded in the blast. The explosion wounded five civilians and caused extensive damage to the restaurant and nearby stores. Police sealed off the scene of the blast and the wounded were taken to hospitals.
Earlier on Tuesday, three Iraqi army recruits were killed after coming under fire in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. The bodies of two Iraqi civilians were also found in the city, police reports said.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2006 00:00 ||
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Iraqi police have detained 31 private security guards in a raid the interior ministry said had netted sophisticated weaponry that was meant to be used for attacks. The staff of the Al-Forat security company were "arrested as they planned to carry out terrorist activities against innocent people", the ministry said in a statement on Monday.
The 31 employees were picked up from the central Hamra hotel, which houses the offices of a number of foreign firms, including media organisations, the ministry said without specifying the day of the arrests. Bayan Jabr Solagh, the Iraqi interior minister, said Al-Forat "does not have a licence from our ministry" to operate as a security firm and charged that some of its detained employees had confessed to participating in violence. "We discovered a lot of weapons including sophisticated rifles usually used by snipers, and also rocket-propelled grenades," the minister told state television. "I am astonished how a private security company can have arms like RPGs as our ministry does not allow such companies to have more than revolvers and Kalashnikovs."
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2006 00:00 ||
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Al-Forat security company
tid bit.
Al-Forat television, run by a Shi'ite political party...?
Shiite leaders from the powerful United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) have failed to decide the fate of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari. Kurds and Sunni Arabs have rejected his candidacy to head the next government, a key sticking point holding up its formation almost four months after elections, forcing the Shiites to meet to decide his fate. But Bassem Sharif, spokesman of the Fadhila Party, says the Shiite alliance leaders broke up the talks aimed at resolving the political impasse until Wednesday (local time). Mr Sharif says the secularists led by former premier Iyad Allawi "had reservations about the programs of the alliance and not about Jaafari himself". Mr Allawi's group had also rejected Mr Jaafari's candidacy.
As the deadlock continues, an adamant Mr Jaafari is refusing to budge, reaffirming his position that only Parliament could now decide his fate. "I have a principle that I will accept what our people decide," he said. "I was elected democratically by the people and I do not see power as a personal gain but a reward to be given to the people."
The dominant UIA, which won 128 out of 275 parliament seats in the December election, chose Mr Jaafari by a single vote in February but his nomination has faced stiff resistance amid accusations he failed to quell violence. The alliance lacks the overall majority in parliament needed to push through a nomination for prime minister on its own.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2006 00:00 ||
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Shiite leaders from the powerful United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) have failed to decide the fate of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari.
His fate is already decided. They know it, we know it, everybody knows it. But what is it with these guys that they have to do the whole bluster, puffing up the chest thing. What are they waiting for. He's past history. Move forward.
#2
As the deadlock continues, an adamant Mr Jaafari is refusing to budge, reaffirming his position that only Parliament could now decide his fate. "I have a principle that I will accept what our people decide," he said. "I was elected democratically by the people and I do not see power as a personal gain but a reward to be given to the people."
IIRC, he wasn't voted in by Parliament, but only by a party vote. Party vote in, party vote out...
#3
yeah, Ptah, but SCIRI doesnt have the votes to push him out in a party vote (IE a UIA vote) as long as Dawa and the Sadrists back him. Thats why they want him to go quietly, to avoid a split in the UIA on the floor of parliament.
UP to 200 Palestinian policemen on Tuesday took their positions in Rafah crossings, which separates Palestinian territories and Egypt. Salim Abu Safiya, director of crossings in Gaza, told reporters the deployment of the Palestinian police force aimed at restoring order inside the crossing and provide protection for the European monitors.
Rafah passageway is the only crossing for the population of Gaza for the outside world. Abu Safiya said it was important to work jointly with other Palestinian security forces in the crossing to facilitate the movement of travelers.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2006 00:00 ||
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European Union foreign ministers have approved a temporary suspension of aid to the Palestinian Authority. Ministers said after a meeting in Luxembourg that some of the 500 million euro ($600 million) cut in funding to the Palestinian government would now be channelled via humanitarian aid organisations.
Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, said: "We do not wish to punish the Palestinian people for the decision they freely made to elect a Hamas-dominated government. At the same time, Hamas has got to recognise that being elected as a government, democratically, they have responsibilities as democrats to do what everybody else has to do as democrats, which is to eschew violence."
Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, said that the Palestinians were not being abandoned and that the EU "will do business as usual with the Palestinian people". However, Ben Bot, the Dutch foreign minister, said: "The Palestinian people have opted for this government, so they will have to bear the consequences."
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2006 00:00 ||
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The United Nations (UN) has advised its aid agencies to avoid meeting with Hamas political leaders and to limit contacts to technocrats in the new Palestinian Government. Restrictions on UN contacts with the new Government could further increase pressure on Hamas leaders, who are already shunned by Israel, the United States and the European Union. But by maintaining contacts with the new Government at a "technical level for operational purposes," the UN bucks efforts by the United States to isolate the cash-strapped government and its ministries. UN aid agencies are at the same time advised to "avoid political contact" with Hamas leaders. These leaders would include cabinet ministers and other high-level appointments.
In New York, chief UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric, says "working contacts" for aid agencies and other UN officials with the new Palestinian Government are permitted to ensure continuation of humanitarian programs. "The issue of political contacts will be dealt with as it arises," Mr Dujarric said.
Mr Dujarric points to statements from the quartet of Middle East mediators, which includes the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia. While the quartet was united in calling on Hamas to renounce violence, recognise Israel and abide by interim peace deals, members have each set out different policies governing contacts with the new Government.
