#3
I think it was Richard Pryor, whose commentary was usually so grim you had to laugh, who noted that about the worst place for a black man to be after dark is on a street "named after Martin."
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
01/21/2013 21:03
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Posted by: Mike Ramsey ||
01/21/2013
15:59 ||
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#1
I'm reminded of Monty Python: "Run away, run away!"
Odd, surrendering their diplomatic mission AND running a Naval exercise.
I wonder if in review we'll find that ALQ/IRN has supplanted the original dissenters.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/21/2013 19:42
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#6
Just the high-priority Russians are being taken out by airplane. There are a lot more who are still waiting to be evacuated - and some who plan to stick around during the "armor blitzkrieg" that Assad is about to dump on his kinsmen.
It must be a bit discouraging to be a "low-priority Russian" ... and be living in an unstable third world country :-)
Where once there was music and dancing, today there is misery and deprivation. When I visited Timbuktu, I was beckoned by an old man into the 14th-century mosque, then shown around the city by a teenage boy. Handing him a tip, he shared it with others. Now this fabled city lies at the heart of the fundamentalist badlands in which uncovered women are whipped, couples stoned to death for adultery and children segregated by sex. There are gruesome tales of suspected thieves having hands sawn off. Villages have been emptied as families flee marauding militia, many from outside the country. Perhaps most incredibly, the music that so defines this country is banned from two-thirds of its territory.
France, which had been trying to marshal a supposedly African-led intervention for months, had no option but to act. Not just because there are 6,000 citizens in its former colony. But because the Islamists were heading south towards the main population areas. They were just one hour away from the second city -- and had that fallen, the entire country could have collapsed into their control. This would be hideous for Mali, disastrous for the region and highly worrying for the West, especially given the number of Malians in France.
In Bamako, there is strong support for the French action; critics who see it as some kind of neo-colonialist invasion appear absurdly ill-informed... Note: Salafist opposition to music is grounded in several hadith in which Mohammud denounces music has musicians killed and/or musical instrument destroyed. Since the Koran calls Mohammud the example for mankind, by this logic, his anti music agenda should be followed by his followers.
Posted by: lord garth ||
01/21/2013
15:49 ||
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Well, if these guys can't connect a bunch of dots on the face of the earth that look like a bad case of Islamic acne, what the fuck are they doing all day long? Having breakfast and lunch, with a dip in the pool inbetween sandwiches? So sorry, I forgot, it's not their arses on the line, (yet). String 'em up.
A comment from a regular that I thought deserved to be a post. AoS.
Posted by: no mo uro
Long response, which I've posted before. Mods, if you don't like, feel free to excise.
The evidence suggests that they do like...
The current fashionable attitude amongst the atheist cultural elite which essentially lumps all devoutly religious people together is the problem, not the answer. The psychiatric term "projection" leaps to mind whenever I hear some atheist or agnostic, or even a member of one of the more exsanguinated and emasculated forms of Christianity or Judaism, attempt to draw parallels between fundamentalist Christians and radical Islam. It is the easy thing to do, and tempting, to conflate the Islamists and the religiously zealous of other faiths, but it will always be inaccurate, since there are major and irreconcilable differences apparent to those who attempt observe these faiths rationally and without bigotry towards religion in general and Christianity in particular.
First, at least in Europe and the U.S., the objections to Christian fundamentalists are almost always based on social, economic, and education industry snobbery, rather than mature, logically thought-out philosophical arguments or dispassionate, accurate assessments of facts on the ground. I am as likely as anyone to prefer attractive, witty, wise, composed sophisticates who are cosmopolitan and informed (and the bulk of devoutly Christian people fit into that category) to angry, fat, envious, ignorant, doctrinaire people (and it should be obvious that plenty of atheists that fit that description). Nevertheless, devout Christians (like devout Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, etc.) are not, despite a few silly forays into educational policy that are basically defensive in nature, and despite a few extremely isolated, statistically insignificant crackpots, a threat to the beliefs or values of anyone outside of their communities, nor to anyone's life or limb. Even their most proselytizing groups are not prone to using widespread organized force to spread or maintain their doctrines, and have not been so to any meaningful extent for centuries.
Second, the essential nature of Islam as a faith is different than that of other religions. The extreme austerity and abstraction of Islam, combined with the arbitrary justifications for otherwise immoral conduct brought about by what is an attempt to duplicate precisely the personality and life of Mohammed, create a contradiction that is unique among religions, and makes for a much more dangerous set of conditions than those produced in any other faith groups including and especially Christianity.
Among world religions, only Islam has such a high percentage of members who are aggressively, outwardly directed in their willingness to expand by the use of violence and oppression -- not as last means, but as a core tactic -- and are dominated by the need to seek out and, as matter not just of practice but of organizing principle, destroy all evidence of nonconformity. In truth, the nature of Islam, with its arbitrary, merciless, and impersonal god, resembles, ironically, a kind of formalized atheism more than anything else. Like atheism it is intolerant, condescending, devoid of humility, and often militant (see atheism in the USSR or Red China or North Korea). Like atheism, Islam is a preening, conceited, self-superior, pseudointellectual 'ethical culture' combined with a set of what are, in practice, unethical moral precepts -- and like atheism, these memes cannot be unbundled.
Much as there has never been or can be a truly free, democratic, and benevolent atheist nation, so too has there never been a truly benevolent Islamist one, and I suspect there never will be. A dispassionate look at the facts reveals that Islam, especially (but not only) radical Islam, is more like atheism than it is, despite its pretensions, like a religion. Most Muslims refuse to deal with this truth. Conversely, atheists demonize Christianity in an attempt to deal with their own inability to honestly resolve any cognitive dissonance created by their own philosophical similarities to Islam. This is the ultimate reason for projection by atheists in their attempts to draw an unfounded confluence between Muslim extremists and Christianity -- instead of seeing the log in their own eye. This is also why trying to draw a link between radical Islam and fundamentalist Christians is not the answer.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/21/2013
13:59 ||
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The Christian fundamentalism is based entirely on scripture, which foretells events (prophecy), many of which have come to pass as signs of a God that trully exists that is the center of the religion.
There is not one prophecy in Islam that has come to pass, only belief in "Alah" by brute, militant force.
French prosecutors have filed preliminary murder and terrorism charges against a Turkish citizen who worked as a driver for one of three Kurdish activists who were gunned down this month in Paris, an official said Monday.
The suspect, identified as 30-year-old Omer Guney, drove for the most prominent victim, a woman who helped found the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, a rebel group seeking autonomy for Turkey's Kurds. Guney has told investigators he has been a member of the PKK for two years, Prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters.
