[Al Jazeera] Sudan will hold a referendum on whether to unify the three states of its Darfur territory into one region, a presidential aide has said.
Ghazi Salaheddin told a news conference in Qatar's capital, Doha, on Wednesday that the vote was part of the Abuja agreement 2006, which was signed by the largest opposition group in Darfur and the Sudanese government but failed to end the conflict.
"We'll start arrangements for this referendum. It's a referendum on the administrative status [of Darfur] according to the Abuja agreement and this means we'll start procedures that deal with this requirement in a democratic way for those residing in Darfur to decide on the issue," Salaheddin said.
"We expect it will take a few weeks because we need a law on how to hold this referendum. This is stipulated in the Abuja agreement that we adhere to and this is not new."
Darfur has been in a grip of an eight-year conflict that started after the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) attacked government troops, accusing them of marginalisation and failure to protect villagers from attacks by nomadic groups.
The region, where the UN says 200,000 civilians have been killed, is currently divided into three states with their own governors and administrations - North, South and West Darfur.
Three-way split resented
Omar al-Bashir, Head of the National Congress Party. He came to power in 1989 when he, as a brigadier in the Sudanese army, led a group of officers in a bloodless military coup that ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and eventually appointed himself president. Omar's peculiar talent lies in starting conflict. He has fallen out with his Islamic mentor, Hasan al-Turabi, tried to impose shariah on the Christian and animist south, resulting in its imminent secessesion, and attempted to Arabize Darfur by unleashing the barbaric Janjaweed on it. Sudan's potential prosperity has been pissed away in warfare that has left as many as 400,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced. Omar has been indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court but nothing is expected to come of it. the Sudanese president, has been indicted by the Hague-based International Criminal Court ... where Milosevich died of old age before being convicted ... (ICC) over war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur but he denies any involvement and says only 10,000 people have died in the conflict.
Sudan's government has long resisted the idea of unifying the territory, for fear of giving Darfuris too large a power base and possibly encouraging separatism, say Sudan analysts.
Many from Darfur's large Fur tribe and other groups resent the three-way split, saying it sliced up their territory, turned them into minority players in each state and allowed Khartoum to divide and rule them.
Sudan has said it has been stepping up efforts to resolve the Darfur crisis and will present the vote as a key concession. No one was immediately available to comment from Darfur's rebel groups.
Salaheddin laid out the government's Darfur strategy including, he said, negotiations, consultations with Darfuris and development.
The United states has promised Khartoum incentives - including help with cancelling its near $40bn debt and easing of sanctions - if it settles the conflict and allows the peaceful secession of the south.
In January, south Sudan, roughly the same size as a unified Darfur, held a referendum for secession and the region is to become an independent state on July 9. The vote followed an agreement that ended a decades-long civil war with the north.
Organising a Darfur referendum would prove a huge logistical task as fighting has turned large parts of the territory into no-go areas, plagued by bandidos, kidnappers and warring tribes.
On Monday around 30 unknown gunnies attacked Um Dersay refugee camp in North Darfur state, killing a 16-year-old girl and burning houses, Darfur's UNAMID peacekeepers said.
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03/05/2011 00:00 ||
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Declaration of the Establishment of the National Transitional Temporary Council
In affirmation of the sovereignty of the Libyan people over the entirety of their territory, land, sea, and air; and in response to the demands of the Libyan people, towards the realization of the free will with which they shaped the uprising of February 17th; and in preservation of the Libyan peoples national unity; we resolve to establish a national council named the National Transitional Temporary Council to be the only legitimate representative of the Libyan people.
Five articles follow, pretty much "articles for a new republic; but first us temporary council guys will take charge" boilerplate. They do refer to the rebellion now as the "February 17th Uprising".
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/05/2011 17:08 ||
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CAMBRIDGE It reads like Libyan government propaganda, extolling the importance of Moammar Khadafy, his theories on democracy, and his core ideas on individual freedom.
But the 22-page proposal for a book on Khadafy was written by Monitor Group, a Cambridge-based consultant firm founded by Harvard professors. The management consulting firm received $250,000 a month from the Libyan government from 2006 to 2008 for a wide range of services, including writing the book proposal, bringing prominent academics to Libya to meet Khadafy to enhance international appreciation of Libya and trying to generate positive news coverage of the country.
