Umm Amer, mother of Amer and Nasser Al-Enezi - most active members of Osoud Al-Jazeera terrorist organisation in Kuwait - says she supports the trial of her sons for their involvement in crimes against the country. In an interview with media before the death of Amer Al-Enezi in prison Wednesday, she said, "Amer can't be the leader of any terrorist cell as by nature he is a calm person. I hope Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah will arrest those who brainwashed my sons putting them in trouble."
"Yeah! Dey wuz led astray!"
Talking about the reaction of her family to the TV images of the security operation in Salmiya, she said, "I didn't know the dead body shown on TV was that of my son Nasser." The 40-year-old Umm Amer went on to say, "when I came to know about the Maidan Hawalli incident I cursed the terrorists. Soon securitymen were at our doors asking questions about Amer. I told them I didn't see or hear from him after Ramadan." Claiming securitymen didn't ask her anything about Nasser, she said, "when I asked the policeman why they were looking for my son they said he was behind the Maidan Hawalli attack."
"You coulda knocked me over with a feather! My boy? Hey, no way!"
Describing Amer as a shy person who can recite the entire Holy Quran, she said, "he had won the first prize in a Holy Quran recitation competition and everybody knows about his good morals. I was surprised when policemen told me Amer was responsible for the Maidan Hawalli attack because he was not a good leader."
Obviously not, since he managed to get his brother bumped off in the festivities, get captured himself, and blow the entire operation. It's an old Islamic tradition, though. They wear those turbans so they don't bruise their heads so bady when they're banging their heads against the wall and screaming: "Idiots! I gotta work with idiots!"
"Amer liked to crack jokes and was good to his parents. He was married when he was 18," she said. "He was a good student and planning to continue higher education in Islamic studies."
"He was going to major in explosives. He hoped to teach it some day..."
Indicating Kuwait University didn't accept him, she said, "if only the university had accepted Amer he would not have fallen in bad company." Amer Al-Enezi has two sons and two daughters. Umm Amer also said Nasser Al-Enezi resigned from the Amiri Guards to continue his Islamic studies in Saudi Arabia.
This article starring:
AMER AL ENEZI
Osoud Al-Jazeera
NASER AL ENEZI
Osoud Al-Jazeera
Osoud Al-Jazeera
Posted by: Fred ||
02/11/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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typical muzzie/'rab lack of personal responsibility--it was the college's fault for not letting him in--it was his friends keeping "bad company" blah blah--shame /honor cultures can munch my shorts
Posted by: SON OF TOLUI ||
02/11/2005 2:39 Comments ||
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KUWAIT CITY: Former minister of information Dr Saad bin Teflah Al-Ajmi says some good may come of the recent tragic shootouts between security men and Islamic militants in the country "if the crises are managed properly in the direction of better representation, a multi party system, more freedom and at the same time combating extremism." Bin Teflah, also a former director of Kuwait's Information Office in London who now teaches at Kuwait University, told the Arab Times the educational system needs to be overhauled to meet the demands of the job market. "It doesn't have to take someone like me to prove that we need to review and develop the educational curriculum. The fact speaks for itself in the sense that the outcome of the education now is people who are semi-literate and incompatible with the job market."
He said his former ministry and the Ministry of Education has always been the targets of so-called Islamists because they want to control the society. "They think they have to purify the society. In an effort to do so - to control the society, to purify the society, to bring it back to their 'ideal Islamic society' they have to control the channels of education and information." The information ministry portfolio has over the years been the 'hottest' seat in the Cabinet with many occupants leaving office before their time was due. The latest casualty was Kuwait's former ambassador to the United Nations Mohammed Abulhassan who resigned in December on the eve of his grilling in the National Assembly by 3 Islamist MPs.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/11/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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KUWAIT CITY: The Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs has no place for preachers who use the pulpit to promote radical and extremist ideas, the sector minister told a seminar Tuesday."The Awqaf Ministry rejects all forms of extremism and we have made it clear that those who promote extremist ideas from the pulpits have no place in the ministry," Dr Matouq Abdullah Al-Matouq told the seminar held under the slogan 'Together Against Terror' organized by MP Jamal Al-Omar at the Al-Omar Diwaniya in Adailiya.The gathering was also addressed by MPs Saleh Ashour, Hassan Jowhar, Ali Hmoud Al-Hajeri, Mohammed Khalifa and Issam Dabbous.
When you come right down to it, government has no place for a Ministry of Islamic Affairs, does it?
Minister of Social Affairs and Labor and Acting Minister of Information Faisal Al-Hajji also attended. Dr Matouq said extremism has nothing to do with Islam. "They (the extremists) call us 'Tagut' (idol worshippers) and say praying behind us or with us is tantamount to praying with idol worshippers, neither do they respect the sanctity of our mosques. Their leaders are the Internet. Their leaders are evil. Those who have no leaders have Satan as their leader."He said only 2 or 3 people among the extremists were found to have been employees of the ministry. The ministry, he said, dispensed with the services of Amer Khlaif Al-Enezi, the spiritual leader of the militants, when it became aware of his radical ideas.
Embarrassing, isn't it? But then, if there wasn't a Ministry of Islamic Affairs, you wouldn't have that problem. But it's tough to let people fend for themselves when it comes to religion...
#2
Dr.Matouq's philosophy is definitely in the right direction however he should keep his abstract comparisons to himself ( Tim McVeigh was no Christian ). It is good to hear Muslim leaders denouncing terrorism, we don't hear that enough publicly.
#3
They have to work their way up the religious hierarchy:
Baby bottom smooth novice
5 day stubble
Kind Fahd trim
Ayatollah weak chin concealer
ZZ Top badass
Posted by: ed ||
02/11/2005 11:50 Comments ||
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Unless the "fire" is in the 50 caliber form...who cares.
A satirical narrative carried recently by the media in the West, where Fox News Channel is shown buying Al-Jazeera, was unfortunately understood to be factually correct by a section of Pakistan's media. "Al-Jazeera Channel categorically denies the assertions entailed in the satirical commentary, it 
expects media to discriminate between imaginative satire and hard fact, and actually seek clarification by checking the story from the source rather than merely repeating it," said Ahamn Muaffaq Zaidan, bureau chief Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel Islamabad, in a press release issued on Thursday. Al-Jazeera appreciates the wide public interest expressed in its future, and wishes to assure viewers in Pakistan and the world over that the channel remains committed to its core editorial values, added the press release.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/11/2005 00:00:00 ||
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#1
The coolest part of this story would br if one of the conditions of the sale was Al Jazeera can't reveal they got bought out by Fox.
#3
heh..heh.. propaganda isn't as concerned with fact, as it is with simply getting the lie out there..throwing the seed to the wind.
All Jaz will now have to "prove" itself, to the newly created skeptics, which will ultimately limit it's ability to provide any real fair and balanced reporting without causing suspicion that this rumor is true. The more lies you print in this day of instant information, the less credible you become.
heh..heh...this little satire created a full on catch 22 for the Jizz folks.
#6
2b: that adds up to "pressure on Al-Jazeera to be ever more anti-American, anti-Australian, anti-western - or you're all Fox tools!" How is this a good thing? If I were a terrorist-sympathizing asshole, I'd be dancing in the streets right now.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
02/11/2005 17:01 Comments ||
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Saudi Arabia intends to increase crude oil capacity to 12.5 million barrels by 2009. Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al Nueimi said the kingdom would continue current oil production of nine million barrels per day. Al Nueimi said Riyad has not yet decided to follow calls within OPEC for an oil production cut, which would be discussed at the cartel's meeting in Isfahan, Iran on March 16. Al Nuemi said the planned output increase was part of a 20-year plan. He said Riyad was also capable of further increasing oil output to 15 million barrels a day. "Saudi Arabia plans to increase its production capacity to 12.5 million barrels per day within the next four years," Al Nueimi said.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/11/2005 00:00:00 ||
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Can they really maintain this output level, given how many expats have already left out of fear of terror attacks? I recall .com talking about equipment maintenance going undone...
I decided to hop over to News from Bangladesh to see if there was anything else going on besides the usual crossfires. I don't plan to do this regularly.
Bangladeshi Newsman Dies of Bomb InjuriesFrom Reuters
DHAKA, Feb 11 (Reuters) - A Bangladeshi journalist died of bomb injuries on Friday, six days after he and three other reporters were wounded in an explosion at a press club, doctors said.
Sheikh Belaluddin was wounded when a remote-controlled bomb exploded in the parking lot of the press club in southewestern city of Khulna on Feb. 5, the latest in a series of attacks on journalists in Bangladesh...
...Fourteen journalists have been killed in the country's southwest in the past 11 years mostly because they have written against crime and lawlessness in the region.
Url: www.kibria.org.
As many of you know, my father Shah AMS Kibria, was brutally assassinated in Bangladesh on January 27 2005. My father was a renowned public figure and intellectual; at the time of his death he was a Member of the Parliament in Bangladesh.
Many of you have contacted me to express your condolences. I am deeply grateful for your support at this time. I am currently focused on working to bring the killers of my father to justice. Our family is calling for an international investigation team to be immediately sent to Bangladesh to conduct an impartial investigation. I am asking you to help us in our efforts...
...For ongoing information and news about my father's killing, please refer to the website:
I will be deeply grateful for your help in these matters.
Nazli Kibria
Associate Professor of Sociology
Boston University
******************************** Previous Rantburg links on this subject are here, here, here, and here. I can't vouch for which speculation is accurate and which not, but this might give an interesting picture of the progression of events there. Oh, and here's some more:
A special of the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrived in the capital on Wednesday and began parleys with senior home ministry officials to frame the terms of reference for the bureau's assistance in investigating the January 27 grenade attack in Habiganj.
A spokesman for the US Embassy told the news agency Thursday night that the FBI agent, Trung Vu, came to Dhaka to meet the ministry officials about the request for support in the grenade attack case.
