We're (very roughly) up and running on the new system. The hour I thought it'd take me to do the changeover stretched into three as I banged my head against the wall trying to make the network come up, but databases are now synced, I think. There are a few things out of order, but nothing too serious.
O Club is available through http://rantburg.com/bb/. I'll get it moved to its own server tomorrow, I think, which'll dislodge even more bugs.
Let me know when things break. The inconvenience should be worth it, since we've got three times the available memory and twice the processing power. So far this thing's been going about 90 miles an hour, but the test will come next time we're DoS'ed.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2011 02:41 ||
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#1
Fastest page load times I can recall. Nice work.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
07/31/2011 3:25 Comments ||
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#2
Here and the O club are rendering really, really quick. It's like I just tuned up my machine. Thanks Fred.
#9
Yup, the usual project: the first 90% of the project takes 90% of your time, and the last 10% takes the other 90% of your time.
Very fast, snappy performance this morning.
Well done Fred! And thanks Badanov!
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/31/2011 9:24 Comments ||
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#10
Great work. Thank you.
Mods, Sherry posted a pretty important article about Gunwalker ("Project Gunwalker: The AP Finally Reports...") shortly before the server swap. Could we carry that one over to today? Thanks.
Posted by: Matt ||
07/31/2011 11:23 Comments ||
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#11
Previous editions of the RDS&TP front pages aren't loading, but you probably already knew that.
#18
The hour I thought it'd take me to do the changeover stretched into three as I banged my head against the wall
Fred, I think that's amazing. Computers always take longer than one expects. I usually think it's going to take me an hour and that stretches into days.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
07/31/2011 17:10 Comments ||
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#22
Tried it on Internet Explorer. Got this message.
The website cannot display the page
HTTP 500
Most likely causes:
The website is under maintenance.
The website has a programming error.
What you can try:
Refresh the page.
Go back to the previous page.
http://www.rantburg.com/bb/?ADD=Y
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
07/31/2011 17:13 Comments ||
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#23
Fred---my post on #21 was with Mozilla firefox.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
07/31/2011 17:14 Comments ||
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#24
Can we take off the "Righthaven lawsuit factory" banner yet?
If it was up to me (and it surely ain't!) I'd leave it up, but amend the title to something like "Help Rantburg join in a class-action suit to turn the Righthaven shysters and their Myrmidons into homeless paupers."
#29
Fred,if you notice sites that used to send you hits are no longer doing so, you should advise them to relink to HTTP://rantburg.com without the port number we used to use to avoid the DoS attacks. The old port number stops the page from loading...
Posted by: DanNY ||
07/31/2011 18:39 Comments ||
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#30
I could comment at the O Club this morning but not now.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
07/31/2011 18:54 Comments ||
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#31
Are you seeing the pictures?
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2011 19:04 Comments ||
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#32
I can see the graphics on http://rantburg.com/bb/ but not the direct link.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2011 20:46 Comments ||
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#41
not for me: white page using FF 5.0
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/31/2011 20:52 Comments ||
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#42
Now at home, on the other machine. A wide variety of browsers fail in debian unstable. (No jokes please). (It's the only OS they'll let us use here at the Institution).
#44
The blank page sounds like a page that's failed to compile. Since it works on my machines and other folks' machines I've got to track down what the condition is that causes it to fail.
Nothing pops to mind at the moment but I'll keep messing, which means the O Club page will occasionally look odd...
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2011 22:08 Comments ||
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#45
"Is there a difference between using http://rantburg.com/bb and http://o-club.org?"
I use Internet Explorer and they both come up for me. "com.bb" brings up the O-Club with my name ready for commenting, while "club.org" brings up the O-Club with "visitor" in the commenter's space.
In both cases, it goes to a completely white screen when I try to post something.
If that helps.
Posted by: Barbara ||
07/31/2011 22:08 Comments ||
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#46
I'm gonna reboot into windows, see what happens.
Tu: Leopard is 10.5; 10.6/Snow Leopard is basically 10.5 with bug fixes. 10.4 to 10.5 and 10.6 to 10.7 were larger changes.
I have a 10.4/Debian dual boot machine at the office I can check with tomorrow. Woohoo, dual g5's! Risc power, baby!
#47
I have no idea what you said, Thing, but it certainly sounds impressive. ;-p
Posted by: Barbara ||
07/31/2011 22:15 Comments ||
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#48
Fred---nothing on either o club site with either Firefox or I/E. But the burg and comments work fine.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
07/31/2011 22:18 Comments ||
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#49
Yeah, the appletalk thing was just a shot in the dark. 10 years ago sounds about right. That's about the last time I built a Novell box. We were rolling them over to Exchange when I left.