There is "serious and corroborating evidence" to show that Guney had a role in the Jan. 9 killings, Molins said.
Guney is now being detained while prosecutors decide if there is sufficient evidence to upgrade the preliminary charges of murder in connection with a terrorist operation and conspiracy to commit murder in connection with a terrorism operation to formal charges. If evidence does not support those suspicions, the charges will be dropped.
I ran across this article in the Economist which answered a question that had been nagging me; why are cell phones banned on airplanes during flight?
The usual reason given is that the transmitters might interfere with the aircraft's avionics. "Both Airbus and Boeing have bombarded their aircraft with electromagnetic radiation at frequencies and power levels used by mobile phones, only to come away empty handed." There goes my plan to use my cell phone as a last ditch weapon against hijackers.
The real reason? Cell phone towers.
Cell phone networks assume that, at any given moment, a mobile phone is within range of only one or two nearby towers. Each tower uses a set of channels different from those allocated to the towers closest to it, but the same as other towers further away. This allows each channel to be reused to carry calls from multiple users.
But a cell phone operating in an aircraft flying overhead might be within reach of any number of towers using the same channels. Compounding this is that an airborne phone would be moving too fast across the sky for the ground-based network to respond.
This would wreck havoc on a mobile network.
Who knew?
Posted by: Mike Ramsey ||
01/21/2013
12:42 ||
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The Islamist militants who attacked a natural gas plant in the Sahara wore Algerian army uniforms, memorized the layout of the vast complex and included two Canadians and a team of explosives experts ready to blow the place sky-high, Algerias prime minister said Monday.
The operation also appeared to have help from the inside a former driver at the plant, he said.
Algeria offered a grim toll in the attack, saying that 38 hostages and 29 militants died in four days of mayhem. The dead hostages included seven Japanese workers and three energy workers each from the U.S. and Britain.
Three of the attackers were captured and five foreign workers remain unaccounted for, the prime minister told reporters at a news conference in Algiers, the capital.
Mondays account offered the first Algerian government narrative of the four-day standoff, from the moment of the attempted bus hijacking to the moment when the attackers began to prepare to explode bombs across the massive gas plant that sprawled over 5 square kilometers ( 2 square miles).
Following up on Red October the large-scale cyber-espionage infestation reported by Kaspersky
malware, The H Security says that the command and control systems behind the apparently five-year-old digital spying ring has began closing down.
The campaign was not limited to laptops and desktops, but also stole data from mobile phones connected to those computers, with special tools for iPhones and Nokia smartphones.
The dark genii
didn't only rely on a typical backdoor program, but also made use of an unusual arsenal, including plugins for Adobe's Acrobat Reader and Microsoft Office that anti-virus programs rarely detected. The plugins waited for the document to be opened and then decrypted and executed the malicious code.
Posted by: Mike Ramsey ||
01/21/2013
11:24 ||
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#1
According to Strategy Page, Kaspersky called the malware Red October because it appeared to be written by Russians. Kaspersky has close ties to the Russian government so this would tend to discount Russian intelligence service involvement.
Perhaps it was a criminal organization selling stolen secrets to the highest bidder.
Posted by: Mike Ramsey ||
01/21/2013 12:18
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SPECTRE lives -- Go after George Soros Ernst Stavro Blofeld, immediately!
#3
Why in the world is this man (Soros)allowed to do what he does? I can only think wealth and power which very in very few instances equates to a fulfillment of a missing male appendage.
[BDNEWS24] Voices demanding execution of the death sentence awarded to former Jamaat-e-Islami ...The Islamic Society, founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka The Great Apostosizer. The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an independent branch there since 1975. It maintains close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores... activist Abul Kalam Azad alias Bachchu Razakar rent the air as jubilant crowds hit the streets on hearing about the ICT verdict that numbered the day of a dreaded war criminal.
News of jubilation also poured in from various parts of the country as the families suffering during the Independence War of 1971 celebrated the long-awaited day. They also demanded that the runaway convicted war criminal be brought back and executed at the earliest.
The second International Crimes Tribunal on Monday ordered that Abul Kalam Azad be hanged until death for committing crimes against humanity in 1971.
Hailing from Borokhardia village of Nagarkanda upazila in Faridpur, Azad is locally known as Bachchu Razakar for his war-time role, and the court found him guilty on seven counts.
He lead the Pakistain occupation Army's collaborative force Razakar Bahini in unleashing a reign of terror at Nagarkanda and Salkha upazilas in the district to thwart the Independence War.
The court said it was proved beyond doubt that Bachchu had killed Chittaranjan Das, a man belonging to Hindu minority community, of Fulbaria during the war.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/21/2013
10:44 ||
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[EURONEWS] Syrian opposition leaders said on Monday they had failed to agree on a transitional government to run rebel-held areas, dealing a fresh blow to their efforts to present a credible alternative to Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Terror of Aleppo ... 's rule.
The Syrian National Coalition (SNC) said in a statement that a five-member committee would put forward proposals on forming a government within 10 days, after talks in an Istanbul hotel broke up without agreement on an interim prime minister.
Formation of a government is seen as a threat to some members of the SNC, especially the Moslem Brüderbund, which would lose influence if a smaller executive body were elected.
The Istanbul talks, the opposition's second bid to form a government, have only highlighted divisions in the coalition and risk undermining support for the umbrella grouping, formed two months ago in Qatar with Western and Gulf backing.
Power struggles within the 70-member coalition have undermined efforts to agree on a transitional government, even as Syria slides further into sectarian conflict between the Sunni Mohammedan majority and Assad's minority Alawite sect.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/21/2013
10:41 ||
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#1
Can't whistle-denture mcshame, jimmauh peanut farmah and jawn magic hat Kerry help?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/21/2013 11:06
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[REUTERS] A group of Eritrean ...is run by the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), with about the amounts of democracy and justice you'd expect from a party with that name. National elections have been periodically scheduled and cancelled; none have ever been held in the country. The president, Isaias Afewerki, has been in office since independence in 1993 and will probably die there of old age. ... soldiers laid siege to the information ministry on Monday and forced state media to announce a call for the release of political prisoners, a senior intelligence official said.
There was no immediate indication it was an attempt to overthrow the government of Eritrea, which has been led by Isaias Afewerki, 66, for some two decades since it broke away from bigger neighbor Æthiopia.
The renegade soldiers forced the director of state television ... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
to make an announcement, the Eritrean intelligence official said.
"The soldiers have forced him to speak on state TV, to say the Eritrean government should release all political prisoners," the source told Rooters on condition of anonymity.
There was no immediate official comment.