'The objective of his meetings is to work out written terms of reference detailing the specifics of the requested assistance and the parameters that would govern the rendering of that assistance,' he said...
I am almost expecting negotiations about when the negotiations will start. Shouldn't the terms of assistance have already been worked out by the State Department? Or are they discussing what the FBI gets in return? Training in crossfires?
MIAMI - (KRT) - To trace her remarkable journey, Bilkis Khatun has only to look in the mirror.
The skin grafts and cartilage and fading scars on her face tell the story of a life rebuilt, from "honor crime" victim in Bangladesh to outspoken survivor in a land halfway around the world.
In the last four years, she has been lasered and stitched, transplanted and tucked. Doctors custom-made a prosthetic ear, surgically implanted a brow, re-created a nose with the last nub of cartilage from her destroyed ear.
But plastic surgery works on the outside. Medical records don't chart the changes within. For Bilkis, now 17 and headed back to her country, the strength and bravery she discovered after enduring an act of unspeakable cruelty may be the greatest makeover of all.
"Oh, my god!"
She cups a hand over her mouth, half laughing, half dismayed. She's watching videotaped news footage of herself when she arrived at Miami International Airport in May 2001. This girl is fresh from Dhaka, in an Indian-style tunic and dark sunglasses so enormous they almost swallow her face. She looks petrified.
The newscasters describe her in grave tones: a disfigured Bangladeshi girl who traveled to Florida for reconstructive surgery after thugs threw acid on her face.
The image shifts to a news conference. Her new plastic surgeon discusses her case and so does her foster mother. On television, Bilkis sits small and silent as a voice-over warns of "graphic pictures" to come: close-ups of Bilkis' ravaged face.
She shakes her head at the big screen. "I've changed a lot."
She is not talking about the plastic surgery.
The Bilkis of today doesn't much resemble her black-and-white schoolgirl picture taken before the attack. She looks like a new self, with scars and uneven skin pigment still evident.
"I worked really hard to have this new face," she says. "But the face, it's not that important. I think what's inside, that's important."
She was 13 at the time of the acid attack. In Bangladesh, such assaults are known as "honor crimes," often committed by spurned boyfriends or angry husbands to avenge themselves, using the most available weapon: battery acid. The Acid Survivors Foundation, started in 1999, reports that there were 283 acid-throwing assaults between January and October last year.
In Bilkis' case, the details are murky. Two men, hired by a would-be suitor she says she never met, broke into her home at night to pour acid on her face. One was later caught, though the specifics of his punishment are unclear. Bilkis spent months in a Dhaka hospital before the Florida/Georgia chapter of Healing the Children stepped in.
Oprah Winfrey had aired a show that spring on international violence against women, including acid attacks in Bangladesh. In Weston, Fla., a single mother with two daughters watched from her sickbed and took action. Within minutes, Heidi Marer was on the Internet offering to help.
"I was saving the world," she jokes.
A few miles away in Fort Lauderdale, someone else was prepared to help, too. Dr. Russell Sassani, who would become Bilkis' chief plastic surgeon and perform 14 surgeries on her, had heard about Healing the Children from his partner, Michael Schneider. Schneider was involved in an airline program that provided adult escorts for children traveling solo, some as part of the charity's campaign.
"As horrific a crime as this was, Mike made me realize it would be a greater crime if we did nothing to help," Sassani said.
Less than two months later, Bilkis stepped off a plane in Miami, armed with a month's worth of English lessons...
There's more, including a comment in the article that states that based on her experiences assimilating to the US, they plan on flying the patients back to their home countries in between surgeries.
Awami League chief Sheikh Hasina has alleged that the BNP-Jamaat alliance government has been killing her party's leaders and workers one after another implicating them in 'false and conspiratorial' cases.
"As part of its evil design to eliminate the Awami League and prolong its misrule, the government has been implicating the leaders and activists at the grassroots level and killing them after branding them as terrorists," she said when the family of slain Dhaka City Juba League leader Billal Hossain Bepari met her at her Sudha Sadan residence at Dhanmondi in the city yesterday...
...The Awami League leader said there is no alternative left to the citizenry other than to remove the 'tyrant' government through a vigorous mass movement.
While consoling the bereaved family of Billal Bepari, Sheikh Hasina assured his mother Majeda Begum that she would bear the educational expenses of his two minor sons.
The Awami League chief also handed over Taka 10,000 and a sewing machine to Hasina Begum, wife of Billal Bepari whose body was recovered by police from a water body (jheel) at the Maghbazar Jheel slum on January 30, a week after he went missing while taking part in a demonstration in the city.
The Awami Juba League blamed police and the cadres of the BNP for the killing of Billal and dumping of his body on the water body.
So someone with an Arabic name, in Germany, is writing material critical of the Mullahs in Iran, and naturally it finds publication in Bangladesh. I wonder if it found publication in Germany?
Some of the mullahs think all is well when in reality it is not. Well how could they be after twenty-five years of dreamy mullah rule, that they should now contemplate consolidating their power.
Perhaps a few of them sense danger, and that their demise is just around the corner? Consolidation includes the execution of 24 key senior officers, including the founding fathers of the Revolutionary Guard earlier this year. The foundation and key of mullah power in Iran (the Pasdaran). They were executed because they had written an open letter protesting about the trafficking of children by certain corrupt government officers.
The closing of 110 newspapers, and the heightened activity of the special 'Press court' whose sole duty is to prosecute journalists who do not sell their truth. The mullahs have also drastically reduced the size of the Basij, the children's militia which until recently could be mobilized to 8 million. The mullahs did this because children along with adult citizens have been very active in protesting against the mullah run government. There is a real fear that with American troops in Iraq, and Afghanistan, that force so large could become a peoples army against the mullahs.
In addition, large sections of the population and especially children look to America for 'inspiration' in most matters, and twenty-five years of mullah rule has not dampened their Western aspirations. In terms of the over all population devoid of government opinion/rent a crowds, Iran is one of the most pro-American societies in the Middle East. Indeed the trend and aspiration is growing, and thus inevitably in time will clash with the increasingly hard line mullahs in Iran. If the mullahs are to be seriously dealt with, then this is the most obvious portal. Primarily through soft power first..
The scope for youthful frustration is thus very enormous, and the logical channel for that latent expanding frustration will find its expression sooner or later against the mullahs. The revolution against the mullahs will come from that section of the population which has no real memory of the 1979 Islamic revolution. It is thus not surprising that the mullahs have executed as a percentage of the over all population, last year alone the highest number of children (Amnesty International 2004).
Some of the mullahs by contrast have been utterly corrupted by power and some in addition have become billionaires, most notably Rafsanjani. Their consolidation of power within Iran, in this year alone, by blocking out 2400 legitimate candidates for the February elections can be seen in this light. On the one hand there is the insecurity of power, and on the other the addiction and corrupting effects of power.
As they say, Read The Whole Thing.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
02/11/2005 7:19:04 PM ||
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The Ministry of Defence has admitted that "systemic weaknesses" in Army procedures and mistakes by "individuals on the ground" contributed to the deaths of six Red Caps who were killed by a mob in Iraq.
Yesterday, families of the soldiers accused the MoD of a cover-up, and threatened to "name and shame" officers they believe were responsible for errors that led to the deaths of the Royal Military Police (RMP) officers in Majar al-Kabir in 2003. None of the officers is to be court-martialled. The board of inquiry, under Col Mike Hickson, heard a catalogue of blunders: the Parachute Regiment was warned there could be violence when it went into Majar al-Kabir in southern Iraq but the Red Caps were not alerted; the Paras were not aware that the RMPs were in the town; the RMPs could not radio for help because their telephones did not work in the area; and a helicopter sent to look for them went to the wrong place.
The families were told in a letter by the director of Army personnel services, Brigadier Stephen Andrews, that the investigation looked seriously at the role of four officers, including two who were recommended for further investigation, but decided not to bring any action against them.
Brigadier Andrews said the MoD decided that "singling out individuals would be perceived as apportioning blame".
He said Col Hickson felt that "administrative sanction" was not thought appropriate "in relation to two of the individuals concerned".
The letter went on: "He did, however, conclude that the chain of command should give further consideration to the possibility that another two individuals should face some form of administrative sanction. These opinions were reviewed with great care by the chain of command, who decided not to accept the recommendation that these two individuals should be investigated further. All the individuals concerned have been informed."
Reg Keys, father of L/Cpl Tom Keys, 20, who died, said: "It says they will protect the identities of these men, but I know who they are. I am not going to stand by. I am going to name and shame them. This is a cover-up and a whitewash."
The letter said that the MoD had accepted the findings of the board of inquiry president. It said that there "are a number of factors that contributed accumulatively to the creation of circumstances in which the deaths occurred".
The letter went on: "Some of these factors were associated with systemic weaknesses in Army procedures as applied by individuals on the ground. We have acknowledged these failings and are taking positive action to rectify them."
L/Cpl Keys' mother, Sally, said the deaths, which were the subject of a television documentary on Thursday, could have been prevented if the men had had a flare, worth £1.50. It could have alerted members of the Parachute Regiment, who were in the vicinity, that the Red Caps were holed up in the village police station and under attack.
The families believe the Parachute Regiment provoked the uprising by militants when the latter were fired on by Cpl John Dolman, who left the Army but was killed by a suicide bomb in Iraq last year when working for a private security firm. The programme said Cpl Dolman had been investigated for the killing of two civilians in Kosovo.
The Parachute Regiment men were extracted from the hostile crowd, but were not aware that the Red Caps were in the police station.
"The documentary pointed out what we thought all along, that the Paras came in and caused a fracas and the RMPs were caught up in the middle," said Mrs Keys. "The townspeople were friendly towards the RMPs, calling them by the first names. But they didn't like the Paras. They are very rough and brutish."
The families have been invited to a further meeting with the board of tribunal at the MoD on Thursday.