As the crisis in Libya deepens, Monitors role in Libya has come under increasing scrutiny.
The really nefarious aspect of this is that it reinforced in Khadafys mind that he truly was an international intellectual world figure, and that his ideas of democracy were to be taken seriously, said Dirk Vandewalle, associate professor at Dartmouth College and author of A History of Modern Libya. It reinforced his reluctance to come to terms with the reality around him, which was that Libya is in many ways an inconsequential country and his ideas are half-baked.
Yesterday, Monitor Group acknowledged in a statement that its paid work included helping Khadafys son Saif with his doctoral dissertation at the London School of Economics.
The firm said that assistance and the book proposal were mistakes. But its statement stressed that the firms main effort was designed to help Khadafys dictatorship bring about change. Many of the firms internal memos had been revealed on a Libyan opposition group website in 2009.
The fallout over relations between high-profile academics and Libya has already taken a toll. Sir Howard Davies resigned yesterday as a director at the London School of Economics, which said it would start an inquiry into the schools ties with the Khadafy family.
Professors sent to visit Khadafy included luminaries such as Joseph Nye, former dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard; Lord Anthony Giddens, former head of the London School of Economics; Francis Fukuyama political philosopher from Stanford University; and Benjamin Barber, who has written extensively about democracy.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/05/2011 00:28 ||
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#1
Forget the stupidity re: geopolitics and the coziness with egomaniac dictators. What pisses me off is that these professors were complicit in the award of a fraudulent PhD. For that they should have their tenure revoked and their academic positions removed.
I sincerely hope that some Harvard alumni make a lot of waves over this. Not holding my breath, given the massive Arab oil contributions to that place over the last decade. But hoping nonetheless.
At a minimum, the rest of us should make it plain to all that the fact of Harvard faculty colluding to ghost write a doctoral dissertation for pay means the university as a whole is worthy only of contempt.
#3
Harvard is the source of many good things, but some things, like this, are reprehensible and intolerable. I will voice my disgust.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
03/05/2011 6:49 Comments ||
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#4
Collusion at the other end of the dissertation, too. After all, it must not only be researched and written, but defended. A man who hasn't written the thing is not going to be able to defend it against a committee of professors who know what questions to ask -- and they all know what questions to ask.
#12
TU and Alan, those remarks are insults to all crack whores.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
03/05/2011 15:47 Comments ||
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#13
"We know what's best for you. Unfortunately, we have the ethics of crack whores".
Isn't that the motto of the Federal Grants program*? Come on, any one surprised? Can we type Man Made Global Warming? Yes we can. *Google translates that for the Latin as "Scimus quid melius fuerit. Miser habemus meretrices Ethica crack"
#14
There are a lot of very useful federal grants awarded, P2K, many by DOD looking to seed future capabilities, or by NIH seeding future drugs or disease treatments. Many, if not most, of the grant recipients do legitimate and scrupulous science in my experience (and I've seen the process from the inside).
The ones that don't deserve unmasking, ridicule, scorn and the end of their careers.
[Arab News] Ahmed Gotari, a 28-year-old unemployed man from the Algerian capital, has grown accustomed over the years to being treated dismissively when he calls on local officials to ask for a job.
So when he went this week to the district mayor's office, he was shocked at his reception: the mayor received him personally, welcomed him to his office and told him he would help.
"It was so great that I asked myself if he was going to bring me a coffee," Gotari told Rooters a few days later. "Not three months ago, we were treated like dogs and even the security guard would not look at us." It is not an isolated case. Algeria's usually unbending officialdom is handing out business loans, letting off rule-breaking motorists, easing up on tax dodgers and turning a blind eye to people trading without a license.
What changed was the revolts in Egypt, Tunisia and other parts of the Arab World.
Algeria's leaders, wary that their country, too, could succumb to a popular uprising, are taking unprecedented steps to try to win people over to their side.
Critics of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika ... 10th president of Algeria. He was elected in 1999 and is currently on his third term, which is probably why Algerians are ready to dump him... ...and owner of the absolute worse combover I have ever seen.
say that despite its huge oil and gas resources, Algeria has deep structural problems: a lack of democratic freedoms, persistent unemployment and poor housing conditions.