The United Nations ...aka the Oyster Bay Chowder and Marching Society... last year estimated that 5,000-10,000 political prisoners were being held in the secretive Horn of Africa country, which is accused by human rights ...which often include carefully measured allowances of freedom at the convenience of the state... groups of carrying out torture and summary executions.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/21/2013
10:40 ||
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Who are the unhinged to make judgements about who lies out on the fringe? This guy has been looking in the mirror too much.
The NRA is composed of citizens both men and women, voters, Schumer's constituents, military personnel who have served our country, governors, Congressmen and women, police officers, disabled shooters as well as world-class competitive shooters, hunters, people who support the firearms industry. So where does Chuckie get off being so arrogant.
#3
So, it's OK to screw with the facts to get your point across.
NO?
Well Ummm, we'll do it anyway, we won't get caught, if anybody complains, we'll just SCREAM "CHILD KILLER".
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
01/21/2013 11:59
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#4
What do you suppose the number of pro-2nd people is who, for whatever reason, are like minded but not official NRA members. They must know that if somebody is going to eff with an open, safe, responsible neighbor they will eff with anyone.
No, it is the Entertainment Industry which promotes guns as entertainment, most often in a completely irresponsible and unrealistic way. Bobby c said it was too much John Wayne and Howdy Doody or something, saying he was quoting the opinionist who shall not be named following the Belcher murder/sui. That guy was talking the city gangsta culture; so any opinions of how the gangsta' rap & video culture handles its relationship with guns? Hollywood at least sets up a scenario where a gun is involved, howz about the performance artists who name themselves after guns and talk about murdering people for walking down the wrong street. Sounds pretty fringe to me.
Oh, and I must have missed bobby c's halftime opinion about the Pat's Talib. Look it up, he was arrested for brandishing and threatening to use a handgun on his sister's boyfriend. How is that different than Belcher other than not being piss drunk and stoned enough to pull the trigger? (Belcher toxicology was BAL .17 at time of death, nevermind what it had peaked at, also missing from the report was the statement "and no other narcotics", telling me he was likely sniffing something too. But the NRA, theyz dangerous).
Some people can smell afternoon tornadoes early in the morning. They did their shopping the second week of November. What this recent activity is, are the people who still had the nah they wouldn't..until bobby c telegraphed the punch. Democrats didn't have a problem with the fringe occupy groups, if fact I would like to know the connection of that Denver bunghole to the Occupy Denver dopers.
Think about this. At nearly a moments notice all these purchases ran inventory out. That is quite a bit of money there. You know what that means, that means those people had to have money available - they are the productive members of this society as well.
#5
Because Bostonians were shot down in the streets, farmers with toe to toe with the two most professional armies of the day, lost toes at Valley Forge, and stormed Yorktown to preserve their right to squirrel hunting, right Mr Shumer? We know your opinion about the 2nd being obsolete, pehaps we could also hear your opinion about how when the 1st was written there is no way the founding fathers could predict mp3 and 3-d surround sound movies? Anything else need tossed out, perhaps search and seizure?
#10
What was one of the first things Mugabe did in Zimbabwe?
Disarm the farmers and general populace. And, no, there wern't murders everywhere, the war was over. It just makes a whole load of sense to disarm your opposition and then go and kill them...
More than 10 suspected al-Qaida operatives were killed by an explosion in a house in south Yemen where they were making bombs and at least three others died in a drone strike, tribal and official sources said on Sunday.
A bomb ripped through a house in the province of al-Bayda on Saturday night, the state news agency, Saba, and a local official said. Three other suspected militants were killed in a drone strike in the central province of Maarib, also on Saturday, tribal sources and the Ministry of Defence said.
The house that was destroyed in al-Bayda had been used for making bombs, an official from the area told Reuters on Sunday. "We heard a massive explosion that terrified people and when we went to the house it was destroyed and everyone there was dead," the official said.
In Maarib, a pilotless plane carried out two strikes against a car, a witness said.
When will they ever learn?
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Monday that Israel has agreed to allow 150,000 Palestinian refugees from Syria to enter the Palestinian Authority.
He said that the PA filed an official requested to that effect with the Israeli government, citing humanitarian grounds. The statement was made during an interview Abbas gave an unnamed Arab news channel.
The Obama administration is finalising a rule book for target killings but these restrictions will not apply to Pakistan where the CIA will be free to direct drone strikes in Fata.
The classified manual, called a counter-terrorism playbook, sets out stringent rules for targeted killings and details the process of adding names to the so-called kill list.
But it leaves open a major exemption for the CIAs campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan, The Washington Post reported yesterday.
The CIA would have this freedom for less than two years but more than one because its drone strategy had been very effective in weakening pro-Taliban militants, the Post reported.
The CIA is expected to give the US ambassador to Pakistan advance notice on strikes. But in practice, the agency exercises near complete control over the names on its target list and decisions on strikes.
But once the CIA achieved its targets in Fata, the rule book would also be applied to Pakistan, the Post reported.
A South African court found suspected Niger Delta militant leader Henry Okah guilty of terrorism on Monday for his role in two car bombs that killed at least 10 people in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, at an independence day ceremony in 2010.
Judge Neels Claassen said Okah, who was charged with leading the militant MEND group in Nigeria's oil-producing Niger Delta region, was found guilty on 13 counts ranging from conspiracy to commit terrorism to detonating explosives.
Claassen told the court, "The evidence that was given by his accomplices was not contradicted."
MEND, or the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, carried out a number of attacks on oilfields and pipelines across the region, which is home to Africa's biggest oil and gas industry, until a government amnesty in 2009.
Security experts think Okah - who accepted the 2009 amnesty after gun-running and treason charges against him were dropped - was at one time the mastermind behind MEND although he has denied ever being its leader.
The 2010 explosions hit the official celebrations laid on in Abuja for Nigeria's 50th anniversary of independence.
But the trouble is that no one seems to learn the lesson no matter how often its taught. The 9/11 attackers came in the name of Islam to teach Americans what Islam is. The Benghazi attackers came in the in the name of Islam to teach Americans what Islam is. And the lesson is still unlearned.
The four-day hostage crisis in the Sahara reached a bloody conclusion on Saturday as the Algerian Army carried out a final assault on the gas field taken over by Islamist militants, killing most of the remaining kidnappers and raising the total of hostages killed to at least 23, Algerian officials said .
One Algerian who managed to escape told France 24 television late Friday night that the kidnappers said, Weve come in the name of Islam, to teach the Americans what Islam is. The haggard-looking man, interviewed at the airport in Algiers, said the kidnappers then immediately executed five hostages.