Unlike the UN, the Bush administration has barred its officials and contractors from having any contact with members of the Hamas Government, including at the technocrat level. In private briefings, Bush administration officials have told UN agencies and non-government organisations to ensure that they do not provide any American funding to the Palestinian Authority, its ministries or local municipalities. The United States has also asked the agencies and groups to abide by its strict no-contact policy when working on projects funded by US taxpayer dollars, according to UN officials briefed by Bush administration officials.
Like the United States, the European Union has severed political contacts with the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority. But ministers of the 25 member states agreed that humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people would continue along with working-level contacts with lower-level officials to make that possible. Russia, in contrast, has brushed aside calls to shun Hamas and has maintained contacts with the Islamic militant group at the highest of levels.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2006 00:00 ||
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We told you what would happen if the check bounced.
Posted by: K. Annan ||
04/12/2006 9:11 Comments ||
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A group of Muslims protesting Playboy's decision to launch an Indonesian edition of the magazine clashed with police Wednesday and stoned the company's editorial offices, witnesses said. No one was injured in the protest involving around 150 members of the Women's Christian Temperance UnionIslamic Defenders' Front, a small group with a history of attacking bars and nightclubs, as well as Western embassies. The protesters smashed several windows and the door and gate at the magazine's offices in south Jakarta, witnesses said. Several were seen scuffling with police officers guarding the building. But many Islamic politicians and preachers have condemned the publication, with most saying that the name of the magazine itself was grounds for the government to ban it. The magazine is selling well, according to vendors, and threatened mass protests against it have failed to materialize.
Hef just celebrated his 80th birthday. The world will be a smaller place when the old goat's gone...
#3
I notice that they have the book open to the centerfold when burning. Might as well take a look and protest at the same time.
Maybe thier eyes will fall out.
Gypsies tramps and thieves
We'd hear it from the people of the town
They'd call us
Gypsies tramps and thieves
But every night all the men would come around
And lay their money down
A suspected Abu Sayyaf leader, who landed on Washington's list of terrorists for bombings that included an attack that killed an American serviceman in 2002, and his father were killed during a shootout with authorities in Curuan district here early yesterday morning.
Colonel Edgardo Gidaya, commander of the antiterror Task Force Zamboanga, identified the slain suspect as Amilhamja Ajijul, alias Alex Alvarez. The father was identified as Andalul Ajijul.
Gidaya said the elder Ajijul was killed when Alvarez's group exchanged shots with authorities at around 3 a.m. in the sub-village of Dulian in the village of Calabasa.
Alvarez was critically wounded in the 30-minute gunfight and died while being treated at a hospital.
The United States had put a bounty of $20,000 on his head and, according to Senior Superintendent Angelito Casimiro of the Western Mindanao police, another P350,000 under the interior department's reward program.
Alvarez and his men were also wanted for crimes other than the bombings like kidnapping and murder.
Four of Alvarez's companions were arrested. They were identified as Asirin Asmani Aslon, Sherhan Aslon, Sawang Aslon and Sambri Kamlon Andon. They were brought to the military's Southern Command headquarters for interrogation.
Gidaya said government security forces also recovered two .45-cal. pistols, cellular phones, jungle bolos and documents from the Abu Sayyaf safehouse.
"Finally we neutralized the leader of this urban terrorist group of the Abu Sayyaf and we have preempted a much wider scale of terrorist attack in the peninsula," he told the Inquirer.
Gidaya said the death of Alvarez and the "neutralization" of his group was an effort by "homegrown experts."
"No foreign troops were involved. Our units painstakingly built up information for almost four years," he said.
Gidaya said Alvarez was wanted for two bomb attacks at the Shoppers' shopping malls here on Oct. 17, 2002, that claimed several lives, another bombing at the Fort Pilar Shrine three days later, as well as the 2000 kidnapping of 53 students and teachers at a Roman Catholic school on nearby Basilan island.
Alvarez's group was also believed to be responsible for the bombing of a café near the gates of the military's Camp Arturo Enrile in the village of Malagutay which killed five persons, including Sergeant Mark Johnson, an American soldier. Forty others, including another US serviceman, were wounded in that attack.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2006 04:03 ||
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Sergeant Mark Johnson
Correction- Sergeant First Class Mark Jackson.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
04/12/2006 10:44 Comments ||
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A suspected Abu Sayyaf rebel was accidentally killed by a bomb he intended to use to attack government troops on violent southern Jolo island, an army general said Wednesday. The powerful blast on Tuesday mangled the body of the still-unidentified militant in Boalo Lipid village in Jolo's Maimbung town, said Brigadier General Alexander Aleo, head of an anti-terrorist task force.
Aleo said the militant planted a land mine, which failed to explode when a military convoy passed by but went off when he checked on it.
Why does a picture of Wiley Coyote checking a landmine after the Roadrunner safely eats the birdseed off it come to mind?
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2006 03:55 ||
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#1
This is better than cartoons!
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
04/12/2006 8:50 Comments ||
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#5
When I got my first red-eye-reducing camera, I took lots of pix of my feet. I'd click the shutter button, nothing would happen, I'd bring the camera down to check it, and *flash!* yet another picture of my comely toes.
#6
Today completely sucked until I read this article.
Posted by: Better now ||
04/12/2006 17:33 Comments ||
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#7
yep - Abu coyote goes out, checks it, jumps up and down violently on it until BOOM****... but you also need a really deep valley for him to plummet in after BOOMing (with that little impact cloud)...do they have those in the PI?
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/12/2006 19:27 Comments ||
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#8
Yes and big rocks to land on them after
Posted by: 49 pan ||
04/12/2006 19:57 Comments ||
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#9
I like the part where Wiley bounces from landmine explosion to landmine explosion over, and over, and over, (Etc)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
04/12/2006 20:31 Comments ||
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#10
LOL 49! coool
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/12/2006 20:43 Comments ||
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Seven members of the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Suffia gang voluntarily surrendered to the military in the province of Sarangani, a top military official announced.
