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Saleh undergoes surgery as Yemen rejoices
Today's Headlines
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Good morning
Posted by: Fred || 06/06/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I think I like the telephone theme. Very George Petty-ish.
Posted by: Scooter McGruder || 06/06/2011 1:34 Comments || Top||

#2  Happy Birthday/Daily Gam Shot

Gemma Bissix aka British Soap Queen aka 'Villain of the Year' 2007 aka Clare Bates in "EastEnders" aka Clare Devine in "Hollyoaks" akf 'Most Spectacular Scene' 2008 aka 'Best Bitch' runner-up 2007 & 2008 (age 28)



Women Who (are about to) Bathe
Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 06/06/2011 1:51 Comments || Top||

#3  Is "Best Bitch" a title to be proud of?
Posted by: Frozen Al || 06/06/2011 11:57 Comments || Top||

#4  Jeepers, creepers. Where'd she get those peepers?
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 || 06/06/2011 12:21 Comments || Top||

#5  The rest of her's not bad either.
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 || 06/06/2011 12:24 Comments || Top||

#6  Jeepers, creepers. Where'd she get those peepers?

Maybelline.
Posted by: Chavinter Hupavirong3890 || 06/06/2011 19:26 Comments || Top||


Afghanistan
Two guards killed in Afghan bank attack
[Bangla Daily Star] Two security guards were killed yesterday in a kaboom targeting an Afghan bank where government employees were thought to be collecting their wages, police said.

The blast happened after explosives were left in a bag at the gates of a branch of a bank in Maydan Shahr city, capital of Wardak province in central Afghanistan.

"It went kaboom! at around 11:50am local time resulting in the martyrdom of two bank security guards," the interior ministry said in a statement.

It is thought that the intended target was government employees who were collecting their salaries from the bank.
Posted by: Fred || 06/06/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: Taliban


Africa Horn
Clashes reported in Sudan flashpoint state
[Pak Daily Times] Clashes have broken out in a flashpoint region of Sudan controlled by the northern government, exacerbating tensions as the southern portion of the vast country prepares to secede following a referendum.

Two southern party officials and the United Nations
...where theory meets practice and practice loses...
reported fighting at the weekend in the Nuba region of South Kordofan, an area in northern territory that the Khartoum authorities have threatened to clear of southern-allied gangs.

Tensions have been mounting between north and south Sudan ahead of the scheduled July 9 division of the country. The Khartoum government seized the disputed Abyei region on May 21, causing tens of thousands of people to flee and drawing sharp international criticism.

In the latest violence, the United Nations said it had received reports of shooting in the village of Umm Dorain in South Kordofan on Sunday and was sending military observers to gather details. "There were reports of shooting in Umm Dorain, which took place late morning," spokeswoman Hua Jiang said. Unknown gangs also attacked a cop shoppe in the town of Kadugli late on Saturday, taking some weapons before leaving, a front man for the UN mission in Sudan said.

Two officials with the southern ruling party in South Kordofan confirmed the festivities in Kadugli and Umm Dorain, and accused Khartoum of launching the attacks. "NCP (National Congress Party) attacked this morning in Umm Dorain and yesterday night in Kadugli, but it is quiet now," an official with the southern ruling party, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), told Rooters.

The National Congress Party is the ruling party of the Khartoum government. In statement carried by the state news agency SUNA, a front man for the northern army said "the incident" in Umm Dorain was an individual case resulting from one soldier firing at random. "The situation was contained," the statement said, adding Kadugli was calm and that relations between Sudan's armed forces and "the other party" in the Nuba region were stable.

Analysts have said fighting could erupt in parts of South Kordofan and the north-run Blue Nile states, which are home to southern-allied gangs that fought Khartoum during the civil war. Southern officials say the South Kordofan militia are northerners and so Juba cannot tell them to withdraw south.

Southerners voted overwhelmingly to secede in a January referendum promised by a 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended decades of civil war. "The SPLM is still respecting the CPA and the international community, but if they attack again, no one will accept that, and we will be defending ourselves," the southern party official said. He added that tanks were used, but did not give details.
Posted by: Fred || 06/06/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Sudan


Africa North
NATO air raids shake Libyan capital
[Al Jazeera] Five powerful kabooms shook Tripoli as warplanes overflew the Libyan capital which has been the target of intense NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the style of the American pants...
air raids for the past two weeks, according to an AFP news hound.

A powerful but distant blast was felt in the centre of the city at around 9:00pm (1900 GMT) on Sunday, followed by stronger kabooms a few minutes later, said the correspondent who was unable to immediately determine the targets.

NATO fighter jets earlier launched intensive air raids on the capital and its eastern suburbs.

Blasts shook Tripoli at around 2:30am (00:30 GMT). A Libyan government official, speaking to the News Agency that Dare Not be Named news agency on condition of anonymity, said British jets had hit a military barracks in Tripoli, but there were no casualties.