And that is exactly what Islam is. Its a bullet to the head of an unarmed man. A murder carried out for the purposes of display. An atrocity whose message is that Islam is a better religion than yours because its followers will kill you. That is what Islam is. That it is all it is. And over a thousand years of terror should have taught that lesson to the free peoples of the world already.
Islam is Daniel Pearl being beheaded. Islam is teenage girls being murdered in Afghanistan, in Jordan and in Toronto. Islam is non-Muslims being murdered because theyre non-Muslim and women being murdered because theyre women. Islam is over a thousand years of terror and tyranny wrapped into one brutal package.
This is Islam. Its lesson is the only one that it is capable of teaching, despite all the Koranic commentary and memorization. Its lesson is the same as that of the bullet or the poison or the Qassam rocket or the knife. Its lesson is death.
#1
Remember how much the Moslems absolutely HATE the Jews because it is an historical fact Moslems fought right alongside the Nazi SS...the Moslems even had their own SS Division ,,the ANSARI Division in the Nazi SS war machine. Moslems fought alongside the Nazi SS, joined and served.
#4
I said it last week and I will say it again, Islam is the only religion in history to be based upon the psychotic ravings and hallucinations of a scheizophrenic mass murderer.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
01/21/2013 10:11
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#5
There's a saying out there - it's not a lesson learned unless its been incorporated into routine behavior. Otherwise, its just a lesson, waiting to be (re)learned.
#6
no matter how many times the Islamists have given this lesson, there are influential Islam apologists who keep up the 'out of context', 'its the fault of the Jews', 'its the poverty', etc. pratter
Posted by: lord garth ||
01/21/2013 13:41
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#7
Shifting or redirecting the focus away from an unhappy event to what they perceive to be root, societal causes, has always been the progressive formula.
#8
I need to take a break from the news. Every one of these stories evokes the Ah go phuech yourselves response in me. It doesn't seem to matter whether it is the islamists, the global warming Nazis or the statists.
#4
Reminds me once again of childhood dreams/visions where the French Foreign Legion + other French elite forces were seemingly setting up defensive combat positions in France, wid the English Channel in their rear + LITTLE TO NO ROYAL NAVY ANYMORE TO SAVE OR BACK THEM UP!
[FALL OF DUBNKRIK/DUNKERQUE here].
As said before, THE GREATEST WEAPON RADICAL ISLAM'S MILTERRS/JIHADIS HAVE AGZ THE JUDEOCHRISTIAN = NON-ISLAMIC WORLD ARE THE [waffling,over-politicized]JUDEOCHRISTIANS THEMSELVES.
Taliban suicide bombers have attacked a government building in Afghanistan sparking a gun fight with police which has lasted more than four hours.
Insurgents launched the attack on the police traffic headquarters before dawn in the Afghan capital, with at least two of the attackers said to have been killed but no civilian casualties as yet reported.
Kabul police officer Mirza Mohammad said at least one insurgent blew himself up at the entrance to the compound and a number of others wearing suicide vests entered the building.
Another police officer said at least three attackers entered the building.
The unnamed officer said a gun battle was taking place inside the three-story building.
Mohammed Zahir, chief of the Kabul Police Investigation Unit, said: 'There are still there are two or three suicide bombers inside the traffic department compound. They are still fighting.'
The number of dead is unconfirmed but explosions could be heard inside the building.
#2
Update 8 killed, 12 wounded in Taliban Kabul attack Up to eight people were killed and 12 others wounded as the headquarters of Afghan traffic police came under attack in capital Kabul on Monday, the Kabul police said.
"Five suicide bombers armed with guns and suicide vests raided the Kabul Traffic Police Headquarters in western Kabul at about 5: 30 a.m. local time Monday," the statement said.
The killed include five attackers and three traffic police officers.
One of the main reasons Western citizens cant see the obvious about Islam is that they have been subjected to an educational system that insists on the moral equivalency of all cultures and religions, just as it had previously insisted on the equivalency of all value systems. So, the initial impulse for writing the book was my realization that the same people who introduced moral chaos into schools and society were now bent on normalizing an alien ideology. Or, to paraphrase Mark Steyn, the people who brought you Heather Has Two Mommies are about to bring you Heather has four mommies and a great big bearded daddy.
#2
...and if southern Thailand is any indication, killing school teachers is right up there at the top of extra curricular activities among the morally equivalent alternate culture. Karma.
#3
Long response, which I've posted before. Mods, if you don't like, feel free to excise.
The current fashionable attitude amongst the atheist cultural elite which essentially lumps all devoutly religious people together is the problem, not the answer.
The psychiatric term projection leaps to mind whenever I hear some atheist or agnostic, or even a member of one of the more exsanguinated and emasculated forms of Christianity or Judaism, attempt to draw parallels between fundamentalist Christians and radical Islam. It is the easy thing to do, and tempting, to conflate the Islamists and the religiously zealous of other faiths, but it will always be inaccurate, since there are major and irreconcilable differences apparent to those who attempt observe these faiths rationally and without bigotry towards religion in general and Christianity in particular.
First, at least in Europe and the U.S., the objections to Christian fundamentalists are almost always based on social, economic, and education industry snobbery, rather than mature, logically thought-out philosophical arguments or dispassionate, accurate assessments of facts on the ground.
I am as likely as anyone to prefer attractive, witty, wise, composed sophisticates who are cosmopolitan and informed (and the bulk of devoutly Christian people fit into that category) to angry, fat, envious, ignorant, doctrinaire people (and it should be obvious that plenty of atheists that fit that description). Nevertheless, devout Christians (like devout Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, etc.) are not, despite a few silly forays into educational policy that are basically defensive in nature, and despite a few extremely isolated, statistically insignificant crackpots, a threat to the beliefs or values of anyone outside of their communities, nor to anyones life or limb. Even their most proselytizing groups are not prone to using widespread organized force to spread or maintain their doctrines, and have not been so to any meaningful extent for centuries.
Second, the essential nature of Islam as a faith is different than that of other religions. The extreme austerity and abstraction of Islam, combined with the arbitrary justifications for otherwise immoral conduct brought about by what is an attempt to duplicate precisely the personality and life of Mohammed, create a contradiction that is unique among religions, and makes for a much more dangerous set of conditions than those produced in any other faith groups including and especially Christianity. Among world religions, only Islam has such a high percentage of members who are aggressively, outwardly directed in their willingness to expand by the use of violence and oppression not as last means, but as a core tactic and are dominated by the need to seek out and, as matter not just of practice but of organizing principle, destroy all evidence of nonconformity.