The feud between the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, and the capital's Evening Standard newspaper reached new depths yesterday after Mr Livingstone described the paper's staff as "a load of scumbags and reactionary bigots". His remarks after a party to celebrate gay and lesbian freedoms drew him into a race row when he likened a Standard reporter - who had already told him he was Jewish - to a "concentration camp guard".
The journalist, Oliver Finegold, had told the Mayor that he was deeply offended by his advice that he should work for "a paper that doesn't have a record of supporting fascism" and his suggestion that Finegold must have taken his job because he was previously a "German war criminal". Mr Livingstone's office said the exchange began in a "relatively light-hearted manner" and ended with the reporter swearing at the Mayor.
The incidenton Tuesday is the latest in an apparent vendetta between Mr Livingstone and the Standard which began soon after the appointment of the editor, Veronica Wadley, in 2002, when the paper reported that the Mayor had launched a drunken attack on his partner and her friend at a party. Mr Livingstone denied the claims. He has since been a thorn in the side of the Standard's owners, Associated Newspapers, by taking legal action over the arrangements to distribute the free title, Metro (also owned by Associated), on the London Underground. He has threatened the paper's exclusive distribution rights, thus encouraging Richard Desmond, to publish his own free London title.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: tipper [http://armedstruggle.blogspot.com/] ||
02/11/2005 2:11:17 AM ||
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Livingstone in his party garb - ready for action.
The Uzbek regime of Islam Karimov held parliamentary elections in December, simultaneously with the contested second round of voting in Ukraine. As a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Tashkent government is openly anxious about the possibility of rapid and extensive democratic reform spreading throughout the former Soviet republics, at the same time as it focuses on the global war on terrorism and its military alliance with the U.S., which commenced after September 11, 2001.
The effectiveness of Uzbekistan in the anti-terror alliance has not, however, been reinforced by the authoritarian stance assumed by Karimov's government. While the Uzbek regime has used severe repression against the adherents of radical Islam since the early 1990s, the U.S. government has not turned a blind eye against blatant abuses. Moreover a variety of interests in the country—in particular democracy activists and the followers of traditional Islam—are lobbying hard for more openness.
Meanwhile, the Islamist website Muslim Uzbekistan denounced the electoral process as "at least as crooked and bogus as Iraq's in 2002 or Ukraine's in 2004." [1] When the parliamentary vote was held, memories were still fresh of the murky terrorist incidents of spring 2004, followed by the trials of the 15 accused, and a new round of attacks, in July 2004. Responsibility for both waves of terror was at first ascribed by Uzbek authorities and other sources to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), more recently known as the Islamic Movement of Turkestan (IMT), as well as the Pan-Islamic organization Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HuT), and a shadowy entity called Uzbekistan Islamic Jihad. During the trial, however, the Uzbek government charged defendants with belonging to a new movement, Jamoat, allegedly linked to al-Qaeda; all 15 of the accused were found guilty and received prison sentences of six to 18 years.
Continued on Page 49
This article starring:
Abraham David Gurevitch
JUMABAI AHMEDZHANOVICH KHOJIYEV
Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
JUMA NAMANGANI
Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
TAHIR YULDASHEV
Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/11/2005 10:10:22 AM ||
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A surprise unilateral cease-fire ordered by two top Chechen rebel commanders has Moscow abuzz with debate. Experts are asking, is it a genuine chance for peace, a PR stunt, or an artificial lull before a fresh storm of Beslan-style terrorist assaults?
Few see much hope of ending the Chechen war, now well into its sixth year, unless there is a political breakthrough that sees the Kremlin, the separatist rebels, and pro-Moscow Chechen forces sit down together to seek a settlement.
President Vladimir Putin appears determined to stay his chosen course, which involves signing a treaty with the Kremlin's handpicked Chechen leader Alu Alkhanov - perhaps as early as this May - that will lock Chechnya into Russian permanently. But amid reports that the rebels could have acquired a nuclear device or radiological weapons, many experts see only an escalating cycle of violence in the offing. "The situation in Chechnya is currently at a dead end," says Alexander Iskanderyan, director of the independent Center for Caucasian Studies, in Yerevan, Armenia. "The key to its solution is in the Kremlin, but I see little hope of change there."
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/11/2005 10:14:44 AM ||
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Some part of it is missing at the moment, but these are small details."
Kim Il-Sung's 'revolution' to be continued by 'son and grandson' North Korea's media has for the first time confirmed that its leader Kim Jong-Il is preparing for a hereditary transfer of power to one of his three sons. Kim, who turns 63 on Feb. 16, became the first ruler in communist history to succeed a father as head of state in 1994 when his father died at the age of 82. Kim Jong-Il had been anointed by his father 20 years earlier when his father embarked upon a two-decade-long transition program. Aaah departed father, I invoke you as Sima invoked Mustafa in the Lion King...Show me the way...
"Our (national) founder Kim Il-Sung, when he was alive, emphasized that if he falls short of completing the revolution, it will be continued by his son and grandson," the North's Central Broadcasting Station said Jan. 27. The term "grandson" referred to one of Kim Jong-Il's heirs apparent, North Korea watchers said. Aaah the revolution. I am the feudal lord and I have all the subjects at my beck and call...
"This is a philosophy that revolution should be completed even if it takes place in the next generation. If our tradition is great, then the inheritance of it should be great as well," the broadcast said. The state-run media also quoted Kim Jong-Il as saying he would "uphold father president's instructions," an indication of an impending another power transfer program. It's good to be the King
-Mel Brooks as King Louis
"History of the world part I" Continued on Page 49
The Bush administration said Friday that it wasn't interested in one-on-one talks with North Korea about its nuclear programs outside the six-party negotiations involving the communist nation's neighbors. "It's not an issue between North Korea and the United States. It's a regional issue," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. "And it's an issue that impacts all of its neighbors."
Looks like Kimmie's temper tantrum didn't work.
North Korea has plenty of opportunity to talk to the United States within six-party talks, McClellan said. In an interview with a South Korean newspaper Friday, North Korea's U.N. envoy demanded bilateral talks with the United States. "We will return to the six-nation talks when we see a reason to do so and the conditions are ripe," Han Sung Ryol told Seoul's Hankyoreh newspaper in an interview published Friday. "If the United States moves to have direct dialogue with us, we can take that as a signal that the United States is changing its hostile policy toward us."
Looks like we're not changing our hostile policy to them.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/11/2005 11:12:29 AM ||
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#1
What's to talk about? I'm sure a SSBN, which already has basically anything worth targeting in N.Korea, is on station is moment. After the first blast somewhere in S.Korea, it will become an island. Of course Kimmy may be seeking suicide by cop, just taking the fawning masses with him.
#5
Saying no to a temper tantrum by Kimmie is a good start. The US must be consistant in its treatment of the Norks. No more back street bailouts. If SKor wants to do it, they can do it alone, and they can defend their country alone. We do not need SKor stabbing us in the back at this time. The sooner the Nork regime implodes, the sooner the North Korean people can be rescued from their 50 year nightmare.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/11/2005 15:57 Comments ||
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#6
Amen, AP. I love what you said, too, Remoteman-those accusers are little hypocrites, blowing gaskets when we act unilaterally, then scurrying to avoid concession when we work multilaterally.
BTW-Jeez, who's doing Kimmi's hair, the singer for Flock of Seagulls?
North Korea has sent a message of solidarity to Iran amid suspicions the reclusive communist state had boasted of having nuclear weapons to raise the stakes while U.S. attention is focused on Iran's nuclear programmes. North Korea declared on Thursday for the first time it possessed nuclear weapons and pulled out indefinitely from six-party talks on its weapons programme, saying it needed a defence against a hostile United States. The North's official news agency reported on Friday that two top officials had sent messages of congratulations to Tehran on the 26th anniversary of the Islamic Republic, which took power after the fall of the Shah's U.S.-backed government. "The Iranian government and people have gained a great success in their work for defending the gains of the Islamic revolution and building independent and prosperous Iran, bravely shattering all sorts of trials and challenges in the past 26 years," said a message from the number two in North Korea's hierarchy, head of parliament Kim Yong-nam. A second message from the North Korean prime minister, Pak Pong-ju, praised Iran's success in its work to defend its sovereignty. "The friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries would invariably grow stronger," the message said.
And people laughed at Bush for putting them together in his "Axis of Evil".
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/11/2005 2:55:41 AM ||
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"We also look forward to your worshipping of our great noble leader as a god who walks upon the Earth." (I notice that Cuba is the bridesmaid again. That must chafe Fidel's buns.)
#2
North Korea has sent a message of solidarity to Iran amid suspicions the reclusive communist state had boasted of having nuclear weapons to raise the stakes while U.S. attention is focused on Iran’s nuclear programmes.
Yep, sounds a lot like a diversion attempt, doesn't it? GWB needs to keep his eye on the mullahs and resolve that first, then deal with Deekhead Leader at a later date.
North Korea's declaration Thursday that it has nuclear weapons and is through for now talking about them brought widespread expressions of dismay and near-universal calls for the North to return to the six-party negotiations aimed at curbing its nuclear program. Russia, China, Japan and South Korea - four of the six parties - urged the North to return to the nuclear talks, as did the leaders of the United Nations and the European Union. The United States, the final party to the now-endangered negotiations, also called for a resumption of the talks.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking in Luxembourg at the end of her European tour, said that the leaders of a country already known as the "hermit kingdom" risked "deepening their isolation." Rice said the possession of nuclear weapons by North Korea or Iran would be "unacceptable." But her tone and language appeared designed to reassure listeners that there was no immediate danger. The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, also offered a relatively sanguine statement. "We remain committed to the six-party talks," McClellan told reporters traveling with President George W. Bush. "We remain committed to a peaceful, diplomatic resolution to the nuclear issue."
They can negotiate or they can starve, their choice.
