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French commandos attack al-Shabab base, explosions, gunfire heard
Today's Headlines
Headline Comments [Views]
17:53 1 18:11 Frank G [336089]
11:55 2 14:00 Steve White [336091] 
10:27 13 21:18 JosephMendiola [336101] 
09:49 1 15:11 wr [336077]
09:44 3 19:40 lord garth [336096]
04:45 7 22:58 trailing wife [336104]
03:04 5 15:39 trailing wife [336094]
03:02 1 12:46 Besoeker [336084]
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02:28 1 17:06 Water Modem [336075]
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Iraq
Anbar police arrest al-Qaeda 'slaughterer'
raqi police in Anbar province arrested last week a leading figure within al-Qaeda in Iraq known as the 'slaughterer' and believed to be responsible for beheading several citizens and members of the security forces.

He was captured in Fallujah's Jubail neighbourhood on December 26th.

"A force from the Special Storming Unit, which is part of the Anbar police counter-terrorism bureau, arrested Majeed Khalaf -- known as the 'slaughterer' -- along with four of his aides while they were inside a residential building," said Anbar police chief Maj. Gen. Hadi Erzaij.

"Local residents of the neighbourhood reported to police the presence of Khalaf and four gunmen after one of the residents photographed the gunmen entering the house using his mobile phone camera, and then delivered the footage to the police as evidence," he said.

Erzaij told Mawtani that security forces were able to "encircle the house in record time, evacuate the street in anticipation of clashes that might inflict casualties among the residents, and storm the house, arresting the five gunmen".

"Various weapons and explosives were found in the possession of the gunmen, in addition to documents, pocket-size al-Qaeda books and a list of names --some whom had been killed and others still alive but believed to be among those the gunmen were planning to kill," he said.

"The five gunmen formed an important cell for al-Qaeda, headed by Khalaf," Erzaij added. "They are now in jail [and are facing] interrogation before they are set to face the Iraqi courts to receive their fair punishment in accordance with Article 4 of the Anti-Terrorism Law in Iraq."
Slaughterer' terrorised citizens

Brig. Mohammad Rasheed al-Obaidi, commander of the Anbar Police Rapid Intervention Force, said the suspect was involved in the 2006 killing of 21 civilians inside a car wash station in the al-Saqlawiya district, north of Fallujah.

"Among [the dead] were 12 security men and others who had been accused of blasphemy because they worked at reconstruction projects that at the time were supervised by coalition forces", al-Obaidi said.

Khalaf would often decapitate his victims and set their heads on their chests facing a camera as he chanted slogans, terrorising citizens and local residents, he said.
Posted by: tipper || 01/12/2013 17:53 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336089 views] Top|| File under:

#1  *knock knock*

"Happy Boxing Day!"
Posted by: Frank G || 01/12/2013 18:11 Comments || Top||


-Lurid Crime Tales-
Was Harry Reid Slated for $600,000 Bribe? - Trunk Pol Implicated
Embattled St. George businessman Jeremy Johnson says new Utah Attorney General John Swallow helped broker a deal in 2010 in which Johnson believed he was to pay Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid $600,000 to make a federal investigation into Johnson's company go away.

But when the federal government filed a lawsuit Johnson thought he had paid to quash, he demanded Swallow return some of the $250,000 initial payment. Then, just days before the Nov. 6 election, Johnson engaged in a frenetic but unsuccessful effort to get Swallow to drop out of the race, saying information about what Johnson called a "bribe" would come out and force the Republican's resignation if he became attorney general.

Johnson's allegations come less than a week after Swallow took the oath of office. Federal agents have interviewed several Utahns about Johnson's relationship with Swallow, among other issues, according to those interviewed. The FBI would not comment.

Johnson said he does not know if any of the money he paid in the deal actually reached anyone connected to Reid.
Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 01/12/2013 11:55 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336091 views] Top|| File under:

#1  $600,000 is chump change for Harry Reid.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 01/12/2013 12:09 Comments || Top||

#2  That doesn't mean you leave it on the table...
Posted by: Steve White || 01/12/2013 14:00 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Politix
Jerry Brown: California's deficit is gone
It's a projection,damn it. Who's going to argue with a projection? Not when you are mellowing out.
Gov. Jerry Brown took office two years ago promising that he had the know-how and the fiscal prudence to guide the state out of its financial crisis, and on Thursday he delivered a budget without a deficit.

It's the first time since 2007 that leaders at the Capitol haven't had a deficit to contend with and the first time since the late 1990s that the outlook over future years shows surpluses instead of deficits.

"This is new. This is a breakthrough," Brown told reporters at a news conference where he presented his spending plan for the 2013-14 year that begins July 1.

The governor promised discipline in spending - K-12 public schools and higher education received significant increases in funding - and in paying off the state's accrued debt.

He's likely to face opposition from Statehouse liberals who would rather see funding restored to programs that have been slashed in recent years, but Thursday his plan was widely praised by Democrats and Republicans.

Some in the GOP did, however, question whether the governor was being too optimistic with his deficit projections.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Jerry-Brown-California-s-deficit-is-gone-4183371.php#ixzz2HmA5Y7AZ
Posted by: tipper || 01/12/2013 10:27 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336101 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Don't worry, they're using the same algorithm employed to prove Man Made Global Warming. /sarc off
Posted by: Procopius2k || 01/12/2013 10:39 Comments || Top||

#2  Marketwatch in November state California faces an unfunded liability of $100 billion in its Public EmployeesÂ’ Retirement System and $65 billion in its State TeachersÂ’ Retirement System.
Funny how the article didn't mention that.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 01/12/2013 12:12 Comments || Top||

#3  It gets better. The CSU chancellor sez they'll need more money to cover "rising pension and health care costs."
Posted by: Pappy || 01/12/2013 13:12 Comments || Top||

#4  Just borrow that special coin krugman wants.
Posted by: Rjschwarz || 01/12/2013 13:29 Comments || Top||

#5  Yes, the $1T 'Krugman' platinum coin.
Posted by: Steve White || 01/12/2013 14:01 Comments || Top||

#6  They already know they are coming in under the projection by at least 10%. They are already planning on increasing spending by "only" 5%. There will be no surplus. There will be no balanced budget. There will be more of the same, and shame on anyone who won't admit it.
Posted by: Iblis || 01/12/2013 14:02 Comments || Top||

#7  Waved your Magic Wand and made it vanish, did you?

It don't work that way.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 01/12/2013 14:47 Comments || Top||

#8  When is California going to crash? We've been hearing about it for years, but it never happens, like the banks are scared to call them on the debt.
Posted by: Charles || 01/12/2013 15:20 Comments || Top||

#9  There isn't a deficit when you ignore it!
Posted by: DarthVader || 01/12/2013 15:20 Comments || Top||

#10  In the California section of the Sacramento Bee today and yesterday, they are already talking about the pay increase for state workers, the incresaed money that can go to "education" (read the Teachers union demand for pay increases) and nothing, nothing about the the pending debt, retirement, or anything about a substantial reserve. All we did was give them more money to spend on their friends.
Posted by: NoMoreBS || 01/12/2013 16:45 Comments || Top||

#11  California owed some $30 billion to various funds, school districts and local governments. The Mr Brown's plan was to pay back $5.2 billion this year. That has now been reduced to $4.2 billion.
Posted by: Pappy || 01/12/2013 20:46 Comments || Top||

#12  Like many States, CA has multiple balance sheets. There is debt service as a cost, bond sales as income, various special accounts and all sorts of contingency accounts. This makes it almost impossible to actually know what is actually going on unless you are 'inside'.
Posted by: lord garth || 01/12/2013 20:46 Comments || Top||

#13  Not unlike the former USSR + Commie Bloc, IFF CALIFORNIA PRETENDS TO ITSELF THAT IT HAS NO DEBT, IT DOESN'T.

Just do a few ole' Soviet/Commie-esque accounting "write-offs" + personnel switches, ....@etc, "fudge the books" then soon California can once again happily "spend spend spend" as its debts never existed to begin with.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 01/12/2013 21:18 Comments || Top||


Government
Department of Homeland Security advises computer users to disable Java because of security hole
The Department of Homeland Security is advising people to temporarily disable the Java software on their computers to avoid a potential hacking attack.

Any system using Oracle Java 7 (1.7, 1.7.0) including

Java Platform Standard Edition 7 (Java SE 7)
Java SE Development Kit (JDK 7)
Java SE Runtime Environment (JRE 7)

All versions of Java 7 through update 10 are affected. Web browsers using the Java 7 plug-in are at high risk.

Great, just great.

A vulnerability in the Java Security Manager allows a Java applet to grant itself permission to execute arbitrary code. An attacker could use social engineering techniques to entice a user to visit a link to a website hosting a malicious Java applet. An attacker could also compromise a legitimate web site and upload a malicious Java applet (a "drive-by download" attack).

Solution

Disable Java in web browsers

This and previous Java vulnerabilities have been widely targeted by attackers, and new Java vulnerabilities are likely to be discovered. To defend against this and future Java vulnerabilities, consider disabling Java in web browsers until adequate updates are available. As with any software, unnecessary features should be disabled or removed as appropriate for your environment.

Starting with Java 7 Update 10, it is possible to disable Java content in web browsers through the Java control panel applet. From Setting the Security Level of the Java Client:

For installations where the highest level of security is required, it is possible to entirely prevent any Java apps (signed or unsigned) from running in a browser by de-selecting Enable Java content in the browser in the Java Control Panel under the Security tab.

If you are unable to update to Java 7 Update 10 please see the solution section of Vulnerability Note VU#636312 for instructions on how to disable Java on a per-browser basis.
Posted by: Mike Ramsey || 01/12/2013 09:49 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336077 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Janet Napolitano, unable to plug the holes of the Dike also known as the Southern Border, desperately seeks to find something wrong with her web browser...
Posted by: wr || 01/12/2013 15:11 Comments || Top||


Afghanistan
Another Look at the Withdrawal from Afghanistan
What Obama didn't mention is that this surge and this strategy were not a success. He'd treated the strategy as an experiment; he gave it 18 months to work, and his generals assured him that would be enough time for the Afghan military to take the lead in a majority of the country's districts, even though some of them knew very well it would take longer. They gambled that enough progress would be made to convince the president to give them more time and more troops.

They gambled wrong. After 18 months, almost to the day, Obama announced that he would start pulling out all 33,000 surge troops--and not replace them with any new ones. This too he publicly presented as a victory, and by the same rationale: bin Laden had been killed, al-Qaida decimated, Taliban foot soldiers routed.

But the goals of the surge--the goals of the counterinsurgency strategy--had not been accomplished. Obama simply--and wisely--rejected them; the experiment was over; he wasn't going to double down.
How many years - and dead or maimed Americans & others - since Bush essentially 'declared victory and left' for Iraq?
Posted by: Glenmore || 01/12/2013 09:44 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336096 views] Top|| File under:

#1  More:
"The policy that Obama now pursues—and has been since the middle of 2011 (that is, 18 months after he put the counterinsurgency experiment in motion)—is essentially Biden’s policy."
Posted by: Glenmore || 01/12/2013 9:51 Comments || Top||

#2  Taliban foot soldiers routed??? No, they are just layin' low, keeping their blades sharp & practicing their beheading skills for later.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 01/12/2013 11:54 Comments || Top||

#3  The Afghan army may have a few minimally competent units.

However, the Afghan air force barely exists. The reasons for this are many (Karzai's own fears of Afghans in planes is one reason). Anyway, without an air force to support ground ops and evacuate the injured, it will be a happy day for the taliban.
Posted by: lord garth || 01/12/2013 19:40 Comments || Top||


-Short Attention Span Theater-
Phony Cpt. Freedom Stansbury
Posted by: Spogum Henbane7455 || 01/12/2013 04:45 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336104 views] Top|| File under:

#1  If he'd more ambition, he'd be POTUS now.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 01/12/2013 6:42 Comments || Top||

#2  Last week he pushed his luck a little too much when he came to our PT formation wearing ACUs with CPT rank, Ranger tab and a 101st unit and deployment patches. He told our 1st Sgt that he was looking for a private who was talking on his cellphone and failed to salute him as he passed.

Translation?
Posted by: gromky || 01/12/2013 7:13 Comments || Top||

#3  Probably some doubt and much discussion about poor Stansbury at Eglin before this happened, but when he rudely interrupted a USAF yoga PT session over an alleged failure to salute, the tats were just too much.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/12/2013 8:53 Comments || Top||

#4  #2 Last week he pushed his luck a little too much when he came to our PT formation wearing ACUs with CPT rank, Ranger tab and a 101st unit and deployment patches. He told our 1st Sgt that he was looking for a private who was talking on his cellphone and failed to salute him as he passed.

Translation?

#2 Last week he pushed his luck a little too much when he came to our where a group of us were working out. He wore an Army uniform with Captain's rank insignia, a patch showing he had been though Green Beret school, and patches showing he had been to war while assigned to the 101st Airborne Division. He told our leader that he was looking for a private who was talking on his cellphone and failed to salute him as he passed.

That's how this old Sailor understood it anyway .
Posted by: FOD || 01/12/2013 9:43 Comments || Top||

#5  Thanks, FOD. That does help. :-)
Posted by: trailing wife || 01/12/2013 15:21 Comments || Top||

#6  FOD, I think that a Ranger tab means he went to Ranger school, rather than Green Beret school. Green Berets are like SEALs.(but not as good, of course, cuz they're Army, not Navy.)

Another former sailor.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia || 01/12/2013 15:39 Comments || Top||

#7  Do the Marines have a Special Forces unit of some sort, or are they all special?
Posted by: trailing wife || 01/12/2013 22:58 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Culture Wars
Missing the point
Here is a grab from the video below of Charles Krauthammer holding forth on a complete irrelevancy in the gun-control pushes being made by the Democrats.

The normally-astute Charles thinks that the administration's goals in in radical gun-control measures are about reducing gun crimes and killings. Of course it's not (see the update to this post). The objective is to increase government control over the lives of Americans in any way they can.

...I have explained before that the fundamental error the Right in general has made for more than a half century is that the main contentions with the Left are about policy. They are not.


...when the Democrats start work on a policy initiative, it is not about the policy, it is about changing the way ordinary Americans think of themselves in relation to government.

The reason the Right is going to lose the upcoming gun-control fight is because they think the issue is about facts
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 01/12/2013 03:04 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336094 views] Top|| File under:

#1  The reason the Right is going to lose the upcoming gun-control fight is because they think the issue is about facts

The Right is going to lose the gun-control fight? The House members are aware that elections are coming up in less than two years. The gun-control issue is a toxic issue if you are in favor of gun-control and want to get elected. I sense people are digging in on this issue and it is the line in the sand. They are aware that all the gun-control legislation is aimed at honest, law-abiding citizens--not criminals or crazy people.
Posted by: JohnQC || 01/12/2013 10:27 Comments || Top||

#2  it is about changing the way ordinary Americans think of themselves in relation to government
A narrow majority of ordinary Americans are willing to consider themselves 'subjects' of their government and passively support forcing this view on the remaining minority, as was proven in the last election. This is the crux of the matter.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 01/12/2013 12:02 Comments || Top||

#3  The objective is to increase government control over the lives of Americans in any way they can.

By ascribing ulterior intentions the author is attempting to assign blanket motivations to everyone that opposes his opinion. Ironically, (Perhaps intentionally) he employs the exact same persuasion scheme as those that promote greater restrictions. The problem is his base assertion is factually incorrect. Believe it or not there are some politicians favoring greater gun control that may be misguided but have some altruistic intentions. And there are plenty of craven politicians not looking for any grander government control but just want to make it look like they're doing something.
There seems to be an awful lot of commentators lately advising that the best way to refute the reactionary left is to use their own tactics against them. Perhaps sticking to logic, facts, and reason and leaving the Alinsky-Style methods to them might be a better course.
Posted by: DepotGuy || 01/12/2013 13:48 Comments || Top||

#4  "Perhaps sticking to logic, facts, and reason and leaving the Alinsky-Style methods to them might be a better course."

That hasn't worked so far, DG. :-(
Posted by: Barbara || 01/12/2013 13:54 Comments || Top||

#5  Double team'em. Those with a knack do Alinsky, those with mastery of facts and logic stick to the high road. And whenever possible apply Ben Shapiro's response to that dreadful Piers fellow on CNN, about the fact that President Reagan supported a semiautomatic weapons ban: "So?"
Posted by: trailing wife || 01/12/2013 15:39 Comments || Top||


Afghanistan
Misogyny Matters In Afghanistan
[Strategy Page]
About the Afghan Airforce.
Posted by: tipper || 01/12/2013 03:02 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336084 views] Top|| File under:

#1  We've come such a long, long way from the days when the harmless sucking of your Battle Buddies member resulted in dishonorable discharge.

Please file under "Mote in thine own Eye".
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/12/2013 12:46 Comments || Top||


Terror Networks
Give Me Hudnah Or Give Me Death
[Strategy Page]
A reminder that the basis of the hudna is taqiyyah.
Posted by: tipper || 01/12/2013 02:45 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336097 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Westerners tend to lose sight* of the fact that Islam is the most militaristic and controlling of all the major religions. Unlike the other faiths, Islam established itself in war and initially spread largely by military conquest.