In truth, the nature of Islam, with its arbitrary, merciless, and impersonal god, resembles, ironically, a kind of formalized atheism more than anything else. Like atheism it is intolerant, condescending, devoid of humility, and often militant (see atheism in the USSR or Red China or North Korea). Like atheism, Islam is a preening, conceited, self-superior, pseudointellectual ethical culture combined with a set of what are, in practice, unethical moral precepts and like atheism, these memes cannot be unbundled. Much as there has never been or can be a truly free, democratic, and benevolent atheist nation, so too has there never been a truly benevolent Islamist one, and I suspect there never will be.
A dispassionate look at the facts reveals that Islam, especially (but not only) radical Islam, is more like atheism than it is, despite its pretensions, like a religion. Most Muslims refuse to deal with this truth. Conversely, atheists demonize Christianity in an attempt to deal with their own inability to honestly resolve any cognitive dissonance created by their own philosophical similarities to Islam. This is the ultimate reason for projection by atheists in their attempts to draw an unfounded confluence between Muslim extremists and Christianity instead of seeing the log in their own eye. This is also why trying to draw a link between radical Islam and fundamentalist Christians is not the answer.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
01/21/2013 11:26
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#4
Well said no mo uro. More to the point, a heathen, hate and revenge focused cult.
#5
It's been long enough between postings that I have no memory of it, no mo uro. This little Midwestern suburban housewife sees no abuse of the forum. ;-)
#6
IIRC DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS [old] > "NO RELIGION" THIRD MOST POPULAR CHOICE BEHIND CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM, BUT JUST AHEAD OF HINDU AND BUDDHISM.
versus
* TOPIX > ISLAMISTS IN AFRICA EMERGE AS THREAT TO THE WEST.
* SAME > OBAMA'S PIVOT TO AFRICA.
* PRAVDA.RU > [UK PM Cameron] WAR IN AFRICA [anti-Terror, Militant] TO LAST FOR DECADES.
Algerian = BP Hostage Crisis shows UK, + by extension the rest of the US-West, is ina "generational struggle" agz Islamic/Islamist-led Terror + Insurgency.
I suspect that when the Jihad finally does begin in the Lower Americas, it will likely begin at roughly a similar time in CONUS-NORAM.
For a map, click here. For a map of Durango state click here. For a map of Coahuila state, click here.
By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com
Mexican naval infantry units as well as Durango state police units in the Durango side of La Laguna region have arrived since Friday, according to Mexican news accounts.
Since last Thursday, when a large part of the municipal police forces of Ciudad Lerdo and Gomez Palacio were detained and sent to the Durango state capital to face investigation -- and in some cases charges -- rumors have abounded on Twitter that Mexican naval infantry units had been dispatched to the region to beef up security.
Last Thursday Mexican Army units, probably from the 10th Military Zone, arrived on the Durango side of La Laguna to disarm local police. Under normal circumstances such an action would be routine, as the Mexican Army is charged with enforcement of the Mexican national Firearms and Explosives Act. It appears to be standard operating procedure for Mexican military zone commanders to disarm police units en mass for weapons checks.
Instead, the local police had apparently been disarmed in anticipation of the mass detention of 158 police agents, including two municipal police chiefs from Ciudad Lerdo and Gomez Palacio, Durango.
According to a report posted on the Animal Politico website, the action left the Durango side of La Laguna with no active local police. Since Friday's mass detentions only 30 police agents have been released.
According to a news report posted on the website of El Diario de Coahuila news daily, fresh reinforcements have arrived since Friday, including Durango state ministerial police and Direccion Estatal de Investigacion (DEI) police agents to help with security in the La Laguna region.
The news report said that checkpoints have been erected in the Durango side of La Laguna and that both levels of security -- Durango state and federal units which include Mexican Army, naval infantry and Policia Federal -- are all involved in security operations in La Laguna.
All the renewed security activity is being coordinated by the Vice Fiscalia, the Mexican equivalent of a district attorney, although the Animal Politico report said the Emergency Telephone number 066 in La Laguna is being answered by the army. The report also characterized the Vice Fiscalia as being paralyzed by the severe increase of crime, especially in armed robberies. The report also claimed the Vice Fiscalia offices are without support staff to carry on their work.
The closing of Centro de Readaptacion Social (CERESO) Number 2 in Gomez Palacio by the Mexican interior ministry last month has presented new challenges now that detainees must be transported to the state capital to face trial and charges.
In the previous iteration of the Seguro Laguna security operation, a Mexican Army commander had the task of coordinating security operations among the three levels of government, but news reports seem to point to a paralyzed legal staff forced to coordinate security in the Durango side of the region.
Last Saturday night, Durango journalist Ruben Cardenas tweeted that the Torreon and Coahuila side of La Laguna had been shut down and that night life on the Coahuila side had all but ended because of security concerns.
A day later there were several reports of gunfights, presumably between criminal gangs that operate in the area.
According to a news article posted on the website of El Siglo de Torreon news daily, gunfire was reported in several colonies in Torreon municipality including ejido Ana and Torreon Jardin and Jacarandas colonies. A Sunday tweet by Ruben Cardenas also reported gunfire in "various zones", as he put it, in Ciudad Lerdo in Durango including on Bulevar Miguel Aleman.
Cardenas also reported on Twitter Saturday that several dead were reported in Anna colony as well as the village of Oribe Peralta in Torreon municipality.
In most of the news reports the idea being put forth is that the Durango side has been enjoying reinforced security, albeit with a civilian staff barely able to handle their new task, but the Coahuila side has been all but abandoned. Little activity by the Coahuila state government has emerged even as gunfights and deaths have been reported on the Coahuila side of La Laguna.
Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com
CAIRO - Riot police fired tear gas on Saturday to disperse dozens of seething demonstrators grimacing fiercelymaking facesrolling their eyes throwing rocks outside an Alexandria courthouse where the citys ex-security director and other officers are on trial for the killing of protesters during Egypts 2011 uprising.
Alexandrias former security director Mohammed Ibrahim is on trial along with five other police officers accused of using excessive violence to put down the 18-day revolt. In Alexandria, as elsewhere in Egypt, thousands of protesters have taken to the streets over the past two years to demand Qisas or retribution for those killed in clashes with security forces.
In fairness, they'll take to the streets to protest most anything...
Relatives of the dead say they have little confidence in the justice system or police investigations.
There's a fair observation...
It is one long chain of corruption, said Ramadan Ahmed, whose 16-year-old son Mohammed was shot dead in clashes outside an Alexandria police station.