Two powerful but distant blasts were also felt in the centre of Tripoli on Saturday at around 6:30pm (16:30 GMT), followed by several others a few minutes later. Witnesses said the kabooms came from Tajura.

For months, Muammar Qadaffy's forces have been battling rebels who are seeking to end his four-decade rule. Despite mounting international pressure, including NATO air attacks against him, the Libyan leader refuses to step down.

'No deadline'
The developments came as William Hague, the British foreign secretary, said there is no deadline for NATO's Libya operation, and Russia voiced concerns that the use of helicopters showed NATO was sliding towards a land campaign.

"We're not going to set a deadline. You're asking about Christmas and who knows, it could be days or weeks or months, [but] it is worth doing," Hague told an interviewer on BBC television on Sunday.

Hague, who held talks with Libyan rebel leaders in their stronghold Benghazi on Saturday, ruled out putting ground forces, saying NATO would stick to the terms of a UN Security Council resolution passed in March to protect civilians.

"We will continue in that way, intensifiying what we're doing - the Apache helicopters are an example of that - but that's different from mission creep," he said.

"This is not mission creep, changing the nature of the mission, this is intensifiying what we are doing in order to make this mission a success."

Hague's trip came just hours after British Apache helicopters attacked forces loyal to Qadaffy. Hague held talks in Benghazi with the head of the rebel Interim National Council, Mustafa al-Jalil. He also toured the city's landmark seafront as well as a medical centre treating war maimed.

"We're encouraging the National Transitional Council to put more flesh on their proposed transition - to lay out in more detail this coming week what would happen on the day that Qadaffy went - who would be running what, how would a new government be formed in Tripoli?" Hague told the BBC.

'For as long as it takes'
Hague earlier said Perfidious Albion would support demining efforts in Misrata, the main rebel-held city in western Libya, and deliver "more equipment, uniforms, bullet-proof jackets" to rebel fighters.

"We have no combat troops in Libya," he said. But Perfidious Albion, he said, would stand with the Libyan people "for as long as it takes".

"We could not, and did not, turn a blind eye when Qadaffy turned his forces against innocent civilians," Hague said.

"For as long as Qadaffy continues to abuse his people, we will continue and intensify our efforts to stop him."

Earlier, Russia, which is calling for a negotiated solution to the Libyan conflict, has expressed alarm over the use of helicopters by NATO, with Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister, saying that the decision was "deplorable".

"We consider that what is going on is either consciously or unconsciously sliding towards a land operation," he said on Saturday.

NATO's stepped-up offensive comes as Libyan opposition fighters make a major advance towards Tripoli, after claiming victory in western Libyan towns against forces loyal to Qadaffy.

An opposition military leader said on Friday that local fighters won control of four towns in the Nafusa mountain range, where government forces had besieged and randomly shelled rebel-held areas for months.

Opposition fighters have also pushed government troops from Shakshuk and Qasr al-Haj, two towns near a key road that runs along the mountain range's northern edge, Ibrahim, the rebel officer, said.

Rebel progress
After a siege by pro-Qadaffy forces, Misrata is now in opposition hands.

Opposition fighters there have now pushed halfway to the town of Zlitan, on the way to Tripoli, after taking control of Zintan.

At one stage, their advance came to within 60km of Sirte, but the government troops held their line and repelled the attack.

Qadaffy's government has been slowly crumbling from within. A significant number of army officers and several cabinet ministers have defected, and most have expressed support for the opposition.

NATO attacks on the Libyan military and government infrastructure have been occurring daily since March 31 in an operation that has just been extended for another 90 days.

The 18-country mission, led by the US, UK and La Belle France, has several core goals: enforcement of a no-fly zone, maintenance of an arms embargo, protection of civilians and facilitation of humanitarian assistance.
Posted by: Fred || 06/06/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  After a siege by pro-Qadaffy forces, Misrata is now in opposition hands.

Opposition fighters there have now pushed halfway to the town of Zlitan, on the way to Tripoli, after taking control of Zintan.