Never forget that fact. The last major attempt of conquest against Christian Europe was turned back at the gates of Vienna in 1683.

* We don't lose sight. It's buried by the Left that won't talk in truth. They'll play the guilt card about slavery, but won't mention all the centuries before the New World was known by Europe, the Muslim Arabs were running slaving expeditions to Sub-Shara Africa to support the slave trade through Cairo to Damascus and Baghdad.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 01/12/2013 10:19 Comments || Top||

#2  all the centuries before the New World was known by Europe, the Muslim Arabs were running slaving expeditions to Sub-Shara Africa

That apparently is still going on, though on a much smaller scale. Nonetheless, the boys who ride the racing camels must come from somewhere.
Posted by: trailing wife || 01/12/2013 14:40 Comments || Top||


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
U.S., Russia talks on Syria end without breakthrough as rebels seize strategic air base
International mediator Lakhdar Brahimi and senior envoys from Russia and the United States called for a political solution to end the Syria conflict on Friday but reached no breakthrough.

Brahimi urged world powers to "create an opening" diplomatically to help stem the bloodshed and alleviate the Syrian people's suffering. He said that he would brief the UN Security Council later this month on his latest consultations.

"We stressed again that in our view there was no military solution to this conflict. We underscored the necessity to reach a political solution based on the Geneva communique of 30 June 2012," Brahimi said in a joint statement read out after his closed-door talks with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov.

Brahimi, in answer to a question on any concrete progress, told reporters: "If you are asking whether there is a solution around the corner, I'm not sure that is the case."

Russia and the United States back opposing sides in Syria's 21-month-old conflict between President Bashar Assad's government forces and rebels fighting to topple him.

Syria denounced Brahimi as "flagrantly biased" on Thursday, casting doubt on how long the UN-Arab League mediator can pursue his peace mission.
Posted by: tipper || 01/12/2013 02:28 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336075 views] Top|| File under:

#1  The US and Russia are not in a position to make peace. Peace is something the Syrian parties need to desire and make... just saying..
Posted by: Water Modem || 01/12/2013 17:06 Comments || Top||


Africa Horn
French commandos attack al-Shabab base, explosions, gunfire heard
MOGADISHU, Somalia -- French commandoes on Saturday attacked a base of Islamist militants in Somalia in a hostage rescue attempt, a Somali intelligence official said. Residents of the town said they heard explosions and gunfire.

The attack occurred in the town of Bulomarer, and come on the heels of French military intervention in Mali, another African country. With France having acted Friday to help Mali against al-Qaida-linked militants who hold more than half of that country and are encroaching further on government-held territory, the raid in Somalia could have been aimed at preventing al-Shabab fighters from harming the French hostage in reprisal.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 01/12/2013 01:54 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336151 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Any captured Islamist would be made to listen to Mireille Mathieu 16 hours a day?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 01/12/2013 6:46 Comments || Top||

#2  Media reports say 3 French KIA including the hostage. Beaucoup bad guys killed.
Posted by: Bangkok Billy || 01/12/2013 7:29 Comments || Top||

#3  Hopefully they coordinated the attack and did not shoot any Belgiums soldiers as they did in Shaba (Katanga) Province of Zaire in 1978.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/12/2013 8:40 Comments || Top||

#4  Why do I feel a sudden urge to buy a Pugeot?
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 8:53 Comments || Top||

#5  Doubt it was the handling or gas mileage. :-(
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/12/2013 9:05 Comments || Top||

#6  "Since 11 September, 2001, the pundits of the French have been telling them that the old United States is gone, replaced by a new unilateralist United States, willing to dispense with the United Nations and ignore NATO, trying to divide a Europe that it once did so much to unify, destroying the international order that it built after World War II. This is the lesson widely drawn in France from U.S. actions in Iraq and the wave of anti-French feeling sweeping the United States. The French conclude from this that the unity of Europe is more urgent than ever. The economic giant the European Union must build a corresponding political and military-strategic component and develop the will to use it. Only then can Europe become a “counterweight” to U.S. power and form a genuine partnership of equals. Europe must be an independent force in a multi-polar world, a leader in the construction of international institutions and a force for democracy, assuming the role that the United States has now apparently renounced. Churchill once said he would call upon the New World to save the Old; France is calling upon the Old World, or at least “old Europe,” to save the New. "
From http://www.watsoninstitute.org/bjwa/archive/10.2/Anti-Americanism/Wall.pdf

"War must be a last resort, and preemptive war is unacceptable" unless you are France.
Posted by: Mike Ramsey || 01/12/2013 9:25 Comments || Top||

#7  The French have always backed their former colonies (with one exception).
Posted by: Pappy || 01/12/2013 11:32 Comments || Top||

#8  You could almost get the impression the French really don't want jihadis controlling the south shore of the Mediterranean.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 01/12/2013 11:52 Comments || Top||

#9  Viva la France!
Posted by: Sierra Faith || 01/12/2013 12:49 Comments || Top||

#10  The French are quite well-versed in these operations. I heard on the radio that (possibly) one of the commandos was captured. If so, that would be a terrible tragedy. . .
Posted by: Mellow Jihadi || 01/12/2013 18:21 Comments || Top||


Home Front: WoT
Terrorism Suspect's Mindset Debated at Ore. Trial
Just another misunderstander of Islam that we all know is a Religion of Pieces.
There's no dispute that a 19-year-old Muslim college student tried to set off a car bomb at Portland's 2010 Christmas tree lighting ceremony, but how he reached that point is the crux of a trial that began in federal court this week.

A jury of seven men and nine women will decide whether this was a case of the U.S. government preventing the radicalization of a young Somali-American man, or was instead the FBI's coercion of an impressionable, hotheaded braggart into a plan he was otherwise incapable of carrying out.

Mohamed Mohamud's attorneys began to build their case during opening statements Friday, arguing that he was the victim of a sophisticated manipulation by undercover FBI agents.

"In America, we don't create crime," defense attorney Steve Sady said. "The FBI cannot create the very crime they intend to stop. And sometimes, it's just a matter of going too far."

Sady said Mohamud was an impressionable college student who talked big about carrying out terrorism plots but had neither the means nor the experience to follow through.
This article starring:
Mohamed Mohamud
Posted by: tipper || 01/12/2013 01:16 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336087 views] Top|| File under:


India-Pakistan
Lashkar-e-Islam asks tribe to offer recruits
A wave of panic ran through Zakha Khel tribemen in the Bara tehsil of Khyber Agency on Friday after Lashkar-e-Islam (LeI) fighters told them to find them new recruits and money or leave the area.

Talking to journalists from an undisclosed location, LeI spokesperson Abu Rasheed Lashkari said the Zakakhel tribesmen were opposed to the LeI and therefore it had issued a warning to them.

He said that the LeIÂ’s local commander Kandahar Afridi had distributed pamphlets and announced from local mosques in Shalobar, Naweya Qamar and Baz Garha areas of the Bara tehsil that every family of the Zakhakhel tribe should either offer one volunteer to LeI, pay Rs0.3 million or leave the area.
Posted by: tipper || 01/12/2013 00:50 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336076 views] Top|| File under:


Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Israel Stocks Up On JDAM (on uncle's tab)
[Strategy Page]
Posted by: Water Modem || 01/12/2013 00:46 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336105 views] Top|| File under:

#1  We promise to put it to good use --- no Nation Building!
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 01/12/2013 2:48 Comments || Top||

#2  Just be sure to use them before the expiration date.
Posted by: SteveS || 01/12/2013 13:21 Comments || Top||

#3  According to the article they are as much being staged there for American needs in the region as Israeli...
Posted by: trailing wife || 01/12/2013 13:35 Comments || Top||

#4  ION PRESS TV > IRAN WAR WILL DESTROY US SUPERPOWER STATUS.

Not likely as I expect Iran to continue to do nothing to antagonize the Bammer outside of Media-correct anti-US rants.

IMO the more realistic threat to US status will be vee Nuke-armed China in its dispute wid Japan over the China-claimed Senkakus.

POTUS OBAMA WILL HAVE ONLY THREE OPTIONS

> Militarily support its ally JAPAN in full agz China.
> Pressure Japan to give up the Senkakus in order to avoid a Limited or Full-scale, Tactical or Strategic Nuclear Military Conflict wid China.
> Do nothing + stay out of the Sino-Japan fracas,+ risk seeing the US lose its credibility wid Japan + ROK + PHIL, etc. ASEAN in East Asia.
THE US WILL BE KICKED OUT.

China's ultimate Mil focii or objective will be to secure de facto control of TAIWAN, as China has hinged the success or failure of its "post-US", future World #1 "Manifest Destiny" on formal reunification wid Taiwan under Beijing.

TAIWAN, NOT HAINAN = CHINA'S EQUIVALENT OF "PEARL HARBOR/HAWAIIAN ISLANDS" IN THE LATE 19TH-EARLY 20TH CENTURY FOR THE NEWLY
"INTERNATIONALIST/MAHANIST" US.

IMO any + all Chinese combat in NE Asia will directly or indirectly be centered on a successful recapture of Taiwan by the PLA.

China has impor advantages, from demanding that the US pay its US$13.0Triyuhn debt to China, to demanding territorial + access concessions from US-Japan-ROK [PHIL?]in order to avoid any Limited or Full-scale nuclear conflict, espec as per TAIWAN.

AGAIN, MANY US NETTERS SAY THEY DON'T TRUST THE BAMMER TO DEFEND AMER'S INTERESTS.

WILL THE BAMMER FIGHT, OR WILL HE BE LIKE POTUS WOODROW WILSON + UK PM NELVILLE CHAMBERLAIN + "KEEP THE US OUT OF WAR"???

Nuclear War, versus Concessions???
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 01/12/2013 21:56 Comments || Top||

#5  FYI CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > CHINA TO "PREPARE FOR THE WORST" AFTER MILITARY CONFRONTATION WID JAPAN, in the East China Sea.

The Artic says SENKAKUS/DIAOYUS - NO, WHAT CHINA WANTS MOST OF ALL IS TAIWAN! The Diaoyus + Okinawa are important to China as per covering or protecting its desired future PLA Milbases on Taiwan as per transit to, from WESTPAC vee the OKINAWA-TAIWAN-PHIL STRAITS.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 01/12/2013 22:10 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
Pakistan Air Force Crumbling Away
[Strategy Page] The Pakistan Air Force is losing nearly two percent of its 900 aircraft each year to accidents. This is more than ten times the rate of Western air forces. These losses are caused by aircraft that are too old and a budget that is too small to properly train pilots and maintain the aircraft. Most of Pakistan's 520 fighters are over 20 years old. This includes 157 French made Mirage IIIs and 5s, 178 of 186 MiG-21s (the Chinese F-7 version), and 31 of 77 U.S. made F-16s. There have been some new aircraft put into service. Since 2000, Pakistan has received 46 F-16s and 100 Chinese made JF-17s (similar to the F-16). These planes are pretty safe. Older aircraft tend to crash more often.

Pakistan does not have enough money to buy enough new aircraft to replace all those becoming inoperable because of age. You can refurbish old aircraft and keep them flying for half a century or more. But Pakistan hasn't got the money for that either. There's also not enough cash for the spare parts and fuel needed for the training flights needed to keep the 3,000 Pakistani Air Force pilots capable of handling high-performance aircraft safely. In short, the Pakistani Air Force is facing a disaster. Each year more and more of their aircraft become inoperable and their pilots, unable to fly enough to maintain their skill, become less capable.
Posted by: Water Modem || 01/12/2013 00:42 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336092 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Oh, BOO HOO, I'll bet Obama's expected to fork over the Latest in Aircraft, he's a "Good Muslim".

And after all, it's expected.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 01/12/2013 2:14 Comments || Top||

#2  If you were to look at the aircraft of the US, i think it is safe to say that we also have a goodly number over 20 years old and we don't lose 2% a year. and that includes working off a carrier; how many of those does Pakiwakiland have?
That damned ol' 'Allen wills it' maintenance mindset will getcha every time....
Posted by: USN,Ret. || 01/12/2013 3:18 Comments || Top||

#3  After leaving Afghanistan lets hope we support India and Afghanistan instead of Pakistan as they are clearly no friend of the West.

They are a country full of radicals from Hamid Gul/ISI downwards.
Posted by: Ebbeath Ulise1733 || 01/12/2013 12:18 Comments || Top||

#4  Perhaps cutting back on the 'whiskey budget' a bit?
Posted by: Pappy || 01/12/2013 12:21 Comments || Top||

#5  That damned ol' 'Allen wills it' maintenance mindset will getcha every time....

Wouldn't surprise me if money budgeted for spare parts was being skimmed off. Corruption is a big factor in the decrepit state of Third World militaries. Phantom soldiers and phantom parts - all paid for but existing only as budget line items and secret foreign bank accounts.
Posted by: Zhang Fei || 01/12/2013 17:33 Comments || Top||


Southeast Asia
Thailand to deport 700 Rohingyas
[Bangla Daily Star] Thai authorities said yesterday that about 700 people from Myanmar's beleaguered Rohingya minority who had entered Thailand illegally were found in two separate raids in the country's south and that they would be sent back to Myanmar.

Police and government officials found 307 Rohingya asylum seekers during a search Friday at a warehouse in Sadao district in Songkhla province, police Maj. Col. Thanusin Duangkaewngam said. On Thursday, nearly 400 Rohingya were found in a raid in the same district.

"The Rohingya said they had voluntarily entered Thailand to travel to a third country," Thanusin said of Friday's raid. "Police will have to expand the investigation to the group of people who brought these Rohingya people in, as it is illegal entry."

Sectarian violence in Myanmar involving the Rohingya has left hundreds dead and many more homeless in recent months.

Thanusin said the refugees found in Friday's raid, including 230 men, 31 women, 22 boys and 24 girls, would be repatriated to Myanmar, also known as Burma.

Human rights activists have called for the Thai government not to deport the Rohingya back to Myanmar, where they face widespread discrimination.

On Thursday, about 50 security officers from a joint military-police task force raided crowded makeshift shelters on a rubber plantation in Sadao district and rescued 397 Rohingya.

There were children and women in the group who appeared to be exhausted and were crammed under the metal-sheet roof, said army Col. Jaran Iamthanon, who led the raid. He said some of the Rohingya attempted to flee by running into the mountains.

Police nabbed
Youse'll never take me alive coppers!... [BANG!]... Ow!... I quit!
eight suspects in Thursday's raid who were believed to be traffickers and confiscated a pistol, a sword, 10 mobile phones and a laptop, police Col. Kriskorn Pleetanyawong said. The men -- six from Myanmar, including two Rohingya, and two Thais -- face charges of bringing in and sheltering undocumented Democrats, as well as illegal possession of a gun, he said.
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336074 views] Top|| File under:


Home Front: WoT
Trial for Somali-American in Christmas tree bomb plot begins
A Somali-American accused of trying to blow up a crowded Christmas-tree lighting ceremony in the US went on trial, more than two years after being nabbed in an FBI sting operation.

Arguing in court near the site of the tree lighting in Oregon, lawyers presented contrasting pictures of Mohamed Mohamud, either as a troubled youth tricked by undercover agents or a hardened Islamist terrorist.

Mohamud's defense lawyer claimed he would not have attempted to detonate the "bomb" -- a harmless fake supplied by FBI agents -- if agents posing as terrorists hadn't coerced the confused youngster into it.

The FBI "created a crime that never would have happened without them," attorney Stephen Sady told the jury which will decide Mohamud's fate, in the trial.

"He wasn't a perfect human being. But he wasn't someone who was sitting around thinking about blowing up his hometown," he added.

The government counters that Mohamud was not tricked and willingly chose to press the button on a cell phone that he thought would kill thousands gathered in downtown Pioneer Square.

Assistant US Attorney Pamala Holsinger told jurors, "He said he would push the button because it would make him happy to have bodies torn everywhere. By the time he met FBI agents he had already decided that violence against civilians, in or out of the US, was justified."

Mohamud watched the proceedings with his attorneys, taking notes on a legal pad. At one point he became emotional, and an attorney put a comforting hand on his shoulder. About ten family members sat on the other side of the packed courtroom, occasionally leaving and returning from the courtroom with what appeared to be a prayer rug.
Posted by: ryuge || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336089 views] Top|| File under:


-Lurid Crime Tales-
Explosion blows apart house in Texas
ooops ....
Authorities are trying to determine what led to the blast early Friday afternoon in Lewisville, about 20 miles northwest of Dallas. There were no immediate reports of casualties. It was not clear who owned the home.
video at the link
Posted by: lotp || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336079 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Either "Sudden Jihad Syndrome", OR a meth lab went KABOOMIE, Euther way, no big loss(Except for whoever owned the house, then there's Insurance.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 01/12/2013 1:46 Comments || Top||

#2  "It was not clear who owned the home."
The county doesn't keep property records? I need to move there.
From the video: Slow speed blast, in the front of the house. At a guess a gas leak (these are not new homes in the picture).
Most meth labs wouldn't set up next to a playground
Posted by: ed in texas || 01/12/2013 10:41 Comments || Top||

#3  Probably a leaky (or deliberately opened) gas line inside the house. Gas lines will spontaneously break due to soil expansion & contraction, which varies greatly from region to region and with seasonal temp changes. Gas lines in my neighborhood were recently changed to all-polymer lines from the main metallic lines to lessen the possibility of this, a very costly measure.
It seems so odd that abandoned houses do not simply have the gas supply shut off at the street level to make these 'accidents' more difficult to carry out.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 01/12/2013 11:59 Comments || Top||

#4  I bet they beans in their chili! That's a no-no here Texas.
Posted by: Secret Asian Man || 01/12/2013 14:49 Comments || Top||

#5  Okay, home is owned by a non-profit called Christian Community Action, as is most of the homes in the neighborhood. They provide affordable housing for the disadvantaged.

