Good idea; you guys haven't yet picked enough fights.
(SomaliNet) Somalis civil aviation department of the transitional federal government on Sunday has issued a decree banning all flights to and from the regions of the self declared break away public of Somaliland.
The move came when Somaliland authority warned off the new e-passport saying anyone who holds that document will face eight years in prison.
That should settle that.
The civilian aviation general manager Mohammoud Sheik Ali said all flights enroute to the cities of Mogadishu to Hargeisa, Mogadishu to Berbera and Hargeisa to Mogadishu were banned starting from the date issued the statement. The government told all the local flight companies to abide by the order.
The new banning will definitely be stumbling block to many Somalis including business people and it is not known how long it will take the impediment
I think the writer was arrested in mid-sentence.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/27/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
So how many flights is that? Like...three?
Geez, at the height of the tourist season too...
Judge sentences female victim to more lashes than her assailant
AL-AWWAMIYA, Saudi Arabia - When the teenager went to the police a few months ago to report she was gang-raped by seven men, she never imagined the judge would punish her and that she would be sentenced to more lashes than one of her alleged rapists received.
The story of the Girl of Qatif, as the alleged rape victim has been called by the media here, has triggered a rare debate about Saudi Arabias legal system, in which judges have wide discretion in punishing a criminal, rules of evidence are shaky and sometimes no defense lawyers are present.
The result, critics say, are sentences left to the whim of judges. These include one in which a group of men got heavier sentences for harassing women than the men in the Girl of Qatif rape case or three men who were convicted of raping a boy. In another, a woman was ordered to divorce her husband against her will based on a demand by her relatives.
In the case of the Girl of Qatif, she was sentenced to 90 lashes for being alone in a car with a man to whom she was not married a crime in this strictly segregated country at the time that she was allegedly attacked and raped by a group of other men.
In the sleepy, Shiite village of al-Awwamiya on the outskirts of the eastern city of Qatif, the 19-year-old is struggling to forget the spring night that changed her life. An Associated Press reporter met her in a face-to-face interview. She spoke on condition of anonymity to protect her privacy; the AP does not identify rape victims unless they ask to be named. Her hands tremble, her dark brown eyes are lifeless. Her sleep is interrupted by a replay of the events, which she describes in a barely audible whisper.
That night, she said, she had left home to retrieve her picture from a male high school student she used to know. She had just been married but had not moved in with her husband and did not want her picture to remain with the student. While the woman was in the car with the student, she said, two men intercepted them, got into the vehicle and drove the couple to a secluded area where the two were separated. She said she was raped by seven men, three of whom also allegedly raped her friend.
In a trial that ended in November in which the prosecutor asked for the death penalty for the seven men four of the men received between one and five years in prison plus 80 to 1,000 lashes, said the woman. Three others are awaiting sentencing. Neither the defendants nor the plaintiffs retained lawyers, as is common here. The big shock came when the judge sentenced me and the man to 90 lashes each, said the woman. The sentence was handed down as part of the rape trial. Lashes are usually spread over several days, dealt around 50 at a time.
The sentences have yet to be carried out, but the punishments ordered have caused an uproar. Because I could make no sense (of the sentence) and became in dire need of patience, I muttered after I read the verdict against the Girl of Qatif: My heart is with you, wrote Fatima al-Faqeeh in a column in Al-Watan newspaper.
Justice in Saudi Arabia is administered by a system of religious courts according to the kingdoms strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law. Judges appointed by the king on the recommendation of the Supreme Judicial Council have complete discretion to set sentences, except in cases where Sharia outlines a punishment, such as capital crimes. That means no two judges would likely hand down the same verdict for similar crimes. A rapist, for instance, could receive anywhere from a light or no sentence to death, depending on the judge.
Saudis are urging the Justice Ministry to clarify the logic behind some rulings. In one recent case, three men convicted of raping a 12-year-old boy received sentences of between one and two years in prison and 300 lashes each. In contrast, another judge sentenced at least four men to between six and 12 years imprisonment for fondling women in a tunnel in Riyadh.
Saleh al-Shehy, a columnist for Al-Watan, asked Justice Minister Abdullah Al-Sheik to explain why the boys rapists got a lighter sentence than the men in last years sexual harassment case. I wont ask you my brother, the minister, if you find the ruling satisfactory or not, wrote al-Shehy. I will ask you, Do you think it satisfies God?