Foreign reaction overall appeared anxious but modulated in tone, perhaps reflecting a sense that little can be gained from bluster in dealing with the prickly, provocative and easily offended government of President Kim Jong Il. North Korea was infuriated when Bush included it in his "axis of evil" with Iran and Iraq. And last month Rice referred to North Korea as an "outpost of tyranny." But Bush, in his State of the Union message, barely mentioned North Korea, except to say that he was working with other countries to advance the talks. The administration sent a special envoy, Michael Green, last week to urge the leaders of China, South Korea and Japan to push for a resumption of the talks.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/11/2005 00:00:00 ||
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"I don't think the North Koreans are suicidal."
No, homicidal is more like it. They're armed to the teeth at the DMZ, they're investing what little they have into nukes rather than food production, they have to sell missiles hidden in ships under bags of cement to earn foreign money, they are running a gulag, and they rattle their saber at a superpower that has them outgunned with nukes by a thousands-to-one ratio.
Posted by: Tom ||
02/11/2005 0:21 Comments ||
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Something I've never understood. China would like to dominate the region economically and politically, if not militarially. US forces in Korea and in Japan prevent this. We are still there because of North Korea, mostly.
If the Nork regiem fell and reunited with the South, that reason would vanish. Majority of our troops would leave, with maybe a few caretaker groups left at a small number of bases.
Benefit - China.
The South Korean economey would be dragged down, much like Germany while they rebuilt the infrastructure, leaving little left for a Korean military.
Benefit - China.
Peaceful, united Korea could be trading partner, not a source of illegal immigration.
Benefit - China.
The Nork threat to Japan would go away, removing a reason for increased Japanese military expansion and spending.
Benefit - China.
So, why keep supporting crazy Kimmie? Can't be just because of comrade-ship, North Korea is more of a personality cult than it is a communist state. Plus, the Chinese look down at any one who's not Chinese. I can't believe they wouldn't sell them down the river if they thought it would not help China. Anyone got an answer?
Posted by: Steve ||
02/11/2005 15:25 Comments ||
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#7
possible answers steve - 1. they really, really dont trust Japan - ergo they think Japan might rearm with Nkor as provocation, and therefore prefer NKor as buffer, ally, troublemaker to deter Japan.
2. They dont think the Skors could magically walk in and restore order if Kimmie goes down. Chaos, refugees to China, danger.
3. Prestige - everybody from VN to Burma to Malaysia to Pakland to Iran knows China is Nkors pal. Turn on them, and you lose a lot of cred. "He may be a jerk, but hes OUR jerk"
Which doesnt mean that they wouldnt turn on Kim if he gets out of hand, which is why this latest move is a very dangerous game.
#9
China won't be worried because any NK nukes will be de facto controlled by anyone except Norkies, like it was for the Warsaw Pact nations during the Cold War, and even iff NK did not develop any indig nukes, the other Commie states will always be ready to supply her with nukes. By definition these anti-US nations whom plan to engage in aymmetric or fourth generation warfare ags US/Allied milfors are weak andor in steady decline - when one adds the regional ambitions of China, Russia, or other more vibrant regional states, NK must realize it has likely little to no hope of ever achieving its own NorCom-specific "manifest destiny"! And as long as they stay true to Communism, Solyent Green, etc. and implosion looms in their future - their ONLY hope to preclude failure and implosion while NOT giving up Communism is to wilfully allow their minor nations to be used as PC, geopol/
geostrategic "cannon fodder" in order to help destabilize and suborn the USA and West to Socialism and Communist World Order/OWG! The Commies are waging a GLOBAL [PSEUDO-] WAR ags the USA BUT WANT THE USA PER SE TO BECOME BOGGED DOWN IN FIGHTING VARIABLE, EXPENSIVE, REGIONAL "LIMITED" CONFLICTS - the anti-US International Lefts are UNITED AGAINST AMERICA, but don't want their real target America, and by extens the Western democracies, to be. WATCH THE RUSSIAN-CHICOM MILEXS CLOSELY - we don't want any Airborne Forces transports to "get lost", "mistaking" NK or TW for Canada and NORAM, since under CLINTONISM Fascist-Rightist America = Fascist-Rightist Russia-China, ergo just as Fascist America made a Left-argued "MISTAKE" invading Iraq and Afghanistan, "Fascist" Russia-China can also make a "MISTAKE" mil invading Canada/NORAM while searching for Terrorists ala BESLAN(S), vv dialecticism and Totalitarian [Geopol]Equalism.
You see, if we didn't critize them, they wouldn't get so angry.
The radicalisation of young Muslims is partly caused by the negative way Islam is being talked about in the Netherlands, the head of the security service AIVD has claimed.
Ask yourself if it would be talked about in a negative way if it wasn't radicalized...
Sybrand van Hulst made the suggestion during an interview with television current affairs programme Zembla on Wednesday night. Van Hulst's organisation is leading the investigation into the activities of extremists in the Netherlands and is deeply involved in the arrest and trial of 12 young Muslims said to be part of a terrorist network called the Hofstadgroep. But he did not specify who he was referring too as being partly responsible for driving some young Muslims towards radicalism.
Nobody we've heard of, we're sure...
MPs Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders have led the criticism against aspects of Islam and the Muslim community in the Netherlands in recent years. Both have received death threats. Filmmaker Theo van Gogh, another vocal critic of Islam, was murdered in Amsterdam on 2 November last year. Mohammed B., 26, who was arrested for the murder, was said to be on the edge of the Hofstadgroep. Van Gogh had recently collaborated with Hirsi Ali to make the short film "Submission" which criticised violence against women in Islamic communities. Submission featured female actors who were wearing see-through veils. Their breasts were visible, something that caused a lot of offence among Muslims, many of whom who were already offended by the film's accusations.
Therefore they were fully justified in killing him, right? And I'm really, really offended by the remarks in Friday sermons, so I'd be fully justified in bumping off any mosque preachers I might run across, right? That's the entire basis of civilized society, right?
Van Hulst estimated that there are about 1,000 "radical Muslims" in the Netherlands. Of these, a few dozen are prepared to use violence. He said one way to help counter the radicalisation of young Muslims was to make them feel welcome in the Netherlands, in order that they would see themselves as being Dutch.
If they're going to do that, I guess they're going to have to come to love titties, aren't they? Or should the Dutch change to accomodate them?
Wotta dumbass.
Posted by: tipper [http://armedstruggle.blogspot.com/] ||
02/11/2005 9:00:36 AM ||
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Another way to help counter radicalisation would be to ship the youths to the Rub Al Khali. Somehow "Dutch" and "Muslim" together in the same sentence seem to be a logical contradiction.
#2
New Dutch welcome wagon for muslim immigrants:
Koran
The Complete works of Sayyid Qutb
Choice of burkha/chador (sunni/shiite) in latest Paris fashion colors
Do's and Don'ts: The proper treatment of dhimmis, by Tamerlane
Pistol, beheading knife, and stationary for those times you want your message to be heard.
Posted by: ed ||
02/11/2005 9:23 Comments ||
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That little Dutch boy should pull out his little finger from the dyke (dam, not lesbian!). Holland is almost beyond rescue.
H/T Drudgereport EFL
CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan quit Friday amid a furor over remarks he made in Switzerland last month about journalists killed by the U.S. military in Iraq. Jordan said he was quitting to avoid CNN being "unfairly tarnished" by the controversy.
During a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum last month, Jordan said he believed that several journalists who were killed by coalition forces in Iraq had been targeted.
He quickly backed off the remarks, explaining that he meant to distinguish between journalists killed because they were in the wrong place when a bomb fell, for example, and those killed because they were shot at by American forces who mistook them for the enemy. "I never meant to imply U.S. forces acted with ill intent when U.S. forces accidentally killed journalists, and I apologize to anyone who thought I said or believed otherwise," Jordan said in a memo to fellow staff members at CNN.
But the damage had been done, compounded by the fact that no transcript of his actual remarks has turned up. He was the target of an Internet and Web site campaign that was beginning to rival the one launched against CBS's Dan Rather following the network's ill-fated story last fall about President Bush's military service.
#1
Whoa -- I'm impressed!!! Wondered where this was going when Brit Hume kinda brought it up... Fox's media show with ??? late Sat afternoon should be interesting. Hummm.... that panelist Jane that is a professor at some journalist school.....
NEW YORK — CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan quit Friday amidst a furor over remarks he made in Switzerland last month about journalists killed by the U.S. military in Iraq. Jordan said he was quitting to avoid CNN being "unfairly tarnished" by the controversy.
During a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum last month, Jordan said he believed that several journalists who were killed by coalition forces in Iraq had been targeted. He quickly backed off the remarks, explaining that he meant to distinguish between journalists killed because they were in the wrong place where a bomb fell, for example, and those killed because they were shot at by American forces who mistook them for the enemy.
"I never meant to imply U.S. forces acted with ill intent when U.S. forces accidentally killed journalists, and I apologize to anyone who thought I said or believed otherwise," Jordan said in a memo to fellow staff members at CNN. But the damage had been done, compounded by the fact that no transcript of his actual remarks has turned up. There was an online petition calling on CNN to find a transcript, and fire Jordan if he said the military had intentionally killed journalists.
#1
Ah-ha! I guess it just goes to show that when the US military targets you, your stuff is weak. At least he now has proof for his best selling expose , "America's Fascist Military and the Fascist Fascists Who Lead Them".
#5
Gee, and it was announced on a Friday afternoon.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/11/2005 21:13 Comments ||
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That tape must be almost incriminating if he resigned this quickly. Congratulations to the bloggers who made this happen. The pressure to release the tape should not stop. This is a major league MSM cover-up.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/11/2005 21:14 Comments ||
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Here's the CNN story. You may have trouble finding it as it is under the Entertainment category.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
02/11/2005 21:18 Comments ||
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#8
I don't agree w/the prof that if Eason came out an apologized right away it would be OK - since he's made that allegation before. Does he believe it????