Good to know that Western media aren't the only ones who get geography scrambled. As far as I can tell, the only Zintan in western Libya is the one near the southern half of the border with Tunisia where the local hillbillies have been rebelling against the Gaddafi regime in an action mostly independent from the rest of the rebellion; it is no-where near Misrata or Zlitan, which is the next town to the west of Misrata on the road to Tripoli. I'm willing to bet that these are two separate reports stitched together by somebody who thought that maybe Zlitan and Zintan were nearby each other.
Posted by: Mitch H. || 06/06/2011 13:14 Comments || Top||

#2  Some time back, I heard a guy say that one destroyer--which is to say one five-inch gun--close inshore could interdict the coast road. So? I asked myself. Then looked at a map to see if there are any roads further south that daffy's forces could use for logistical support.
Nope.
Now, I know there's a pull to the silver-bullet, choke-point, do-this-one-thing and it all comes apart thinking. Usually doesn't work. The other guy can usually come up with a work-around.
However, unless the terrain is suitable for cross-country trucking far enough south to be out of naval gunfire range assisted by UAV spotting--shells being cheaper than missiles and thus preferable--NATO could make the coast road into a one-way street.
Presumably, they have. If daffy's guys can't get supplies forward, they have to retreat to their supplies. Even if they hide in Red Crescent APCs--I mean ambulances--and school buses so NATO doesn't want to risk a shot, supplies are different.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey || 06/06/2011 14:04 Comments || Top||

#3  I have to get a hat like that !!
Posted by: Steven || 06/06/2011 15:47 Comments || Top||

#4  Steven,

It's a Daffy thing. You couldn't get away with.
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 || 06/06/2011 18:19 Comments || Top||

#5  ...with IT. Couldn't get away with it.
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 || 06/06/2011 18:19 Comments || Top||


Arabia
Bahrain protests: Trial opens for 47 doctors and nurses
Dozens of doctors and nurses who treated injured protesters in Bahrain have appeared in court charged with attempting to topple the monarchy.

The 47 medics appeared in a special military court in Manama.

They have been held since March, when Bahrain declared an emergency law, which was only lifted last week.
Posted by: john frum || 06/06/2011 18:16 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


4 Killed as 1st Armored Division Comes under Attack
[Yemen Post] At least four soldiers were killed and eight others were maimed in when the first armored division came under attack on Sunday.

Rockets landed at the headquarters of the division near the change square in downtown Yemen's capital Sana'a, but there were no details about the attack.

A source inside the division said the rockets landed near the headquarters but we did not have an idea about who fired them and why

Ali Muhsen Al-Ahmer, commander of the division and once a close ally of President-for-Life Saleh
... exemplifying the Arab's propensity to combine brutality with incompetence...
, defected from the army and announced support to the popular uprising demanding the departure of the regime months ago.
Posted by: Fred || 06/06/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Yemen opp. to block Saleh's return
[Iran Press TV] The Yemeni opposition says it will do everything within its power to prevent the return of the country's president from Soddy Arabia, where he has decamped to under the pretext of receiving treatment.

"We will work with all our strength to prevent his return," Mohammed Qahtan, front man for the Common Forum parliamentary opposition collation said on Sunday, referring to President President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh
... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower...
, AFP reported.

"We see this as the beginning of the end of this tyrannical and corrupt regime," he added.

Following a reported rocket attack on the presidential palace on Friday, Saleh went to the kingdom along with several other top Yemeni officials to be treated for alleged serious shrapnel wounds and burns on his chest and neck.

Afterwards, dozens of Yemeni youth celebrated what they called the fall of the regime in the capital of Sana'a, chanting, "Today, Yemen is a newborn" and "This is it, the regime has fallen."

The president has been in office for nearly 33 years with several opposition members arguing that his long-promised reforms have not been materialized.

Hundreds of thousands of people have turned out for near daily demonstrations in Yemen's major cities since late January, calling for an end to corruption and unemployment and demanding Saleh's ouster.

The opposition front man said Saleh's sons must be "forced to hand power over to (Vice President) Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi," who under the constitution replaces the absent ruler.

"We are ready to cooperate with Abdrabuh but the problem is whether his children are ready to hand power over to him," he said.
Posted by: Fred || 06/06/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  SALEH repor took up to 24 persons, believed to be mostly family members + close political associates, wid him to Saudi Arabia for his post-attack surgery - his family in gener is also repor believed to be preventing the Yemeni VP from assuming formal constitutional power in his absence.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 06/06/2011 23:27 Comments || Top||


Vice President Hadi Takes Control
[Yemen Post] Vice President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi started today his new powers as an acting president after Presient Saleh left for treatment in Soddy Arabia.

Hadi also met with the U.S. ambassador to Yemen and they talked about an orderly transfer of power as government officials denied that Saleh has left the country forever with his family.

A senior revolution leader in Sanaa said that there are strong chances that the youth protesters will accept the VP Hadi if he leads change in Yemen. She said, "Even though President-for-Life Saleh
... exemplifying the Arab's propensity to combine brutality with incompetence...
still have his sons and nephews in power, they are kids and will cry soon if Saleh does not return."
Posted by: Fred || 06/06/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Take wid a grain of salt, as the last thing I've read this AM is that Saleh has NOT taken formal control yet, + that Prez Saleh's familia is preventing or obtsructing Hadi from doing so???
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 06/06/2011 23:30 Comments || Top||


Saleh undergoes surgery as Yemen rejoices
[Al Jazeera] Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters have celebrated what they described as the fall of the Yemeni government after President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh
... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower...
, the long-serving president, left the country for medical treatment in Soddy Arabia.