Officials say that the natural gas line was damaged by a 3rd party crew working on a utility pole. They still don't know why the house blew up from the inside.

It does irk me that the media refers to Lewisville as a Dallas suburb, when it isn't even near Dallas or in Dallas county. It is in Denton County. Also it is curious that they don't give the address.

And it should be ...put beans...
Posted by: Secret Asian Man || 01/12/2013 15:01 Comments || Top||

#6  They still don't know why the house blew up from the inside. Gas could well have moved along the path of the pipeline around the outside of the pipe and into the house's interior, then built up in the confined space. Without a gas/air mixture accumulating in a confined space, explosive power is greatly diminished.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 01/12/2013 16:20 Comments || Top||


Iraq
Thousands of Iraq Sunnis in Angry anti-Maliki Demos
[An Nahar] Thousands of Sunni Moslems erupted into the streets of Storied Baghdad
...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate...
and other parts of Iraq on Friday to decry the alleged targeting of their minority, in rallies hardening opposition to the country's Shiite leader.

The protests have worsened a political crisis, pitting Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki against his erstwhile government partners, with the premier facing accusations of authoritarianism and sectarianism ahead of key provincial polls.

Counter-demonstrations were held in predominantly Shiite areas of southern Iraq calling for authorities to resist demands to reform anti-terror laws or consider a wide-ranging prisoner release, both key demands in majority-Sunni areas.

Anti-government protests were held in Storied Baghdad's mostly-Sunni districts of Adhamiyah and Ghazaliyah, as well as the cities of Ramadi, Samarra, djinn-infested Mosul and Tikrit, AFP journalists said.

Several smaller towns north of Storied Baghdad also held rallies.

In Ghazaliyah, hundreds of protesters rallied after Friday prayers at the Umm al-Qura mosque, holding up banners calling for the repeal of anti-terror laws, the release of women prisoners, and improved human rights
...not to be confused with individual rights, mind you...
in jails.

"These sounds do not represent only one community," Ahmed Abdulghafur al-Samarraie, head of the foundation that manages Sunni mosques across Iraq, said in a speech at the rally, referring to the shouts of protesters.

"No, these are the sounds of Iraqis from all over Iraq, all shouting 'No to suffering, no to the absence of services, no to injustice, no to foreign agendas, no to conflict, no to the return of the Baath, Qaeda or militias, no to torturing until death.'"

Hundreds of protesters also gathered at Adhamiyah's Abu Hanifa mosque, despite a heavy security presence and soldiers barring would-be demonstrators from outside the district from taking part, an AFP journalist said.

"We do not have any demands in our protests -- we are just here for our rights," said a 62-year-old man who gave his name as Abu Fares. "The government should provide a good quality of life for people."
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336084 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Iraq


Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Jordan's PM: We can't receive Paleo refugees from Syria
Translated interview with Jordanian Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour originally published in Al-Hayat.
Posted by: ryuge || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336097 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Well, there was that little tiny thing... Black September
Posted by: Water Modem || 01/12/2013 0:14 Comments || Top||

#2  to quote wikipedia:
The term Black September (Arabic: أيلول الأسود‎ aylūl al-aswad) refers to the Jordanian Civil War that began in September 1970 and ended in July of 1971. The conflict was fought between the two major components of the Jordanian population, the Palestinians represented by the Palestine Liberation Organisation under the leadership of Yasser Arafat and the Trans-Jordanians represented by the Jordanian Armed Forces under the leadership of King Hussein.[5] At its core the civil war sought to determine if Jordan would be ruled by the Palestine Liberation Organisation or the Hashemite Monarchy.[6] The war resulted in the deaths of thousands of people, the vast majority Palestinian.[3] Armed conflict lasted until July 1971 with the expulsion of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and thousands of Palestinian fighters to Lebanon.

Posted by: Water Modem || 01/12/2013 0:16 Comments || Top||

#3  Can you send your paleos to syria?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 01/12/2013 2:51 Comments || Top||

#4  Why is it that no one wants the Paleostinians?
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia || 01/12/2013 18:22 Comments || Top||

#5  never had belligerent unemployable unemployed entitled-feeling relatives stay for a couple days, last a couple years, and trash the place?

I guess not
Posted by: Frank G || 01/12/2013 19:02 Comments || Top||

#6  You forgot your /sarc tag, Rambler. ;-p
Posted by: Barbara || 01/12/2013 20:22 Comments || Top||

#7  They can - they [politely] just don't want to.

Methinks the ruling Hashemites know any "Paleo Spring" will covertly actually target them, NOT the Israelis despite any PA = Fatah-Hamas rants to the contrary.

So do the Israelis.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 01/12/2013 21:03 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Culture Wars
More layoffs loom for NY Times
Sux to be the NY Times

But, hey, at least their girlfriend Barak is safe in the White House

And then there's the free contraceptives, so it's all good...

In the news business, no one is safe - not even senior editors at The New York Times.

The media business was shaken on Friday when it was reported, first in New York Magazine and confirmed by POLITICO, that managing editor John Geddes, assistant managing editors Jim Roberts and Susan Edgerly, former Washington editor Rick Berke, and former Times Magazine editor Jerry Mazorati could all be casualties of the Times' effort to cut costs.
Posted by: badanov || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336076 views] Top|| File under:

#1  They're also closing their Environmental Dept.
James Delingpole is dancing on their grave with glee.
Posted by: tipper || 01/12/2013 0:27 Comments || Top||

#2  Close the whole shebang, and be done with it.

No need for the rag.

Too damn expensive and wordy. (But says nothing)
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 01/12/2013 2:05 Comments || Top||

#3  ...then who'd republish the talking points and press releases from the White House? Oh, wait, the remaining 90% of the MSM. Never mind.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 01/12/2013 8:40 Comments || Top||

#4  Pinch is just flying that puppy straight into the ground. I'm waiting for their 'guy' in the WH to decide that they need a govt bailout.
Posted by: ed in texas || 01/12/2013 10:30 Comments || Top||


Africa Subsaharan
Central Africa Rivals Agree to Unity Government
[An Nahar] The government and rebels in the Central African Republic have agreed to form a government of national unity under President Francois Bozize and to hold elections in one year.

The plan, reached in the Gabonese capital Libreville, also calls for
"...you to do as I say, and in return I don't kill you..."
a ceasefire and for the appointment of a prime minister drawn from the opposition.

Under the plan, legislative elections will be held in 12 months.
After which democracy will flourish in the good ol' CAR...
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336069 views] Top|| File under:


Afghanistan
Obama, Karzai accelerate end of U.S. combat role in Afghanistan
[REUTERS] President Barack Obama
They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them...
and Afghanistan's Caped President Hamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai
... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtun face on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use...
agreed on Friday to speed up the handover of combat operations in Afghanistan to Afghan forces, raising the prospect of an accelerated U.S. withdrawal from the country and underscoring Obama's determination to wind down a long, unpopular war.

Signaling a narrowing of differences, Karzai appeared to give ground in talks at the White House on U.S. demands for immunity from prosecution for any U.S. troops who stay in Afghanistan beyond 2014, a concession that could allow Obama to keep at least a small residual force there.

Both leaders also threw their support behind tentative Afghan reconciliation efforts with Taliban Death Eaters, endorsing the establishment of a Taliban political office in Qatar in hopes of bringing gun-hung tough guys to inter-Afghan talks.

Outwardly, at least, the meeting appeared to be something of a success for both men, who need to show their vastly different publics they are making progress in their goals for Afghanistan. There were no signs of the friction that has frequently marked Obama's relations with Karzai.
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336073 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda


Bangladesh
WorldÂ’s second largest Muslim gathering begins in B'desh
Posted by: ryuge || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336074 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Oh goodie, Much shootings and bombings Probably.
Lots of ALLAH ACKBAR.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 01/12/2013 1:52 Comments || Top||

#2  The same Moslems who gave the world three million dead in just 8 months during the BanglaDesh War when the Moslems raped 250,000 women and machine gunned crowds of fleeing civilians from trucks?

Those Moslems?

And we don't need to mention what happened in Jessore on the 6th of December.

But you can take some satisfaction that 93,000 Moslem Pak prisoners cooked in the heat in the Rann of Kutch for six years. They fought for about half a day and then ran for the next two weeks until they surrendered unconditionally like Moslems usually do. Moslems don't make very good soldiers when they actually have to fight other soldiers instead of civilians and women and children.
In fact Moslems are usually piss stain soldiers if you want to be frank about it.
Posted by: Threater Flusoper9823 || 01/12/2013 7:02 Comments || Top||

#3  In fact Moslems are usually piss stain soldiers if you want to be frank about it.
TF, but they make good splodydopes, you've got to give them dat.Mother Nature in action culling the herd.
Posted by: tipper || 01/12/2013 10:26 Comments || Top||


Europe
Spain Seizes Materials Bound For Iran's Nuclear Program
But we still don't know that they are working toward warlike nuclear weapons.
[Jpost] Truck carrying highly corrosion-resistant valves, banned for sale to Iran by EU, seized by Spanish police; company used false companies in UAE for deliveries, channeling cash through banks in other countries.

Spanish police placed in durance vile
Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'!
two men and seized the contents of a truck bound for Iran loaded with materials destined for use in the Islamic state's nuclear program, the Spanish Interior Ministry said on Friday.

The truck, intercepted on a motorway in northern Spain early on Wednesday, was carrying highly corrosion-resistant valves, the ministry said in a statement.

Police were examining computer databases and documents at the company, Fluval Spain, a ministry front man said. The two arrested men were employees at the firm, he said.

"The company, registered in the Basque Country, used false companies in the United Arab Emirates for the deliveries, channeling cash through banks in other countries," the ministry statement said.

The company had commercial links with Iranian firms that featured on lists drawn up by the European Union
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
as having connections with Tehran's nuclear program, the ministry said.

No-one at the company could be reached for comment.

The European Union has banned the sale of such material to Iran, which denies Western accusations it is seeking to develop a capability to make nuclear weapons. Tehran says its atomic program is for civilian energy purposes.

World powers are searching for a diplomatic solution to a decade-old standoff over the nuclear program to avert the threat of a Middle East war.

News of the seizure of materials bound for Iran's nuclear program came as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told a group of visiting US senators on Friday that stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons would be his top priority in his next term if he is reelected.
Posted by: trailing wife || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336084 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Iran

#1  But we still don't know that they are working toward warlike nuclear weapons.

There's NON warlike Nuke?
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 01/12/2013 2:20 Comments || Top||

#2  Bailing out a sinking ship with a teacup.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 01/12/2013 2:48 Comments || Top||


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
New threat of Iranian-backed kidnappings of diplomats
The Carter presidency increasingly is looking like a best-case scenario...
The United States government is concerned about new threats of Iranian-backed terrorism against diplomats and high-profile religious leaders in the Middle East from operations by Tehran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

"Iran continues to be a malign influence in the region and play a destabilizing role, especially in support of the Assad regime and Hezbollah," said a State Department official involved in Iranian affairs.

"The department takes threats to its personnel seriously and takes necessary precautions to ensure their safety," the official said, without elaborating.
Just like in Benghazi, huh pal? This official should be sent to a post in an Arab state for the next year...
The official made the comments when asked about new fears disclosed to the Free Beacon by a security source in the Middle East on Wednesday that the IRGC is planning a new round of terrorist kidnappings of foreign diplomats and others.

According to the security source, IRGC operatives in West Beirut and Lebanon's Bekaa Valley are preparing to conduct kidnapping attacks of foreign diplomats in the region, especially those from the United States and its allies. Other potential kidnap targets include Sunni and Christian leaders, the source said.

The goal of the kidnappings would be to influence events in Lebanon and neighboring Syria.
They'd certainly get Champ to bow...
The source said the IRGC plans to conduct the kidnappings using the name of an obscure Islamist group. However, the real perpetrators are expected to be the IRGC and its regional proxy, Hezbollah.
Boy howdy, there's a strategy we've never seen before...
The kidnappings would signal a return to the tactic used by Iranian-backed terrorists in Lebanon from 1982 to 1992 when a total of 96 foreign hostages were taken from 21 different countries. Most of the victims were American and Western European nationals. At least eight of the hostages died in captivity, including several who were murdered.

Among those killed during the hostage attacks were CIA Beirut station chief William Francis Buckley and Marine Col. William Higgins.
Mr. Buckley wasn't 'killed': he was cruelly tortured over a long period of time and then brutally murdered. Col. Higgins was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by Hezbollah. We never did do justice for either man, and we very likely never will. That diminishes us as a nation, but quite a few Americans don't seem to care.
The IRGC is the covert action force engaged in both terrorist operations and intelligence activities in support of Iran's Islamist regime. A subsection, the Quds force, has been linked to terrorist and other attacks in the region.
It's a darned shame we don't have a CIA chief with the stones to put a hunting license out on those guys, especially when they're outside Iran.
"The uncompromising support of [Iran's] supreme leader for the IRGC has turned this organization into the most powerful entity in the Iranian government in several sectors, including the military and economy, as well as in the political arena (for instance, in the current administration, more than half of the ministers are IRGC officers)," states a recent Pentagon report published with the Library of Congress.

The security source said the new round of kidnappings would signal a return to "the bad old days."

The Iranians are continuing to back the embattled regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, which is facing opposition from a group called the Free Syrian Army that is known by U.S. intelligence agencies to be infiltrated with al Qaeda and other jihadists.

"The Iranians are determined to reinforce the [ruling Syrian] Alawites with both weapons and men along the coastal strip of Syria," the source said. "They are also investing heavily in Hezbollah in west Beirut."
That might be all they want: let the east and central part of Syria go to the Sunnis, and make sure they stay weak. They'll have a radicalized Iraq to their east and the Alawites/Hezbollah/Iran to the west, the mistrustful Turks up north, and a mistrustful Jordan to the south. They'd be 'independent' but neutered for a while. If al-Qaeda set up a state within the new state, so the much better for Iran so long as the crazies attacked the infidel West.
There are new fears that the civil war in Syria will destabilize Lebanon, which is at risk of splitting into warring fiefdoms, as is happening to Syria.

"Lebanon could well descend into armed stalemate," the source said.
Or it could end up a Shi'a state with a bloodbath for the infidel Druze and Maronites...
According to U.S. officials, Islamist groups and their attacks in Syria grew sharply over the last several months of 2012. Some 110 attacks were carried out in September, 233 in October, and 247 in November, an official said.

IRGC spokesman Gen. Ramezan Sharif told Iranian state media that IRGC Quds forces are operating in Lebanon and Syria with the goal of supporting both countries. But he denied the forces represent an Iranian military presence.

"At present, the IRGC has military attachés in around 15 world countries, including Syria and Lebanon, while the Islamic Republic Army has sent military attachés to a number of other countries," Sharif said.

The new terror threat comes as the United States supplied 200 armored personnel carriers to Lebanon on Thursday in Beirut, the AnsaMed news service reported.
Still not sure why we did that -- it isn't like the mighty Leb army will hold back the tide...
...Especially not that bit which was seconded from Hizb'allah's military arm.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday that the U.S. military also has a "planning element" in Lebanon as part of efforts to bolster the country's security against violence spilling over from Syria.
Posted by: Steve White || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336092 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Mr. Buckley wasn't 'killed': he was cruelly tortured over a long period of time and then brutally murdered. Col. Higgins was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by Hezbollah. We never did do justice for either man, and we very likely never will.

Those deaths were 'acceptable losses' under the Cold War rubric, a standard that seems to have made a strong comeback lately and likely to be more enthusiastically applied by such notables as future Secretary of State.
Posted by: Pappy || 01/12/2013 12:39 Comments || Top||

#2  COL Rich Higgins
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/12/2013 13:23 Comments || Top||

#3  a task force to kill Iranian/Hezbollah agents is in order, but not likely under this regime, especially with that craven bootlicker Hagel as SOD
Posted by: Frank G || 01/12/2013 16:33 Comments || Top||

#4  I strongly agree with Steve White's comments on the Buckley and Higgins torture-murders. However, as usual on here, the partisan bias leads to some selective use of history. It's just not accurate to portray Obama being as bad (best case scenario) or worse (weaker) as Carter. Drone attacks in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen are quite different from Carter's style of appeasement (usually involving large sacks of cash courtesy of the American taxpayer). The current policy of choking Iran with trade and financial sanctions is doing a pretty good job of weakening that country. (I'm sure that will get argued here, but the facts on their rising inflation, debased currency, reduced oil prices to the few countries still buying, and lack of extra places to store oil are incontrovertible). It should also be noted that Ronald Reagan had as weak a response as Carter to the murder of Americans in Lebanon, but he is not mentioned in comments previous to mine.
Posted by: Odysseus || 01/12/2013 17:56 Comments || Top||

#5  #4 - agreed about the weakass response to Leb killings, including the bombings. They're lucky I wasn't in charge. Reagan should've pounded the shit out of them then let Marines in to kill the rest
Posted by: Frank G || 01/12/2013 18:47 Comments || Top||


Africa North
France Launches Airstrikes in Mali to Support Government
[VOA News] La Belle France has carried out Arclight airstrikes in Mali to support government forces trying to stem advances by Islamist bully boys.