Davros will be interesting next year, will they or won't they tape???
#10
I'm shocked, frankly. I thought he could deny, deny, deny forever and get away with it.
Yeah, it's a strange feeling seeing good news. Ever since Rathergate broke, it's been a new day. It's rather nice, seeing the good guys win. These are the kind of events in which we used to get beaten badly due to the media's control of how to frame the situation. Now that they're subject to a small portion of the scrutiny they focus on others, we're seeing the man behind the curtain.
This is not the first time Ward Churchill has disagreed with the U.S. government's idea of who is, and is not, a terrorist.
I never doubted it for a minute.
In April 1983, Churchill went to Libya to meet with Col. Moammar Gadhafi. The U.S. government had banned travel to Libya two years earlier, saying Gadhafi supported terrorism. Churchill traveled to Tripoli and Benghazi as a representative of the International Indian Treaty Council and the American Indian Movement. He went with Dace Means, brother of AIM leader Russell Means. They were seeking recognition from Gadhafi of the U.S. government's breaking of Indian treaties. "The main thing we sought and received was diplomatic support," Churchill told the Associated Press at the time. He added, "AIM has not requested arms from the Libyan government." Churchill wasn't available Thursday to talk about the Libya trip or other developments. EFL
Posted by: Steve ||
02/11/2005 4:15:25 PM ||
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SO?
Let's quit taking this guy seriously. He does have a use as fodder for humor, just like Kimmy in N Korea! (But we have to take Kimmie seriously,...as we would if we found yellowcake in the basement of Ward Churchill...)
Looks like Chief S**tting Bull has found a tribe that will take him: Rael to bestow Honorary Priest title to Ward Churchill
Rael to bestow "Honorary Priest" title to Ward Churchill for his essay
the 60,000+ members of the Raelian Movement send Churchill their support
Miami, Feb 10, 2005. Rael, leader of the International Raelian Movement (www.rael.org) has just given the "Honorary Priest" title to Ward Churchill (University of Colorado professor) for his essay which most of the US is decrying as insensitive or unpatriotic. or a direct incitement to mass murder in the best tradition of Julius Streicher.
Ricky Roehr (leader of the US Raelian Movement) is quoted: "Mr. Churchill is exactly right in what he wrote! If we are to have peace, we must take responsibility for our part in the violence and stop handing out blame as if we have done nothing. Quite the contrary, we have done terrible things to countless people. EFL, more disgusting propaganda, lies, strawmen, and tortured sentence structure at link. The really remarkable thing is that nobody is especially surprised by this kind of Moonbat link-up. All the insane power-seeker elements in the world seem to be lining up on the same side of the present conflict.
Who would have thought, for example, that virtually every nazi, communist, and anarchist group on the planet, every conspiracy cult, celebrity/media cult, and weird Hollywood religious cult, every academic con-artist and cultural faddist; would be coalescing into a kind of Grand Unified Moonbat alliance in support of Islamic medievalists?
Better yet, this depraved alliance seems hellbent on a violent showdown with the forces of sanity.
Evolution continues apace: The counter-survival traits are increasingly concentrated, so the elimination of one will eliminate them all.
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy ||
02/11/2005 12:23:29 AM ||
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The human brain is incredibly complex and thus subject to an incredible variety of defects. That's the only way I can explain it.
Posted by: Tom ||
02/11/2005 0:29 Comments ||
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The really remarkable thing is that nobody is especially surprised by this kind of Moonbat link-up. All the insane power-seeker elements in the world seem to be lining up on the same side of the present conflict.
Who would have thought, for example, that virtually every nazi, communist, and anarchist group on the planet, every conspiracy cult, celebrity/media cult, and weird Hollywood religious cult, every academic con-artist and cultural faddist; would be coalescing into a kind of Grand Unified Moonbat alliance in support of Islamic medievalists?
#3
Yet another reason that "the massacre of the Comet Wardens" in Niven and Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer is my favorite scene in all of science fiction.
Lucifer's Hammer, 1977
time: late 70s
place: mostly Southern California
An amateur astronomer named Tim Hamner discovers a new comet on a course that will take it very close to the Earth. The comet nucleus has broken up. It will rain mountain size chunks all over the Earth if it happens to hit, causing earthquakes, tsunamis, drastic weather change, and effects akin to nuclear winter.
In the weeks and months after Hamner's discovery, the chances of a collision go from one in a million to one in a hundred to one in ten.
A new religious cult, the Comet Wardens, forms in Southern California. Playing on the discoverer's name, their leader declares that the comet is the "hammer of God" sent to punish humanity for its wickedness. The Wardens dress in white robes and oppose all rational efforts to prepare for a possible collision, insisting that only prayer and repentance will save humanity.
By the time the comet is due millions have already fled the LA basin for the hills and deserts. With a collision deemed ever more likely, the last hold-outs run for the hills that morning, jamming the freeways.
In a final spectacular demonstration, the white robed Comet Wardens chain themselves across a major traffic artery, snarling traffic for miles and trapping the panic stricken hordes in the city.
Late in the morning, the comet actually hits. A huge asteroid smashes into the ocean just off LA. It is clearly visible from the city, God's own tsunami is headed their way and thousands cannot escape.
The Comet Wardens have thrown away the keys to their chains, there is no time or equipment to cut the chains and open the highway, and the police have fled.
Thousands of would-be refugees realize that they are doomed and that they could have gotten away if not for the Comet Wardens, now helpless in their long chains as the vengeful mob pounces.
They have about half an hour before the tsunami hits.
Go ye to the library or the bookstore and read of it, for it is good.
#4
AC - Holy shit - I forgot about that story. Brings a tear to mine eye - from laughing my ass off, heh. Most excellent - and a rational extrapolation of our future. We will get hammered, again, someday. I hope I get thirty minutes free 'n clear with the moonbats before I go. Thx, bro. ;-)
#5
...Lucifer's Hammer is without doubt one of the best SF novels of all time, and a damned sight more impressive than eye candy like Armageddon or Deep Impact .
Have to admit tho that while the comet warden scene is probably the best in the book, the one that has always stayed with me is the surfer who rides the tsunami in...
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
02/11/2005 7:30 Comments ||
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Wait till the Realians clone Ward Churchill.
Posted by: ed ||
02/11/2005 7:51 Comments ||
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www.rael.org=moon bats extrodinare.Read it at least twice,home made mustard gas is what sticks in my mind.
#14
Other way around, Mojo. Lucifer's Hammer was written in 1976 and published the following year. Footfall, which reused some of the same concepts, was published in 1983.
The loons are standing together
Rael to bestow "Honorary Priest" title to Ward Churchill for his essay
the 60,000+ members of the Raelian Movement send Churchill their support
Posted by: Korora ||
02/11/2005 12:01:50 AM ||
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Somehow I knew he would come out of this on top. I am 1/16 Injun so does that make my cat 1/32? My dog refuses to acknowledge her ancestry and want to remain a mutt. Chief Spouting Bull is completely loony. On the morning show Katie Curic looked horrified after he started talking. She was probably expecting an intelligent thought and statements filled with wisdom and deep thought. What she got was a ranting loon that clearly has lost touch with reality. Let this be a warning to you kids that think drugs can’t hurt you.
#7
Letter to the editor in this morning's Wisconsin State Journal (I don't know how to post links yet)
"Ward Churchill's curious thoughts on how American Citizens came tobe murdered during the Sept. 11 attacks may evertually prove to be a blessing in disguise. Single handedly, he has provided the necessary departure point to scrutinize exactly what constitutes bona fide scholarly research now found in so many of our public universities.
"Yes, let Churchill speak (at UW Whitewater in March). And then let the real debate begin over taxpayer-funded college tenure, pseudoscience ethnic studies programs and political radicalism that poses in the guise of rigorous academic research. The truth will not only win out, it will also set us free."--Patrick Gould
The Native American Cultural Awareness Assn, the studen group that invited Churchill, says of UW Whitewater's decision to let Churchill speak, "By continuing to host Mr. Churchill's presentation we certainly do not advocate haterd and certainly do not wish to perpetuate the image of the American Indian that hates all white people," NACAA members said in a statement. "Our ultimate goal is to educate and unite, not offend."
I will be very interested to find out how Mr. Churchill proposes to help the NACAA reach that goal. I also wonder what would happen if the UW Whitewater students divided the costs of Chruchill's $4000 honorarium by the number of students paying fees, and subtracted their shares from the next student fees payment.
#8
It's rather amusing that all the Native Americans look vaguely oriental, while Mr. Professor Churchill looks gloriously and smugly occidental... very Western Caucasian in fact.
An ambitious new effort by the F.B.I. to recruit foreigners in the United States and use them as spies overseas has created new frictions with the Central Intelligence Agency, which views the bureau's actions as a serious encroachment on the agency's traditional primacy in intelligence gathering, senior government officials said. The rift reflects the fundamental changes sweeping through American intelligence agencies as the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., as well as elements of the Defense Department, face increasing pressures to improve their intelligence capabilities in the aftermath of the September 2001 attacks. All three agencies are still struggling to grapple with the transformation in the threats facing the United States since the end of the cold war and are due to report to the White House next week on their plans to improve counterterrorism efforts.
In a departure from past practice, the F.B.I. wants to manage the foreigners it recruits under the new program after they return to their home countries. The C.I.A. wants to maintain its lead role in recruiting and managing these sources. The transformation of the F.B.I. into an agency that collects intelligence overseas is causing unease within the C.I.A., where officials question whether the F.B.I. has the expertise to play that role. Among the particular sources of friction in the last year have been several episodes in which senior intelligence officials said the F.B.I. failed to inform the C.I.A. fully about its relationships with intelligence sources overseas or practiced poor tradecraft in its dealing with them.