The president has undergone two operations "with success" to remove shrapnel from his upper body and perform neurosurgery on his neck, according to a Saudi official.

"Today, Yemen is newborn," sang dozens of youths on Sunday in Sanaa's University Square, dubbed "Change Square", which has been the epicentre of anti-government protests that have raged since February.

Protesters also danced and slaughtered cows to revel in Saleh's departure.

In Yemen's second-largest city Taiz, a flashpoint of anti-government demonstrations south of the capital Sanaa, hundreds also celebrated, chanting: "Freedom, freedom, Ali has decamped".

Meanwhile,
...back at the sandwich shop, Caroline was experimenting with ingredients...
the al-Ahmar group, leading Yemen's Hashed tribal federation that has been locked in battle against troops loyal to Ali Abdullah Saleh, has agreed to abide by a day-old truce, the opposition said on Sunday.

Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the acting president, has offered to withdraw troops from the Sanaa neighbourhood that has seen the heaviest fighting and lift roadblocks for the main routes into the capital.

Saudi officials said Saleh was in their capital, Riyadh, for treatment only and that the visit was not a political one. They also said Saleh would return to Yemen after two weeks.

But Yemen's opposition has vowed not to let Saleh return from Soddy Arabia.

"We will work with all our strength to prevent his return," Mohammed Qahtan, Yemeni parliamentary opposition front man, told the AFP news agency. "We see this as the beginning of the end of this tyrannical and corrupt regime."

Medical treatment
Saleh left for Riyadh on Saturday after he was injured in an attack on his compound in Sanaa a day earlier, the Saudi royal court said in a statement on Sunday.

He flew to Riyadh on a Saudi medical aircraft and was immediately taken to a military hospital at King Khalid Air Base, while a second aircraft carried members of his family.

Saleh walked off the aircraft but had visible injuries on his neck, head and face, a source told Rooters news agency.

Once he recovers from the first two surgeries, Saleh is also expected to have plastic surgery to mend wounds on his face and neck.

Saleh's departure has raised speculations over whether he is going to return to Yemen again.

The rocket attack on the presidential palace, which killed 11 people, devastated the government.

The prime minister, two deputy prime ministers and the speakers of both parliamentary chambers are being treated in Riyadh for injuries.

'End of Saleh's rule'
The rocket attack on Saleh's presidential palace marked a major escalation in the four-month-long uprising against his 33-year rule.

Al Jizz's Hashem Ahelbarra, who has reported extensively on Yemen, said Saleh's retreat to Soddy Arabia spelled the end of his rule.

"If he was maimed then he would need long treatment in Soddy Arabia and Yemen cannot stand a protracted power vacuum," he said.
Posted by: Fred || 06/06/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  perform neurosurgery on his neck

Like they did on Daniel Pearl?
Posted by: Glenmore || 06/06/2011 7:57 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
Suicide attack kills 18 in northwest Pakistan
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Police say a suicide bomber has attacked a bakery in northwest Pakistan, killing 18 people and wounding 40 others.
Bread is un-Islamic?
Police official Liaquat Ali Khan says the attack occurred late Sunday in a neighborhood where army personnel live in the town of Nowshera.

It was the second bomb blast of the day. An earlier attack killed six people at a bus stop in the Matani area, also in the northwest.
Posted by: Steve White || 06/06/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Rockets fired on forces' post in Landikotal
[Pak Daily Times] Two rockets were fired on the Frontier Corps (FC) and Khasadar Force checkposts by unidentified cut-throats on Sunday in Zayarai area of Khyber in tehsil Landikotal, administration sources told Daily Times.

The rockets fired from the surrounding hilltops, however, missed the targets, sources added.

They said that in the wee hours of Sunday, three missiles were fired on a post from Qazi's guesthouse an undisclosed location while sources in the forces confirmed two missiles were fired on the post. No causality was, however, reported in the incident.

Soon after the incident, administration and officials of law-enforcement agencies moved to the spot, cordoned off the whole area and launched massive search operation.

"Around 10 rustics of the area were jugged under the Frontier Crimes Regulation Act," sources concluded.
Posted by: Fred || 06/06/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: TTP


Eight arrested for plotting to kill president
[Dawn] The brute squad has picked up eight alleged forces of Evil for their involvement in a plot to assassinate President Asif Ali President Ten Percent Zardari
... sticky-fingered husband of the late Benazir Bhutto ...
during his scheduled visit to Pakistain Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims), sources told on Saturday.