Armed Forces of the Philippines' 4th Civil Relations Group (CRG) chief Lt. Col. Oscar Lasangue said the militants are followers of Akmad Yusop, whose group is affiliated with the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf, operating in the areas of Maitum, Lake Sebu and Palimbang in Sarangani province.
Lasangue identified them as Eddie Tungkay alias Tafilak, Daniel Bon alias Otig, Luna Tungkay alias Hamsa, Josen Tungkay alias Josen, Richard Tungkay alias Maglam, Israel Tungkay alias Dod, and Ludy Gaday alias Ludy.
The former members of the militant group said they were merely used by Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon as security guard and tour guides in Sarangani province.
Hapilon alias Salahuddin has a P11 million bounty in his head.
Hapilon is one of the Basilan-based Abu Sayyaf leaders who fled to remote areas in Mindanao to escape authorities.
Hapilon, like Khadafy Janjalani and Jainal Antel Sali alias Abu Solaiman were involved in the 2001 kidnapping of Americans Guillermo Sobero and missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham.
Lasangue said the Abu Sayyaf movements are limited and are no longer capable of committing terror actions as the military offensive continues with great intensity coupled by the people's support in the government's anti-terror campaign.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2006 03:54 ||
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#1
The Abu Suffia were a gang that extorted money from the locals near Palembang. Like the article said when the Abu Sayyaf came to the Kraan River to hide and plan missions they were escorted by the Abu Suffia. These guys were intorduced to the Abu Sayyaf by the MILF leadership in the town and protected by the MILF. THey are really nothing more than punks that carried bags for the Abu Sayyaf.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
04/12/2006 8:49 Comments ||
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SUSPECTED Tamil rebels blew up a bus full of sailors in northeastern Sri Lanka today killing 12 and further dimming hopes for a new round of peace talks next week, officials said.
The latest bombing, the second in as many days, was seen by officials involved in the Norwegian-backed peace bid as a blow to their efforts to get the parties to meet in Switzerland to discuss ways to save a faltering truce.
Today's bombing raised to 19 the number of people killed in the latest upsurge in violence against government forces.
The navy bus, the third in a convoy of seven transporting off-duty sailors, was travelling from the port city of Trincomalee to Kantale, the next main town in the region, when it was caught in the landmine blast, a police official said.
"Victims have been sent to three hospitals," the official said. He said the bus had hit an oncoming van just after the blast and four passengers, including three Britons, were also hurt.
A spokesman for the British High Commission here said none of the three had life threatening injuries. The Britons were from the eastern England city of Norwich, police said.
Among those killed was a civilian driver of the bus transporting the sailors returning home for the traditional Sinhala New Year on Thursday.
The latest attack was a copy of yesterday's ambush in the island's north where five soldiers and two civilians were killed. The government blamed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for the attack.
There was no formal reaction from the LTTE.
Shortly after the attack, police fired teargas at a stone-throwing Sinhalese mob in Trincomalee to save a Tamil legislator, officials said.
The Sinhalese put up white flags to mourn the death of sailors and tried to attack legislator Nadarajah Raviraj in retaliation for the bombing.
"The MP's vehicle was damaged and the police action was aimed at protecting him," a police official told AFP from the port town. Several men were also arrested.
The MP had just attended the funeral of Vanniasingham Vigneswaran, who spearheaded the Tamil Resurgence Movement, a known LTTE front organisation.
He was gunned down in Trincomalee Friday by suspected pro-government activists.
The upsurge in violence came as Sri Lanka's international donors urged the Tigers to attend the April 19-21 talks aimed at salvaging a Norwegian-brokered truce that held since February 2002.
Diplomats involved in the process have expressed fears that the talks may be delayed by the violence that followed a war of words between the two sides.
"We are getting close to the date (of talks), but some of the arrangements have not been completed because of the uncertainty," an official said referring to the increasingly tentative Swiss talks next week.
However, the international community was trying to nudge both sides back to the table.
The ambassadors of Norway, Japan and the EU - known as the "Co-Chairs" for their efforts to drum up aid in support of Sri Lanka's peace bid - travelled to Tiger territory yesterday to deliver a strong message.
"The LTTE was urged again to refrain from all violence and to engage in a discussion on a political outcome, ensuring the democratic rights of all people in Sri Lanka," they said.
Today's mine attack was the third against troops since the first round of truce talks held in February in Switzerland where both sides agreed to halt attacks that left at least 153 people dead in December and January.
The LTTE was also held responsible by the Government for a landmine attack on Saturday. The Tamil separatist conflict has claimed over 60,000 lives since 1972.
COLOMBO - Nine people were killed and at least 50 injured in a bomb blast at a vegetable market in Sri Lankas restive northeastern port town of Trincomalee Wednesday, police and doctors said.
The device planted on a bicycle damaged several shops ahead of the traditional Sinhalese and Tamil New Year festivals on Thursday and Friday. It was a bomb placed on a bicycle, a local police official told AFP. First we thought it was a bomb thrown at the market, but now it is established that it was rigged up on a cycle.
Shortly after the blast, local mobs attacked several shops in the market and there were clashes in the multi-ethnic area, police said. An indefinite curfew was imposed on the area to bring the situation under control. Hospital sources said nine people had been killed and at least 50 injured people were admitted to the main hospital.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006 09:18 ||
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Suspected Tamil Tiger rebels killed two Sri Lankan policemen in an ambush on Wednesday, police said. Diplomats said violence was spiralling out of control, upcoming peace talks looked unlikely and war might beckon.