These are issues that cannot be resolved overnight, so the authorities are targeting the problems that can be fixed.
"This is just an aspirin for somebody who has cancer. It would calm the pain for a while but it will not solve the problem," said Mohamed Lagab, a political analyst and teacher of political sciences at Algiers university.
The government is not ignoring the bigger problems.
It lifted a 19-year-old state of emergency and gave opposition voices airtime on television, key demands of its opponents. It also is investing billions of dollars in modernizing the economy and building new homes.
But its tactic of focusing on day-to-day issues appears to be working -- at least for now.
In January there were several days of rioting across the country triggered by rises in the prices of sugar and cooking oil. Since then there has been no violence and a series of political protests has lost momentum.
Officials throughout Algeria have received instructions to take a more lenient approach with citizens.
In one example, police have been given instructions to take away the licenses of drivers who commit traffic violations only in "very grave" circumstances, according to a government document seen by Rooters.
An instruction signed by Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia told the tax authorities to postpone some of their demands for payment.
A police officer said the authorities also were turning a blind eye to black market activity, known in Algeria as "trabendo," and which consists of youngsters selling cheap good in the street without a license.
"They don't pay taxes. We are not sure about the quality of the products they sell, but we don't care about this now," said the officer in the working class neighborhood of Bab El Oued.
"We want them to be doing something." Another popular measure was the waiver of 24-month compulsory military service for men who had not done their service by the age of 30.
The government also has promised to fund 100 percent of the start-up costs for young people who present a plan for opening a small business.
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03/05/2011 00:00 ||
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[Asharq al-Aswat] Egypt's prime minister-designate vowed Friday before thousands of demonstrators at a central Cairo square to do everything he could to meet their demands and pleaded with them to turn their attention to "rebuilding" the country.
Essam Sharaf was picked by Egypt's military rulers on Thursday to replace Ahmed Shafiq as prime minister.
Shafiq was the last premier to be named by Hosni Mubarak, who stepped down Feb. 11 in the face of massive anti-government protests demanding an end to his 30-year rule.
A former transport minister, Sharaf endeared himself to the protesters when he joined the demonstrations that forced Mubarak to resign. His made his address Friday at Tahrir Square, the protests' epicenter.
"I draw will and determination from here," he told the estimated 10,000 demonstrators. "I will do my utmost to realize your demands," he said, pledging to step down if he fails.
Shafiq, a U.S.-educated civil engineer, served in the Cabinet for 18 months between 2004 and 2005.
His appearance at the square on Friday -- he was carried on the shoulders of demonstrators to and from the podium -- was the latest evidence of the power retained by the youth groups nearly a month after they ousted Mubarak. Sharaf's government will serve in a caretaker capacity until parliamentary elections are held.
However, The infamous However... Sharaf declined to take an oath of office before the demonstrators as they demanded and left the square amid chants of "Swear! Swear!"
Besides Shafiq's resignation, the revolt's leaders want Mubarak's National Democratic Party dissolved along with the hated State Security Agency blamed for some of the worst human rights ... which are not the same thing as individual rights, mind you... violations during Mubarak's rule. Other demands include the prosecution of security officials behind the deaths of protesters and the release of political prisoners.
"I am here because I get my legitimacy from you," Sharaf, in a gray business suit but no tie, told the demonstrators. He called on the protesters to turn their attention to "rebuilding Egypt."
"I pray to God that I see an Egypt where free opinions are voiced outside (prison) cells and security agencies are in the service of the nation."
Posted by: Fred ||
03/05/2011 00:00 ||
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[Arab News] Thursday's news of the resignation of the Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq -- who was appointed by Hosni Mubarak in a failed attempt to quiet the anti-government protests -- has been welcomed by Egyptian expatriates in the Kingdom.
Mubarak stepped down Feb. 11 and the military took control of the country, but Shafiq remained in office at the head of a caretaker government.
A brief statement posted on the military's official website said it had chosen former Transport Minister Essam Sharaf as the new prime minister and asked him to form a new caretaker Cabinet to run the government throughout a transition back to civilian rule.