La Belle France's foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, confirmed the air raids Friday, but declined to give more details about the military operation.

La Belle France announced earlier Friday that it had deployed troops to Mali at the request of the government. Troops from Nigeria and Senegal
... a nation of about 14 million on the west coast of Africa bordering Mauretania to the north, Mali to the east, and a pair of Guineas to the south, one of them Bissau. It is 90 percent Mohammedan and has more than 80 political parties. Its primary purpose seems to be absorbing refugees...
also are in Mali to help government forces.

Malian military officials say the attacks have stopped the offensive by beturbanned fascisti. The rebels, who control all of the north of the country, had pushed south this week, taking the town of Konna. A Malian army officer, Colonel Oumar Dao, told news hounds that the troops from Nigeria, Senegal and La Belle France are in the central town of Sevare, not far from the town of Konna.
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336090 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in North Africa

#1  Unlikely the aircraft are based in metro France.
So they're based in the neighborhood. That means the French either had a logistics arrangement and pre-positioned supplies someplace around there, or they could put one together most PDQ and with the full cooperation of the government in question, whichever one that was.
So, either the French have a butt-kicking, speed-of-light planning staff and the loggy stuff ready to go, or it was all done in good time with something like this anticipated.
I would really, really like to know why, if it's the latter case, they figured they needed to be ready like this.
If it's the first case, I need to start drinking again.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey || 01/12/2013 7:48 Comments || Top||

#2  Just a guess mind you, but my money is on Chad being their Point of Origin. The French are very feisty about the goings on in that neighborhood.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/12/2013 8:28 Comments || Top||

#3  There are small units of French troops in most of their former colonies.
Posted by: Pappy || 01/12/2013 11:33 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
Lal Masjid clerics indicted
[Dawn] A senior civil judge on Thursday indicted Maulana Abdul Aziz, his spouse and two other clerics of Lal Masjid in the kidnapping case of police officials. Sheikh Mohammad Sohail, the senior civil judge (west), also directed the prosecution to produce more witnesses in the case and adjourned the matter till Friday.
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336079 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Pakistan

#1  They'll never get enough evidence to convict them.

The photos will be proven to be doctored, the videos shot in a studio. All the witnesses will change all their testimony at least four times.
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 9:15 Comments || Top||


Afghanistan
Afghan Taliban welcome US 'zero option' on troops
Don'tcha just bet they do!
[Bangla Daily Star] The Taliban have welcomed news from Washington that the US might withdraw all its troops from Afghanistan next year, saying the American public was pressing for an end to "this aimless war".

The comment came ahead of a crucial meeting between President Barack Obama
This is a teachable moment...
and Afghanistan's Caped President Hamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai
... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtun face on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use...
at the White House yesterday that is expected to focus on how many American soldiers will remain in Afghanistan.
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336077 views] Top|| File under: Taliban


Africa North
France joins fight against Mali Islamists
[France24] French troops are backing the Malian army's counter-offensive against beturbanned fascisti who control the country's north, President François Hollande confirmed on Friday.

"French army forces supported Malian units this afternoon to fight against terrorist elements,'' Hollande said from the Elysée presidential palace, adding that the French operation would last "as long as necessary" and was aimed at protecting the citizens of Mali as well as the 6,000 Frenchies thought to be in the country.

The Malian army had earlier announced the counter-offensive, which it said would begin in Sévaré and advance to the key central town of Konna. "Our offensive has started," a Malian official said, on condition of anonymity. "The objective is to retake total control of the town of Konna and to proceed from there," he said, adding that "military planes from friendly countries" were being used in the attack. Troops from Nigeria and Senegal
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336093 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in North Africa

#1  Gotta figure Foreign Legion bad boys are tip of the spear again.
Posted by: Shipman || 01/12/2013 4:01 Comments || Top||


Seven Hurt in Sinai Attack on Egypt Police Patrol
[An Nahar] An Egyptian police officer and six recruits were maimed on Friday when gunnies attacked their patrol in the Sinai Peninsula, security officials said.

The patrol had been tasked with protecting the cross-Sinai pipeline that supplies Egyptian gas to Israel and Jordan and which has been the target of 15 separate attacks since 2011.

Unidentified gunnies opened fire on the patrol in the Ouja region, hitting the seven men, all of whom were taken to hospital in El-Arish.

Sinai, a sparsely populated peninsula home to both lucrative tourist resorts in the south and shadowy Islamist forces of Evil in the north, is also a major transit point for arms smuggling to the Islamist-ruled Gazoo Strip.

Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336090 views] Top|| File under: Salafists


Arabia
Saudi Arabia allows women in parliament
[Bangla Daily Star] King of the Arabians, Sheikh of the Burning Sands Abdullah
... Fifth out of 37 sons of King Abdulaziz to ascend to the throne. He is, after his half-brothers Bandar and Musa'id, the third eldest of the living sons of Abdul Aziz ibn Saud. Abdullah's mother is from the Rashid clan, longtime rivals of the Saud. He has 6 sons and 15 daughters and about $20 billion. His youngest son is just seven years old...
appointed 30 women to the previously all-male consultative Shura Council in decrees published yesterday, marking a historic first as he pushes reforms in the ultra-conservative kingdom.

The decrees, published by the official SPA news agency, give women a 20 percent quota in the Shura Council, a body appointed by the king to advise him on policy and legislation.

One decree amended an article in the council's statute to give women representation on the body while the other named the 150 members, among them 30 women.

King Abdullah took the decisions following consultations with religious leaders in the kingdom, where women are subjected to many restrictions and are not allowed to mix with men, according to the decrees published by the SPA.

They stipulate that men and women will be segregated inside the council, with a special area designated for females who will enter through a separate door so as not to mix with their male colleagues.
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336079 views] Top|| File under:


Southeast Asia
Two soldiers, two police killed in southern Thailand
Two soldiers providing protection for teachers and two police officers were killed in separate attacks in Pattani province on Friday.

Soldiers were patroling a rural road in Yarang district when a buried homemade bomb blew up under their vehicle. Both soldiers were killed and forensic police were inspecting the scene.

Meanwhile, two highway police were gunned down by suspected terrorists insurgents at 9 p.m. yesterday in Pattani's Sai Buri district. A source said the officers were killed while patroling on a local road.

Yesterday Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm Yubamrung said the government's peace process for the deep South was on the right track.

After his return from a three-day visit to Malaysia, he told reporters that details of his meeting with Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak were confidential.It has been reported Mr Najib promised to help Bangkok solve the insurgency in Thailand's deep South.

Mr Chalerm said, "Talks must be held. If [the insurgents] don't listen to us, we have to find and ask for help from people to whom they will listen."

He refused to say how Malaysia viewed the insurgency in the southernmost provinces. He said, "It is confidential, but we talked a lot and it's so far so good."

The deputy prime minister said the military has not been left out of the loop. Army commander Gen Prayuth Chan-ocha was aware of every step of his visit to Malaysia, he said.

Mr Chalerm said he is seeking a meeting with former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who is in charge of Thai-Malaysian border economic development. Details about that meeting have not yet been confirmed.

Mr Chalerm said there is concern about Thais working in a restaurant chain in Malaysia which has been linked with financing for the southern terrorists separatists. Out of more than 150,000 Thais employed in Malaysia by the Tom Yum Kung restaurant chain, only 6,900 are legally registered. The remainder are mostly employed as waiters and waitresses, he said.

Mr Chalerm said if the Thai workers at the restaurants are registered, they will get better pay, making them less vulnerable to overtures by terrorists separatists. He said, "[With better livelihoods], they will be able to say no if they are urged to do bad things."

The operators of the restaurant chain have denied supporting the rebels.

After his planned talks with Mr Mahathir, Mr Chalerm's plans to visit Indonesia. A source said he intends to ask Indonesia to act as a mediator in the insurgency.
Posted by: ryuge || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336090 views] Top|| File under: Thai Insurgency


Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Israeli Fire Kills Palestinian in Gaza
[An Nahar] Israeli army gunfire killed one Paleostinian and maimed another in the northern Gazoo Strip on Friday, a front man for the territory's emergency services said.

The two men, one of them a 20-year-old farmer, were hit by live fire east of Jabaliya and near the Israeli border, Ashraf al-Qudra said.

The Israeli army declined to make any immediate comment on the incident.

Friday's fatality would be the second Paleostinian killed by Israeli forces since a November 21 truce between the Jewish state and the Islamist group Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, ended eight days of hostilities between the two sides.

Over the course of the battle between Israel and Gazoo Death Eaters, 177 Paleostinians -- more than half of them civilians -- were killed by Israeli air strikes.

Six Israelis -- four of them civilians and two soldiers -- were killed by rocket and mortar fire from Gazoo.
Ynet adds:
An IDF official said dozens of Palestinians had gathered illegally near the border fence, in an off-limits area. Soldiers dispatched to the place called on the protestors to turn back, but were ignored. They fired warning shots at the legs of a Palestinian attempting to cut the fence.

Military sources confirmed that the soldiers had hit the Palestinian's legs.

Palestinians reported that the man killed in the incident was a resident of Gaza's Sajaiyeh neighborhood. They said another Palestinian who was with him was shot in his leg.

Medical sources said the dead man was shot in the chest, and that the two were evacuated to a local hospital in the northern Gaza Strip after the incident.

A similar incident last week ended without any casualties. An IDF force opened fired at a group of Palestinians approaching the border fence in the central Gaza Strip in a bid to deter them. The army said the group was trying to sabotage the fence.
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336100 views] Top|| File under: Hamas

#1  One of them a 20-year-old farmer,

Innocently growing Missiles, nnd throwing them.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 01/12/2013 2:23 Comments || Top||

#2  They fired warning shots at the legs of a Palestinian attempting to cut the fence.

Cutting boarder fences could void your life insurance policy. Looks like a job for the pain ray.
Posted by: Mike Ramsey || 01/12/2013 10:54 Comments || Top||

#3  Waste of Perfectly good fuel, use Ammo, or us the fuel Directly. (Burn-em, or Tracers)
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 01/12/2013 18:40 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
Pak holy man with a funny hat testing his political voice with massive march
[LATIMES] The "Arab Spring" seems a long way from Pakistain's winter of discontent.

Still, when religious scholar Tahirul Qadri talks about his hopes for the massive rally he is planning in Islamabad on Monday, one that he hopes will lure more than a million people into the streets of the quiet capital, the image he uses is that of Cairo's Tahrir Square.

Government leaders have tried to warn the gray-bearded mullah, respected by many for his denunciations of the Taliban and his espousal of tolerance, that a gathering on the scale he is planning would give Islamic fascisti the opportunity to carry out a major terrorist act. Paks haven't forgotten that it was at a large rally in Islamabad's twin city, Rawalpindi, that former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto
... 11th Prime Minister of Pakistain in two non-consecutive terms from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996. She was the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founder of the Pakistain People's Party, who was murdered at the instigation of General Ayub Khan. She was murdered in her turn by person or persons unknown while campaigning in late 2007. Suspects include, to note just a few, Baitullah Mehsud, General Pervez Musharraf, the ISI, al-Qaeda in Pakistain, and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who shows remarkably little curiosity about who done her in...
was assassinated by a jacket wallah in 2007.

But Qadri has refused to back down.

Already, police have begun bracing the city for the event. Freight containers and barbed wire are being positioned to block avenues leading to the capital's "red zone," which embraces the parliament, President Asif Ali Ten Percent Zardari
... husband of the late Benazir Bhutto, who has been singularly lacking in curiosity about who done her in ...
's residence, the Supreme Court and other major government buildings. Anyone trying to enter the capital will have to show identification. As many as 10,000 police and security personnel will be deployed to maintain order.

In what is being billed as the "Long March," Qadri and the rally participants plan to leave the eastern city of Lahore on Sunday and are expected in Islamabad on Monday.

The last thing that Pakistain's government wants is a South Asian version of the events that played out in Cairo's Tahrir Square, epicenter of Egypt's 2011 revolution that ousted President Hosni Mubarak
...The former President-for-Life of Egypt, dumped by popular demand in early 2011...
. Pakistain may be saddled with a host of ills, including suicide kabooms, crippling power outages and a tattered economy, but it differs from Mubarak's Egypt in that it is a democracy with vibrant, free media and a competitive political landscape.

And, in fact, although he mentions Egypt as an inspiration, Qadri's stated goal is far more modest: He is demanding electoral reforms he says will weed out corruption and sweep away the politicians who have allowed terrorism and rampant poverty to flourish.
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336088 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan

#1  What happens if Nobody shows up?
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 01/12/2013 2:15 Comments || Top||

#2  Probably everybody will show up. He said he's got all the answers and he's a holy man so you know he's not lying.
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 9:17 Comments || Top||

#3  you know he's not lying.
HaHaHaHaHa.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 01/12/2013 18:26 Comments || Top||


Britain
George Osborne to the EU: Change or Britain will leave
George Osborne has issued an ultimatum to the European Union, saying it "must change" in order to avoid a British exit.
So much for recent American warnings to cleave rather than split. Heaven only knows what would've happened had America not been run by The Smartest Man in the Room.
David Cameron is preparing to give a major speech about Britain's future in Europe, which could pave the way for a referendum on EU membership. Some Conservatives say Britain should leave the EU if other members do not agree to much looser membership.

The Chancellor insisted that he wants Britain to remain "an active part of a reformed EU".

A Treasury aide insisted that Mr Osborne's comments were fully consistent with the Government's position that the EU needs to change "and indeed is changing".

Douglas Alexander, Labour's Shadow Foreign Secretary, said Mr Osborne's comments were designed to appease Conservative backbenchers.
Sorta like how Mr. Boehner treats the Tea Party Pubs...
Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, has used a speech to describe the ongoing questions about Britain's membership of the EU as a "massive disruption".

He said it was "deeply unhelpful" and welcomed the intervention by Philip Gordon, the US assistant secretary responsible for European affairs, who expressed concern about the consequences of Britain leaving the EU.

Nick Clegg this week said the Prime Minister is risking the "livelihood and safety" of millions of British people by raising questions about Britain's EU membership.

The Deputy Prime Minister said that "playing politics" with EU membership could jeopardise British jobs and hamper international police operations.
We're not a member of the EU, yet our two respective police forces manage to cooperate...
Mr Cameron's approach is being resisted by Angela Merkel of Germany. Mrs Merkel has told the Prime Minister she has no intention of opening an EU treaty negotiation in order to provide a new settlement that can be put to a referendum in Britain, The Daily Telegraph understands.
Posted by: lotp || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336072 views] Top|| File under:


India-Pakistan
Attack on Nato terminal leaves two dead in Quetta
[Dawn] A day after a series of kabooms claimed around hundred lives in Quetta, unidentified myrmidons attacked a NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis....
terminal in the restive Balochistan
...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it...
capital leaving two people dead on Friday, DawnNews reported.

Initial reports suggest that around five containers, carrying goods for international troops operating in Afghanistan, were also destroyed in the attack when rockets were fired in Hazar Ganji area.

"A group of at least 12 faceless myrmidons attacked the terminal and fired rockets, which triggered a massive fire and gutted five out of 10 containers parked there," senior local police official Hamid Shakeel told AFP.

Meanwhile,
...back at the bunker, his Excellency called the chief of staff and complained that the artillery was keeping him awake...
another loud kaboom spread fear among the citizens when a roadside kaboom went kaboom! near the city's Sariab Road area.

According to police, the bomb was planted near the old office of the Quetta Development Authority (QDA). There were, however, no casualties due to the kaboom.

Police said that due to a shutter-down strike being observed in Quetta due to yesterday's violence, the blast did not result in any major casualties.
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336092 views] Top|| File under: Taliban


Pakistanis Protest the Killing of 86 Shiites
[NY Times] Protesters and distraught family members of 86 Shiites from the Hazara ethnic group killed in two kabooms on Thursday in the southwestern city of Quetta braved biting cold to stage a sit-in on Friday, refusing to bury their dead till the Pak Army took control of the city to provide them with security.

"I ask the army chief: What have you done with these extra three years you got in office?" a bitter Maulana Amin Shaheedi, a senior Shiite leader, was quoted as saying by local news media. "What did you give us except more death?"

In a telephone interview on Friday night, hours after the protest started, another leader, Nadir Ali, said, "Right now, it is raining in Quetta and the temperature is minus two centigrade." As of midnight, the group was still in place.

There was no immediate response from the country's powerful army or its chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani
... four star general, current Chief of Army Staff of the Mighty Pak Army. Kayani is the former Director General of ISI...