More than 20 people have died since Friday in the island's minority Tamil-dominated north and east. The military have blamed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for a string of claymore fragmentation mine attacks on security forces.
"It was a claymore attack," Senior Superintendent Nihal Samarakoon told Reuters from the northeastern port of Trincomalee, close to the scene of Wednesday's ambush of a police truck. "Two were killed and two were injured. It was the LTTE."
A second round of talks between the two sides is due to take place next week in Switzerland, but with the Tigers still to commit themselves to attending, diplomats fear that the meeting may not happen and that the attacks will destroy the 2002 truce.
The head of the Nordic-staffed unarmed mission monitoring the truce met the rebels on Monday to discuss the escalation in violence, which has taken diplomats and analysts by surprise.
"Oh God," said one western diplomat when told of the latest attack. "It's very bad... there's no other way to describe it. Time is basically running out here. Things are spiralling out of control."
The rebels say they want a government safe-conduct for a Sea Tiger vessel to take their commanders from eastern rebel areas to the de facto Tiger capital for talks. If they cannot meet their commanders, they say they will not go to Geneva.
The rebels deny carrying out the attacks and blame local groups of Tamil civilians, but analysts and diplomats say the ambushes are too sophisticated to be the work of anyone else.
"It seems like the incidents are escalating," head of the Tiger peace secretariat S. Puleedevan told Reuters by satellite phone from rebel territory. "It is very important the Sri Lankan government work so our eastern commanders can come."
A senior diplomat said the attacks could be some form of "bizarre brinkmanship" ahead of talks, but that even if the meeting did take place the best that could be hoped for was staving off war, not real progress. With both sides re-arming, the rebels may not want to wait.
This is the second spell of serious violence in recent months. In December and January, more than 200 died after a series of similar suspected rebel attacks but tensions fell after the two sides agreed to a first round of talks in Geneva.
The rebels say the government has failed to meet its pledge to disarm a renegade group of ex-rebels led by former senior Tiger Karuna Amman, whom they say the army is using to attack them. The army denies the charge.
Analysts fear any return to conflict could see Black Tiger suicide bombers attacking the capital, Colombo, scaring investors away from the island's $20 billion economy and hurting a country hard hit by the 2004 tsunami.
Civilians, aid workers and foreigners have also been hit by the past week's violence. Two Sri Lankan aid workers died in a claymore attack in the northern army-held Jaffna enclave on Monday, and two British nationals were wounded in an attack on a naval bus on Tuesday that killed 10 sailors and a bus driver.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2006 03:56 ||
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A LEBANESE appeal court has dropped terrorism charges against Sydney man Saleh Jamal.
Jamal, 31, could walk free from a Beirut jail within weeks after the Lebanese Court of Appeal ruled that terrorism charges could not be upheld against him due to a lack of evidence.
He allegedly told his wife, in an intercepted telephone call, that she would never see him again because he was going to a place "that is higher than the mountains".
Prosecutors wanted to mount a charge that Jamal was planing to become a suicide bomber.
His two-year sentence - slashed from five years on appeal - is due to expire next month, and he will be released to the custody of Lebanese General Security.
It is then up to NSW police to extradite him to Australia to face charges in Australia over the 1998 shooting of the Lakemba police station, The Australian newspaper reports.
He has previously threatened to crash a plane into the Harbour Bridge if he were forcibly returned to Australia.
April 12 (Bloomberg) -- Iran, defying United Nations Security Council demands to halt its nuclear program, may be capable of making a nuclear bomb within 16 days, a U.S. State Department official said.
Don't panic, yet....
Iran will move to ``industrial scale'' uranium enrichment involving 54,000 centrifuges at its Natanz plant, the Associated Press quoted deputy nuclear chief Mohammad Saeedi as telling state-run television today. ``Using those 50,000 centrifuges they could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 16 days,'' Stephen Rademaker, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, told reporters today in Moscow.
.....it's 16 days from when they get them on line. You may exhale now.
Rademaker was reacting to a statement by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said yesterday the country had succeeded in enriching uranium on a small scale for the first time, using 164 centrifuges. That announcement defies demands by the UN Security Council that Iran shut down its nuclear program this month. The U.S. fears Iran is pursuing a nuclear program to make weapons, while Iran says it is intent on purely civilian purposes, to provide energy. Saeedi said 54,000 centrifuges will be able to enrich uranium to provide fuel for a 1,000-megawat nuclear power plant similar to the one Russia is finishing in southern Iran, AP reported.
``It was a deeply disappointing announcement,'' Rademaker said of Ahmadinejad's statement. Rademaker said the technology to enrich uranium to a low level could also be used to make weapons-grade uranium, saying that it would take a little over 13 years to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon with the 164 centrifuges currently in use. The process involves placing uranium hexafluoride gas in a series of rotating drums or cylinders known as centrifuges that run at high speeds to extract weapons grade uranium.
Iran has informed the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency that it plans to construct 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz next year, Rademaker said. ``We calculate that a 3,000-machine cascade could produce enough uranium to build a nuclear weapon within 271 days,'' he said.
So that's two years from now, more or less. Assuming they don't have a tunnel full of centrifuges already up and running
While the U.S. has concerns over Iran's nuclear program, Rademaker said ``there certainly has been no decision on the part of my government'' to use force if Iran refuses to obey the UN Security Council demand that it shuts down its nuclear program. Rademaker is in Moscow for a meeting of his counterparts from the Group of Eight wealthy industrialized countries. Russia chairs the G-8 this year.
China is concerned about Iran's decision to accelerate uranium enrichment and wants the government in Tehran to heed international criticism of the move, Wang Guangya, China's ambassador to the United Nations said.
Posted by: Steve ||
04/12/2006 13:00 ||
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#1
If all top Iranian officials do this.....