The sources said that the arrest was made after security agency intercepted a call on May 15 in which two forces of Evil were planning to carry out suicide kaboom during the scheduled visit of President Asif Ali Ten Percent Zardari
... husband of the late Benazir Bhutto, who has been singularly lacking in curiosity about who done her in ...
to Pims to enquire after his ailing father.

The security agency traced the phone call and succeeded in locating one of the group members, who was incarcerated from the area of Margalla cop shoppe about three week ago.

The alleged terrorist was handed over to the security agency which obtained from him the whereabouts of his other group members scattered in Islamabad and its adjacent areas.

The liquidation plan and the arrest was also shared with the president, the sources said.

Later, his other group members were also incarcerated from Islamabad and its adjacent areas.

During interrogation they disclosed their association with a banned sectarian outfit and admitted that they had planned to assassinate the president.

They said the group had also planned to kill the president in Nawab Shah during his father`s funeral prayers or burial, the sources said. In the light of the information, intelligence was mounted at Nawab Shah which led to the arrest of four other alleged forces of Evil involved in the plot, the sources said.

The sources said the burial of the president`s father was all set to take place on the evening of May 25, but due to security risk the ceremony was delayed till next morning and during the period the four alleged terrorist were incarcerated.

The security agency has also picked up over two dozens other people for their alleged links with the group, the sources said.

The names of the alleged forces of Evil were being kept secret.
Posted by: Fred || 06/06/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Pakistan


Iraq
Five American soldiers killed in Iraq - US
FIVE American soldiers have been killed in central Iraq, the US military said in a statement.

"Five US service members were killed Monday in central Iraq," the statement said, without giving further details.

An interior ministry official and an Iraqi police officer said five rockets struck the US's sprawling Camp Victory base on Baghdad's outskirts, but Captain Dan Churchill, a US military spokesman, declined to give details on how the soldiers died.

Monday's deaths bring to 4,459 the number of American soldiers to die in Iraq since the US-led invasion to oust Saddam Hussein in 2003, according to an AFP tally based on independent website www.icasualties.org.

Some 45,000 US soldiers are still based in Iraq, primarily charged with training and equipping their Iraqi counterparts, though they still take part in joint counter terror operations.

All American forces must withdraw from Iraq completely by the end of the year, according to the terms of a bilateral security pact.
Posted by: tipper || 06/06/2011 07:02 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Bombs hit Iraq oil tanks in rare southern attack
A bomb attack against an Iraqi oil storage depot set one tank ablaze on Sunday in a rare assault on strategic southern oilfields, but the country's crude exports were unaffected, Iraqi oil officials and police said. The attack underscored the complex task Iraq faces in protecting and building up its oil infrastructure as the last US troops prepare to withdraw from the OPEC country at the end of the year when a bilateral security pact finishes.

Dhiya Jaffar, head of the state-run South Oil Company, told Reuters the attack set ablaze one tank at the Zubair 1 storage facility, but the explosion had not affected pumping to Al Fao port, where crude exports are dispatched.

An Iraqi police source said bombs targeted four tanks at the facility, but only one of the tanks hit contained crude and ignited. Another bomb hit an empty tank and bombs at two other tanks were disactivated, the police source said. Jaffar said the facility had 20 tanks, of which 14 were working. He described the attack as a 'terrorist operation' without giving any details.

One Iraqi oil official said the blazing tank and another damaged tank near the Zubair oilfield, which is operated by Italy's ENI and US Occidental Petroleum and South Korea's KOGAS, had been quickly isolated. Firefighters put out the blaze hours after the attack and other storage tanks were operating normally at the complex, the Iraqi oil official said.
Posted by: Steve White || 06/06/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  ION KAVKAZ CENTER > [Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan]IEA MUJAHIDEN HIT AT [US-NATO] BASES.

Also from SAME > DEATH OF RUSSIA: RUSSIANS FEAR REBELLION OF "MIGRANT WORKERS".

Milyuhns-n-Tilyuhns of foreign migrants theresame.

* SAME > [Poorly trained]RUSSIANS CAUSED HUGE CASUALTIES AMONG THEIR SOLDIERS AT MILITARY BASE IN UDMURTIA [arms depot explosion], RADIOACTIVE CONTAMINATION FEARED.

Russian Federation's = RusArmy's "Fukushima"???
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 06/06/2011 2:19 Comments || Top||

#2  Sounds like the authorities actually got everything at Zubair under control pretty easily. One tank down, but they were able to put out the fire and prevent further detonations.
Posted by: American Delight || 06/06/2011 8:54 Comments || Top||


Bombs hit Iraq oil tanks in rare southern attack
[Pak Daily Times] A kaboom on an Iraqi oil storage depot set one tank ablaze on Sunday in a rare assault on strategic southern oilfields, but the country's crude exports were unaffected, a top Iraqi oil official said.

The attack underscored the complex task Iraq faces in protecting and building up its oil infrastructure as the last US troops prepare to withdraw from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) country at the end of the year when a bilateral security pact finishes.