Quetta, the capital of Balochistan
...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it...
Province, has been ravaged by a vicious cycle of sectarian violence in recent years. Thursday's toll was one of the highest in 14 years of violence that have left hundreds of Hazaras dead. The dual suicide kaboom on Thursday, like most of the attacks on Hazara Shiites, was claimed by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi
... a 'more violent' offshoot of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain. LeJ's purpose in life is to murder anyone who's not of utmost religious purity, starting with Shiites but including Brelvis, Ahmadis, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Rosicrucians, and just about anyone else you can think of. They are currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of al-Qaeda ...
, a Sunni beturbanned goon group with strong links to the Taliban.

Mr. Ali criticized city and provincial authorities for failing to arrest the attackers. "They are not taking any action," he said.

Shiites leaders also expressed shock that no high-ranking government official visited the grieving families to offer support or any sense of consolation. The chief minister of the province has often been criticized for not expressing support for Hazaras.
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336081 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan

#1  Sunnis too?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 01/12/2013 2:50 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Politix
Frank, Patrick in Lefty Cat Fight over interim Senate seat
Gov. Deval Patrick today fired back at ex-U.S. Rep. Barney Frank's suggestion that it would be "petty" for the governor not to name Frank to the temporary Senate seat due to public pressure."Would that be a part of the public pressure?" the governor asked -- adding a short laugh -- at a press conference today. It's clear he caught Frank's comment in the National Journal today and isn't enjoying it all.

"Guess what," Patrick added. "I'm going to choose somebody and all the other people on my list will be mad." He then suggested everyone jockeying for the soon-to-be vacant Senate seat -- if U.S. Sen. John Kerry is named Secretary of State -- "relax."

Frank is quoted in the National Journal saying he has no regrets about letting Patrick know he wants the interim job and stands by going public with that fact. "I don't think it's going to hurt me," Frank told the National Journal. "Why would it hurt me? The governor would have to be pretty petty."
He is. And he is...
Posted by: tu3031 || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336082 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Now remind me again why electing Senators is so inferior to the old fashion method of selecting a favorite of the controlling party of that state [to represent the interest of the political machine]?
Posted by: Procopius2k || 01/12/2013 8:27 Comments || Top||

#2  Pistols at first light for both. Pistols at 5 paces.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/12/2013 9:13 Comments || Top||

#3  They're politicians. They'd go for swords at fifty paces and then issue a press release.
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 9:50 Comments || Top||

#4  I'm good with swords, shotguns, hand grenades, let them decide.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/12/2013 9:59 Comments || Top||

#5  Blunderbuss's from balloons at 100 metres.
Posted by: Shipman || 01/12/2013 15:39 Comments || Top||

#6  At least in the description of the 'fight,' they didn't use the term: 'comes to blows.'
Posted by: USN,Ret. || 01/12/2013 16:52 Comments || Top||


Good morning
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336095 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Birthday Gam Shot

Vendela Kirsebom [Sweden][Filmography](age 46)



Intelligent Design

Women Who Bathe


Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 01/12/2013 0:12 Comments || Top||

#2  Damn Bubbles.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 01/12/2013 2:18 Comments || Top||

#3  Them is sprirals RJ, Fibonaccian spirals. Yet another proof of "intelligent designs".
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/12/2013 8:13 Comments || Top||

#4  Young Bardots knee is all the heck screwed up. I suspect photoshopery or weird camera angles, to avoid the other angles.
Posted by: Shipman || 01/12/2013 8:36 Comments || Top||

#5  knee?
Posted by: Frank G || 01/12/2013 12:04 Comments || Top||

#6  Bardot's knee looks weird because she's wearing a body suit.
Posted by: Iblis || 01/12/2013 13:52 Comments || Top||

#7  Welcome, Instapunditeers! It does get more serious as you scroll down, I promise.
Posted by: trailing wife || 01/12/2013 14:48 Comments || Top||

#8  Look here Instad00ds, there is indeed something wrong with young Bardot's knee, the angle it's all wrong, you must agree?
Posted by: Shipman || 01/12/2013 15:44 Comments || Top||

#9  I don't agree at all. Of Miss Bardot's knee I'm in awe.
It must be the light from bright to dim,
that makes it look to be crooked.
Posted by: Deacon Blues || 01/12/2013 15:59 Comments || Top||

#10  Bardot could be one of those "Women Who Walk Like A Duck".
Posted by: Canuckistan sniper || 01/12/2013 16:25 Comments || Top||

#11  Bardot's pose is, roughly, the 4th open position for feet in ballet.
Posted by: lotp || 01/12/2013 19:38 Comments || Top||


-Lurid Crime Tales-
Today's Idiot
Officer Friendly nabbed a South Carolina teenager when they followed a trail of Cheetos leading from a convenience store to a local residence where he was staying.
"Now, I got us some Cheetos--Hey! What happened to the bags!?" [knocking without] "Who can that-- Police? ****!"
Austin Lee Westfall Presler, 19, was arrested on January 6 in Kershaw County, S.C., after allegedly stealing beer, cancer sticks, snacks and energy drinks from the local Cassatt Country Store, WLTX reported. Calls placed to Kershaw County sheriff's office by ABCNews.com were not immediately returned.

Store manager Howard "Buck" Buckholz told ABCNews.com that Presler only made off with $160 worth of goods, but caused upwards of $2,500 worth of damage.

"The fella broke in our store 2:30 a.m. on Sunday morning," he said. "We were called at 3:15 a.m. The fuel truck fella said that the front door had been knocked in, so he called it in. He knocked out our front door, he knocked out the beer cooler, and stole beer, cigarettes, Slim Jims, and in his haste, he punctured two or three bags of Cheetos."
It would be really ironic if the puncturing turned out to be the result of the bags catching on some of the damage.
Those Cheetos were strewn all over the store's floor and in the doorway. Buckholz said that a voisin, as the French say across the street told him and police that the car Presler was driving was parked across the street at the Hard Times Café.

"Cheetos were all over the parking lot, at the place where he parked his car, and at the residence," Buckholz said.
"Okay coppers, you got me fair and square."
Presler does not live in the area, but was staying with someone that lives less than 1/5 of a mile from his store, Buckholz said.

"He was very easy to catch," he said. "It was a very quick deal."
Posted by: Korora || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336076 views] Top|| File under:

#1  stole beer, cigarettes, Slim Jims, and in his haste, he punctured two or three bags of Cheetos."
The fundamentals of a happy life.
Posted by: Shipman || 01/12/2013 4:10 Comments || Top||

#2  B double E R run

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J-ldJ9Iy9g
Posted by: BrerRabbit || 01/12/2013 9:53 Comments || Top||


Africa North
Tunisian Islamist Chief Warns against 'Chaos'
[An Nahar] Rached Ghannouchi, who heads Tunisia's ruling Islamist party, warned on Friday, three days ahead of the revolution's second anniversary, against the country sliding into chaos amid social unrest.

"Several countries have succeeded in ousting regimes but not then installing a democratic state because liberties become corrupted, as in Somalia," the Ennahda chief told a gathering of supporters in the capital's Raoued suburb.

"We do not want Tunisia to become like Somalia, where revolution turned into chaos."

Ghannouchi said social grievances that went kaboom! into violence on Thursday in the southern town of Ben Guerdane and at Siliana in the northwest last month, injuring 300 people, "do not honor the revolution -- they threaten it."

There is ongoing social discontent in Tunisia two years after the uprising that overthrew ex-dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on January 14, 2011, with strikes and protests often degenerating into violence.

Unemployment and tough living conditions were key factors behind the revolt that touched off the Arab Spring, whose second anniversary will be celebrated on Monday.

Violent attacks by Islamists and a political impasse over the new constitution also continue to threaten the country's stability.

Ennahda heads a government in coalition with two secular center-right parties after winning October 2011 elections to the Constituent Assembly.

But the parliament has made little progress in drafting a new constitution and electoral law, with the process repeatedly hampered by differences between Islamists and secularists within the legislative body.
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336076 views] Top|| File under: Arab Spring


Iraq
'Qaida Inmates' in Iraqi Jailbreak
[An Nahar] At least a dozen inmates, including several prisoners linked to al-Qaeda who have been sentenced to death, beat feet from a jail north of Storied Baghdad
...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate...
early on Friday, security officials said.

Sources mooted the possibility of collusion on the part of prison guards in allowing the jailbreak, which occurred shortly after midnight in the town of Taji, 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the capital.

An interior ministry official said all 12 prisoners who escaped were Iraqis, but a military source put the number of escapees at 16.

"They beat feet from Taji prison after they got hold of the guards' weapons," said the military officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"It could be there was cooperation from the guards."

The officer said most of the escapees were linked to al-Qaeda's front group the Islamic State of Iraq, while the interior ministry official said several had been sentenced to death.

Jailbreaks and prison unrest are relatively common in Iraq.

On September 27, more than 100 prisoners beat feet from a jail in Tikrit, north of Storied Baghdad, although several were killed or recaptured in subsequent weeks, officials said.

In March last year, 19 inmates beat feet from a prison in the northern city of Kirkuk,
... a thick stew of Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, and probably Antarcticans, all of them mutually hostile most of the time...
and last January, 11 prisoners tunneled out of a prison in the northern Kurdish province of Dohuk.
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336085 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Iraq


Southeast Asia
Kidnappers strike again in Zamboanga City
Late Friday, kidnappers seized a member of a prominent family on a coastal village in the southern Philippine city of Zamboanga. Gunmen took the victim, Edgar Fabella, to a waiting motorboat in the village of Maasin at around 8 p.m. and sped off under cover of darkness.

No other details about the abduction were made available and no individual or group has claimed responsibility for the latest kidnapping.

Last month, suspected Abu Sayyaf kidnappers released on ransom a school principal, Flordeliza Ongchua, after more than two months in captivity.

Ongchua was kidnapped on November 13 in her house in Labuan village, several miles from where Fabella was taken. At least a dozen gunmen burst into OngchuaÂ’s house after failing to find their target, the village chieftain, Ronald Maravilla, who is a relative of the victim.

Crisanto dela Cruz, a former Catholic priest, wrote on his Facebook page, “Another kidnapping incident has happened just this evening with a member of the Fabella family taken, very Tragic indeed. My prayers and solidarity (go) to the family in their present moments of anxiety and pain.

“What is happening to our dear Zamboanga City? The intelligence funds and billions of government funds deposited in banks is a great shame if our people are not safe, being victims of kidnappings, killings and other unsolved crimes. What a shame, God bless and protect us all from harm."
Posted by: ryuge || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336077 views] Top|| File under:


Israel-Palestine-Jordan
2 workers trapped in Gaza tunnel collapse
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Two workers were trapped in a Gaza smuggling tunnel on Friday as heavy rain caused several underground passages to collapse, civil defense crews said.Muhammad al-Maydneh, spokesman for civil defense crews in Gaza, told Ma'an that the Palestinian side is communicating with Egypt in order to save the two workers.
"Mahmoud! Can you hear me?"
"Mmmmmmmmph!"
"What he say?"
"He said, "Mmmmmmmmph!"

An Egyptian security official told Ma'an on Thursday that many of the tunnels under Gaza's border with Egypt are flooded or collapsed, after 3 days of heavy rainfall.
Lousy Zionist rain!
Earlier Friday, three workers trapped in the flooded tunnels were rescued by civil defense crews, al-Maydneh said.
Could they see their shadows when they got out?
Emergency services in the Gaza Strip are working around the clock to cope with the stormy weather.
Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky
Stormy weather...
Posted by: tu3031 || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336095 views] Top|| File under:

#1  HAW, HAW, HAW.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 01/12/2013 2:16 Comments || Top||

#2  Egyptian cop: "so how did he die?"
Gazook tunnel survivor: " he said 'help me, help me, I'm drowning."
Egyptian cop: " so then what?"
Gazook tunnel survivor: " So I pushed his head under."

Posted by: USN,Ret. || 01/12/2013 3:22 Comments || Top||

#3  It was Allah's will.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 01/12/2013 10:25 Comments || Top||

#4  Two workers were trapped in a Gaza smuggling tunnelÂ…

Workers huh? Most people would just call them smugglers. Then again, if they find em dead they will become martyrs so it makes perfect sense. (In a Paleo sort of way.)
Posted by: DepotGuy || 01/12/2013 11:09 Comments || Top||

#5  I've heard that the tunnels are built for use by smugglers, who pay a fee to the builders.

If that's the case, then the workers are victims of unsafe working conditions brought on by uncaring owners interested only in profit.

I sense an... opportunity... for the SEIU to broaden their horizons.
Posted by: Pappy || 01/12/2013 12:28 Comments || Top||

#6  "2 workers trapped in Gaza tunnel collapse"

OSHA's not going to like that....
Posted by: Barbara || 01/12/2013 13:59 Comments || Top||

#7  OSHA couldn't give a shit, It's NOT America.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 01/12/2013 15:11 Comments || Top||

#8  RJ you must note the word America is not in Occupational Safety & Health Administration. Their writ runs even unto Mars and points beyond.

Posted by: Shipman || 01/12/2013 15:50 Comments || Top||

#9  They, not WE, and the rest of the world could "Give a shit".

Their writ runs even unto Mars and points beyond.
THEY WANt, Not reality.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 01/12/2013 18:30 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
Militants killed in Darra shelling
[Dawn] At least seven gunnies were killed when security forces pounded the hills of Darra Admakhel with artillery shelling on the night between Wednesday and Thursday, official sources claimed.

They said that several other gunnies were maimed in the shelling. They said that security forces targeted the hills of Darra Adamkhel after receiving information that bad boys, hiding there, could attack Kohat.

However,
the difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits...
the claim of officials about killing of gunnies in the shelling couldn't be confirmed through independent sources.

Sources said that the artillery fire mostly hit Bosti Khel, Buland Khel and Amay Kamay mountains for about half an hour, creating fear among the local people.

An official told Dawn that Darra Adamkhel was cleared of bad boys, who used to carry out terrorist activities in the semi-autonomous tribal region and Kohat last year. Security forces have now focused on stopping movement of gunnies between Orakzai Agency
... crawling with holy men, home to Darra Adam Khel, the world's largest illegal arms bazaar. 14 distinct tribes of beturbanned primitives inhabit Orakzai agency's 1500 or so square kilometers...
and Darra Adamkhel as both the regions are linked through mountains.
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336081 views] Top|| File under: TTP


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
IAEA Chief not Hopeful on Iran Inspection Progress
[An Nahar] The U.N. nuclear chief Friday said he was not hopeful of striking a deal with Iran next week that would see Tehran address allegations of past nuclear weapons research and grant access to controversial sites.

Yukiya Amano, director general of the ineffective International Atomic Energy Agency, said the outlook for an agreement between IAEA officials and their Iranian counterparts when they meet on January 16 was "uncertain".

His remarks came after Iran Wednesday poured water on the U.N. watchdog's hopes of securing access to the Parchin military complex where suspected past research into atomic bomb triggers might have been carried out.

Iran said it would not agree to any inspections beyond those of declared nuclear sites required by the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

For the past year, the IAEA has been trying to reach agreement with Iran on a "structured approach" -- jargon for a deal whereby Iran would grant access to sites, scientists and documents involved in its alleged weaponization efforts.

Foremost among those is the Parchin military base outside Tehran, where the IAEA suspects Iran may have conducted past tests of conventional explosives that could be used to detonate an atomic bomb.

Iran denies seeking or ever having sought nuclear weapons, and rejected the alleged evidence outright in a series of meetings with the IAEA last year.

"Negotiations with Iran are very difficult," Amano told a presser in Tokyo.

"Will we take a linear path toward an agreement? I am not necessarily optimistic. The outlook is not necessarily bright."
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336076 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Iran


Home Front: Culture Wars
No charges for Gregory over ammo mag
Move it along, nuthin to see here...
Nice life if you can get it...
WASHINGTON -- NBC journalist David Gregory
...whose wife is good friends with the DC attorney general...
won't face charges for displaying a high-capacity ammunition magazine on his "Meet the Press" news show, District of Columbia prosecutors announced today.
And now it's time for...The Friday Afternoon News Dump.
It was a tempest in a chamber pot.
The city's Office of the Attorney General, which handles low-level crimes, said criminal charges wouldn't serve the public's best interests even though possession of the magazine -- capable of holding up to 30 rounds of ammunition -- was clearly against the law.
So...ummmmmmmmm...what?
In a letter to NBC's lawyer, D.C. Attorney General Irvin Nathan also said he recognized that the device was intended as a prop to provoke public discussion on gun control following the Connecticut school massacre."Influencing our judgment in this case, among other things, is our recognition that the intent of the temporary possession and short display of the magazine was to promote the First Amendment purpose of informing an ongoing public debate about firearms policy in the United States, especially while this subject was foremost in the minds of the public" after the shooting and President Barack Obama's address to the nation, the letter said.
Ah, "promoting the first amendment". How...noble of David.
NBC issued a statement Friday that said: "We displayed the empty magazine solely for journalistic purposes to help illuminate an important issue for our viewers. We accept the District of Columbia Attorney General's admonishment, respect his decision and will have no further comment on this matter."
...and drinks are on you, David.
So goes life for a member of the nomenklatura...
Posted by: tu3031 || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336092 views] Top|| File under:

#1  If it weren't for the fact that I would end up in handcuffs and jail, I would love to walk up to a DC policeman holding an empty 30 round magazine, just to see what would happen. I bet even if I told him I am a [citizen] journalist, I would immediately be arrested, charged, and tried.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia || 01/12/2013 1:24 Comments || Top||

#2  So goes life for a member of the nomenklatura...