#50
Could someone who can't post give it a try now (its in debug mode) and tell me what you see. Also, what's the content of the address bar on the browser?
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2011 22:39 Comments ||
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#51
no luck: response -
ADD Y
sname Frank G
comments test
User: Frank G
address bar = http://rantburg.com/bb/?ADD=Y
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/31/2011 22:50 Comments ||
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#52
Also no luck (Safari 5.05, Mac OS 10.6.7)
ADD Y
sname PBMcL
comments Testing...
User: PBMcL
#62
It should work now. The bug was in the spam filtration module, which I'll have to fix tomorrow. I'm way too tired tonight. I've just turned it off for now.
Check and make sure it works, please.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2011 23:19 Comments ||
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#63
Comment posted. I'm now a suspected spammer.
ADD Y
sname PBMcL
comments Test #4
User: PBMcL
Editor: NO
Add is set...
Counter is 0
Insert complete.
A senior Defense Ministry official who allegedly leaked secrets that helped the Taliban stage suicide attacks in Kabul has been arrested by the Afghan Intelligence Service -- one of three high profile arrests announced Saturday by the agency.
A spokesman said also arrested were a senior Taliban official accused of leading an insurgent propaganda campaign in eastern Afghanistan, and an insurgent who allegedly helped organize an April 1 attack against the U.N. headquarters in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif that killed 11 people, including seven foreign U.N. employees.
Infiltration has become a serious concern for Afghan forces and the U.S.-led military alliance that is training them -- often on bases they share. The Taliban have said the practice has become one of their main strategies in their war against the U.S.-led coalition and President Hamid Karzai's government.
Several attacks involving bombers wearing military uniforms have targeted foreign troops as well as official Afghan institutions, including an April suicide bombing by an attacker wearing an army uniform that killed three people at the Defense Ministry.
The intelligence service recently arrested Gul Mohammad, an army officer who was serving at the Defense Ministry headquarters in Kabul, the agency's spokesman Lutifullah Mashal said at a news conference.
Mohammad, who was an eight-year veteran of the army, was in charge of three checkpoints in the capital -- one near NATO headquarters and the presidential palace, and two others on a road where the coalition has many bases and training facilities.
Mashal said insurgents offered Mohammad 200,000 Pakistanis rupees ($2,300) to help organize suicide attacks in Kabul. Many of the suicide bombers operating inside Afghanistan are thought to be trained in Pakistan's lawless tribal regions, which border provinces such as Nuristan and Nangarhar.
A battle between Libya's main opposition and a rogue faction inside the movement's armed forces has raised fears of infighting caused by the yet unexplained murder of one of its chief commanders.
Libya's opposition said on Sunday its forces had overrun the base of a pro-regime faction after five hours of fighting near the opposition stronghold Benghazi, according to spokesman Mahmoud Shamam.
Al Jazeera's Tony Birtley, reporting from Benghazi, said the battle was launched to subdue elements of Muammar Gaddafi's forces that had been operating as a "fifth column" within the opposition ranks.
"According to sources here there is no connection with the attack and the death of [Abdel-Fattah Younes]," said Birtley, who added that documents were found on the defeated faction that linked it to Gaddafi.
'Unity intact'
Shamam said fighting broke out early on Sunday and left four dead and six wounded. The main rebel force is now in control of the al-Nidaa Brigade's base on the western outskirts of Benghazi, the de facto capital of Libya's opposition-held east.
"It was a long battle and it took many hours because they were heavily armed," he said.
"In the end we arrested 31 of them. We lost four people," said Shamam, who added the group of fighters were rounded up for their role in organising a prison break in Benghazi earlier in the week.
The fighting followed Thursday's killing of chief rebel commander Younes under mysterious circumstances.
Two knife-wielding men hijacked a truck in China's restive northwest, rammed the vehicle into a crowd, then got out to attack the pedestrians, a police official said Sunday
The attack, in which eight people are reported to have died and 22 injured, happened in the Silk Road city of Kashgar in northwest Xinjiang, a region rocked by ethnic violence in recent years.
The attackers' identities and motive were unclear, but an overseas activist group said it worried Chinese authorities might crack down on minority Uighurs blamed for previous violence in the region.
State-run Xinhua News Agency reported that two blasts were heard about an hour before the incident Saturday night one from a minivan and the other from the food stall-lined street where the hijacking took place. The police official, from the information office of the Xinjiang regional public security bureau, said she could not confirm whether there were explosions.
According to the official, two men hijacked a truck and stabbed the driver to death. The men then drove the truck into a crowd, got out of the vehicle and attacked people along the road with a knife or knives, said the official, who refused to give her name, as is common with Chinese officials.