Please explain to us how one judge ruled and how the other ruled? What evidence did the one rely on and what proof did the other use? he added.
The broad discretion judges enjoy have been a disaster for Fatima, another Saudi woman. She suddenly found herself divorced from her husband, Mansour al-Timani, after her half-brothers went to a judge and told him their sister had married beneath her. Fatima, whose full name has not been given in media reports, had been married for over three years and was pregnant with her second child when the judge declared the marriage void in July 2005.
Today, Fatima sits in jail with her 11-month-old son her 4-year-old daughter was recently freed rather than return to the custody of her family as the judge decreed.
The problems over sentencing are exacerbated by loose trial rules, in which physical evidence sometimes is not presented.
The Girl of Qatif said her trial had two sessions. The three trial judges asked for her statement, then heard the statement from the seven defendants in the first court session, according to the woman. In the second, about a month later, the judges pronounced their verdict. It was not known if there were other sessions she did not attend.
Judges in the case referred The Associated Press to the Justice Ministry when asked about the sentencing. The ministry, in a statement Tuesday, said rape could not be proved. There were no witnesses and the men had recanted confessions they made during interrogation, the statement said. It said the verdict cannot be appealed.
Sharia allows defendants to deny signed confessions, according to Abdul-Aziz al-Gassem, a lawyer who was not involved in the case. They still get punished if convicted, but the verdict is lighter. The lack of transparency in the investigation, the trial and the sentencing, plus the difficulties that journalists have to get access lead to deep a darkness where everything is possible, said al-Gassem.
#1
The result, critics say, are sentences left to the whim of judges.
OK - but is that what this is really about? Or is this just MSM whitewash to cover what exposes an ugly reality in much of the Muslim world - which is the fact that it is a greater crime for a woman to to step outside the bonds of chattel than it is for men to rape women.
#3
I am certain that the libs will soon embark on a letter-writing campaign as well as demonstrations at SA embassies everywhere in the world decrying this......yeah, right......
CARACAS, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday threatened "corrective actions" against a subsidiary of Mexican cement maker Cemex amid a wave of nationalizations as part of his self-styled socialist revolution.
I think Iran's still ahead on the 'Race to Zim-bob-we', but Chavez keeps threatening to overtake them ...
Venezuela this month ordered the "forced acquisition" of the assets of a Colombian cement maker, and Chavez in April threatened to nationalize the cement sector as part of a campaign to boost the government's role in the economy.
This *might* be a quid pro quo for his sponsors in Iran. I've read (here and there, and of course no links to cite) that Syria in particular controls a lot of the global cement industry. The Hariri family in Lebanon made a lot of its money in cement, and I've always harbored at least a tiny suspicion that his death was at least partially related to his business as well as his politix.
On Sunday he ordered authorities to carry out an inspection of the property limits of a Venezuelan Cemex facility and evaluate its impact on the environment following a complaint that pollution from the operation was harming local residents. "Companies ... should invest in technology to minimize and eliminate the impact on the environment and people's health," Chavez said during his weekly Sunday broadcast. "Because if not the government will be obligated ... to take corrective actions that I cannot yet describe."
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/27/2007 00:00 ||
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It's going to be interesting how he's going to make it profitable when he slashes prices. Then again, private profit isn't his motive.
#4
Missiles under cargoes of cement have been discovered off Egypt and Israel previously. The Syrian cement provides a weight equivalent for the manifests and could be the conduit for shipping to Chavez, putting Iranian "smart" bombs within range of the US.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel was all smiles after meeting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Monday, praising relations between the two countries as open and constructive.
But her visit has been marred by a report in SPIEGEL that a large number of computers in the German chancellery as well as the foreign, economy and research ministries had been infected with Chinese spy software. Germany's domestic intelligence service, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, discovered the hacking operation in May, the magazine reported in its new edition, published Monday.
The Chinese government has vehemently denied the report, with the Chinese Embassy in Berlin describing the accusation of state-controlled hacking as "irresponsible speculation without a shred of evidence."
But Prime Minister Wen Jiabao assured Merkel that measures would be taken to "rule out hacking attacks." During a news conference in Beijing on Monday, Merkel didn't comment on the specific allegation but said it was important that "common rules of the game" were observed in a globalised economy.