Then we are safe from the next generation!
rd
Posted by: red ||
04/12/2006 13:24 Comments ||
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#2
I know its been said before and often, but the chants and photos from today's Iranian nuclean celebration party - replete with heavy religious overtones - looks/sounds like its right out of "Beneath the Planet of the Apes!" Let's hope for a different ending...
#6
What gets me is the false axiom that for some reason, Iran has to start with crude ore and refine it all the way to nuclear grade material.
Hasn't it crossed anyone's mind that at some point, any of the other following things could have happened?
1) They bought already-enriched uranium, and want to start up a nuclear plant just to bombard the good stuff with neutrons and create plutonium. So once that plant is online, it will start producing plutonium quickly.
2) They bought semi-enriched uranium that needs far fewer centrifuges and processing to become weapons grade than crude ore.
The bottom line here is that either of these situations could give them a bomb doing exactly what they are doing right now, and much faster than projected. The illusion is that they had to begin from scratch.
If that is not the case, then Iran could have the bomb in short order.
#7
Iran has a small PUREX plant at Tehran Nuclear Complex. It can produce 600 grams of Plutonium a year.
The only reactor in Iran that can produce Plutonium is running at high burnup and under IAEA inspections. It is tiny - 5 MW and will produce less than half a kilogram of Pu per year.
Iran can't hide a plutonium production reactor (large IR signature) , nor can it effectively hide additional Pu reprocessing plants - the presence of Krypton 85 gas in the atmosphere would be a dead giveaway.
It also doesn't have the spent fuel - you need about 1 ton of spent fuel (at low burnup) to produce 1 kilogram of Pu.
Posted by: john ||
04/12/2006 16:28 Comments ||
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#8
According to Richard Gawin Three years of 1,300 centrifuges
operating at 3 SWU per year would provide 11,700 SWU. The above 13,920 SWU
requirement would thus take 3.57 years (or 13,920 divided by 11,700 multiplied by 3), or 3
years, if each of the 1,300 centrifuges can deliver 3.56 SWU per year. If one assumes that an
implosion-type weapon uses 20 kg of HEU, then 1,300 centrifuges could produce the
requisite HEU in about 14 months. A centrifuge's power consumption is something like 100 kilowatt-hours per
SWU (about $5 of the $100 price of a commercial SWU). Thus a machine producing 3 SWU
per year consumes 300 kWh over a period of 8,766 hours, for an installed power of about 35
watts. This is less than that used by a 40-watt light bulb, and something like that required for
a small desk fan. A park of 1,300 centrifuges needs 45 kWh, less power than a small car.
There are many small computer centers that demand uninterrupted power, and commercial
suppliers sell such systems w
Posted by: john ||
04/12/2006 16:33 Comments ||
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#9
It looks like the Pakistan way--- HEU.
The Chinese design provided by AQ Khan used HEU.
Posted by: john ||
04/12/2006 16:34 Comments ||
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#10
More from Richard Garwin...
The performance of a gas centrifuge is measured by its yield of separative work units (SWU). Each of the centrifuges used in Pakistan or in the European enrichment enterprise, Urenco, may be assumed to produce about 3 SWU per year. The commercial nuclear-fuel market values an SWU at about $100. Technically, the number of SWU that would normally be used to produce a kilogram of U-235 as HEU (about 1.05 kg of HEU) is 232 SWU. The number of SWU that must be invested to make 1 kg of U-235 as LEU (in 22.7 kg of LEU) is about 151 SWU. In both cases one is assumed to start from natural uranium (0.711 percent U-235) and discard depleted uranium with 0.25 percent U-235. If one assumes a Urenco centrifuge with a capacity of 3 SWU per year, then the production of LEU containing one metric ton of U-235--enough to replenish for a year a single large reactor producing a million kilowatts of electrical power (the standard-size reactor such as was being built by KEDO in North Korea)--would require 1,000 kg times 151 SWU/kg, or 151,000 SWU. At 3 SWU per year per centrifuge, this would require 151,000 divided by 3, or slightly more than 50,000 centrifuges working for a year. And the next year the plant's output would supply the following year's replacement fuel, and so on.
Posted by: john ||
04/12/2006 16:41 Comments ||
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#11
H. Blix said 5 years, and he's bound to be right some day, maybe. After all, an expert is anyone from out of town.
#12
Excellent numbers, john, assuming they're true. From the low productivity factors, they certainly do look accurate. Thank you for a factual breakdown of what it takes. Sadly, as 'moose pointed out, there are "end run" strategies that render the time factors irrelevant. All the more reason to bomb Iran immediately.
#13
They just discussed a bomb Iran scenario on FoxNews with a target count and all..
Problem is... None of the target were Rafsanjani's properties. Ranburg discussion on March 1st about Rafsanjani's worth At the top slot comes, unsurprisingly to Iran observers, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, whose family rules over a vast financial and business empire. From the pistachio farms of his hometown Rafsanjan to huge oil trading companies, the ruling theocracys former president has used his power and influence to expand his wealth. Conservative estimates put his fortune at well beyond the 10 trillion Rial mark, the equivalent of $1.1 billion.
Most of the powerful clerics enormous wealth is vested in the hands of his sons and daughters, as well as other close relatives such as his brothers, nephews, and bother-in-laws, and son-in-laws. One of his villas was sold in 2004 for roughly 29 billion Rials. His brother, Mohammad Hashemi, the former chief of the state broadcasting corporation, owns the company Taha, which imports industrial-scale printers.
Note the sleazy Ayatollah's in that article and the Military and BUSH should make DAMN SURE that those assets are on any first strike target list.
That will destroy the Mullah's pocketbooks and make it hurt for them not only the public and the military.