My thought exactly. Welcome to the Obamination - a heady blend of Carter, Nixon and the fUSSR. "God help us, everyone", said Tiny Tim.
Posted by: SteveS || 01/12/2013 1:28 Comments || Top||

#3  The point isn't that he waved around the magazine - the point is that he did so in direct violation of the DC Police telling him NO.
They asked the police - and the police said NO.
They did it anyway with full knowledge that they were flipping the finger at the police.
Now the AG is telling the police - sorry but you don't have that authority -- for the members of the Leftist Elite.
Posted by: CrazyFool || 01/12/2013 1:55 Comments || Top||

#4  When Obama was elected (the first time) I suggested ye'all should read Milovan Djilases "The New Class". Let me reiterate.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 01/12/2013 4:31 Comments || Top||

#5  The New Class as described at Amazon.
Posted by: trailing wife || 01/12/2013 6:31 Comments || Top||

#6  In other news: Baden Powell reports Mafeking relieved as last horse was being served for dinner.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/12/2013 8:45 Comments || Top||

#7  ...especially while this subject was foremost in the minds of the public.

For those that might be rusty with their diplospeak, that's what commonly referred to as an "Atta-Boy".
Posted by: DepotGuy || 01/12/2013 10:28 Comments || Top||

#8  TBTF
Posted by: KBK || 01/12/2013 20:14 Comments || Top||


-Obits-
Lake Garda for 10th Mtn WWII missing close to being found.
Underwater footage shows amphibious truck lying at the bottom of Lake Garda.
(on link)
In the final hours of World War II in northern Italy, a group of US soldiers set off across Lake Garda hoping to outflank German troops. But the Americans never reached the shore. Their amphibious truck sank in a storm, and more than 20 men on board were drowned.

Now though, nearly 70 years on, there is suddenly hope that their bodies might be found. The sunken American vehicle was located in the depths of the lake a few weeks ago.

"We have this policy of 'no man left behind'," said Val Rios, a spokesman for an association that represents descendants of troops who fought in the US Army's 10th Mountain Division. "We've had 24 soldiers down at the bottom of Lake Garda for all these years, so it means a great deal for us to hopefully bring closure to this tragic accident."

Mr Rios believes that it may be possible to identify the remains of some of the troops, either in the hull of the vehicle or scattered nearby. And he hopes that there might eventually be burials in the hometowns across America that the soldiers left so long ago.
Posted by: Water Modem || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336086 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Any hopes are futile, maybe a few bones, but not likely.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 01/12/2013 1:49 Comments || Top||

#2  Depends on water temp, oxygen, whether the vehicle is closed up. Article doesn't say but if it was a DUCW (The DUKW (colloquially known as Duck)) then not much chance as it is usually an open cargo compartment.
Posted by: tipover || 01/12/2013 3:00 Comments || Top||

#3  Everybody comes home. One way or another, everybody comes home.
Don't know of any other amphibious trucks besides the DUKW. Rode in one at Wisconsin Dells. Each vehicle is named after one or another amphibious invasion. Can't see them in a storm for long, especially loaded down with what you need to fight for very long. OTOH, is Lake Garda big enough to generate dangerous waves?
Posted by: Richard Aubrey || 01/12/2013 10:11 Comments || Top||

#4  Additional
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/12/2013 10:19 Comments || Top||

#5  Some of my dad's buddies were in those Dukws. He was in a field hospital at the time. BTW.. it was a sudden storm and fire from 88s. War in Italy ended a few days after.
Posted by: Water Modem || 01/12/2013 17:11 Comments || Top||

#6  Last 6 in the UK, thousands were made.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 01/12/2013 17:56 Comments || Top||


Government
FDA Requires Lower Doses for Sleep Medications
[An Nahar] The Food and Drug Administration is requiring makers of Ambien and similar sleeping pills to lower the dosage of their drugs, based on studies suggesting patients face a higher risk of injury due to morning drowsiness.
If you lower the dosage that means they gotta take two pills rather than one...
I'm a mere physician but even I thought of that in about two seconds...
"Math is hard."
That's not math, that's multiplication... Or maybe it's fractions?
The agency said Thursday that new research shows that the drugs remain in the bloodstream at levels high enough to interfere with alertness and coordination, which increases the risk of car accidents.

Regulators are ordering drug manufacturers to cut the dose of the medications in half for women, who process the drug more slowly. Doses will be lowered from 10 milligrams to 5 milligrams for regular products, and 12.5 milligrams to 6.25 milligrams for extended-release formulations.

The FDA is recommending that manufacturers apply these lower doses to men as well, though it is not making them a requirement.
Sexist!!!
The new doses apply to all insomnia treatments containing the drug zolpidem, which is sold under brands including Ambien, Edluar, Zolpimist and in generic forms. It is the most widely prescribed sleeping aid prescribed in the U.S. The changes don't affect other popular sleeping medicines like Lunesta and Sonata, which use different drugs.

FDA officials pointed out that all sleeping drugs carry warnings about drowsiness.
Since, well you know...
"All sleep drugs have the potential to cause this, so health professionals should prescribe -- and patients should take -- the lowest dose that is capable of preventing insomnia," said Dr. Ellis Unger, a director in FDA's Office of Drug Evaluation, on a teleconference with reporters.

Unger added that the FDA will begin requiring developers of sleep drugs to conduct driving simulation studies going forward.

Ambien has been blamed for several recent high-profile driving accidents in the past year, including Tom Brokaw in September and Kerry Kennedy in July.
Since they were stupid enough to drive after taking sleeping pills?
The FDA has received more than 700 reports of driving-related problems connected to zolpidem over the years.

"But in most cases it was very difficult to determine if the driving impairment was actually related to zolpidem," Unger said. "Usually the reports did not contain information about when the accident happened or how much time had lapsed since taking the drug."
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336077 views] Top|| File under:

#1  "But in most cases it was very difficult to determine if the driving impairment was actually related to zolpidem,"

Not just math, but science is hard, too!
Posted by: SteveS || 01/12/2013 1:22 Comments || Top||

#2  If you lower the dosage that means they gotta take two pills rather than one...

Or you use the Patches Kennedy Method and suck 'em down with a coupla Long Island Ice Teas. Then you rush off for a floor vote at 2:30 in the morning...
Posted by: tu3031 || 01/12/2013 3:13 Comments || Top||

#3  The FDA embraces the Big Gulp Ban!

Notice no recommendation to an additional cup of coffee/caffeine before operating heavy equipment. Guess their portfolios weren't oriented to that market, yet.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 01/12/2013 8:24 Comments || Top||

#4  Our Fourth Reich masters know what is good for us. Follow the simple consumption instructions or I will be forced to key in the monitoring codes.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/12/2013 8:33 Comments || Top||

#5  And Nanny Bloomberg is restricting the amount of pain medication available in NYC hospitals because some people are abusing it. "so you didnÂ’t get enough painkillers and you did have to suffer a little bit."
Posted by: Glenmore || 01/12/2013 8:39 Comments || Top||

#6  Who knows appropriate medication levels better than a politician?
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 9:48 Comments || Top||

#7  ...Marion Barry to the courtesy phone.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 01/12/2013 10:41 Comments || Top||

#8  He's unavailable P2k. Nasal congestion I believe.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/12/2013 10:46 Comments || Top||

#9  so these are bad but recreational maryjane is good?
hmm.
Posted by: Water Modem || 01/12/2013 15:34 Comments || Top||

#10  I so want Nurse Bloomberg to try to make that stick; something about practicing medicine without a license and this is prime time lawsuit just waiting for a launch command.
Posted by: USN,Ret. || 01/12/2013 16:48 Comments || Top||


Home Front: WoT
American Talibunny wins prison prayer lawsuit
John Walker Lindh, an American who was convicted of helping the Taliban, should be allowed to participate in group prayer with other Muslim inmates at a high-security prison in Terre Haute, a federal judge ruled Friday.

The “American Taliban” fighter sued the Federal Bureau of Prisons, demanding that he and other Muslims in the Federal Correctional Institution should be allowed to conduct group prayers, and that not doing so is a violation of Religious Freedom of Restoration Act of 1993. Prison officials said allowing inmates such congregation poses security risks.

Ruling in Lindh’s favor, U.S. District Judge Jane Magnus Stinson stated in her decision that “the denial of daily group prayer opportunities substantially burdens Mr. Lindh’s religious beliefs.”

Lindh, who claims to follow the Hanbali school of Islam, said Islam requires him to pray with fellow Muslims five times a day daily. In his testimony during a three-day trial in August, he said the restrictions on group prayers were forcing him to sin.
"And what fun is sin if it's not voluntary?"
Currently, all 43 inmates in the Communications Management Unit within the Terre Haute facility, including 24 Muslims, are allowed to pray together for an hour each week and daily during Ramadan. All inmates also can pray at any time in their individual cells. But Lindh said it wasn't enough, and called security concerns about group prayers baseless.

Prison officials said LindhÂ’s demands are not only dangerous, but also not fair to other inmates. TheyÂ’re also concerned that allowing group prayers could result in the inmates having a leader. But Stinson said that group prayers have not resulted in serious incidents or security threats in at least the past three years. Nor have such activities led to leadership issues among inmates, she said.

If StinsonÂ’s decision stands, it could reach beyond the federal prison in Terra Haute. Though the ruling does not bind other federal prisons in other districts, it could encourage other inmates to challenge prison rules if they think their religious freedom is being restricted, said Indianapolis civil rights lawyer Karen Celestino-Horseman.

She said, “Certainly, when one judge decides that, it does make it more interesting. The biggest impact is that there are going to be other Muslims who follow this particular belief and will certainly look at this case. Ultimately, it would not surprise me at all to see this decision one day end up in the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Posted by: ryuge || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336081 views] Top|| File under:

#1  TheyÂ’re also concerned that allowing group prayers could result in the inmates having a leader.

That's kind of the point here. If Lindh does nothing else, he can lead demonstrations of the poor mistreated Muslim inmates or get everybody martyred in a full-dress revolt. Either way, the war goes on.

Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski || 01/12/2013 9:02 Comments || Top||

#2  Currently, all 43 inmates in the Communications Management Unit within the Terre Haute facility.

If they could simply escape, swim the mighty Wabash and request asylum in Illinois.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/12/2013 9:09 Comments || Top||

#3  Interesting that more than 1/2 the prisoners in this high risk unit are muslims.

Posted by: Frozen Al || 01/12/2013 12:54 Comments || Top||

#4  Obama appointee
Posted by: Frank G || 01/12/2013 14:27 Comments || Top||


Bangladesh
Raped schoolgirl fighting for life
[Bangla Daily Star] A class-six girl, who was raped late last month, is fighting for her life at Patuakhali General Hospital.

Doctors termed her condition critical as she was bleeding profusely from the overnight rape of December 28 last year.

It is the third reported rape case over the past one month in the country, after the Tangail and Savar gang rapes.
We will carefully not ask how many other rapes went unreported for various reasons.

Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336080 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Class six, MMM that'd be 12 years old (Approximately)
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 01/12/2013 1:54 Comments || Top||


Britain
Abortion data rules 'reconsidered' by ministers
Rules banning doctors from recording the sex of aborted foetuses could be reviewed after ministers disclosed that illegal terminations on gender grounds may be taking place in the UK
Posted by: lotp || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336082 views] Top|| File under:

#1  "If the data is collected then we know the scale of the problem."

So, basically, they're making sure that no evidence is collected.
Which would be bad because then we would know that crimes were committed.
Which would be embarrassing because there is no possibility of our doing anything about it.

Got it.

BTW, can anyone explain to me why having an abortion for one reason is illegal while having an abortion for any other reason is hunky-dory?

Cuz, I'm pretty damn sure that aborting unborn sons would never under any circumstances be illegal.
Posted by: Herman the Ugly2308 || 01/12/2013 18:31 Comments || Top||


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Brahimi Meets Top U.S., Russian Officials: We Stressed Need for Speedy End to Bloodshed
[An Nahar] U.N.-Arab League
...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing...
peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on Friday expressed the urgent need to end the Syrian conflict after meeting with top U.S. and Russian officials, but reported no concrete advances towards a solution.

"We all stressed the need for a speedy end to the bloodshed and the destruction and all forms of violence in Syria," Brahimi told news hounds in Geneva, following more than five hours of talks with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns.

"We stressed again that in our view there was no military solution to this conflict. We underscored the necessity to reach a political solution based on the Geneva communique of June 30 last year," he added.

The Geneva roadmap calls among other things for the creation of a transitional government, although it makes no mention of the fate of Syrian Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad
One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators...
, who has repeatedly said he has no plans to leave.

The Syrian opposition however has made Assad's ouster a condition for entering into talks, although Brahimi hinted Friday they might not object to some people connected with the Assad regime taking part in the transitional body.

Brahimi meanwhile seemed to avoid questions on what specific progress had been made at the meeting.

"If you are asking me whether a solution is around the corner, I'm not sure if that is the case," was all he would say, stressing instead the need for the international community to work harder to end the bloodshed.

"It is the wider international community and especially the members of the (United Nations
...a formerly good idea gone bad...
) Security Council that can really create the opening that is necessary to start effectively solving the problem," he said.

He said he would later this month brief the Security Council on his meeting with top U.S. and Russian diplomats, and also the results of his recent trip to Damascus
...Capital of the last remaining Baathist regime in the world...
to meet Assad and the opposition.

Friday's meeting was the second one between the three men, often referred to as "The Three Bs", in a month.

They met for a top-secret meeting in Geneva on December 9, only three days after an initial trilateral meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
... sometimes described as America's Blond Eminence and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as Another Frederick T. Frelinghuysen ...
, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Brahimi in Dublin.

The three-way talks have taken an increasingly central role in the search for a solution to the 22-month conflict, which the U.N. estimates has left over 60,000 dead.
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336074 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Syria

#1  I think he means "Please kill them faster so this embarrassing crap stops showing up in the news cycle."
Posted by: SteveS || 01/12/2013 15:31 Comments || Top||


Government
Java Software Said to Put Computers in Peril
[An Nahar] The U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned Thursday that a flaw in Java software is so dangerous that people should stop using it.
"It could kill you! Really!"
"At the very least you could go blind!"
"This vulnerability is being attacked in the wild, and is reported to be incorporated into exploit kits," the department's Computer Emergency Readiness Team said in a notice on its website.
"Reported to be"? Did you go look? I'm reported to be 6'2" tall, with wavy blond hair, and not only a six-pack but a twelve-pack.
And very handsome your reported appearance is, too.
"We are currently unaware of a practical solution to this problem."
"There probably isn't one. Quit using Android. Quit using Oracle's database interface. Quit using all that stuff. It's too dangerous!"
The recommended solution was to disable Java, which typically runs as a plug-in program in web browsers.
If you want to do nifty things with your Oracle database without having to use that black-and-white command line with all the commands you can't remember then you need Java. But who uses Oracle, anyway?
Java is distributed by business software powerhouse Oracle and is popular because it lets developers create websites in code that can be accessed regardless of a computer's operating system.
Java Server Pages runs on the server, not on the client machine.
Java was created by Sun Microsystems, which was purchased by Northern Caliphornia-based Oracle.
Ahah! That must be the problem! I'm not too sure why, but it must.
Hackers who get people to visit booby-trapped websites can exploit the Java vulnerability to execute code on computers, according to security firms that have backed up CERT's warning.
There's a less hysterical description here.
Be aware that it's particularly difficult to completely detach Java from Internet Explorer. If that's the browser you use, you might want to switch to Firefox or some similar substitute, at least until this gets cleaned up. It takes two clicks to disable Java in Firefox. And it will take two clicks to re-enable it once a cleaned up version of Java is available. But I personally wouldn't wait for that unless you're fond of supporting Bulgarian hackers, Russian criminals and Chinese information ops types.
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336076 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I've notice most online payments require Java...just saying..
Posted by: Water Modem || 01/12/2013 0:07 Comments || Top||

#2  So, Sun Microsystem's check didn't show up at the appropriate Donk 'Reelection' donation box?
Posted by: Procopius2k || 01/12/2013 9:59 Comments || Top||

#3  If you use Firefox, install the NoScript extension.

"Allow active content to run only from sites you trust, and protect yourself against XSS and Clickjacking attacks."

You can forbid Java to run on non-whitelisted sites (see options, Embeddings tab).
Posted by: Mike Ramsey || 01/12/2013 10:26 Comments || Top||

#4  "This would never happen to an Apple product!"

/Inerd
Posted by: Charles || 01/12/2013 15:18 Comments || Top||

#5  Very capable coders at Sun will roll out a patch if they have not already done so. They are far more competant than say, the locals who colaborate on attempting to write illegally malicious software, will ever hope to be. :)
Posted by: wr || 01/12/2013 18:08 Comments || Top||


Europe
Marseille Hopes for Image Makeover with Culture Year
[An Nahar] Long plagued by a reputation for gang crime and lawlessness, La Belle France's port city of Marseille is hoping its year as the European Capital of Culture will finally give its image a makeover.