F.B.I. officials acknowledged lapses, but said there were also instances in which the C.I.A. had failed to keep the bureau fully informed of its activities. Those problems, the officials said, underscored the necessity of reaching a new understanding. In interviews, senior officials on opposite sides of the debate laid out their views in stark terms. "Today the C.I.A. is the only one who can handle the overseas mission," an intelligence official said. "The C.I.A. hires and trains people to be intelligence officers; the F.B.I. hires and trains people to be law enforcement officers. They flash a badge and say, 'Tell me what I need to know,' and that gets you nowhere outside the United States."
Continued on Page 49
International : Christian Internet Terror Watchdog Undaunted by Islamist Threats
By Allie Martin and Jenni Parker
A New Mexico homeless shelter director, who also writes for a Christian news service, claims he has been targeted for death by users of a radical Islamist website. Salman Rushdie, move over.
Jeremy Reynalds is executive director of Joy Junction, a Christian emergency homeless shelter in Albuquerque. Also, as a freelance writer and private citizen who helps to monitor Internet terrorism, he has identified and helped shut down several websites operated by radical Muslim groups that advocate terrorist activity. That fact has secured him a "persona non grata" label among Islamic extremists -- perhaps one in particular. What good is the Patriot Act, without counter-terror patriots.
Christian Wire Service (CWS) reports that just hours prior to the January 30 elections in Iraq, a jihadist terror site -- "www.mawsuat.com" -- was taken off-line by its U.S. Internet service provider after Reynalds alerted the ISP to the site's contents. Through the Federal Bureau of Investigations and other sources, the freelancer has since learned that his role in that site's demise has angered a number of jihadist radicals. And now, a recent posting on a Houston, Texas-based website called Ansarnet has publicly blamed Reynalds for the shutdown of the site. A discussion on Ansarnet, started by the person who ran the now defunct "mawsuat.com," included the Christian writer's home address so that he could be "visited," a picture of him, a wish for his ribs to be broken, and prayers to Allah that his "fatty neck" be delivered to his enemies -- an apparent reference to decapitation. "Texas-based"? Let's re-base them in Gitmo. Continued on Page 49
Posted by: IToldYouSo ||
02/11/2005 3:47:48 AM ||
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Education by Murder I am afraid is the only way that Americans will wake to the dangers of the muslim fifth column.
#2
Except the MSM will give their allies cover by blaming any murders and decapitations on 'robbers' or any common criminal - see the incident in Jersey.
I wish this guy all the luck. He is literally risking his life to shine the light on these islamists. He would be a true martyr.
#3
I would also like to note that New Mexico, while otherwise rather liberal in character, has no restrictions on gun ownership. I would encourage him to obtain a concealed-carry permit, training, and possession of a firearm if he already does not have one.
#4
I hope the authorities will do what they should be doing in this case. As we've already learned the hard way, death threats from these people must be taken very seriously.
#5
One of the good things about Arizona is you do not have to have a concealed carry permit.As long as your fire arm is in plain,visable sight you can carry.This means you can strap your Colt to your waist and walk down the street,I for one would be very reluctant to mess with someone with a .45 straped to thier waist.
#6
raptor: Actually, you *do* need a permit for concealed carry. It is different from unconcealed carry. http://www.azccw.com/ . There are many twists and turns, though. For example, you can keep a loaded gun in your glove box or front/back seat if it is in a buckle holster, not a snap or velcro holster. And, you can have all sorts of weapons in your vehicle if the ammo is stored in the trunk. There are certain restricted areas, such as Mill Avenue in Tempe, where concealed or unconcealed weapons are prohibited--except if you have a "court-order carry"--basically a judge has given you an official order that you *must* carry in public, but they are few and far between. Last but not least, if you are on the Barry Goldwater military reservation near Yuma, and have a permit to travel the Hell's Trail route, you must be armed with a minimum of a handgun and a high-powered rifle (drug-smuggling route)(along with two 4WD vehicles and a medium-range radio transmitter, etc. It is a harsh place).
#7
Raptor's point was that if you are willing to carry openly, you don't need any permit here. Of course, there are lots of hunting preserves "gun-free zones," but many of those won't stand up in court.
#8
I'm confused, Anonymoose. Does one keep the extra 4WDs in the trunk of the Mercedes, or lashed to the roof, when driving Hell's Trail? In the trunk could be considered "concealed carry", I'm thinking.
Posted by: tipper ||
02/11/2005 1:12:32 AM ||
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Those big ugly CIA Mommas should be tearing the jewels right off of those animals and feeding them to the dogs, then they'll know what torture is exactly.
I'd pefer the Pershing solution myself.
#2
LOL Mike, I bet if you lop off the first pair of do dads the rest would become VERY cooperative. Won't need females, pig entrails, or Israeli flags after that move. But since were are being nice to them there are far worse things in this world than having a female rub up against you (getting your head sawed off comes to mind).
#3
I would like to submit/donate my body to for 'scientific' research purposes. I'm not sure how much erect female nipple rubbing I can take but one of us patriots must be willing to sacrifice for the war on terrorism.
unfortunately my do dads were whacked off by the little woman a few decades ago.
#6
The Aljazeera comments are hilarious, but so is the article:
"..red dye that stimulates menstrual blood..."
Now that sounds like a nasty unconventional weapon.
Seriously though, why are we bothering with these little mind games? Shouldn't we just shoot non-uniformed enemy combatants and be done with it?
Posted by: Tom ||
02/11/2005 12:15 Comments ||
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#7
Heavens no! Not Red Dye #2, a posssible, suspected, kinda suspicious carcinogen in genetically modified cancer susceptible lab rats. The Geneva Convention expressly forbids giving mass murdering terrorists red M&Ms on these grounds.
Posted by: ed ||
02/11/2005 12:21 Comments ||
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#8
or green M&M's. These frustrated im-masculine neurotics are horny enough as it is....willing to die for raisins
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/11/2005 12:33 Comments ||
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#9
Let's quit playing kid's games with these nutcases! It's time to bring out the heavy weaponry! MAKE THEM LISTEN TO THE LIFETIME UTTERANCES OF PAT BUCHANAN AND JERRY FALWELL! I doubt even the hardest of the islamonutcases could withstand THAT!
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/11/2005 15:40 Comments ||
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#10
Jeeze Louise, Old Patriot Mike! You scared the hell out of me with those capital letters. I thought JM came by and got on step with one of his CAPITAL LETTER rants! Whew.....
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/11/2005 15:46 Comments ||
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#11
MESSAGE FROM GITMO DETAINEE:
Allah be praised!
I must endure this for the sake of my future with the 72. I am learning things here they never taught in that Koran School I went to in the Frontier Country of Pakistan...
30 more minutres with that blonde infidel temptress with the whip, and...
The Muslim Chaplin let me borrow his laptop for this message. NOW! Back to my cell for more lessons from those infidel Amazon women.
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Didn't those nuts at Al-Jazzera realize they would open themseves up to those comments
? WHAT A BUNCH OF IDIOTS!
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/11/2005 18:10 Comments ||
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#13
tight tee-shirt...and they're horrified - but if they'd set up one of those clinics where they rip the clitoris out of teenage girls - well, hey, no problemo.
Hey Mr. Soldier, how about playing us some of those beheading tapes we made. We really want to see the one where they guy was screaming and there was lots of blood squirting out. That was COOL!
"Is it just me, or is it a little hot in here? Somebody open a window..."
Two influential former congressional leaders were named Wednesday to lead a new Washington group to study the UN's effectiveness and reform efforts. Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the House of Representatives, and George Mitchell, former Democrat Senate leader, will lead the task force on UN reform created by the US Institute of Peace, a government organization dedicated to studying international conflict. The task force will also include a number of business executives, retired diplomats and former military leaders, including General Wesley Clark, the former NATO commander who ran for the Democratic Party nomination for president in 2004. The task force is mandated to monitor "the extent to which the United Nations is fullfilling the goals of its Charter and offer recommendations for US action" to the US Congress, according to a USIP statement.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/11/2005 00:00:00 ||
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"I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure..."
#3
Two influential former congressional leaders were named Wednesday to lead a new Washington group to study the UN’s effectiveness and reform efforts.
#4
Newt Gingrich....George Mitchell,... General Wesley Clark, will lead the task force on UN reform created by the US Institute of Peace, a government organization dedicated to studying international conflict.
fund another task force, commmission another study and establish that, yes, indeed, there is a nose on your face.
..and not exactly the Elliot Ness "A" team, if you ask me
ZAMBOANGA, Philippines (AP) - The military will not ease its pursuit of Muslim gunmen who attacked an army attachment, triggering fighting that has killed more than 60 people, including 24 soldiers, the commander of troops in the southern Philippines said Friday. "At this stage we have to move on and continue on with our pursuit operation and hunt down those responsible for killing the soldiers,'' Lt. Gen. Alberto Braganza told reporters after the body of a battalion commander killed the previous day was brought to a military chapel.
Lt. Col. Dennis Villanueva, head of the army's 53rd Infantry Battalion, and two of his enlisted men were killed in a mortar attack by followers of jailed former Muslim separatist leader Nur Misuari on the southern island of Jolo Thursday.
Braganza, commander of the military's Southern Command, said troops were "closing in'' on their targets. "We expect more fighting,'' he added.
Braganza said he ordered troops on Wednesday to assault a camp of Misuari's followers after they killed 17 soldiers, including 13 marines, in an ambush on Monday. Misuari's followers said they were responding to alleged intrustions into their strongholds on Feb. 1, when the army was pursuing suspected Abu Sayyaf rebels in the area.
"Hey! It was their fault! Stop shooting us!"
A child and its parents were killed in crossfire as soldiers chased suspected militants.
Two soldiers were also killed in that incident and two others died in mortar fire Tuesday, bringing the total number of troops killed so far to 24, according to government figures. About 40 troops were wounded. The military said 37 Misuari loyalists have died in the fighting.