Ayman Abdul Bari, a young Egyptian journalist working in Soddy Arabia said Shafiq's resignation marks the end of the age of corrupt dictatorship and beginning of a new epoch of freedom and human values in the political history of Egypt.
"Shafiq's resignation is not a voluntary act. It is his submission to the wishes of the young revolutionists that no remnant of the old regime should remain in the new system. All of them should quit the new Egyptian political arena," Abdul Bari told Arab News.
He added that Shafiq was a choice pick of Mubarak and because of that he should not have been allowed to stick around under any pretext.
"If he remained in power, he would most probably help the old elements to intrude into the midst of the revolutionists and dilute the noble goals of the revolution," he added.
Jeddah-based pharmacist Muhammad Abdul Salam Al-Bardeesi said Shafiq's resignation has removed all obstacles in purging the government of the old guard. "Personally I believe that every element fostered by the corrupt Mubarak government should go and only then would the Jan. 25 revolution be complete," he said.
Egyptian expat Saeed Al-Baraee, who teaches in a Saudi private school, said Shafiq's resignation would make investigations into corrupt officials easy. Shafiq was not free from corruption charges, he added.
"For instance, Shafiq -- in his capacity as the civil aviation minister -- awarded the contract for work at Cairo International Airport to contractors who were close to the former president's family," he said.
Ridwan Qanawi, who is from Upper Egypt, wondered how Shafiq could be considered a clean politician as he had close connections with Mubarak and his sons on one hand and with some notoriously corrupt bureaucrats and businessmen on the other.
An engineer by profession, Sharaf served in the Cabinet for 18 months between 2004 and the end of 2005. He visited the anti-Mubarak protesters in Cairo's central Tahrir Square, the uprising's epicenter, something that endeared him to the youth groups behind the opposition movement.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/05/2011 00:00 ||
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"I don't know of anyone at the (Central Intelligence) Agency who was fully comfortable with the Libyans telling us everything we wanted to know," said a former senior intelligence official. "The going assumption was they were lying whenever possible, and we were rarely proven wrong."
Moreover, he said, U.S. intelligence believed that the Libyans had not been completely truthful on the quantity as well as the quality of the weapons. "We believed they were saving something for a rainy day." More details at link.
So Gaddafi was set free to make money and corrupt the Western political and intellectual class in exchange for what exactly?
Chemical weapons are still an issue and he still managed to extort concessions from the West using his HEU stockpile in 2009.
#1
Chemical weapons are still an issue and he still managed to extort concessions from the West using his HEU stockpile in 2009.
Still, we did get his nuclear program -- used to design the Stuxnet virus, 'tis said -- and destroyed much of the chemical stock he admitted to. There's that much less available to the bad guys, which is something.
By Adam Entous And Julian E. Barnes of the Wall Street Journal.
After weeks of internal debate on how to respond to uprisings in the Arab world, the Obama administration is settling on a Middle East strategy: "Yeah, the debate was about how we could blame Bush. So we ran a whole bunch of focus groups on that. We stopped when the focus group participants all responded that they really missed Bush."
I wonder how long the internal debate about Jewish settlements lasted. How does one measure a picosecond? Quickly...
I think it might be related to the the vibration period of a nanoviolin's E string (that's the high one, for those of you who did chorus or band in high school instead).
help keep longtime allies who are willing to reform in power, even if that means the full democratic demands of their newly emboldened citizens might have to wait. So all of you "emboldened citizens" hanging by your thumbs in some despot's hellhole, just, as it were, hang in there.
Instead of pushing for immediate regime change the U.S. is urging protesters from Bahrain to Morocco to work with existing rulers toward what some officials and diplomats are now calling "regime alteration." Personally I prefer "tyranny light."
The approach has emerged amid furious lobbying of the administration by Arab governments But no cash changed hands. Nope, nope, nope. However, Malia is now a member of the Saudi royal family.
Administration officials say they have been consistent throughout True, although not in the way they meant
urging rulers to avoid violence and make democratic reforms that address the demands of their populations. Like making them buy health insurance.
Still, a senior administration official acknowledged the past month has been a learning process for policy makers. Yeah, since the Middle East has only been front page news all day every day since the invention of the printing press, I can see how this was all a shock. Being surprised is the hallmark of The One's administration.