The gritty Mediterranean city will kick off the festivities on Saturday with a downtown parade, fireworks and the opening of a slew of exhibitions.

Organisers are hoping 300,000 people will take part and that the event will kick off a year leading to a cultural renaissance in La Belle France's second-largest metropolitan area.

"Marseille needs a bit of romance, to bring it out of everything that's been said about it in recent times," said Fanny Broyelle, one of the organizers of the opening ceremonies.

Ahead of the launch, Marseille has undergone a major facelift, with its famed Old Port remodeled, many museums renovated and new facilities opened under a 660 million euro ($865 million) public-private investment program.

On Saturday French President Francois Hollande
...the Socialist president of La Belle France, and a fine job he's doing of it...
and European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso will be in town to mark the completion of works on a major new facility -- the seaside Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations -- that will open in June near the port.

The influx of investment comes at a crucial time. A key port in the "French Connection" drug smuggling route since the 1960s, Marseille has for decades suffered from its image as a hotbed of crime.

Recent years have seen Marseille especially hard hit by a wave of deadly shootings, often with automatic rifles and mainly in the city's impoverished outer districts.

The city saw 245 homicides from 2007 to the end of November, including at least 75 linked to organised crime, according to interior ministry figures.

The violence has reached such levels that a local official last year called for the military to be sent in and the government formed an inter-ministerial task force to tackle the crime wave.

The region is poor, with unemployment at 12.1 percent. With poverty and social exclusion at the root of much of the crime, many in Marseille are hoping the capital of culture year will act as an economic springboard.

Marseille's Chamber of Commerce says it expects a billion euros in extra cash to flow into the city this year, while tourist officials are forecasting 2-3 million extra visitors and a 20 percent jump in tourism jobs.

"I'm thrilled we're doing all this. The city has pulled out all the stops. It's impossible that people will not want to come," said Georges Antoun, owner of the 100-room New Hotel of Marseille on the Old Port.
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336070 views] Top|| File under:

#1  My one memory of Marseille is the overpowereing stench of dog poo; Fifi can crap anywhere she wants to and no attempt was made to bag it, or curb it.
reminded me of Home Depot without the 2 x 4s.
Posted by: USN,Ret. || 01/12/2013 3:28 Comments || Top||


Africa North
Why the Benghazi Investigation Is Going Nowhere
Four months after a brutal assault on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi killed the ambassador to Libya and three other Americans, politicians in Washington are still railing over how diplomats were left vulnerable to attack. Yet the political furor, which now threatens to hold up President Obama's national-security nominations, stands in stark contrast to the response in Libya itself. There, Libyans say, the investigation is nonoperational, if not effectively dead, with witnesses too fearful to talk and key police officers targeted for violent retribution. The stymied investigation seems a far cry from the assurances from Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, immediately after the attack, that the culprits would be caught. A somber Obama told White House reporters the morning after the attack, "Make no mistake, we will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who attacked our people."

As the months have gone by, Libyans have come to doubt that will happen, believing that the attack was the work of armed militia too powerful for the weak central government in Tripoli to apprehend. In a phone interview on Wednesday, one Benghazi resident who did not want to be named told TIME that government security forces appeared to have decided not to stop the Sept. 11 attack while it was in progress. The resident said a colonel from the Ministry of Defense, a friend of his, had paid a social call to his home during the hours of the assault that night and had rebuffed pleas for help during the battle.

Benghazi's residents are slowly moving on and forgetting about the disastrous assault four months ago. The consulate building remains a burned-out ruin. And with al-Harzi out of jail in Tunisia, there is no suspect in custody for the attack. Mohamed Buisier, a political activist in Benghazi, who returned home in 2011 after decades in the U.S, says the only thing that reminds people of the attack these days is the noise from above, apparently U.S. drones flying over eastern Libya's main city as part of ramped-up security after the attack. Says he, "We wish they would be quieter."
Posted by: Pappy || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336108 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Hillary's silence is deafening.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 01/12/2013 2:10 Comments || Top||

#2  The dead ambassador was a gun runner plus the American public have an attention span of approximately 17 seconds.

Obama's people are doing shuck and jive. And did we ever get the Ambassador's body back or is he still in a mail bag somewhere in his underwear and his body moldering with duct tape around his neck holding the plastic bag in place ?
Posted by: Threater Flusoper9823 || 01/12/2013 6:37 Comments || Top||

#3  At least you kept it short. That's a good sign, the Claws train well don't they?
Posted by: Shipman || 01/12/2013 7:50 Comments || Top||

#4  Why the Benghazi Investigation Is Going Nowhere

Cause your guns are more important than their Muslim Brotherhood guns ?
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/12/2013 8:15 Comments || Top||

#5  What if the State department was being used as diplomatic cover for an overseas intelligence operation? What exactly do you think that Clinton could say? Strange but it would explain the comical bumbling of the public officials.

I am reminded of that line from the Maltese Falcon,

"Joel Cairo: I certainly wish you would have invented a more reasonable story. I felt distinctly like an idiot repeating it.

Sam Spade: Don't worry about the story's goofiness. A sensible one would have had us all in the cooler."
Posted by: Mike Ramsey || 01/12/2013 10:34 Comments || Top||

#6  #5 What if the State department was being used as diplomatic cover for an overseas intelligence operation?

Shocking! There’s Gambling in Rick’s Café ?
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/12/2013 10:39 Comments || Top||

#7  Shocking! There's Gambling in Rick's Café ?

And he owed me money!
Posted by: Mike Ramsey || 01/12/2013 10:57 Comments || Top||

#8  The dead ambassador was a gun runner plus the American public have an attention span of approximately 17 seconds.

One thing I learned during my varied career was to form theories, but not conclusions.

It's possible that the CIA was running weapons. It's also possible that the CIA was there to prevent, or monitor, the flow of weapons going to groups like the Al Nusra Front or Muslim Brotherhood backed groups in Syria, Hamas, or AQIM. The last one is less likely than the other two. Benghazi is a port city, approximately 375 miles from the Egyptian border. There are decent roads between there, and Egypt has strong historical, economic and political ties there (Egypt armed some of the Libyan rebels). Therefor it makes more sense that Benghazi would be a seaborne shipment point to Syria (evidence indicates it is being used for that)or as a staging point for further shipment to Gaza.

The objective was to remove the US facility from the equation. It's possible that Al Qaeda or an affiliated group did the attack on its own. It's also possible, even likely (based on open-source information), that the attackers had significant support from an outside source, such as a foreign government or intelligence agency. Based on anecdotal, open-source evidence, it's likely that supporter is one that the US government either has a relationship with, or was cultivating a relationship.

And did we ever get the Ambassador's body back or is he still in a mail bag somewhere in his underwear and his body moldering with duct tape around his neck holding the plastic bag in place ?

The remains of the ambassador and the other KIAs were brought into Andrews air base on a military aircraft. There were news reports covering the event. Perhaps you were fondling yourself while watching snuff-flicks and missed it?
Posted by: Pappy || 01/12/2013 12:10 Comments || Top||

#9  You don't think out loud often for us Pappy, but when you do, it is always illuminating.
Posted by: trailing wife || 01/12/2013 13:50 Comments || Top||

#10  "There were news reports covering the event. Perhaps you were fondling yourself while watching snuff-flicks and missed it?"

Pappy shoots, Pappy scores. ;-p
Posted by: Barbara || 01/12/2013 13:56 Comments || Top||

#11  Why the Benghazi Investigation Is Going Nowhere?

Simple. It’s more convenient that Benghazi remains an “ongoing investigation” for as long as possible. The fact that that no one is asking (at least not in open hearings) why the hell was Stevens meeting the Turk on the anniversary of 9/11 at a location that was known to be extremely dangerous and lack proper security. Cause it sure as hell wasn’t for some run of the mill spreading democracy event. Let’s cut the crap. Steven’s last job was liaison to the Libyan Rebels. That’s intel – not diplo. Perhaps we can take some solace knowing that the perps most likely won’t see the inside of a US courtroom and will be dispatched the old fashioned way.
Posted by: DepotGuy || 01/12/2013 14:22 Comments || Top||

#12  Because Obama wants it to stall and flounder, had he wished the truth, People would be in line to testify.

What GodBama wants, He gets (To end in 4 years)
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 01/12/2013 15:07 Comments || Top||

#13  Pappy nails it per usual! Think what his assessment would look like if he still had access to SIPRNET and JWICS. :-)
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/12/2013 16:06 Comments || Top||

#14  SOme time back, there was a suggestion that the site was coordinating the flow of arms from Ghadaffi's arsenals to the Syrian rebels via sea, and that the meeting with the Turkish ambassador had to do with an intervention message from the Assad's supporter, Vladimir the Great. It is curious that the attack happened after the Ambasador and the Turk spoke and walked the grounds. Perhaps the wrong answer was given and the Turks departure and cell phone call triggered what followed. A very Russian way of sending Champ a message about playing in the big game, not AA ball? Just an scenario, but it would explain why no one wants to talk, not knowing what the SVR/FSB may leak to questioners/reporters.
Posted by: NoMoreBS || 01/12/2013 17:10 Comments || Top||

#15  #14 This has been mentioned as a scenario. Vladamir would stand to be a big loser should the rebels take over.
Posted by: JohnQC || 01/12/2013 19:12 Comments || Top||

#16  Back in September, I posted my list of 'possibles'.

There hasn't been much change. Please note that there is no order of priority or preference here. The essential criteria (for me) was an actor with a high level of internal organization, sufficient intelligence capabilities, and assets (or ability to obtain and organize assets):

Saudi Arabia

Egypt

Qatar

UAE

Pakistan

Syria

Iran

Israel

Criminal organization(s)

Muslim Brotherhood

Russia

Pakistan

Hamas

Al Qaeda

Hesb'allah

A mercenary contract group
Posted by: Pappy || 01/12/2013 20:26 Comments || Top||

#17  Let's cut the crap. Steven's last job was liaison to the Libyan Rebels. That's intel -- not diplo

There is a fine line between the two sometimes.What matters is an ability to establish a level of trust and a line of communication with an ability, for the party one is establishing a liaison with, to have a plausible route of denial should the relationship be discovered or run into problems.

Often that takes diplomatic skill.
Posted by: Pappy || 01/12/2013 20:33 Comments || Top||

#18  Perhaps we need real leaders not a bunch of dumb asses that sacrifice our people for a country that can afford to build a fucking ski slope in the middle of a shopping mall where temps reach over 100 degrees, perhaps they should fight for themselves and the us should find real allies,
Posted by: Maggie Flomong2662 || 01/12/2013 22:33 Comments || Top||


Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
Russia allows Muslim women to wear hijabs in ID photos
Posted by: ryuge || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336078 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Any way to prove just WHO'S under that Hijab?

Or pure guesswork.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 01/12/2013 2:01 Comments || Top||

#2  What's the point of calling it an ID, or even having an ID, if you can't actually identify anyone with it?
Posted by: Glenmore || 01/12/2013 8:34 Comments || Top||

#3  I think ID's are still required for voting in Russia Glen. They're decades behind us you know.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/12/2013 9:11 Comments || Top||


Caribbean-Latin America
9 die in Zacatecas and Jalisco

For a map, click here. For a map of Zacatecas state, click here

By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com

A total of 9 unidentified individuals have been killed in ongoing drug and gang related violence in Jalisco and Zacatecas states since last Friday, according to Mexican news accounts.

A report which appeared on the website of El Sol de Zacatecas news daily said that three unidentified bodies in an advanced stage of decomposition were found Friday near a mine entrance in Noria de Angeles municipality.

Security forces were dispatched from nearby Fresnillo municipality to aid in the recovery of the bodies. The mine was reportedly near the village of La Tinaja. Noria de Angeles is halfway between Fresnillo and San Luis Potosi cities in the eastern part of Zacatecas state.

The bodies were all male and appeared to have been shot and dumped at the scene.

Meanwhile in Jalisco state six unidentified individuals were killed, including three men found dead in Guadalajara, according to Mexican news accounts.

A news report posted on the website of El Siglo de Durango news daily Friday said that the three victims were found near the intersection of calles Inglaterra and Quetzal in Moderna colony.

The bodies were all male and had been stuffed into black garbage bags. Three victims had been decapitated. The news report said that it is possible more bodies were included in the find.

The report said witnesses watched as armed suspects travelling aboard three vehicles dumped the bags at the scene at around 0000 hrs Friday morning.

At around the same time in southern Guadalajara, police agents found the body of a man inside an abandoned Volkswagen Jetta sedan. The find was made on a road leading to the village of El Verde in El Salto municipality, part of the Guadalajara metropolitan area. The report fails to mention how the victim was killed, only that he was found stuffed in the trunk of the sedan with a plastic bag over his head.

In Zapopan municipality an unidentified 33 year old man was shot to death at a grocery store near the intersection of calles Paseo de los Manzanos and Paseo de las Jacarandas in Praderas de San Antonio colony. According to the report, the victim was separated from a group of friends who were held at gunpoint, then was shot and killed on the spot.

Both .223 caliber and 9mm weapons were used in the shooting.

Lastly, in Zapotlanejo municipality an unidentified man was found shot to death in Los Altos de Jalisco colony near the intersection of calles Abasolo and Independencia.

Jalisco state and its border with Michoacan was the main location in Mexico that the interior ministry said would be reinforced with additional Policia Federal troops in the wake of a large uptick in shootings and gang violence.

Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com
Posted by: badanov || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336089 views] Top|| File under:


Afghanistan
Afghan President Karzai promises will step down in 2014
[Dawn] Afghanistan's President Hamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai
... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtun face on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use...
said Friday that he would stand down at the end of his second term in 2014 and allow a successor to be freely elected.

"The greatest of my achievements eventually, seen by the Afghan people, will be a proper, well-organized, interference-free election in which the Afghan people can elect their next president," he said.

"And certainly I will be a retired president, and very happily a retired president," he vowed, in response to a question about the 2014 vote at a joint White House presser with US President Barack Obama
How's it going, Sunshine?...
Karzai was elected in 2004 and re-elected in 2009, in two votes marred by allegations of widespread electoral fraud and held against the backdrop of an ongoing war between NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all....
-backed government forces and Taliban guerrillas.

Both the leaders agreed that American forces would hand the lead in the fight against the Taliban to Afghan forces in the next few months.

"Starting this spring, our troops will have a different mission -- training, advising, assisting Afghan forces. It will be a historic moment and another step toward full Afghan illusory sovereignty," said President B.O..

He said US forces would "still be in harm's way" in Afghanistan after the handover, at least until 2014, but would take a backseat to Afghan forces in offensive operations and the drawdown would come a little quicker than planned.

"Because of the progress that has been made in terms of Afghan cops, their capacity to take the lead, we are able to meet those goals and accelerate them somewhat," Obama said.
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336078 views] Top|| File under: Taliban

#1  And in 2014 Will promise to "Step Down" in 2015.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 01/12/2013 2:09 Comments || Top||

#2  More likely he'll leave feet first sooner than that, since it sounds like we are mostly withdrawing before that.
Posted by: Glenmore || 01/12/2013 8:20 Comments || Top||

#3  Most likely he'll be gone before the last ISAF troops are gone.
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 9:04 Comments || Top||

#4  No discussion on the 15th para of the attached (SOF back in Iraq).
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/12/2013 9:19 Comments || Top||


International-UN-NGOs
U.N. Climate Panel Denounces Fresh Data Leaks
[An Nahar] The U.N.'s climate science panel bemoaned Wednesday a fresh leak of data from a landmark report on global warming that it will start releasing this year.

"Clearly, it is regrettable, all the leaked material is in draft form, internal working documents," Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice president of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told Agence La Belle France Presse.

This is the second leak in as many months from the panel's work to update its ground-breaking 2007 climate change report.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336084 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Filthy, stinking, beautiful theories' destroying facts!
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 01/12/2013 3:16 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
Eleven shot dead across Karachi
[Dawn] Eleven people were killed in separate incidents of firing, including an attack at a compound that left nearly half a dozen people dead and a couple of others maimed, across the city on Thursday, police said.

Armed with AK-47 rifles, six men arrived on two cycle of violences at a compound in Quetta Town, off the Superhighway, officials at the Sohrab Goth cop shoppe said.

They opened fire on the people present inside the compound, mostly labourers, and sped away, said Sindh police front man SSP Imran Shaukat.

The maimed were rushed to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital where five of them, identified as Mohammadullah, Usmanwali, Ajab Khan, Fareedullah and Zahir Shah, were pronounced dead, while two others, Saeed and Javed, were admitted for treatment, the officer said.

The police said that all the victims hailed from Mohmand Agency
... Named for the Mohmand clan of the Sarban Pahstuns, a truculent, quarrelsome lot. In Pakistain, the Mohmands infest their eponymous Agency, metastasizing as far as the plains of Peshawar, Charsadda, and Mardan. Mohmands are also scattered throughout Pakistan in urban areas including Karachi, Lahore, and Quetta. In Afghanistan they are mainly found in Nangarhar and Kunar...