About 600 marines were deployed to reinforce 2,000 soldiers already on the ground. Air force planes bombarded the gunmen in Jolo's coastal town Panamao early Thursday prior to a large ground assault, the military said.
Jolo Gov. Ben Loong said thousands of villagers have fled their homes in Panamao and outlying towns and gone to emergency shelters.
Troops have been put on alert and security has been tightened in areas near Jolo, particularly in the southern port city of Zamboanga, to prevent diversionary attacks, including bombings, military spokesman Lt. Col. Buenaventura Pascual said. If they can, government forces want to capture or finish off the attackers now, he said.
Misuari formerly headed the Moro National Liberation Front, a large Muslim separatist group that accepted limited autonomy and signed a peace accord with the government in 1996. But violence flared again years later and Misuari was imprisoned near Manila on charges of rebellion. Many of his armed followers still maintain strongholds in Jolo, and have been accused of supporting the al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/11/2005 00:00:00 ||
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Iran and Tatarstan Republic on Friday signed a 500 million dollar contract to explore and exploit oil in Iran.
The agreement was inked by Head of Iran's Mostazafan and Janbazan Foundation Mohammad Forouzandeh and head of Tatneft, an open joint stock company in Tatarstan, a republic in southern Russia, in the presence of Tatarstan Prime Minister Roustam Minnikhanov.
Iran and Tatarstan Republic can cooperate with each other in the fields of exploration and production of Hydrocarbon resources, Minnikhanov said.
Forouzandeh, for his part, said Tatneft Company will attend Iran's oil tenders, adding his foundation is interested in cooperating with the Russian side in air industries and building construction fields.
Head of Mostazafan and Janbazan Foundation, heading a delegation, arrived in Tatarstan Republic on Thursday to explore avenues for boosting cooperation with Russia and Tatarstan.
The United States might be trying to isolate Iran internationally, but that hasn't stopped Armenia from deepening its ties with its neighbor to the south.
During a visit to Armenia, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said that Tehran-Yerevan cooperation will promote mutual interest, regional security and stability. Khatami met with the secretary of the Armenian National Security Council, Serzh Sarkisian.
Khatami stressed that Iran supports Armenia, believing that mutual cooperation can help development and security in the Caucasus. Sarkisian voiced his hopes for further expansion of bilateral relations, commenting that cooperation in the fields of culture, education and economy is in the interest of regional security.
Linking the railways of the two neighboring countries would be effective in establishing the north-south corridor, Sarkisian added.
EU negotiators offered to send a mission to help Iran obtain a nuclear light-water research reactor, in what would be the first concrete move towards rewarding Tehran for abandoning uranium enrichment, diplomats said as four days of EU-Iranian talks ended.
Iran's reaction was not immediately known in talks that have been deadlocked since beginning in December.
The trio of Britain, France and Germany, representing the European Union, is trying to convince Iran to dismantle an enrichment program that the United States says is part of secret nuclear weapons development.
In return, Iran would get economic and political rewards. This is confusing, as it seems to be just the opposite of what a light water reactor does. "Light water (ordinary water) is used as the moderator in reactors as well as the cooling agent and the means by which heat is removed to produce steam for turning the turbines of the electric generators. The use of ordinary water makes it necessary to do a certain amount of enrichment of the uranium fuel before the necessary criticality of the reactor can be maintained."
Despite the U.S. State Department having designated the Iranian MKO (Mujahedin Khalq Organization) as a terrorist group, some administration hawks nevertheless think that its members could be useful as the Bush administration pressures Iran over its nuclear weapons program. At the Ashraf camp south of Baghdad, U.S. forces have confined 3,850 MKO members since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, largely because the MKO were once Saddam's allies against Iran during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War and were thus seen by the U.S. military as unreliable.
But now some members of the Bush administration, notably in the Pentagon and CIA, are seeking to recruit useful MKO members to operate in or simply to pressure Iran -- even as it insists that it does not deal with the MKO as a group. Some Pentagon policy planners are hoping a corps of informants can be selected from among the MKO at Ashraf, trained as spies and then be infiltrated back into Iran to gather intelligence, particularly on Iran's nuclear activities. One MKO official complains, "They (want) to make us mercenaries." The MKO has its roots in Marxism. Its former role in terrorist attacks dates back to its support for the U.S. embassy takeover in February 1979. During the 1970s, when the shah ruled Iran, the MKO assassinated U.S. military and civilian personnel working on defense projects.
They already seem to have infiltrated the Iranian nuke program. This is one of those dammed-if-you-do / dammed-if-you-don't subjects. They could be a valuable intel asset if handled with rubber gloves.
Posted by: Steve ||
02/11/2005 1:23:32 PM ||
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This is one of those "James Bond" rules games. By that, I mean that James Bond could do anything he wants without penalty because of his primary mission: to stop nuclear proliferation. A "License to Kill" actually means much, much more than homicide.
Since the end of World War I, the very nature of the porous borders of the Middle East has remained a clear geopolitical threat to the powers that sought to control the region. The porous nature of these young political frontiers has existed throughout the history of the Middle East as a fundamental symptom of tribal and smuggling routes, even before the movement of Arabs from modern day Saudi Arabia. When analyzing the 450-mile border that divides Iraq from Syria, several realities on the ground need to be understood. One of the clearest threats that exists for US forces stationed within Iraq is how the porous border situation provides active sanctuary for insurgents who can crisscross the border. Tactically, the existence of porous borders allows insurgent forces not to have to rely on critical bases of operation within Iraq itself which stand a higher chance of being discovered and destroyed by US military forces. Thus, the weak border areas between Syria and Iraq become an issue for US efforts to contain the many actors of the Iraqi insurgency. That being said, however, the Syrian-Iraqi border is only one facet of a greater problem that entails all of the political borders of Iraq. Nonetheless, it has gained continual attention by both policy and military leaders in their efforts to curb the momentum of the Iraqi insurgency of late. It is important to analyze four components of the border problem and how they relate to the security situation for both US forces and the Ba'athist and Alawite regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Much more at link
Posted by: Steve ||
02/11/2005 10:16:50 AM ||
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I wonder if US and Iraqi forces have started using the porousness of the border to their advantage...one thing these a**holes in Syria need to remember is that it cuts both ways. I hope we remind them of that fact often...
Syria has been negotiating the purchase of an advanced anti-missile system from Russia. Russian industry sources President Bashar Assad sought to procure the S-400 anti-missile defense system during his visit to Russia in January. The sources said Assad was briefed on the S-400 but did not sign any agreement. "Assad is very interested in the S-400 and apparently Syria has the money to buy this," an industry source said. The sources said Russia has sought to sell the S-400 to Iran, Syria and the United Arab Emirates. Russia has touted the S-400 as providing a more effective defense than the U.S. PAC-3 anti-missile system.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/11/2005 00:00:00 ||
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For Baby's sake, I hope they're better then those GPS jammers they sold to the Iraqis.
NATO defence ministers agreed on a major expansion of the alliance's peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan by sending troops to the west of the country, a key step in a plan to extend NATO's mission across the whole country. Ministers also yesterday narrowed differences that have stalled the allied training mission in Iraq, with several nations offering to contribute instructors operating either inside or outside the country. Agreement on the Afghan mission came after Italy, Spain and Lithuania committed hundreds of troops to support US forces that will switch to NATO command. The deal ends months of delay while allied military planners sought the extra forces. "NATO will now proceed to further expand the International Security Assistance Force into the west," said alliance Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. "We have the resources we need to expand."
The western deployment will double the area of Afghanistan under NATO's command, to cover just over half the country. Washington has long sought such a fusion, hoping to free up the thousands of front-line troops it still has in Afghanistan. However the US will keep some units in Afghanistan, serving with NATO or hunting Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders believed hiding along the mountainous Afghan-Pakistani border.
February 11, 2005: The United States is still trying to recover Stinger portable anti-air craft missiles in Afghanistan. Some 2,000 of these missiles were given out in the 1980s, to Afghans fighting Russian invaders. Most of the missiles were not used, and most were stolen, instead of being returned to American control. It's not certain why the recovery effort continues. The batteries are dead by now, and the rocket propellant has gone bad as well. Moreover, you cannot just get some geek to cobble together new batteries. The "Stinger battery" also contains cooling elements that make the missile seeker work (by allowing it to pick up the hot exhaust of a jet engine.) The rocket motor is only good for 15 years (after that it will start to degrade and give erratic performance.) Replacing the rocket motor is even more difficult that trying to rig replacement batteries. In other words, those 1980s era Stingers are useless.
The real danger is from Russian SA-7 portable anti-aircraft missiles. Not as capable as the Stinger, there are still lots of Sa-7s available with good batteries. Several have been fired in Iraq recently, although without bringing down anything. In Afghanistan, there are lots of small aircraft and helicopters flying around that are very vulnerable to an old-tech missile like the Sa-7. During the 1980s, the Afghans got their hands on lots of Sa-7s, fired over 500 of them, and brought down 47 aircraft and helicopters, and damaged 18 others. During the Vietnam war, 528 Sa-7s were fired, bringing down 45 aircraft and helicopters, and damaging six others.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Steve ||
02/11/2005 9:49:01 AM ||
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More likely it's a matter of tracing the pipe-line.