Since former president Hosni Mubarak was deposed on February 11, 2011, nearly 100 police officers have been brought to trial on charges of killing and wounding protesters, although all were acquitted or received suspended sentences.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/21/2013
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[Dawn] US President Barack Obama was sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts for a second term in office on Sunday in a brief, intimate private ceremony at the White House.
"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God," Obama said, in the Blue Room of the White House.
Roberts, who stumbled when swearing in Obama to open his first term in 2009, read each line of the oath out loud, before the president repeated it with his right armed raised and his left hand on a family Bible.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/21/2013
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#1
See also DAILY TIMES.PK > OBAMA TAKES OATH AMID NEW THREATS, i.e. strifes at home + abroad, + not having the luster or inspiration of his 2008 campaign.
VERSUS
* FOX NEWS thiS AM > GOP AT LOWEST POINT IN DECADES, MAY BE FORCED TO RE-EVALUATE ITSELF.
OOOOOOO, thats a Purgin', ala Mensheviks-vs-Bolsheviks.
* IIRC SAME > FAILED, DISHONEST AMERICAN LEADERSHIP CLASS SEEN IN COLLAPSE OF POPULAR CELEBRITIES + SPORTS HEROES.
* GUAM PDN > WORLD: [Excessive]DEBT CRISIS THREATENS UNITED STATES.
VERSUS
* DAILY TIMES.PK > CHINA "STRONGLY DISSATISFIED" WID AMERICA'S ISLAND REMARKS, as made by SecState Hillary in support of JAPAN agz CHINA vee on-going Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute.
A friend + I both agree that the Bammer is an Anarchist, albeit he believes Obama is a Purist widout agenda, while I believe that Obama is an Anarchist-for-Globalism/OWG - my friend also believes that, vee a bad US Economy, POTUS Bammer will find a way to declare Martial Law in the USA + stay in power as POTUS for a 3rd Term or more. I nominally agree, but IMO however severe US Econ Probs per se won't be enuff as the Bammer will likely have the significant support of to many PCorrect BETTER-SAFER-TO-BUST-THE-BUDGET/DEBT-CEILING-THAN-NOT-BE-REELECTED GOP-Right on any "QES" or "Stimulus" he attempts to enact. NO NEED FOR MARTIAL LAW IFF THE GOP-DEMS ARE GOING TO ALLOW THE BAMMER TO KEEP BUSTING THE CEILING(S).
A major Nuclear Crisis/Confrontation wid CHINA is the better condition for the Bammer to seemingly declare Martial Law in the US, espec iff China refuses to back down vee either Japan or the US.
TO AVOID A LIMITED OR FULL-SCALE NUCLEAR WAR, CHINA MAY DEMAND IMPORTANT + UNILATERAL TERRITORIAL CONCESSIONS VEE US ALLIES IN EAST ASIA, PERHAPS ALSO VEE THE US ITSELF.
"CONCESSIONS" THAT NEITHER THE AMER PEOPLE OR US OVERSEAS ALLIES WILL LIKE, I.E. LED TO INCREASINGLY ESCALATORY MASS PROTESTS + ARMED DISOBEDIENCE IN MANY US STATES + CITIES + WASHINGTON, + DESPITE THE BAMMER COUNTER-ARGUMENT THAT HE KEPT THE US "OUT OF [Nuclear]WAR"???
A Bammer 3rd term or longer is consistent wid my belief that the Bammer is an Anarchist-for Globalism/OWG, moreso iff none of the GOP-DEM POTUS Candidates come 2016 are themselves NOT Anarchists andor Globies.IMO THE BAMMER WILL NEED THE THIRD TERM OR MORE TO ENSURE THAT THE "NATIONALIST", "SOVEREIGN" USA IS DE FACTO UNDER THE GRIP OF "GLOBALIST", "ANTI-SOVEREIGN" OWG + OWG NAU???
#4
Yes, but the burning question on the morning news is what dress michelle's famous arms will wear. Seriously.
I'll prove it, and add to Besoeker's point. The selection started at twenty dress submissions. Each submission involves a top line designer putting together a design, manufacturing the dress. The dress is then sent to DC because they only work with a mannequin. In DC, michelle and entourage critique each dress, where comment and suggestions are delivered back to the designer with the dress. Changes are made, sent back to DC, where we will wait, anxiously as you are told, for which designer she will wear. The winning pick is expected to be worth $16million in endorsement business.
Add to that cost, the cost of paying people to research that story, put together a TV segment, and present it. That is just the danged ole dress, haven't even gotten to the shoes.
#9
I could hear the Myrlie Evers-Williams invocation from the next room. I began to feel my heart racing and neck veins bulging. At about the 1.7 minute point I could take it no longer and raced to the door. A 2 mile walk and petting the neighbor's dogs settled me down. My BP and pulse quickly returned to normal. I'm alright now; well, as alright for me goes under the current administration.
#11
Today's Denver Postpole had a photo of Michelle (arms covered) holding the family Bible as zero placed his hand on it for the private ceremony in the White House. Didn't that burn his hand?
#12
Has anyone noted the apparent composite look of the "bible" used in the private ceremony? Seen from the top, it appears to have several different color page sections and what might be a second binding, almost as if it was a book-in-a-book. If that were so, does anyone else wonder what that might portend? Curious, if only for the look of the image, and the need to have a private ceremony.
#14
Interesting, NoMore. I blew up the image of the book, and it does indeed look weird - for a Bible or any other book.
As for the ceremony on Sunday, that's because the President has to be sworn in on/by the 20th of January. For some reason (undoubtedly NOT religious*), they didn't want to have the Inaguration on a Sunday, hence the private swearing-in.
*I suspect Bambi wanted to use the symbolism of the MLK holiday - not that he ever experienced discrimination (except the positive kind, since he was given everything all his life).
Posted by: Barbara ||
01/21/2013 14:05
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#15
Daughter brought home a little flyer with his oliness; who is he? what does he do?
#17
There is much more work to do: more chronic unemployed, more food stamps to be delivered, more debt, more spending, more printing, more regulation....
#19
Why did I not hear of this in civics class? Found this earlier this week and no one seems to be aware of this monumental event. Anyone remember learning about the 40's air bombing in Tulsa?
I thought so.
Another point of what's wrong with out gum't education today.
#20
I HEARD he screwed up the Oath, and it had to be renewed, I'd love to hear the screw-up. (Or was it, did he mmis-Quote it deliberately)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
01/21/2013 17:44
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#21
Last term he screwed up the oath and they re-did it privately later. This year I think he just chose to be sworn in twice for the fun of it - once, as mandated by law, on the 20th, then again today for show, as part of the coronation proceedings.