The police Sherlocks said they were not yet sure about the exact motive for the attack though tribal enmity could be a cause.

Two killed in North Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...

Two men were rubbed out at the office of a non-governmental organization in North Bloody Karachi on Thursday night, police said.

Armed men stormed into the office of Pukar, an NGO being run by Mohammad Ashraf said to be associated with the Pakistain People's Party, situated within the remit of the Sir Syed cop shoppe, said SP of North Nazimabad Syed Salman Hussain.

They fired at Abdul Ghani, a cook, and Mohammad Naeem, a worker, and fled, the SP said, adding that a watchman outside the office identified one of the suspects as a drug peddler.

"The attack was not carried out on political grounds," the officer said.

The police later shifted the bodies to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital for medico-legal formalities.

Court steno killed

A court official belonging to the Tableeghi Jamaat was bumped off in Saddar on Thursday, police said.

They added that Bashir Nazir, 45, a stenographer at a sessions court, was targeted by gunnies riding a cycle of violence near Lucky Star within the remit of the Preedy cop shoppe.

The shooting caused panic at the traffic intersection as people ran for cover, while the attackers sped away.

The police reached the crime-scene and shifted the body to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre for a post-mortem examination.

Resident of Lines Area, the victim was father of four, the police said.

Protesting the killing of their colleague, court staff observed a pen-down strike suspending the legal proceedings. Undertrial prisoners brought to the city courts lockup were sent back without being produced in court.

Young man rubbed out

A young man was killed near Water Pump in F.B Area within the remit of the Gulberg cop shoppe, officials said.

They added that Mohammad Azhar was passing through the area on his motorbike when he was bumped off in a drive-by shooting. The body was later taken to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital for medico-legal formalities, the police said.

Man killed in Nazimabad

In Nazimabad No 2, a man was killed in a gun attack on his car within the remit of the Gulbahar cop shoppe.

The victim, identified as Khurram Shamsi, was rushed to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
He's dead, Jim!
on arrival.

Man found rubbed out

The body of an unidentified man stuffed in a gunny bag was found from the old city area on Thursday night, police said.

They added that the gunny bag was spotted near the ICI Bridge.

The police shifted the body to the Civil Hospital Bloody Karachi for medico-legal formalities. Hospital sources said that the victim had been shot in the head.

Bomb found

An bomb resembling a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG-6) spotted in Rabia City, Gulistan-e-Jauhar, on Thursday was safely defused and shifted from the residential area, officials said.

The police believed that it had been used during a recent clash between two rival groups in the same compound but it did not explode.

The officials said that the bomb was spotted in Phase 5-D of Rabia City by area people who subsequently informed the police. Finally, a team of the bomb disposal unit reached the spot and defused it.
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336084 views] Top|| File under:


Collective failure
[Dawn] WAKE-UP calls are rare in a country as violent as Pakistain. But as desensitised to bloodshed as we have become, a single day in which well over 100 people die in several incidents of terrorism and assassination across the country is impossible to get through without thinking about where we are headed as a nation. Thursday laid out, in gory detail, the realities that we collectively face today: the range of communities under threat, including Shias, security forces and the police, journalists, religious organizations, Fata's rustics, and those simply caught in the crossfire. How widespread the threat is, from Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
to Quetta to Swat
...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat...
in a single day. How many causes are being fought for with violence, from sectarian hatred and religious differences to separatism and ethnic or tribal feuds. And, most importantly, how underprepared we remain despite many unfortunate incidents to learn from.

Thursday's events pointed both to how much we know and to how much we don't. The motive and actors behind the Swat attack on the Tableeghi Jamaat and the shooting to death in Bloody Karachi of a number of labourers from the tribal areas remain unclear, demonstrating how varied the threats are. But the kabooms against Hazara Shias in Quetta were simply the deadliest of a string of attacks on the community in and around the city over the past year. And consecutive kabooms have taken place before, with those rushing to the scene, including media persons, having been caught in previous incidents of second kabooms closely following a first at the same place. Swat still contains a heavy military and police presence that has been there since the 2009 operation. Baloch grievances have been lingering for years and attacks by Baloch nationalists on the Frontier Corps are old news. So while some threats are new and unexplained, others have by now developed a pattern, stem from a known problem or take place in areas that are heavily guarded.

Thursday's events were enabled, then, by massive failures on the part a range of institutions, from the government and the media to the military, the police and intelligence agencies. No bold political solutions for Balochistan
...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it...
have been worked out. No decisive military action has been launched in North Wazoo. Intelligence gathering is inadequate and poor coordination between intelligence agencies and the police means attacks are rarely prevented. No sustained national consensus has been built against terrorism and violent extremism, for which the media is also to blame. How long can Pakistain survive in the face of such a complete failure to fend off internal threats?
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336077 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Pakistan

#1  They;re Killing each other?
More powe to them, soon they'll be extinct.
And Islam as well.
Goodbye, don't let the door hit you in the Quran on the way out.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 01/12/2013 1:41 Comments || Top||

#2  Faster, please!
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 01/12/2013 4:33 Comments || Top||


Kashmir violence could turn "ugly": Hafiz Saeed
"Nice state ya got there. Be a shame if somethin' happened to it."
[Dawn] Jamaat-ud-Dawa
...the front organization of Lashkar-e-Taiba...
chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed
...who would be wearing a canvas jacket with very long sleeves anyplace but Pakistain...
, accused of criminal masterminding the 2008 Mumbai massacre, on Friday said India was trying to destabilise Pakistain and predicted violence in the disputed region of Kashmire could get "ugly".
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336075 views] Top|| File under: Lashkar e-Taiba

#1  It's beautiful now?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 01/12/2013 2:56 Comments || Top||

#2  Depends on Hafiz Muhammad Saeed's vision now, eh?
Posted by: Pappy || 01/12/2013 12:22 Comments || Top||


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Syrian rebels seize key airbase, activists say
[TIMESOFINDIA.INDIATIMES] Syrian rebels and Islamic forces of Evil overran a major military airbase in the north on Friday and, buoyed by the victory, intensified their offensive on two other bases in their most aggressive campaign yet to erode the air supremacy on which the regime of Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad
Lord of the Baath...
has increasingly relied the past year.

The rebels control the ground in large parts of the north, but they have been unable to solidify their grip because they -- and civilians in rebel-held regions -- come under withering strikes from aircraft stationed at a number of military bases in the area.

The Taftanaz airbase in Idlib province is the largest airbase yet to be captured by the rebels. It is the biggest field in the north for helicopters the military uses both for strikes on rebels and for delivering supplies to government troops still in the north to avoid the danger of rebel attacks on the roads.

Shortly after they captured the Taftanaz field, rebels in the neighboring province of Aleppo intensified their assault on the Mannagh airbase and the international airport of the city of Aleppo, which includes a military base. Rebels have been trying to capture the two sites since last week, along with a third airfield known as Kweires.
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336086 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Syria


Europe
Former Serb cop jailed for 20 years over Srebrenica
Bosnia's war crimes court has jailed a former Serb police officer for twenty years on Friday for his role in the 1995 mass killing of Muslims in Srebrenica.

Bozidar Kuvelja, 41, was found guilty of crimes against humanity but acquited of genocide.

Presiding judge Jasmina Kosovic said, "Kuvelja is convicted of taking part in the persecution and forced removal of Bosniaks from Srebrenica on religious and ethnic grounds and the killing of several dozen detainees at a warehouse in nearby Kravica between July 11 and July 14."

Kosovic said the judicial panel could not conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Kuvelja knew of the genocidal intent of the principal perpetrators of the massacres.

Kuvelja was an officer in the special police brigade of the Jahorina Training Center, part of the Bosnian Serb Interior Ministry. He was charged with helping round up Bosnian Muslim civilians, dividing men from women and transporting detainees to dozens of execution sites, including a warehouse in Kravica.

There, Kosovic said, "members of Kuvelja's brigade fired from automatic weapons and threw hand grenades into the packed warehouse."

Around 100 who at first survived the assault were lured out for medical treatment, only to be fired upon again by Kuvelja's brigade while forced to sing nationalist Serbian songs, said the judge.
Posted by: ryuge || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336075 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Kuvelja is convicted of taking part in the persecution and forced removal of Bosniaks from Srebrenica on religious and ethnic grounds

Good for him.
Less Muslims, mpre peace.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 01/12/2013 15:03 Comments || Top||


Government
USN: Uniforms "will burn robustly"
Navy working uniforms are extremely flammable and will melt in a fire, putting sailors at risk, the Navy announced Wednesday.

The nylon-and-cotton (referred to as NYCO) uniforms worn by sailors on ships and at bases "will burn robustly," and turn into a "sticky molten material," according to a test conducted in October by the Navy Clothing and Textile Research Facility.

"If this sticky molten material came in contact with skin it would contribute to increased burn injury due to conductive energy transfer," the report concluded. "The use of the NYCO material in an environment where there is potential for a flame or thermal threat is not recommended."

"It will melt and burn to consumption," Rear Adm. John Kirby, chief of information, said in a statement.

There have been no uniform requirement changes made after the finding. Navy officials said they are committed to sailor safety.

"Where there is a need, fire retardant/flame resistant clothing is provided," Kirby said.

Sailors on ships are regularly exposed to the threat of fire, especially those working with or near planes or engines. The Navy removed its requirement that all uniforms be flame-resistant in 1996.
Posted by: Pappy || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336094 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ...I've been out of the regular navy for 32 years now, and the only thing that hasn't changed about the service in that time is that (1) the Navy Uniform Board has way too much time on its hands and (2) spends way too much money justifying its ongoing existence. The last time I went through 32nd Street NAVSTA firefighting school as a weekend warrior back in 1989, the main classroom had a pair of double-knit poly Khaki trousers pinned to the bulletin board. They had literally been melted from the knees to the ankles, in a demonstration of why polyester didn't belong aboard a ship
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) || 01/12/2013 0:22 Comments || Top||

#2  Shouldn't be a problem as long as they don't go into combat, and aren't around the usual fires and industrial accidents you have working around machinery. Yeah, put me down in the WTF? column.
Posted by: SteveS || 01/12/2013 1:16 Comments || Top||

#3  Sailors on ships are regularly exposed to the threat of fire, especially those working with or near planes or engines. The Navy removed its requirement that all uniforms be flame-resistant in 1996.

You also have fires in the laundry rooms, paint lockers, etc. And that's just on a normal day. Never mind combat.

I can't believe that they dropped the requirement that all uniforms are fire-retardant. The Navy uniform board should be required to wear any uniforms they come up with on a ship.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia || 01/12/2013 1:21 Comments || Top||

#4  In 1969 we wore Wool, and cotton, NOT burnable easily.
Posted by: Redneck Jim || 01/12/2013 1:58 Comments || Top||

#5  2 major flight deck and hangar fires during my time, and the cotton based clothing worked just fine. agree with earlier post about the uniform board justifying its existence, that and lining the pockets of the Navy Exchange.
latest goof; the pixelated cammies, or whatever they're called; looks to me like a keep up with the army and air force syndrome. seriously, so the pixels work to hide people; so the bad guys will look at a boat and see nobody on it. really?
Posted by: USN,Ret. || 01/12/2013 3:33 Comments || Top||

#6  "Purple suit syndrome" USN, Ret.
Posted by: Pappy || 01/12/2013 12:50 Comments || Top||

#7  NYCO also know as BYON (Bring your own Napalm ....to the party)
Posted by: Alaska Paul || 01/12/2013 15:14 Comments || Top||

#8  Agree wid #1 - IMO the USN is looking for a PCorrect excuse to begin prepping the future Fleet wid GWCC = Sun-resisting materials + lubes.

lEST WE FERGIT, SOLAR/SUN-RESISTANCE = 'TIS BUT ONE FORM OF "HEAT-RESISTANCE".

The Navy got the Super-AEGIS, got the Stealth Techs, got CVN 21, etc. but OOOOOOOPPPPSSSSS they neglected per the Sun.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 01/12/2013 21:11 Comments || Top||


Europe
Zagreb bomb blast 'not terrorism'
Police have confirmed a man was hurt when a bomb exploded in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, on Friday morning. But the police ruled out the possibility of terrorist attack.
Because the obvious couldn't possibly be true.
Goran Burusic, the leader of Zagreb's police bureau, said at a press conference, a 54-year-old man was slightly wounded in the blast. Burusic said, "In this case, we believe that it is not about terrorism."
"Just because."
A similar explosion occured on early Wednesaday morning on the railway nearby the Podsused railway station. No one was hurt but tracks and a cargo train engine were damaged and windows of nearby buildings were broken.
Posted by: ryuge || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336087 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Not terrorism. Junior just got a bomb-making kit for Christmas and was out playing with it.
Posted by: Glenmore || 01/12/2013 8:14 Comments || Top||


-Lurid Crime Tales-
Police errors left Jimmy Savile free to 'groom the nation'
[GUARDIAN.CO.UK] A litany of failings by police and prosecutors meant the one chance to bring Jimmy Savile to justice while he was alive was lost, the director of public prosecution has admitted as he promised to reinvestigate thousands of sexual assault cases where victims felt they were not believed.

Three official reports on Friday revealed for the first time the damning details of how the authorities just three years ago failed to build a case against the BBC celebrity, who sexually assaulted children and young people across six decades and used the power of his celebrity to "groom the nation".

The BBC, hospitals, schools, the police and prosecutors all let down the hundreds of victims, aged as young as eight, allowing the predatory paedophile to continue abusing "in plain sight" throughout his lifetime. Police across the country including the Metropolitan police, Surrey, Sussex and Savile's home force, West Yorkshire, failed to share information, in some cases failed to record allegations against him and in other cases even warned victims off.

When Savile was finally interviewed by detectives in 2009 the encounter was "perfunctory" and he was allowed to control the proceedings, a review by Surrey police found.

Apologising to the victims, Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, said victims of any sexual abuse, no matter how historic, who felt their complaints were mishandled should come forward, and promised a review of such cases. Panels will be set up across the country by police and prosecutors to re-examine cases. This had to be a "watershed moment" in the way complaints from victims of sexual assault are handled, he said, adding that victims had to be believed.
Posted by: Fred || 01/12/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [336099 views] Top|| File under:

#1  He appeared in a non-canon Doctor Who short during the Colin Baker years, along side a kid who wanted to appear on Doctor Who. The Doctor and Tegan call Savile "monstrous" and "revolting". The Doctor knew something, perhaps?
Posted by: Korora || 01/12/2013 12:01 Comments || Top||

#2  Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, said victims of any sexual abuse, no matter how historic, who felt their complaints were mishandled should come forward, and promised a review of such cases.

Couldn't do it while Jimmy was alive. The dead don't talk, and more importantly, can't be stoolies.
Posted by: Pappy || 01/12/2013 12:42 Comments || Top||

#3  >The Doctor knew something, perhaps?

EVERYONE knew something. Nothing was done. Protected by the establishment?

quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 01/12/2013 16:19 Comments || Top||

#4  Breitbart reports:

Late BBC TV and radio star Jimmy Savile is accused of physically abusing hundreds of children--the youngest of whom was just 8--as well as many young adults whom he met through his high profile charity work at various children's hospitals throughout England.

Savile's crimes began in Manchester in 1955, peaked in the late 70's and early 80's, and continued at a lower pace all the way until at least 2009, two years before his death at 85.

The police report concludes that Savile committed 214 criminal offenses including 34 rapes or other serious sexual assaults across England. 450 people have come forward with information about Savile's crimes
Posted by: trailing wife || 01/12/2013 16:26 Comments || Top||

#5  There must be some of the enablers who were sufficiently involved to be guilty of breaking a law. Public trial--lots of ink--and max sentence. The others, public shaming until they kill themselves.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey || 01/12/2013 19:45 Comments || Top||

#6  Oh, yeah. Don't forget law enforcement. Cops, prosecutors, etc.
Hang them.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey || 01/12/2013 19:46 Comments || Top||



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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.
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Two weeks of WOT
Sat 2013-01-12
  French commandos attack al-Shabab base, explosions, gunfire heard
Fri 2013-01-11
  France confirms Mali intervention
Thu 2013-01-10
  Taliban suspects arrested over Karachi polio killings
Wed 2013-01-09
  Indonesia Foils Terror Plot on Tourist Spots
Tue 2013-01-08
  US drone attack kills four in North Waziristan
Mon 2013-01-07
  Syria Opposition Rejects Assad's Reconciliation Plan
Sun 2013-01-06
  Dronezap in South Wazoo send 18 TTP Jihadis to their rewards
Sat 2013-01-05
  Syria jets, troops wage offensive on rebels near capital
Fri 2013-01-04
  New U.S. Drone Strike Kills Three Qaida Suspects in Yemen
Thu 2013-01-03
  Iran to Citizens: Flee Isfahan
Wed 2013-01-02
  Fourteen Killed as Nigerian Troops Clash with Islamists
Tue 2013-01-01
  Pakistan: Six charity workers shot dead
Mon 2012-12-31
  Qaeda in Yemen offers bounty for killing US ambassador, troops
Sun 2012-12-30
  Pakistan reports 21 tribal policemen kidnapped, found dead
Sat 2012-12-29
  At Least 15 Killed in Sect Attack in North Nigeria

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