People who came under attack retaliated, and one of the suspects was killed and the other caught, the official said.
Police recovered 600 kilogrammes of explosives during a search operation in Dera Ismail Khan from compounds that reportedly belonged to militants, Express 24/7 reported Saturday.
The explosives recovered included rockets, grenades and different explosives and were defused by the Bomb Disposal Squad (BDS). The material was placed in a police store room as evidence. Why do I have a feeling this will end tragically?
Ousted Fatah strongman says more than $1b. missing from fund handed over to PA president.
Ousted Fatah official Muhammad Dahlan over the weekend launched a scathing attack on Paleostinian Authority President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... , accusing him of dictatorship and financial corruption. He said that more than $1 billion have gone missing from a fund that was handed over to Abbas after he was elected president in 2005.
Dahlan's attack on Abbas came after PA security forces raided the former Fatah commander's home in Ramallah on Thursday, arresting his bodyguards and confiscating weapons and armored vehicles.
It's a different world over there.
Armored vehicles? Use 'em or lose 'em...
Dahlan was at home during the raid, which was carried out by dozens of security officers, but was not jugged thanks to his parliamentary immunity.
Shortly thereafter, Dahlan left for Jordan through the Allenby Bridge, where he gave a series of interviews to Arab media outlets in which he strongly condemned Abbas, 76, and accused him of financial corruption and seeking to destroy Fatah."Abbas does not recognize any law, morals or values," Dahlan said, referring to the raid on his home and last month's decision to expel him from the Fatah Central Committee.
That could be said about most of the senior guard. Working for Yasser Arafat did not encourage a punctilious conscience.
Dahlan said that the dispute between Fatah and Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason,, and Israel's presence in the West Bank, gave Abbas a "free hand to practice dictatorship against the Paleostinian people, silence people and deny them their salaries."
Dahlan said that the dispute with the PA president erupted after he demanded to know what had happened to $1.3b. that was in the account of the Paleostinian Investment Fund.
I dunno, ask Suha...
The PIF was established in 2000 as an independent Paleostinian investment company "committed to maximizing the assets' value for its shareholder: the Paleostinian people."
According to its website, PIF's chief objective is "to safeguard and consolidate the Paleostinian people's investments and property, both in Paleostine and abroad."
Dahlan said that after the death of Yasser Arafat, the responsibility for the fund was transferred to Abbas in 2005.
"This is money that Yasser Arafat had collected from Paleostinian taxpayers for the day that we would need it," Dahlan explained. "There aren't more black days than today, where our employees are not receiving salaries. Why doesn't he pay from this fund, which he controls personally? The PLO does not know about this sum.
This is documented money that was delivered to him [Abbas] from an international accounting company."
Dahlan said that when he exposed the issue of the PIF last April, Abbas got furious. "He thinks that the sun can be covered with a sieve," he added.
"Yasser Arafat worked strenuously to save this money for the 'black day.' the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... thinks that the people don't know where this money is and who received it. Now he's admitting that there is only $700 million in the fund.
But the real sum should be about $2b."
Dahlan, who headed the PA Preventive Security Force in the Gazoo Strip after the signing of the Oslo Accords, also claimed that Abbas was furious with him because he had been badmouthing the PA president's two sons, Yasser and Tareq, who are wealthy businessmen.
And they got their seed money from...
Dahlan said that Abbas was mistaken if he thought that he could make charges against him without expecting a reply.
Dahlan said that he respected Paleostinian laws by arriving in Ramallah last week to file a petition with a Fatah disciplinary court against his expulsion from the faction. "I didn't sneak into Ramallah or arrive secretly," he said. "I came in a public way and with my own legs."
Abbas does not want law and order to prevail, Dahlan charged. "He sent his forces to intimidate Paleostinian leaders to keep them silent about his political, national and moral crimes."
Dahlan was also quoted as saying that Abbas has always hated Fatah and now wants to destroy it.
"Abbas is trying to cover up for his political, organizational and internal failures," Dahlan said. "Fatah has lost the Gazoo Strip, the parliament and even the municipal elections. In his era, we have become without a political horizon and there's no hope for Paleostinians. We are in a pathetic situation."
Senior Fatah officials in Ramallah said that if Dahlan returned to the West Bank, he would be immediately locked away and charged with "financial corruption, murder, extortion and collaboration with outside forces."
The officials said that the offenses were committed during the period that Dahlan was in charge of the Preventative Security Force in the Gazoo Strip.