#14
A little HEU, or a lot of lesser-enriched uranium can achieve critical mass - you just gotta ram 'em together. Oppenheimer & Co, didn't even test the HEU bomb (Little Man? The cylindrical one) - they dropped it and it went off. The Plutonium bomb was more complicated, but (IIRC) more efficient (Fat Boy?)
More than one way to skin a cat.
Or a Mullah.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/12/2006 21:35 Comments ||
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#15
You need 60 kg of HEU for a gun type weapon and 20 kg of HEU for an unsophisticated implosion type weapon.
LEU won't do.
Posted by: john ||
04/12/2006 21:40 Comments ||
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#16
Some bloggers on FREE REPUBLIC.com and other sites are arguing that Iran may already have 5-10 or 20 bombs, and that MadMoud is playing mind games wid the West in order to disguise that fact that Iran already has nukes. Meanwhile, REGIME CHANGE IRAN reports that iff Iran continues on its current path MILITARY ACTION AGAINST IRAN IS VERY LIKELY IN 2007 - looks like Hillary, the Dems, and the MSM/Hollyweird may get their "WE SAVED THE WORLD AND AMERICA FROM DUBYA AND USA/GOP/FASCIST-CAUSED NUKE BRINKMANSHIP-WAR" 2008 elex promo after all, and whether they truly want it or not.
Posted by: john ||
04/12/2006 23:29 Comments ||
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#18
The real world isn't like hollywood.
Physics undergraduates can't build atomic bombs and countries with nuclear arms don't sell them. They are heavily guarded; no terrorist can steal one or buy one.
Posted by: john ||
04/12/2006 23:43 Comments ||
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When the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, lands in Tehran today, he will step into a new reality created by yesterday's announcement by the mullahs that Iran has "joined the group" of nuclear nations.
The brazen boast in Tehran yesterday that Iran is now able to enrich uranium independently instantly changed the diplomatic landscape, but at the United Nations few diplomats expect any action from the Security Council before April 28, when Mr. ElBaradei is scheduled to report on Tehran's compliance with the council's demand to stop all enrichment activities. "All eyes are now on ElBaradei," an American official said yesterday. America is expected to argue that Iran is in noncompliance with last month's unanimous statement by the Security Council, and ask for punitive measures.
"Iran is not paying attention to what the Security Council said," American Ambassador John Bolton told The New York Sun. The Islamic Republic's clerics "show why we feel a real sense of urgency," he added. "Iran has to realize that it is clearly going down the wrong road."
An IAEA official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the agency was not immediately able to verify yesterday's announcement by Iran's atomic organization chief, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, that Iranian scientists have succeeded in enriching uranium at Natanz to the level of 3.5%. IAEA inspectors are expected to look today at cameras and other devices installed in Iranian nuclear facilities.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2006 09:27 ||
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#1
If I were one of those inspectors, I'd be itching to get out of there as fast as possible.
#4
Since ElBaradei got the Nobel Prize that is enough affirmation of his incompetence for me. Between Iraq, Iran and Korea, ElBaradei has been a real whizbang success at controlling nuclear arms poliferation.
I have this sick feeling that a major city will have to disappear before some of those morons at the UN get serious about Iran.
Of course a nuke in NY would solve two problems:
The UN and the Yankees but I digress.
ACTUALLY..........This is getting scarier by the day and I get the feeling that we are going to have hell to pay for Jimmy Carter and ZB's incompetence in Iran.
An Iranian Sunni rebel group video broadcast on Arab satellite television on Tuesday showed the killing by firing squad of a man identified as an Iranian Revolutionary Guard officer. The Jundollah (Gods Soldiers) video broadcast by Al Arabiya television showed militants kill the man. They displayed his identification card bearing the name Zahed Shaykhi.
The video also showed the Baluchi groups leader Abdolmalek Rigi despite official media reports that Iranian forces had killed him. "These are falsehoods aimed at playing with the emotions of people," a militant reading a statement said.
Iranian officials have said Rigi is the leader of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network in the Islamic Republic.
Rigi appeared on the tape speaking to the Iranian officer who sat nearby with a gunman pointing his rifle at his head and another standing by. The two militants later fired rounds at the officer who was sitting on the ground wearing white robes. The group has kidnapped Iranian soldiers in the past to try to force the release of detained members.
In March, the group claimed responsibility for an attack that killed 22 people in a remote region in southeastern Iran and said it had taken seven hostages.
The attack was in an impoverished area on the borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan , the scene of sporadic unrest among Irans Baluchi minority, most of them Sunni Muslims. There are frequent police clashes with armed drug smugglers in the region. Some 90 percent of Irans 69 million people are Shiite and the Sunni minority sometimes complains of discrimination. In July, the rebel group said it had beheaded an Iranian security agent.
Iran also blames Britain for unrest in its restive and mainly Arab southwestern oil province of Khuzestan, across the border from southern Iraq where British troops are stationed. Britain denies supporting the ethnic Arab rebels.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
04/12/2006 04:01 ||
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We did this yesterday, but I suspect we'll have more discussions today.
Tehran, Iran, Apr. 11 Radical Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared on Tuesday that Iran had officially joined the group of countries with nuclear capabilities commonly known as the Nuclear Club.
I officially announce that Iran has joined the worlds nuclear countries, Ahmadinejad said in a speech that was broadcast on state television. This is the start of greater progress and achievements, he said.
Earlier, Irans nuclear chief announced that Tehran had recently managed to enrich uranium to the level required to make nuclear fuel. We successfully enriched uranium to 3.5 percent on April 9, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, who heads Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, said.