The so-called "Trojan" espionage programs were concealed in Microsoft Word documents and PowerPoint files which infected IT installations when opened, SPIEGEL reported. Information was taken from German computers in this way on a daily basis by hackers based in the north-western province of Lanzhou, Canton province and Beijing. German officials believe the hackers were being directed by the People's Liberation Army and that the programs were redirected via computers in South Korea to disguise their origin.
German security officials managed to stop the theft of 160 gigabytes of data which were in the process of being siphoned off German government computers. "But no one knows how much has leaked out," a top official told SPIEGEL.
The hacking operation has triggered fears in Germany that China may also have infiltrated the computer systems of leading German companies, to steal technology secrets and thereby speed up its inexorable economic growth. The domestic intelligence service plans to help businesses hunt for spy programs in their computers.
The alleged attack has disappointed the German government because it has tried for years to promote friendly relations with China, and has voiced only muted criticism of China's human rights abuses and environmental pollution. The espionage is robbing Germany of its key resource in the fight for international markets, namely technological and engineering know-how.
"I'm very concerned about Chinese espionage in the field of technology," Hartmut Schauerte, an expert on China in the Economics Ministry, told SPIEGEL.
The head of domestic intelligence for the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg, Johannes Schmalzl, said: "Sixty percent of our alleged cases (of economic espionage) are related to China."
After a one-hour meeting with Wen on Monday, Merkel said she was satisfied with the state of German-Chinese relations which had now reached a level where both sides could address problems and engage in constructive discussions. She urged the Chinese government to step up its fight against product piracy and do more to protect the environment.
German leaders regularly visit China to drum up business there. Merkel's four-day visit ends on August 29 when she will fly on to Japan for two days.
Not WoT related, but the financial situation, if it gets out of hand, is going to put a hurt on all of us, and that will make the required focus on the WoT even harder to achieve. I'm no Chicken Little like the Dhimmicrats, but a Western world in a recession isn't going to pay attention to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Malaysia, etc.
And unfortunately a whole lot of liquidity is available from the oil ticks for the small consideration of...your soul.
In Germany, it emerged that the state-bank SachsenLB may have accumulated $80bn of exposure to risky assets through a set of Irish funds kept off balance sheet. The regional government of Saxony agreed yesterday to sell the East German bank - the biggest victim so far of the worldwide credit rout - for a token 300m (£204m) to the Landesbank Baden-Württemberg in Stuttgart (LBBW), ending a three-week saga that has revealed the extent of German involvement in the some of the most treacherous areas of US sub-prime debt.
Georg Milbrandt, prime minister of Saxony, said the sale of state-owned lender was the only viable option. "Given the market turbulence and the pressures on the bank, it could not have gone on without a partner. We want to get our ship off the high waves and into a safe port," he said.
Once again the gummint has to bail out a bunch of investors who played the market hinky and wrong. It's for our own good, of course ...
Sachsen LB, founded in 1992 after the fall of the Berlin Wall, was rescued two weeks ago in a state orchestrated bail-out. A consortium of banks agreed to provide a 17.3bn credit lifeline, but only on the understanding that it agreed to be sold to a stronger player. It allegedly used no fewer than five Irish 'conduits' (off-balance sheet vehicles) to invest in collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) and other high-risk instruments, according to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.
The biggest losses stemmed from structured investment vehicles (SIVs) which involve using short-term credit to buy longer-term assets, creating a mismatch in maturities.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/27/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
The financial & economic health of the US is a key part of the WOT.
#5
Meanwhile, back in the USA, in a clear sign that the credit crunch is still affecting the nation's largest financial institutions, the Federal Reserve agreed on 8/20 to bend key banking regulations to help out Citigroup and Bank of America. This unusual move by the Fed shows that the largest Wall Street firms are continuing to have problems funding operations during the current market difficulties, according to banking industry skeptics. The Fed says that it made the exemption in the public interest, because it allows Citibank to get liquidity to its affiliated brokerage in "the most rapid and cost-effective manner possible."
So, how serious is this rule-bending? Very. One of the central tenets of banking regulation is that banks with federally insured deposits should never be over-exposed to brokerage subsidiaries; indeed, for decades financial institutions were legally required to keep the two units completely separate.
The Federal Reserve is in crisis management at the moment. However, it doesn't want to show any signs of panic. That means no rushed cuts in interest rates...
Waiving one of the most important banking regulations can only add nervousness to the market. And that's what the Fed did in these disturbing letters to the nation's two largest banks.