The Abbas-Dahlan rivalry has caused significant damage to Fatah, one official told The Jerusalem Post. "Hamas is already celebrating the infighting in Fatah and is now saying that the accusations against Dahlan prove that Hamas was right when it kicked the Paleostinian Authority out of the Gazoo Strip in 2007."
The dispute is also threatening to spark a confrontation between Fatah supporters in the West Bank and those in the Gazoo Strip. Dahlan continues to enjoy widespread support among many Fatah cadres in the Strip. Over the weekend, Dahlan supporters in the Gazoo Strip expressed outrage over Abbas's measures against the former Fatah commander. Some pointed out that Abbas and Dahlan had been strong political allies for many years.
In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the U.S. dispatched a military team to the Philippines to help the Manila government root out militant Islamic extremist groups. The terrorist threat is seen as much diminished since then but still active. The military mission remains in the Philippines as part of the U.S.-led global anti-terrorism campaign.
Rocky Zeender spent two years on what he calls the forgotten front of the war on terrorism - the Philippines.
"Nobody knows about it. Right now all the funding and all the military support is going into the Middle East. And by no means is the Philippines as large of a front as the Middle East. However, it does provide an enormous safe haven for some radical members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front or Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah to come and train in," Zeender said.
As a member of the U.S. Special Forces, a Green Beret, Zeender slogged through the jungles and across mountains of the southern Philippines with Philippine troops from 2008 to 2010 looking for militant Islamist groups, some of whom have had links to al-Qaida.
"You do have some very sporadic cities throughout Mindanao, although it would pretty much resemble any Vietnam movie anyone has ever watched - pretty much nothing but jungle and mountains and rice paddies. I spent most of my time up in the mountains. It was extremely dense jungle, extremely dense forest, very steep terrain, and very difficult to travel, sometimes impossible to travel, by vehicle, only by foot," Zeender said.
The Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines, numbering about 600 men and women from the four U.S. armed services with an annual $90 million budget in the current fiscal year, was created in 2002. Its mission, as the Task Forces website puts it, is to advise and assist Philippine forces to fight terrorism and to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people of Mindanao.
The Joint Task Forces presence is temporary and its role is strictly advisory. But Zeender says U.S. troops did patrol with military troops and national police, and in doing so did take casualties, including some fatalities, primarily from improvised explosive devices.
"The U.S. military is not allowed to actively target terrorist groups within the Philippines. We were there strictly as advisors. However, if attacked, we do obviously have the right to self-defense, and that did happen under a couple of occasions while I was in the Philippines. And we worked very well with our counterparts," Zeender said.
The vast and rugged Philippine archipelago along with the islands of Indonesia to the south is a perfect refuge for terrorist groups. The primary terrorist groups there are the Abu Sayyaf Group, a separatist group that has long utilized kidnapping for ransom to get funds and hostage beheadings to reinforce its demands, and Jemaah Islamiyah, an al-Qaida ally responsible for several deadly bombings in Indonesia and the Philippines. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front has officially broken with al-Qaida and has had a series of on-again, off-again ceasefires with the Philippine government as it tries to reach a peace settlement but radical members of the group remain militarily active.
Emile Nakhleh, former chief of the CIAs political Islam strategic analysis unit, says the jihadist groups influence in the region is weakening.
"There are still some very nasty elements. But the countries in Southeast Asia and the publics have basically - especially their publics - are rejecting this whole rhetoric of terrorism and the whole radical narrative that has been the hallmark of global terrorism. And so they are definitely on the wane," Nakhleh said.
However, in January a bus bombing in Manila was blamed on the Abu Sayyaf. In June, Philippine security forces went on alert for possible terrorist bomb attacks in Manila. The attacks never materialized. But the island of Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago remain dangerous. On July 12 two American citizens and a Filipino relative were kidnapped in Zamboanga City on Mindanao.
Zeender believes progress against Philippine-based terrorist groups remains elusive without a deeper U.S. commitment in the Philippines.
"Weve lost some members of my old unit actually down there. And I dont really see any gains being made. There seems to be one hand in the pot, and were not really fully committing. And I believe it would be almost kind of a stalemate. Were not really gaining any ground or affecting anything on a large international level. However, we are helping the Philippine government and some of the locals. But on an international scale, as far as eliminating the threat of terror, were sort of stalemating it," Zeender said.
But the issue of a U.S. troop presence is a sensitive one in the Philippines. The 1987 Philippines constitution bars foreign military bases from the country, and the U.S. bases were closed after Philippine Congress voted in 1991 not to extend the base leases. However, the two countries still hold joint military exercises. And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reaffirmed the U.S. defense commitment to the Philippines in June amid rising tensions between Manila and Beijing over disputed islands in the South China Sea.