Following the announcement, the director of the Education Organisation of Tehran told the state-run news agency Fars that a national honour and pride bell will ring in schools across the Iranian capital at 9 am on Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, former Iranian President Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani announced that Iran had began uranium enrichment, despite a call by the United Nations Security Council for it to cease all uranium enrichment activities. We operated the first unit which comprises of 164 centrifuges, gas was injected, and we got the industrial output, Rafsanjani, who currently chairs the State Expediency Council (SEC), told the Kuwaiti news agency in Tehran.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2006 00:10 ||
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#1
Yea, he's a gonna get "clubbed" all right.
Posted by: Captain America ||
04/12/2006 0:31 Comments ||
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#2
Isn't there a bit of hazing involved with this fraternity?
#4
WND.com has a promo for Mr. Jerry Corsi, author of ATOMIC IRAN, whom argues that Iran may only be 4 months away from having the ability to dev indigenous, enriched uranium-based nuke devices. IFF MR. CORSI IS CORRECT, RUSSIA-CHINA will be behooved to do something NOW against Iran [pre-2008 US elex]in order to prevent Iran's Radicals from having an arsenal suffic powerful and in quantity to threaten Russia-China. Moscow-Beijing can no longer afford to wait for the Clintons and the Dems. China in particular, with enuff manpower reserves to supp a multi-front conventional war in NorKor, Taiwan, and ME, and wid both JAPAN and SOUTH KOREA modernizing or re-arming, may choose to take immediate mil action in one or more theaters, i.e against IRAN in the name of Internat peace and the universal fight againt Radical Terror; and TAIWAN [Norks as diversionary "holding front"], which in essence/reality would be China's super-PC opening move in "rebellious Taiwan" = US-China War for control of the Pacific. WE ALL KNOW THE GOP AND USA WILL GET THE BLAME NO MATTER WHOM STRIKES WHOM FIRST. Remember, the GWOT is more than a "CLASH OF IDEOS" BUT A FINAL WAR FOR CONTROL OF THE WORLD, CONTROL OF THE FUTURE OWG-NWO, AND WHAT -ISMS WILL DOMINATE SAID FUTURE WORLD AND OWG, which the DemoLefties say can not and must not be DEMOCRATIC/FREE CAPITALIST SOVEREIGN AMERICA - you know, PATRIOTISM!?
#6
Bush will stop them, at least for a while. I think he recognizes this is a pay me now or pay me later situation. He's not the type to pass it on to the next guy. Nobody except maybe the Chinese, wants the MM with nukes. Let's polish that ATO.
I am he as you are he as you are me,
and we are all together.
See how they spin, centrifuges now!
U-2-3-5
I'm cheering.
Waiting on some yellow cake.
Waiting for the van to come.
Isotopic distill, holy missile launch day
Man its been a long time,
So let your beard grow long.
I am the madman
they are the launch men
Ahmadnejad-man!
Goo goo g' joob
Religious rockets sitting
pretty little missiles in a row.
See how they fly like birdies in the sky
See how they sail
I'm crying
I'm crying, I'm crying
Yellow cake ore-man
Put out the blasphemer's eye
Stone the little harlot
Pornographic priestess
Boy, you've been a naughty girl
you showed your hair to all
I am the madman
they are the launch men
Ahmadnejad-man!
Goo goo g' joob
Sitting in an Persian garden
waiting for the sun
If the sun don't come, you get the sand
from standing in the Persian wind
I am the madman
they are the launch men
Ahmadnejad-man!
Goo goo g' joob
Expert, UN, inspects equipment,
Don't you think the imam laughs at you?
See how they smile knowing what's coming
See how they sneer!
I'm cheering
Rocket that's launching
climbing up the Persian sky
Elementary children singing Allah Akhbar
Man, you should have seen them reading
Omar Khayyam too
I am the madman
they are the launch men
Ahmadnejad-man!
Goo goo g' joob
Goo goo g' joob
Goo goo g' goo
goo goo g' joob goo
juba juba juba
juba juba juba
juba juba juba juba
juba juba
#8
I agree with TC8214. The Iranians will have nuclear weapons. So will their richer neighbors. The trick will be to limit any detonations to within muslim lands.
Actually, I think this a dog and pony show for the natives and a sleight of hand for western audiences. I think the Iranians already have enough U-235 for one or more bombs. They are known to have had for several years parts for 3000 centrifuges and can manufacture thousands more.
It's quite easy to hide centrifuge cascades in tunnels. They don't use anything like the electrical power of the Manhattan project. I read somewhere that a centrifuge uses about 40 watts each and UF6 sublimates into a gas at 120°F at 1 atmosphere (triple point at 133°F).
Posted by: ed ||
04/12/2006 12:20 Comments ||
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#18
You don't have to test a critical-mass uranium bomb. Oppenheimer didn't. The physics is known and understood. IIRC, about 200 KG of moderatly enriched uranium, or a little as 20 KG of highly-enriched uranium - slam 'em together with a small explosive charge, and ... boom.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/12/2006 21:43 Comments ||
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Twenty-two people were arrested in connection with a gunfight Monday in the town of Khalwat al-Kfeir in Hasbaya district, Interior Minister Ahmad Fatfat said on Tuesday. Three people, including the grandfather of current Druze MP Wael Abou Faour, were wounded in the fight.
"You bastards! You shot Grampaw!"
The shooting reportedly occurred between the bodyguards of pro-Syrian former Minister Wiam Wahhab, who was paying condolences at a funeral in Khalwat al-Kfeir, and numerous people identified as partisans of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP). Wahhab said his convoy was ambushed by PSP supporters, according to judicial sources.
Local witnesses also reported that Wahhab's convoy was attacked. Druze Sheikh Kamal Abou Ibrahim tried to stop the assailants "because the Druze tradition is against harming the guests," the witnesses said, but Abou Ibrahim was was hit by gunfire. At a press conference Monday Abou Faour accused Wahhab of "provoking strife" and said the shooting incident "shows that there is a Syrian political decision to blow up the situation in Lebanon."