Even as the federal government is trying to make sense of the Balochistan Liberation Army and deal with the situation in that province, a shadowy outfit calling itself the Sindh Liberation Army has emerged in Sindh, another province with longstanding problems with Islamabad. While rumours about the existence of the organisation have been making the rounds in government circles, including intelligence agencies, for some time now, senior officials refuse to give the SLA much credence and say the outfit by no means poses a 'serious' security threat to the province. Critics disagree and say Cheema and his team are being too complacent when they claim that the SLA poses no 'real' threat to security. Recent events also prove otherwise. Through anonymous phone calls to police officials and journalists, the SLA has claimed responsibility for several attacks and bomb blasts in the recent past. These include two bomb explosions near the district headquarters of Rangers in Larkana and blasts at two electricity towers in the Sibi district of Balochistan in which about 12 people were injured. The Sibi attack plunged Quetta and much of the province into darkness. It also shows that the SLA might be operating outside Sindh also and perhaps in collusion with the BLA. While authorities have so far only speculated about groups and individuals responsible for these attacks, it is the first time that they have publicly declared in the media that the SLA is involved in the aforementioned blasts.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
02/11/2005 8:48:07 AM ||
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Funny. In Islamrealm one has to bomb indiscriminately right and left to gain credibility.
#4
Is there a province in Pakistan that doesn't have a secession movement?
The frontier provinces, I think, but mainly because the central government gave up on them years ago.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/11/2005 13:11 Comments ||
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The central gov't never really controlled the frontier provinces, from what I understand. The tribal territories straddle the Afghan/Pakistan border. Back in the day, the British Empiracles negotiated that the tribals would allow central gov't to administer national stuff -- like registering births and marriages, handling international diplomacy and wars -- that the tribes didn't care about anyway, while the tribal council continued to run all the local stuff. That's why the tribal jirgas (drums and all) are the ones to hunt out foreign terrorists, and not Pakistani Regular Army troops.
#6
During the seventies there was a popular Pashtun secessionist movement which was leftist in ideology. It has since been made almost defunct by the rise of the Taliban and pan-Islamism amongst the Pashtuns.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
02/11/2005 23:20 Comments ||
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Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld arrived in Iraq on Friday morning for a daylong visit to review Iraq security forces and meet with Iraqi and American leaders. The visit was not announced publicly in advance for security reasons. His first stop was to be at a combat surgical hospital to meet wounded soldiers.
Rumsfeld's visit came a day after a remotely detonated car bomb exploded in Baghdad on Thursday, killing two Iraqis but missing a U.S. military convoy as insurgent violence claimed more than 50 lives. Clashes between Iraqi police and rebels erupted along a major highway southeast of the capital.
Rumsfeld is the most senior U.S. official to arrive in Iraq since the nation's elections on Jan. 30. Rumsfeld's spokesman Larry di Rita said the purpose of the trip was ``to recognize the great success of the elections.''
Rumsfeld arrived from France, where he met with NATO defense ministers and discussed ways to increase their contributions to the U.S.-led efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In December, Rumsfeld made a surprise Christmas Eve visit to U.S. troops in Mosul, where he met many of the victims of an insurgent attack on a mess tent that had been bombed several days earlier. He also shared a Christmas Eve dinner with troops at a base outside of Baghdad and, amid tight security, visited others in Tikrit.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/11/2005 00:00:00 ||
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Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Mahmud Abbas were both facing threats to their authority Wednesday after agreeing at a landmark Middle East summit to end four years of bloodshed. While world leaders hailed what they widely saw as a chance of a historic breakthrough between Israel and the Palestinians, commentators warned that many obstacles lay ahead on the road to peace. Both Sharon and Abbas declared a ceasefire at the summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh but the main Palestinian militant movement Hamas swiftly dampened some of the optimism by saying it was not bound by the deal.
As Sharon prepared to brief his senior ministers on the outcome of his historic meeting with Abbas and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on the shores of the Red Sea, his disgruntled Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom pledged to lead a campaign to ensure his flagship project to quit Gaza is put to a referedum. Abbas was also facing a struggle to persuade militant factions such as Hamas to support his declared agreement with Sharon "to cease all acts of violence against Israelis and against Palestinians wherever they are." In his summit speech, Sharon had reiterated his determination to implement his plan to pull troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/11/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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Security forces have been put on high alert on the eve of Ashura amid fears that recent sectarian violence could spark a bloody new cycle of revenge, officials said yesterday. Last year's Ashura was one of the most violent ever and authorities are on alert after a spate of bloodshed between the two sects in the northern towns of Gilgit and Skardu in January, which left 17 people dead. "Because of recent sectarian incidents in some parts of the country we have instructed the provinces to be extra-vigilant. Security forces have been put on high alert to ward off any threat," Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Javed Cheema told AFP. Police commandos and plainclothes agents have been deployed in all major cities including Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Rawalpindi to guard sensitive sites, another Interior Ministry official said.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/11/2005 00:00:00 ||
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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.
Umm Amer, mother of Amer and 
KUWAIT CITY: Former minister of information Dr 
KUWAIT CITY: The Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs has no place for preachers who use the pulpit to promote radical and extremist ideas, the sector minister told a seminar Tuesday."The Awqaf Ministry rejects all forms of extremism and we have made it clear that those who promote extremist ideas from the pulpits have no place in the ministry," Dr 
A satirical narrative carried recently by the media in the West, where Fox News Channel is shown buying Al-Jazeera, was unfortunately understood to be factually correct by a section of Pakistan's media. "Al-Jazeera Channel categorically denies the assertions entailed in the satirical commentary, it 
expects media to discriminate between imaginative satire and hard fact, and actually seek clarification by checking the story from the source rather than merely repeating it," said Ahamn Muaffaq Zaidan, bureau chief Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel Islamabad, in a press release issued on Thursday. Al-Jazeera appreciates the wide public interest expressed in its future, and wishes to assure viewers in Pakistan and the world over that the channel remains committed to its core editorial values, added the press release.
Saudi Arabia intends to increase crude oil capacity to 12.5 million barrels by 2009. Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al Nueimi said the kingdom would continue current oil production of nine million barrels per day. Al Nueimi said Riyad has not yet decided to follow calls within OPEC for an oil production cut, which would be discussed at the cartel's meeting in Isfahan, Iran on March 16. Al Nuemi said the planned output increase was part of a 20-year plan. He said Riyad was also capable of further increasing oil output to 15 million barrels a day. "Saudi Arabia plans to increase its production capacity to 12.5 million barrels per day within the next four years," Al Nueimi said.
North Korea's media has for the first time confirmed that its leader Kim Jong-Il is preparing for a hereditary transfer of power to one of his three sons. Kim, who turns 63 on Feb. 16, became the first ruler in communist history to succeed a father as head of state in 1994 when his father died at the age of 82. Kim Jong-Il had been anointed by his father 20 years earlier when his father embarked upon a two-decade-long transition program. 
The Bush administration said Friday that it wasn't interested in one-on-one talks with North Korea about its nuclear programs outside the six-party negotiations involving the communist nation's neighbors. "It's not an issue between North Korea and the United States. It's a regional issue," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. "And it's an issue that impacts all of its neighbors."
North Korea has sent a message of solidarity to Iran amid suspicions the reclusive communist state had boasted of having nuclear weapons to raise the stakes while U.S. attention is focused on Iran's nuclear programmes. North Korea declared on Thursday for the first time it possessed nuclear weapons and pulled out indefinitely from six-party talks on its weapons programme, saying it needed a defence against a hostile United States. The North's official news agency reported on Friday that two top officials had sent messages of congratulations to Tehran on the 26th anniversary of the Islamic Republic, which took power after the fall of the Shah's U.S.-backed government. "The Iranian government and people have gained a great success in their work for defending the gains of the Islamic revolution and building independent and prosperous Iran, bravely shattering all sorts of trials and challenges in the past 26 years," said a message from the number two in North Korea's hierarchy, head of parliament Kim Yong-nam. A second message from the North Korean prime minister, Pak Pong-ju, praised Iran's success in its work to defend its sovereignty. "The friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries would invariably grow stronger," the message said.
North Korea's declaration Thursday that it has nuclear weapons and is through for now talking about them brought widespread expressions of dismay and near-universal calls for the North to return to the six-party negotiations aimed at curbing its nuclear program. Russia, China, Japan and South Korea - four of the six parties - urged the North to return to the nuclear talks, as did the leaders of the United Nations and the European Union. The United States, the final party to the now-endangered negotiations, also called for a resumption of the talks.
Rael to bestow Honorary Priest title to Ward Churchill 
Two influential former congressional leaders were named Wednesday to lead a new Washington group to study the UN's effectiveness and reform efforts. 
Syria has been negotiating the purchase of an advanced anti-missile system from Russia. Russian industry sources President Bashar Assad sought to procure the S-400 anti-missile defense system during his visit to Russia in January. The sources said Assad was briefed on the S-400 but did not sign any agreement. "Assad is very interested in the S-400 and apparently Syria has the money to buy this," an industry source said. The sources said Russia has sought to sell the S-400 to Iran, Syria and the United Arab Emirates. Russia has touted the S-400 as providing a more effective defense than the U.S. PAC-3 anti-missile system.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld arrived in Iraq on Friday morning for a daylong visit to review Iraq security forces and meet with Iraqi and American leaders. The visit was not announced publicly in advance for security reasons. His first stop was to be at a combat surgical hospital to meet wounded soldiers.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Mahmud Abbas were both facing threats to their authority Wednesday after agreeing at a landmark Middle East summit to end four years of bloodshed. While world leaders hailed what they widely saw as a chance of a historic breakthrough between Israel and the Palestinians, commentators warned that many obstacles lay ahead on the road to peace. Both Sharon and Abbas declared a ceasefire at the summit in the Egyptian resort of 
Security forces have been put on high alert on the eve of Ashura amid fears that recent sectarian violence could spark a bloody new cycle of revenge, officials said yesterday. Last year's Ashura was one of the most violent ever and authorities are on alert after a spate of bloodshed between the two sects in the northern towns of Gilgit and Skardu in January, which left 17 people dead. "Because of recent sectarian incidents in some parts of the country we have instructed the provinces to be extra-vigilant. Security forces have been put on high alert to ward off any threat," Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Javed Cheema told AFP. Police commandos and plainclothes agents have been deployed in all major cities including Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Rawalpindi to guard sensitive sites, another Interior Ministry official said.