Dhiya Jaffar, head of the state-run South Oil Company, said the attack set ablaze one tank at the Zubair 1 storage facility, but the kaboom had not affected pumping to al Fao port, where crude exports are despatched.

"The fire is still burning, but it is under control. Production has been adjusted so daily production levels and export levels are not affected. Exports are continuing at the same rate," Jaffar told news hounds.

An Iraqi police source said bombs targeted four tanks at the facility, but only one of the tanks hit contained crude and ignited. Another bomb hit an empty tank and bombs at two other tanks were made safe, the police source said.

Jaffar said the facility had 20 tanks, of which 14 were working. He described the attack as a "terrorist operation".

One Iraqi oil official said the blazing tank near the Zubair oilfield, which is operated by Italia's ENI and US Occidental Petroleum and South Korea's KOGAS , had been isolated.

Crude is stored in the tanks before being pumped to al Fao port for export. A shipping source said current exports from the area were normal at 1.632 million barrels per day.
Posted by: Fred || 06/06/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Iraq


Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Assad paid Golan demonstrators $1,000 apiece, but turnout scanty
DEBKAfile' sources report that Syrian security agents captured by protesters were hanged in broad daylight from electricity poles on city high streets Sunday, June 5, causing troops and police to flee in panic.

Let's hope Debka got this one right.
Posted by: Bernie || 06/06/2011 03:42 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


#2  An attempt by Assad to divert attention from what's going on in Syria.

If one Syrian is killed trying to bust Israel's borders, there is all kinds of hell to pay. If dozens or hundreds of protesters are killed in Syria, little is said. There is a double standard here in the media as well as in the Arab world. But then this is no surprise.
Posted by: JohnQC || 06/06/2011 17:09 Comments || Top||

#3  A thousand dollars to face a crack Israeli sniper? They actually got takers for this?
Posted by: john frum || 06/06/2011 18:25 Comments || Top||

#4  What can I say, John? They're IDIOTS.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 06/06/2011 18:31 Comments || Top||

#5  Assad is very desperate. There are divisions in his forces. He diverts attention like JohnQC said. He is far weaker than given credit for.
Posted by: newc || 06/06/2011 21:12 Comments || Top||


2 charged in Itamar settler murders
[Ma'an] Two Paleostinians have been charged with the grisly murder of a young Israeli family stabbed to death in a West Bank settlement in March, the Israeli military said on Sunday.

Its website said military prosecutors charged Hakim Awad and a relative, Amjad Awad, both from the West Bank village of Awarta, with the murder of five members of the Fogel family: three-month-old Hadas, four-year-old Elad, 11-year-old Yoav, and their parents Udi and Ruthie.

In addition to the frenzied March 11 stabbing attack at the Itamar settlement near Awarta, the men were also charged with stealing weapons, breaking and entering, and conspiracy to commit a crime, the military said.

"They confessed to committing the acts and incriminated one another," the website said, quoting the charge sheet. "Also, fingerprints and DNA material of the two were found at the [Fogel] family home."

Israel's Ynet news website quoted Amjad Awad as saying he had no remorse, as he was led into a military court in the West Bank for the indictment.

"I'm proud of what I did," he was reported to have said.

The family of the 19-year-old Hakim Awad maintains that the teen is innocent. "We have the medical records, he is in unstable health," his mother told Ma'an shortly after he was charged, adding that the family was gathering the papers to present as evidence in his defense.

She said Hakim had undergone testicular surgery in November at the Rafidiya Hospital in Nablus. "He was at home [the night of the murders] and went to bed at 9:30 [p.m.]," she said.

A report in Israel's Haaretz daily news website quoted from the indictment, saying the two charged allegedly arrived at the settlement at 7 p.m., shortly after dusk, first stabbed the elder children, then their parents. According to the report, the mother was stabbed and then shot, though the assailants were said to have brought only knives to the home.

The indictment was quoted as saying that the two later returned to collect their weapons, at which point the infant child of the Fogel family was slain to stifle cries.

Neither the military website nor the Israeli press gave a date for the trial.

On Sunday, Israeli military released a statement on the completion of an investigation into the actions of soldiers before, during and after the murders, when the village of Awarta was put under a curfew for five consecutive days, and rounded up hundreds of residents during home-to-home raids and collecting forced DNA samples.

The statement on the investigation revealed few details, but the military's Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Benny Gantz expressed "appreciation of the security forces that operated to apprehend the assailants," though the two had not yet been indicted or tried.