The rest of the article explains how we really need Bahrain to be stable, which for all I know is true. But the point is that this has been total amateur hour, which has the uniquely bad effect of undercutting both the reformers and the status quo..
Posted by: Matt ||
03/05/2011 11:12 ||
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#1
Mubarak is out and Egypt is in danger of turning into a Sunni Iran.
Gaddafi is weakened but still hanging on to some power. He might yet restore his rule over Libya.
This really is a convenient time for the Obama administration to relax demands for regime change (which were officially made in Mubarak's case.)
[Ennahar] Yemeni President President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh, ... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, after serving as a lieutenant colonel in the army. He had been part of the conspiracy that bumped off his predecessor, Ibrahim al-Hamdi, in the usual tiresome military coup, and he has maintained power by keeping Yemen's many tribes fighting with each other, rather than uniting to string him up. ... has lost significant support in his country, but this crucial ally of the United States in the Arabian Peninsula may still survive the pressure from his opponents, ensure analysts.
In power for 32 years, he faces daily demonstrations demanding his departure, in Sana'a, Aden and other cities of this poor country of some 24 million inhabitants.
"It's clear that his situation is bad," says Christopher Boucek, an analyst of the Carnegie Middle East Program, so that further violence between Iranian catspaws and security forces have killed four Friday in the north.
The opposition groups were aligned against Mr. Saleh, and they were joined by leaders of major tribes, and by separatists based in the south, who are challenging the old part of the North in 1990.
"But it is too early to announce that President-for-Life Saleh ... exemplifying the Arab's propensity to combine brutality with incompetence... is finished," said Mr. Boucek in an interview with AFP.
President Saleh, 68, took power in northern Yemen in 1978. With the end of the Cold War, Marxist southern and northern tribal found themselves joined in a unitary state, he became president in 1990.
Since the beginning of the dispute, he said he was determined to stay in power until the end of his current term in 2013, but he has seen close allies abandon him.
A dozen members of his own party, General People's Congress, have even resigned in protest against the violence that marked the beginning of the challenge in January. According to Amnesia Amnesty International, 27 demonstrators were killed before the four deaths announced Friday.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/05/2011 00:00 ||
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This might not explain everything about the Norks, but it sure does explain the KCNA.
North Korea's collapse will be brought about not by external pressure or the economic malaise but by widespread crystal methamphetamine abuse, say North Korean defectors who have recently arrived in the South.
How serious the problem is can be gleaned from a special instruction issued by North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's son and heir Jong-un, who earlier this year ordered the security forces to round up drug users, "regardless of rank" -- implying that addiction is widespread in all strata of society.
Defectors say that youngsters at an elite school in Chongjin, North Hamgyong Province attended by the children of senior officials were caught by security officers having sex acts while watching a porn video under the influence of the drug. Widespread drug use has also been reported at major universities such as Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies and Kim Chaek University of Technology.
North Korean sources say many security officers are themselves in thrall to the highly addictive drug.
Rumors say that at an officers' school under the North Korean Army near the border area, senior officers are enticing female soldiers under their command to use the drug and siphoning off the school's food to raise money for drugs.
Many officials of the State Security Department, the key North Korean agency charged with protecting the regime, are drug abusers themselves, sources claim, and reportedly work themselves up into frenzies of violence under the influence.
Instead of disposing of drugs they confiscate, officials either use them themselves or make money selling them on.
Some North Koreans allegedly use drugs as currency, with high school students exchanging them as birthday gifts and people even giving them as wedding presents.
The drugs in circulation are made in the North. The North reportedly began producing them in the early 1980s to earn the hard currency for the regime.
But crackdowns abroad have made export more difficult, especially in China, so the drugs are now sold in the North itself.
Once the taboo was broken, drugs became rampant. Even scientists at academies of sciences have begun secretly making drugs in their laboratories to earn money on the side as the economy goes from bad to worse.
A former senior North Korean official who recently defected to South Korea said the number of drug addicts has soared since a botched currency reform in late 2009.
A rumor among senior officials in Pyongyang in recent days is that Kim Jong-il's younger sister Kyong-hui is among the addicts, and Kim father and son too use the drug.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/05/2011 00:00 ||
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#4
China ships meth ingredients by the shipload to Mexico. It is my pet theory that Mexican drug cartels get most of their assault rifles from China and possibly North Korean via Venezuela.