Five police and two civilians have been injured in a bomb attack at a tea shop in Pattani's Mae Lan district, and two military ranger volunteers were wounded in a landmine trap in a different district of the same province.
A couple of terrorists attackers riding on a motorcycle threw a grenade at seven people who were drinking tea at a shop owned by Pol Sen Sgt Maj Wiraphong Pomsakun of the Mae Lan district police station, said the victims. The victims were transported to a nearby hospital and later discharged because most of their injuries were considered minimal.
Meanwhile, a military ranger has lost her leg in a landmine blast in Panare district. Ranger volunteer Sukchitratda Intharamuang, 29, stepped on the landmine which blew off her left leg. It also injured her colleague, military ranger volunteer Somwong Phetsing, 51.
The were inspecting a deserted military ranger outpost where a shooting attack was reported the previous night. The two were hospitalised. One bomb was found and destroyed before the accident, which was about 100 metres from the first mine.
A man was shot dead in Pattani on Friday night. Rohima Chewae, 42, was gunned down in Thung Yang Daeng district of Pattani while riding a motorcycle on his way back home in Thung Yang Daeng district of Muang, Yala. He died instantly.
In Bannang Sata district of neighbouring Yala province, military ranger volunteer Chalit Nusang, 31, was shot by a terrorist gunman who was hiding while Mr Chalit was travelling on the back of a pick-up truck along with several other volunteers.
Syrian security forces backed by tanks and snipers launched a ferocious assault Sunday on defiant cities and towns, killing at least 70 people and possibly many more as the regime raced to crush dissent ahead of Ramadan. Corpses littered the streets after a surge in violence that drew widespread international condemnation. but not Obama's
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/31/2011 17:54 ||
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A Syrian Major-General has deserted Assad's army along with a group of other officers and joined the rebels.
In an Arabic video clip posted on Youtube on July 29, 2011, the officer, Major-General Riad El As'ad is seen in the company of other officers, announcing the establishment of the "Free Syrian Army whose main goal will be to fight the army of oppression headed by President Bashar Assad".
As'ad accused the Assad regime of crimes against the Syrian people and called on the officers and soldiers in the Syrian army not to aim their weapons at the people. He further called on them to join the Free Syrian Army.
The major-general warned that the Free Army will eliminate any soldier who acts to harm his own people. The present army commanders do not represent the army, he continued, they are acting for the criminal gang that controls the media and prevents the people from obtaining truthful information on what is happening.
In recent weeks, a large number of officers and soldiers have deserted the regular Syrian army. In one instance, there was a mutiny and at least ten of the soldiers participating were shot and killed.
The former Vice President of Syria, Abd Al-Halim Khaddam, Assad's bitter enemy, speaking from France, opined that Assad will fall only if the army disintegrates. That disintegration may have begun.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/31/2011 09:21 ||
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[7 views]
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#1
Heh. think the chin-less one's sphincter puckered a bit on this news?
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/31/2011 9:28 Comments ||
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Syrian tanks stormed the city of Hama at dawn Sunday, launching what appeared to be a major offensive to crush a four-month-old rebellion in the country's biggest protest flashpoint.
Activist Omar al-Habbab, contacted by telephone in Hama, said residents had taken to the streets to defend makeshift barricades with sticks, stones, knives and burning tires as tanks pounded the city with shells and soldiers opened fire at anything that moved.
"People are fighting tanks with their bare chests," he said. "We are in the Stone Age facing this military assault."
Reuters reported that hospitals had counted 24 dead, but witnesses told the news agency more bodies were lying uncollected in the streets as shells exploded at a rate of four a minute.
Syrian security forces killed at least 62 people Sunday in an escalation of the crackdown on protests ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, activists and residents said. Most died in raids on the flashpoint city of Hama, where a barrage of shelling and gunfire left bodies scattered in the streets.
"It's a massacre. They want to break Hama before the month of Ramadan," an eyewitness who identified himself by his first name, Ahmed, told The Associated Press by telephone from Hama, where at least 49 people were killed Sunday.
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.
A senior Defense Ministry official who allegedly leaked secrets that helped the Taliban stage suicide attacks in Kabul has been arrested by the Afghan Intelligence Service -- one of three high profile arrests announced Saturday by the agency.
Ousted Fatah strongman says more than $1b. missing from fund handed over to PA president.
Syrian security forces backed by tanks and snipers launched a ferocious assault Sunday on defiant cities and towns, killing at least 70 people and possibly many more as the regime raced to crush dissent ahead of Ramadan. Corpses littered the streets after a surge in violence that drew widespread international condemnation. 