A military front man told Ma'an on Thursday, that it was common practice for the army to identify suspects as "assailants," and said the two were awaiting trial at a military court in the northern West Bank.
Posted by: Fred || 06/06/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Southeast Asia
Indonesia implicates terror gang in police deaths
[Asia One] Indonesian police said on Sunday the gunnies who rubbed out two coppers in Central Sulawesi were from an beturbanned goon group founded by radical holy man Abu Bakar Bashir
... Leader of the Indonesian Mujahedeen Council and proprietor of the al-Mukmin madrassah in Ngruki. The spriritual head of Jemaah Islamiya, which he denies exists. Bashir was jugged and then released in the wake of the 2002 Bali bombings, which he blamed on a conspiracy among the U.S., Israel, and Australia ...
(pictured above).

"All of them were indicated to be Jemaah Ansharut Tauhid (JAT) members who had been training or preparing themselves to commit terror acts planned in that region," national police front man Anton Bachrul Alam told news hounds.

"Their future plans include stealing firearms from Brimob special police force in Central Sulawesi, robbing a bank and carrying out robberies in the villages," he added.

Two men have been tossed in the slammer over the attack, in which four gunnies on cycle of violences opened fire on police guarding a bank in Palu district last month and two other gang members were killed in a raid in Poso district on Saturday, Alam said.

Three others are still on the lam, he added.

The shooting is the latest in a series of recent terror-related incidents including a Good Friday plot to blow up a Jakarta church and a book bomb campaign targeting Mohammedan moderates and counter-terrorism officials.

Bashir, 72, has been accused of providing funding of more than $62,000 to a terrorist group dubbed Al-Qaeda in Aceh that was plotting attacks in Indonesia, and prosecutors have sought a maximum life sentence.

Police say the JAT he founded in 2008 was a front for a new campaign of terrorism in the world's most populous Mohammedan-majority state.

Indonesia is struggling to deal with the threat of homegrown Islamist Islamic fascisti who oppose the country's secular, democratic system and want to create a caliphate across much of Southeast Asia.

Vicious communal festivities between Mohammedans and Christians in 2000 and 2001 claimed around 1,000 lives in Poso, and sporadic unrest continued for several years.
Posted by: Fred || 06/06/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under: Jemaah Islamiyah


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Syrian opposition: Anti-Israel rioters paid $1,000
Protestors for hire? Demonstrators along the Syria-Israel border were paid thousands of dollars by President Bashar Assad's regime to take part in Sunday's riots, Syrian opposition activists charge.

Israeli officials later reinforced the claims, accusing the Syrian regime of encouraging protests along the northern border. Sunday’s riots were an attempt "to divert attention away from the massacre in Syria,” one official charged. "The Syrians will be held accountable for these events.”

Late Sunday, Syrian officials claimed that 23 people were killed and 350 were wounded after the IDF fired at protestors aiming to rush the border fence earlier in the day. However, the army dismissed the figures, claiming that they were inflated.
Wasn't more than 19 deaders, tops...
Washington-based members of the Reform Party of Syria said intelligence sources close to the Syrian government in Lebanon informed them that the protesters on the Syrian side of the Druze community of Majdal Shams were in fact poverty-stricken farmers paid by the Assad regime. According to the sources, the farmers migrated over the last few years from drought-stricken northeast Syria to the south. They reached the Israel-Syria border on Sunday in the aims of reenact "Nakba Day" events, the sources said.

The Syrian opposition group claimed that each farmer was promised $1,000 for showing up at the rally and $10,000 to their families if they are killed by IDF fire.
Expensive day for Pencilneck...
According to the report, the average salary of a Syrian citizen is about $200 per month, meaning that participation in Sunday's demonstration could provide a protester and his family with five months worth of financial relief.
Provided he lives...
Meanwhile, army officials fear that the border with Syria will turn into a regular protest and riot site, similar to weekly Palestinian and leftist demonstrations at West Bank villages. Military officials say that should riots continue in the area on a regular basis, the IDF will have to change its deployment in the region. “At this time already we have several regiments that are here instead of following their regular plans,” a military source said.

Notably, the border area with Syria also offers greater operational challenges in containing riots compared to similar events in Judea and Samaria. For example, the firing of tear gas across the border is limited by law and cannot be used as a collective means of crowd control.
Posted by: Steve White || 06/06/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Meanwhile, oer in the SINAI DESERT = SOUTH OF ISRAEL ...

* KAVKAZ CENTER > DID 400 MUJAHIDEEN OF AL-QAEDA APPEAR [infiltrate] IN SINAI PENISULA? as searched for by Egyptian security forces. EGYPT HAS DIFFICULTIES PROTECTING ITS SOVEREIGNTY IN THE SINAI.

AQ Mujahideen believed to be composed of Palestinians, Arab Bedouins, other Arab ethics.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 06/06/2011 2:11 Comments || Top||


Syria security forces 'kill dozens' in north
[Al Jazeera] The corpse count in a government security crackdown in northern Syrian town has risen to 38, with 28 people dead on Sunday alone, according to the AFP news agency.