#5
It seems to me that a re-imagining of Dante's Inferno is in order, with various communist regimes, former and current, used to represent the circles of Hell. North Korea easily takes the innermost circle, a frozen wasteland wherein dwells Satan himself.
In that analog, instead of Satan chewing on Judas, Brutus and Cassius, he now gnaws on Jimmy Carter, George Soros, and Noam Chomsky.
#6
The drugs in circulation are made in the North. The North reportedly began producing them in the early 1980s to earn the hard currency for the regime.
But crackdowns abroad have made export more difficult, especially in China, so the drugs are now sold in the North itself.
And this generates hard currency how?
Posted by: Mike Ramsey ||
03/05/2011 15:15 Comments ||
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#7
gemnerates hard currency by selling them for other things, asia is a big usuer of speed
Posted by: chris ||
03/05/2011 16:16 Comments ||
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Ulema from different schools of thought have condemned the ruthless killing of Federal Minister for Minorities Affairs, Shahbaz Bhatti, a private TV channel reported on Wednesday.
Speaking on a television channel, Jamia Binoria Al Alamiya head, Mufti Naeem, said that the killing was a cruel act, adding that it should not be justified as a religious duty, as the prime minister has clearly turned down any possibility of amendments in the blasphemy law. He said that Bhatti could have been killed when the blasphemy issue was hot, but he was killed at this time to hush up the Rayomd Davis issue and to create a rift between Mohammedans and Christians.
He further said that some powers were trying to promote the impression that injustice is being done with the minorities in Pakistain, so that they could take action. He said that the Taliban were blamed for attacks on shrines, but later on it is disclosed that some other power was responsible for the attacks. He said that as the murder took place in Islamabad, the government is responsible for the incident and should take immediate action. He urged the Learned Elders of Islam to teach the value of patience, tolerance and equality to the masses.
Replying to a question about former Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer, he said that Taseer was a Mohammedan and his killing could not be justified.
Pakistain Ulema Counsel Chairman, Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Ashrafi, said that the killing of Bhatti was a sad incident. Ashrafi said that no law, Shariat or code of conduct could justify the murder. Killing someone without a reason was against the teachings of Islam, he said. Ashrafi said that justifying previous murders by celebrating them and terming the killers as heroes was promoting such killings. He said that the movement to save the blasphemy law promoted extremism, adding that the assassin of Taseer has not been punished yet. He said that such murders are schemes against Islam, adding that some powers are misusing our people against us.
Ashrafi said that Bhatti's murder had nothing to do with Davis' case, adding that the case was an entirely separate issue. He said that people issue edicts on their own, which resulted in such killings. He said that the Learned Elders of Islam should condemn activities which were being carried out in the name of Islam, the channel reported him as saying. Pakistain Jamiat Ulema chief Abu al Kher Zubair termed the brutal killing of Bhatti as a plot against the blasphemy law.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/05/2011 00:00 ||
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BAGHDAD / Aswat al-Iraq: Curfews and traffic bans imposed in the provinces of al-Anbar, al-Diwaniya and Kirkuk were lifted on Friday as life came back to normal following mass protests in Iraq demanding better services and living conditions.
Violence that erupted during the protests left dozens demonstrators and security men wounded.
Meanwhile, Brig. Sarhad Qader, the director of the Kirkuk Districts Police Department (KDPD), told Aswat al-Iraq news agency that an improvised explosive device went off in a village in the district of Taza, (25 km) southern Kirkuk, near an Iraqi army patrol but left no casualties or losses.
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03/05/2011 00:00 ||
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MISSAN / Aswat al-Iraq: Thousands of supporters of Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr staged a march in al-Amara on Friday to express backing for the Libyan people, according to the director of Sadrs office in the city.
The demonstrators were chanting slogans of support for the Libyan people in their upheaval to change Libyas ruling regime and denouncing the killing of Libyan civilians, Taama al-Khazaali told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.
The protests in Amara were peaceful and condemned criminal acts perpetrated against the Muslim Libyan people who call for peaceful change of the regime while in the same time denounced any U.S. interference in Libyan affairs, he added.