#24
Somehow I don't think the media will go public with a Scandal of that Magnitude. Todays WaPo is more likely to cover up the story than anything else.
Posted by: Charles ||
01/21/2013 20:11
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#25
"in America, anyone can become President. Its one of the risks we take.
#26
Lets just tell it like it is, he is such an arse, nevermind the mooslimb western Christian haters, when I even hear him begin to speak, I understand. An analogy: He is like a Cape Coloured: the Whites, (the West-Christian/sensible people) don't want him, the Blacks, (Muslims) don't want him, he's a fokken goffel. Sonavabeaitch edjit riding a Unicorn.
#30
Heh, double-speak in kaffir. They always used to lie to one when asked how far to the nearest watering hole was, "pa douzi" = "really close" when in actual fact it was katchana-really far away. That was a laugh until we sussed they were lying, and then the war was on, which, thanks to the Dimmocrats in charge forced a political loss lost forever.
Why has this geezer not been done for F&F, let alone the Benghazi debacle, and how did the Hildebeast recover so quickly without a truncheon up her butt?
#31
Soz, B, that sounded like i was saying you were speaking kaffir double-kaffir speak, it isn't so. I peronally value your words most highly on this forum.
#32
See also PRAVDA.RU > WHAT IS EXPECTED OF OBAMA?
* TOPIX > THE ONE SUBSTANTIVE FOREIGN POLICY POINT IN OBAMA'S INAUGURATION SPEECH.
TWASN'T, + what very little there was Amers have heard before from the Bammer or any number of his POTUS predecessors + US Politicos.
* CHINA DAILY > [Daily Bail] US BORROWS US$6.0BILYUHN PER DAY, US$4.0MILYUHN PER MINUTE..
versus
* CHINA DAILY FORUM > CHINA MILITARY HAWKS TAKE THE OFFENSIVE.
RELATED TOPIX > US POSITION ON ISLAND DISPUTE A "BETRAYAL": CHINA.
In China's view, the US is DE FACTO BREAKING ITS VOW OF NEUTRALITY as per SecState Hillary's latest pro-Japan remarks.
* TOPIX > [Fox News Channel] AT START OF SECOND TERM, OBAMA FACES GATHERING STORM ABROAD.
China + Iran + US-World Economy + Debt Burdens + EU breakup? + expanding Jihad.
* SAME > US BUDGET WOES COULD LIMIT OUTREACH TO ASIA, + many places elsewhere in the World.
* DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > [Washington Examiner] UTAH SHERIFFS WARN OBAMA OF DEADLY WAR [local uprising = armed rebellion?] OVER GUNS.
Locally perceived Gun Ownership, Possession Rights ala the US Constitution.
IMO the Mormons are trying hard not to say that their + every American's right to own Guns is how Mormons per se will protect themselves from historical, often violent or bloody ANTI-MORMONISM???
Also read, MORMONS = "BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY" VEE ANTI-MORMONS, "GUNS" = "GOOD FENCES" = "GOOD NEIGHBORS/NEIGHBORHOODS".
* SAME > CHATHAM HOUSE SPEAKER: IRAN WILL MAKE NUKES.
ARTIC = ...
- ISRAEL presently in panic or nervous mode over the broad ME + Iran situation, i.e. anti-Israeli "Arab Springs" + Iran's Nucprogs.
- Obama nominee JOHN KERRY = seens a "soft", while CHUCK HAGEL is deemed as pro-Isolationist???
- ISRAEL BELIEVES THAT OBAMA WILL PREFER A NUCLEAR IRAN AS ACHIEVED THRU DIPLOAMCY + INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION, vee initiation of anti-Nucprog Military Strikes wid dubious or highly uncertain outcomes.
- OBAMA = USA = INCREASINGLY CAUGHT BETWEEN A ROCK + HARD PLACE???
Yuuupp.
* SAME > [The Nation] THE PENTAGON AS GLOBAL NRA.
ARTIC = ...
- POTUS OBAMA seen as HAMSTRUNG WEAKLING domestically, but a SUPERMAN overseas.
- US seemingly endlessly flooding the world wid advanced weaponry while calls increase at home for stronger Gun Control measures
* WORLD NEWS > RICK SANTORUM: IRAN COULD GET A NUCLEAR BOMB IFF CHUCK HAGEL CONFIRMED AS US SECRETARY OF DEFENSE.
MOSCOW -- Russia has prepared the Guantanamo list of U.S. officials who will be denied entry visas, officials in Moscow said Friday, the latest apparent retaliation for a U.S. law imposing sanctions on Russians over the death of an activist lawyer.
The difference, of course, is that few Americans want to go to Russia...
Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the foreign relations committee in the lower house of parliament, said Friday the list as drafted last month initially included 11 U.S. officials involved in running the prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and other sites allegedly used by the U.S. and its allies as secret prisons to hold terrorism suspects. The list was expanded this month to 60 people, he said.
Not a problem, comrades citizens, our banned officials will stay home, and their replacements will communicate with your officials by Skype...
Among U.S. officials added to the list were judges, investigators, justice ministry officials and special services agents who were involved in Russian citizens Viktor Bouts and Konstantin Yaroshenkos legal prosecution and sentencing to long terms of imprisonment, he said.
Sorry Mr. Holder, but that ski vacation to Norilsk is on hold...
Pushkov also said that the list included members of Congress and American citizens allegedly guilty of the maltreatment and death of Russian orphans they adopted, as well as judges who passed wrong rulings on those cases and psychiatrists who asserted that those children had inborn defects and serious development deviations which caused their deaths.
Given the corruption on the Russian side of these adoptions the ban is something that should be welcomed...
The list may be expanded to include other U.S. officials, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told RIA Novosti.
The U.S. measure -- the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, which was signed into law by President Obama last month -- imposed visa restrictions and froze the U.S. bank accounts of Russian officials involved in the death of Magnitsky. The lawyer blew the whistle on a multimillion-dollar tax scam allegedly carried out by Russian officials and police officers. He died in a Moscow prison in 2009 while awaiting trial, allegedly the victim of torture.
Russia already responded to the U.S. law by banning adoption of Russian orphans by American couples as of Jan. 1. In the last two decades, Americans have adopted over 60,000 orphans from Russia. There are still about 600,000 orphans in Russia, more than 120,000 of them eligible for adoption, officials said. Russian families adopt about 7,000 orphans a year.
The corruption in the process has been horrific, and some of the orphans pushed into gullible, foolish and sometimes dishonest American couples have had myriad medical and psychologic problems. The money has been too sweet for Russian orphanage directors and their masters to ignore, so it persists.