The operation is part of a crackdown that has been continuing since Saturday, when 10 people died, said a human rights
...not to be confused with individual rights, mind you...
group.

Rami Abdul-Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based independent rights group, said on Sunday that the deaths in the town of Jisr al-Shughour included six coppers. These figures have not been independently verified.

Security forces also rubbed out two protesters in the eastern city of Deir Azzour on Sunday after mourners angered by the killing of a 14-year-old set fire to two Baath Party buildings, residents said.

Human rights groups say more than 1,200 people have died in the military action against anti-government protesters since March.

Bashir al-Assad, the Syrian president, has coupled military operations with symbolic overtures towards the opposition, including a general amnesty and a call for national dialogue.

Dialogue offer 'a joke'
At a meeting of Syria's mostly expatriate opposition in Brussels on Sunday, representatives said dialogue with the government would be "a joke" as long as the violent crackdown continued.

Obeda Nahas, one of the representatives chosen at a two-day Conference of the National Coalition to Support the Syrian Revolution, said any opposition figures who talked to the government right now would not be taken seriously by the Syrian people.

"We can't sit at the table and have some killers with us at the table," he said.

Nahas and other representatives renewed calls on foreign governments and the UN to increase political and legal pressure on Assad's government.

"We want more pressure on this regime because it doesn't seem to be listening to its own people," he said.

Ausama Monajed, another participant, said opposition figures were working to put together legal cases against the Assad government in federal courts in the US, several European courts and the International Criminal Court
... where Milosevich died of old age before being convicted ...
in The Hague.

Meanwhile,
...back at the fist fight, Jake ducked another roundhouse, then parried with his left, then with his right, finally with his chin...
in Syria, Abdul-Rahman, of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and other activists said, the military pulled back tanks from the outskirts of the central city of Hama and in southern villages.

A resident of the city, where at least 65 anti-government protesters were killed on Friday, said the tanks retreated from the outskirts of Hama overnight.

He said the situation in Hama remained "very tense". Residents were conducting a general strike in memory of children previously killed when security forces opened fire on anti-government protesters on Friday.

"Most of the shops here are closed, people are grieving and worried," he said by telephone on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The deaths in Hama and reports of tanks headed there had caused new alarm.

Army withdrawal
Activists on Sunday also said the army withdrew from the villages of Dael and Hirak near the city of Deraa where the uprising against the government began in mid-March.

The military had been conducting military operations in the area for days.

The Local Co-ordination Committees, which helps organise and document the protests calling for an end to the Assad government, said a total of 18 people died in Hirak and 12 in Dael since the start of the operations.

The activists reports could not be independently confirmed. The Syrian government has severely restricted the media and expelled foreign news hounds, making it nearly impossible to independently verify events there.

Details of the operations in Jisr al-Shughour were also sketchy and attempts to reach residents of the town were unsuccessful, possibly because communications have been cut.

The state-run news agency
...and if you can't believe the state-run news agency who can you believe?...
, SANA, said on Sunday four coppers were killed and more than 20 maimed in the area when "armed terrorist" groups attacked government buildings and cop shoppes.

It said the groups have been launching attacks against government buildings since Saturday, setting fire to a nmber of public and private buildings, cutting off roads and intimidating residents.
Posted by: Fred || 06/06/2011 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Pencil-neck's uncle did way better (or worse) back in 1982 in Hama.
Posted by: Glenmore || 06/06/2011 8:00 Comments || Top||

#2  Not uncle, dada.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 06/06/2011 12:46 Comments || Top||

#3  Assad pere might have ordered the Hama massacre, but Hafez's little brother Rifaat actually commanded the force which did the work, so you're both right.
Posted by: Mitch H. || 06/06/2011 13:17 Comments || Top||

#4  ARAB NEWS > SYRIAN GOVT. VOWS "DECISIVE RESPONSE" AS GUNMEN KILL 120 TROOPS [tote = overall], thus far in Syria's troubled northern region as per on-going Protests.

IOW, D *** NG IT, NO MORE MR. NICE BABY ASSAD!
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 06/06/2011 23:35 Comments || Top||



Who's in the News
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Mon 2011-06-06
  Saleh undergoes surgery as Yemen rejoices
Sun 2011-06-05
  Colombian army kills FARC security chief
Sat 2011-06-04
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Fri 2011-06-03
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Thu 2011-06-02
  Kuwait Withdraws Diplomats from Yemen
Wed 2011-06-01
  Yemen truce collapses
Tue 2011-05-31
  50 Protesters Killed in Taiz by Security Forces
Mon 2011-05-30
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Sun 2011-05-29
  Taliban suicide bomber strikes at high-level meeting in Afghan north
Sat 2011-05-28
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Thu 2011-05-26
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Wed 2011-05-25
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