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03/05/2011 00:00 ||
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TEHRAN (FNA)- Chief of Staff of Iran's Armed Forces Major General Hassan Firouzabadi warned the US officials of the fatal consequences and aftermaths of Washington's military intervention in Libya.
Yeah, yeah. Go talk to your boss about it, but don't speak 'down' to him, even though it will be hard.
"Any kind of US measure and interference in Libya will not only stabilize Islamic Revolutions in the region and further clarify their path and direction, but also cause a severe blow to the US economy and increase their (Americans') debts and budget deficit," Firouzabadi cautioned in his remarks on Saturday.
Please, our military spends more on hammers and toilet seats then we'd spend to remove Qadaffy, if our C-in-C wanted to make it happen.
He dismissed the Washington and Pentagon officials' explicit hints about an imminent US military intervention in Libya, and said, "The Libyan people have risen and shown that they can liberate their country and they are much different from the Iraqi and the Afghan people."
Perhaps the Libyans, Iraqis and Tunisians share a certain characteristic with the Iranian people...
The top military official noted that the capitalist system is seeking to develop its strategies in the wealthy and Muslim states which possess abundant oil wells and resources, and mentioned, "The reality is that the US wants to stage a military intervention to find control over Libya's oil wells as it did in Iraq with the Iraqi oil."
If all we had wanted was the oil we would have made a deal with Saddam.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/05/2011 11:55 ||
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#1
sure is funny how we supposedly steal everyones oil but our gas still keeps going up. I f we wanted too take them over we would do just that and forget about all that humanitarian bullshit.
Posted by: chris ||
03/05/2011 15:58 Comments ||
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#2
Chief of Staff of Iran's Armed Forces Major General Hassan Firouzabadi warned the US officials of the fatal consequences and aftermaths of Washington's military intervention in Libya.
This guy needs to witness those "consequences" upfront and personal.
Posted by: Mike Ramsey ||
03/05/2011 17:49 Comments ||
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[An Nahar] Caretaker Premier Saad Hariri reiterated that he rejects to become a partner with Hizbullah's arms that have allegedly turned against the Lebanese.
"Former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and I preserved the resistance," Saad Hariri told An Nahar daily in an interview published Friday but said he would no longer defend it "after it put arms in the face of the Lebanese."
"The other team hasn't done a thing to help the partnership succeed," Hariri said, adding that he "exerted every effort to have a national unity cabinet based on several principles mainly reconciliation and real partnership."
The caretaker prime minister vowed not to back off from his demands to find a solution to illegitimate arms and keep Leb committed to the Special Tribunal for Leb.
"The country would not resurrect as long as a team carries weapons," he told An Nahar ahead of a private visit to Riyadh.
Snapping back at officials who claim that the arms belong to the resistance, Hariri said: "We are all strugglers."
Asked why he didn't blame Syria for allegedly toppling his government in his latest speeches, the caretaker premier said he sought to consolidate the state-to-state relations between the two countries.
"I didn't want the improvement made in the ties to go backwards," Hariri added.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/05/2011 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.
Bouteflika
[Asharq al-Aswat] Egypt's prime minister-designate vowed Friday before thousands of demonstrators at a central Cairo square to do everything he could to meet their demands and pleaded with them to turn their attention to "rebuilding" the country.
[Arab News] Thursday's news of the resignation of the Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq -- who was appointed by Hosni Mubarak in a failed attempt to quiet the anti-government protests -- has been welcomed by Egyptian expatriates in the Kingdom.
"I don't know of anyone at the (Central Intelligence) Agency who was fully comfortable with the Libyans telling us everything we wanted to know," said a former senior intelligence official. "The going assumption was they were lying whenever possible, and we were rarely proven wrong."
President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh,
He further said that some powers were trying to promote the impression that injustice is being done with the minorities in Pakistain, so that they could take action. He said that the Taliban were blamed for attacks on shrines, but later on it is disclosed that some other power was responsible for the attacks. He said that as the murder took place in Islamabad, the government is responsible for the incident and should take immediate action. He urged the 
[An Nahar] Caretaker Premier Saad Hariri reiterated that he rejects to become a partner with Hizbullah's arms that have allegedly turned against the Lebanese.