Maybe she wanted to spend more time with Cecelia Sarkozy. The lefty blogs have been gleefully 'reporting' that Laura has been keeping her distance from Dubya lately.
#1
One thing I notice, living just south of Austin, not that far from Crawford, the many more white contrails of jets when W is in town. Makes me feel like, I am now living in the safest place on the planet! Thanks, guys, it nice having you "on the job."
It is the world's leading criminal intelligence service renowned for helping track down fugitives on all five continents. But now Interpol is itself under attack from a team of West African con-men who are using the organisation as a cover for their fraud. In the latest in a series of scams, e-mails bearing Interpol's name have been sent out across the globe. In them, the author claims to be from the Lyon-based crime agency and claims the group need the individual's details to facilitate an investigation. But like all the other so-called 419 frauds - named after the statute in Nigerian law which covers such crimes - the claims are fraudulent.
Yesterday, a spokesman for Interpol urged anyone receiving the e-mails to ignore them completely. He added: "Interpol would like to draw your attention to a series of recent e-mail scams sent to members of the public using the Interpol name. Please note that Interpol does not send e-mails to members of the public. "If you receive an e-mail from someone claiming to be an Interpol 'agent' or officer, asking you to transfer money to an account, or saying that Interpol is required to intervene in any large sums of money being transferred, treat it as a fake message."
Edited for brevity. Pix at link.
Finding a space on the beach can be a problem especially if you're staging a large-scale amphibious landing. The biggest danger comes from mines, both in the surf zone and on the beach itself. But obstacles are a real problem too: defenders will barricade the beach not just with barbed wire but with welded steel obstacles (called 'hedgehogs' on land, 'urchins' in the water) and concrete blocks. Even if marines can get ashore on foot, they can't bring any vehicles, heavy weapons or supplies. Those obstacles need to be blasted aside to create a clear lane.
One solution is to use standard General-Purpose Bombs a lot of them, in a system called the JDAM Assault Breaching Systems or JABS. Rather than being dropped together, the idea is to use "The sequential detonation of multiple bombs to create a wave that sweeps the obstacles from the lane."
The approach can be enhanced by the use of continuous rod warheads, a gigantic version of a type of warhead more commonly seen in air-to-air missiles such as the AIM-120 AMRAAM . The Navy is developing the new weapon for Stand-Off Obstacle Defeat; rather than fire shrapnel in all directions, the contionuous rod warhead literally projects a ring of steel outwards:
It is composed of an explosive charge surrounded by steel rods. The rods are positioned next to each other forming a circle around the charge and welded at alternating ends. When the explosive charge is detonated the rods are propelled outward forming a ring that expands as it is propelled parallel to the ground. The expanding ring of rod material will destroy obstacles, such as tetrahedrons, concrete cubes, and hedgehogs that are in its path.
Posted by: Dar ||
08/27/2007 18:30 ||
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Notice how the Dhimmicrats pretty much have to hope that the country goes to hell in order to win an election.
Former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers warned that the United States may be heading into recession. "It would be far too premature to judge this crisis over," Mr Summers said. "I would say the risks of recession are now greater than they've been any time since the period in the aftermath of 9/11."
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/27/2007 00:00 ||
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Well, that is what they have congress for - to raise taxes and throw it off. I wash my hands of this country once you put them in charge of the whole thing again. If you are that stupid, the less support you deserve.
#2
What the man is really saying is that there is a possibility of a Democrat president and Congress and that practically GUARANTEES a recession, if not a depression.
#3
The economy is vulnerable right now if no one is willing to grant credit and a lot of people lose their homes because they over extended themselves and banks were willing to grant risky loans. The next few months will tell.
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.
Judge sentences female victim to more lashes than her assailant 
CARACAS, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday threatened "corrective actions" against a subsidiary of Mexican cement maker Cemex amid a wave of nationalizations as part of his self-styled socialist revolution.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel was all smiles after meeting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Monday, praising relations between the two countries as open and constructive.
It is the world's leading criminal intelligence service renowned for helping track down fugitives on all five continents. But now Interpol is itself under attack from a team of West African con-men who are using the organisation as a cover for their fraud. In the latest in a series of scams, e-mails bearing Interpol's name have been sent out across the globe. In them, the author claims to be from the Lyon-based crime agency and claims the group need the individual's details to facilitate an investigation. But like all the other so-called 419 frauds - named after the statute in Nigerian law which covers such crimes - the claims are fraudulent. 