The 22 arrestees included 12 of Wahhab's bodyguards, according to Lebanese satellite television station Future T.V. All the arrestees were reported to have been in possession of weapons. Abou Faour, who is from Khalwat al-Kfeir, confirmed that his 82-year-old grandfather was among the wounded. After the incident, military and security forces personnel moved into the village to restore order. Fatfat said that the Internal Security Forces and the Lebanese Army are working their best to ensure that calm prevails in the area.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2006 00:00 ||
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The Lebanese military judiciary issued arrest warrants Tuesday against 14 people for planning to carry out terrorist acts while Hizbullah confirmed the suspects intended to assassinate the group's Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Charges included forming "a gang with the intent of carrying out attacks against the state and terrorist acts and trading in arms and bombs," but did not explicitly state that a plot to kill Nasrallah had been in the works.
Military intelligence arrested nine of the 14 suspects, eight Lebanese and one Palestinian - the other five are still at large - and seized weapons, officials announced Monday, following reports by daily newspaper As-Safir that a gang was detained for plotting to kill Nasrallah on his way to the national dialogue. A statement issued by the Loyalty to the Resistance parliamentary bloc headed by MP Mohammad Raad condemned the "terrorist" plot against Nasrallah, stressing it served Israel's interests. But Raad said Hizbullah would continue its participation in the national dialogue, despite the plan to murder Nasrallah.
A Hizbullah spokesperson told The Daily Star Israel had long been planning to kill Nasrallah, and added that the investigation should continue to determine whether those had links to Israel's secret service. Nasrallah's predecessor, Sayyed Abbas al-Moussawi, was killed in an Israeli raid in 1992.
Earlier Monday, Nasrallah's political adviser, Hussein Khalil, station confirmed As-Safir's reports in a television interview with Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV. He said "information collected by Hizbullah's security apparatus converged with that of Lebanese intelligence, leading to unearthing the network in question." Khalil said focus should next be on determining the political background of the plotters and blamed "the enemies of Lebanon and the enemies of the (Arab) nation," in an apparent reference to Israel. Meanwhile, a judicial source said reports about Nasrallah being the target of the arrested group were "exaggerations," and could not yet be confirmed.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2006 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.
Three British soldiers have been wounded, two of them seriously, by a roadside explosion in Afghanistan. The Defence Ministry says the three had been on patrol in the southern province of Helmand when the explosion hit their Land Rover on Monday. They have been flown to hospital for treatment. 
The death toll in a rocket attack on a primary school yard in Afghanistan has risen to seven young children with more than 30 wounded. Deputy police chief Mohammad Hassan Farahi says two rockets were fired into Asadabad, the capital city of Kunar province, and one hit a school in the grounds of a mosque, killing six students aged between seven and 10. Another child died later in hospital. Thirty-three other children and a teacher were wounded, mostly by shrapnel. The second rocket did not cause casualties.
The death toll from an explosion at a hospital complex in northern China rose to at least 33 on Tuesday amid reports that explosives stored in a garage may have caused the tragedy. Rescuers found a total of 33 bodies amid rubble after the Monday morning blast at the Xuangang Coal Power Company's staff hospital in Shanxi province, China Central Television (CCTV) reported in its evening news. 
Scores of people, including prominent 
A booby-trapped car blew up close to a popular restaurant in the Iraqi capital after nightfall on Tuesday wounding at least nine people, a security source said. The source said the explosives-laden vehicle, parked near the restaurant, blew up at 8 p.m., shortly after arrival of policemen at the restaurant, adding that four of them were wounded in the blast. The explosion wounded five civilians and caused extensive damage to the restaurant and nearby stores. Police sealed off the scene of the blast and the wounded were taken to hospitals.
Iraqi police have detained 31 private security guards in a raid the interior ministry said had netted sophisticated weaponry that was meant to be used for attacks. The staff of the Al-Forat security company were "arrested as they planned to carry out terrorist activities against innocent people", the ministry said in a statement on Monday. 
Shiite leaders from the powerful United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) have failed to decide the fate of Prime Minister 
UP to 200 Palestinian policemen on Tuesday took their positions in Rafah crossings, which separates Palestinian territories and Egypt. Salim Abu Safiya, director of crossings in Gaza, told reporters the deployment of the Palestinian police force aimed at restoring order inside the crossing and provide protection for the European monitors.
European Union foreign ministers have approved a temporary suspension of aid to the Palestinian Authority. Ministers said after a meeting in Luxembourg that some of the 500 million euro ($600 million) cut in funding to the Palestinian government would now be channelled via humanitarian aid organisations.
The United Nations (UN) has advised its aid agencies to avoid meeting with Hamas political leaders and to limit contacts to technocrats in the new Palestinian Government. Restrictions on UN contacts with the new Government could further increase pressure on Hamas leaders, who are already shunned by Israel, the United States and the European Union. But by maintaining contacts with the new Government at a "technical level for operational purposes," the UN bucks efforts by the United States to isolate the cash-strapped government and its ministries. UN aid agencies are at the same time advised to "avoid political contact" with Hamas leaders. These leaders would include cabinet ministers and other high-level appointments. 
A group of Muslims protesting Playboy's decision to launch an Indonesian edition of the magazine clashed with police Wednesday and stoned the company's editorial offices, witnesses said. No one was injured in the protest involving around 150 members of the 
By Amal Jayasinghe in Colombo 
When the director of the 
Twenty-two people were arrested in connection with a gunfight Monday in the town of Khalwat al-Kfeir in Hasbaya district, Interior Minister 
The Lebanese military judiciary issued arrest warrants Tuesday against 14 people for planning to carry out terrorist acts while 