The adoption ban triggered protests in Russia. On Sunday, thousands of people walked through downtown Moscow in what they called "The March Against Scoundrels."
They're not protesting their own sons-of-bitches, they're protesting ours...
Moscow was going a bit far in its retaliation against the United States, said Lilia Shevtsova, senior researcher with Moscow Carnegie Center.
The Kremlin publicly admitted in the past that at least some of Russian inmates held in Guantanamo were really involved in terrorism, Shevtsova said in an interview. If they go like this they will soon impose visa restrictions on U.S. officials involved in the liquidation of Osama bin Laden.
Which should be a mark of honor...
Posted by: Steve White ||
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Well if you're not concerned about plight of orphans and comrade Viktor Bout, what kind of Russian are you ?
SANAA - A Yemeni tribunal specialising in terrorism began on Saturday the trial of 21 suspected members of Al Qaeda, including three Jordanians and an Egyptian, accused of attacks against security forces.
The defendants, who appeared in four separate groups, one comprised of the Jordanians and Egyptian, have been charged with belonging to a criminal gang linked to Al Qaeda to carry out attacks against the state police and the army, the indictment read at the hearing said. The accused pleaded not guilty and claimed their confessions were obtained under duress and torture, an AFP correspondent reported.
The next hearing was set for January 26.
On Monday, nine Yemenis accused of complicity in a suicide bombing that killed 86 soldiers in May 2012 and which was claimed by Al Qaeda had appeared in a similar court.
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[An Nahar] Syria's opposition umbrella group met Sunday in a bid to name a prime minister-in-exile, a day after the Damascus ...The capital of Iran's Syrian satrapy... government ruled out any calls for the ouster of Bashir al-Assad.
The diplomatic face-off came as a couple and their three children were killed in regime air strikes on a village in Damascus province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The National Coalition, recognized by many Western and Arab powers as the sole representative of the Syrian people, met in Istanbul to discuss the formation of a government-in-exile and who would eventually head it, an opposition official said.
"A proposal was made to name Riad Hijab but it has run into much criticism," the official told Agence La Belle France Presse on condition of anonymity.
He said talks held behind closed doors would continue into the evening and resume Monday in Istanbul, and that the meeting would also prepare for an opposition forum in Gay Paree on January 28 attended by Friends of Syria nations.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius confirmed the meeting in a radio interview.
Former prime minister Hijab is the highest-ranking official to have defected, crossing the border to Jordan in August and joining the opposition. He has worked closely with Turkish leaders to help restructure the fragmented Syrian opposition.
Subdued and short on charisma, the 46-year-old Sunni Moslem holds a doctorate in agricultural engineering, but owes his steep ascent in Syria's ruling party to his unwavering loyalty to Assad and the ruling Baath Party.
The opposition bloc has called for the establishment of an interim government with full executive powers in rebel-held areas inside Syria.
But Foreign Minister Walid Muallem struck a defiant tone late Saturday telling state television ... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
that those who demand the Assad removal want only bloodshed in the country.
"Nobody can afford to undermine the presidency -- it is unacceptable," Muallem said.
"The U.S. continues to have the president's departure as a condition of regime change, ignoring the fact that the captain of a capsized ship does not jump into the first boat," he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/21/2013
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[Libya Herald] The defence minister, Mohammed Mahmoud Al-Bargati has accused his former deputy of inciting an attempt to kill him during his visit to Tobruk yesterday, Saturday.
Bargtati issued a statement to the Libyan news agency LANA tonight, saying that his recently-removed deputy, Siddiq Al-Ghaith had been behind an attempt to assassinate him, when gunnies opened fire on his vehicle at the Tobruk airbase.
The defence Minister also said that Ghaith's claims to Al-Jazeera ... an Arab news network headquartered in Qatar, notorious for carrying al-Qaeda press releases. The name means the Peninsula, as in the Arabian Peninsula. In recent years it has settled in to become slightly less biased than MSNBC, in about the same category as BBC or CBS... TV, that the shooting had been a "tribal matter", were untrue.
There was much confusion after the incident, with a LANA news hound saying that the minister had not been targeted, but that his security detail had fired warning shots in the air, after a dispute broke out between military units at the airbase.
This was contradicted by the new deputy defence minister, Khalid Sharif, who told AFP: "As the minister prepared to leave the airport by car, his bodyguard shot it out with angry soldiers and ex-rebels, but the minister was not hurt."
Posted by: Fred ||
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Police have killed the leader of an armed group in Russia's North Caucasus republic of Kabardino-Balkaria. The terrorist militant offered armed resistance to police who came to arrest him in Nalchik, and was killed by return fire.
The slain terrorist militant is suspected of having masterminded a series of attacks on local police and officials, the local Interior Ministry said. The gang operated in the eastern Urvansk district.
The Diplomad nails it with regard to how non-Western governments (and a few Western ones like the Russians) view the taking of hostages by terrorists:
The objective of these operations is to kill the hostage-takers, and end the embarrassment and threat they pose to the government. Once the hostages fall into the hands of the crazies, they are written off. The thinking is brutal and simple, "I don't care about the hostages you have. You have no bargaining chip. I am going to kill you."
Posted by: Steve White ||
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#1
The question that must be asked is "Which strategy results in less loss of life in the long run?"
#5
it is a perfectly accurate description of the attitude most of the world has towards hostages and hostage-takers.
Theyre not hostage-takers. This illustrates the folly of calling them bombers sometimes and gunmen at other times. Hell, a couple of months ago you might just as well called em limb loppers. Their motives are clear. Theyre Islamic Terrorists! Every action against them should start and end with that base line.
#6
that's it. They are killers. They start with the Americans and proceed thru the rest of the Christians. Those people were dead the minute they were taken.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/21/2013 19:40
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[An Nahar] Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem has rejected the idea that Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Trampler of Homs... will be ousted, telling state television ... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
that those who demand his removal want only bloodshed in the country.
Muallem said late on Saturday that the United States and Russia were unable to agree on Syria "because they do not agree on what is meant by 'period of transition'."
"The U.S. continues to have the president's departure as a condition of regime change, ignoring the fact that the captain of a capsized ship does not jump into the first boat," Muallem said.
"As long as the Americans and plotters, including Syrians, cling to this condition, it means that they want continued violence and the destruction of Syria."
Muallem said only the Syrian people can decide "through their choice at the ballot box" on Assad's fate, insisting that "nobody can afford to undermine the presidency -- it is unacceptable."
The opposition in Syria has insisted on Assad's departure as a prerequisite for any negotiations to settle the 22-month conflict that has left more than 60,000 people dead, according to United Nations ...boodling on the grand scale... figures.
Muallem also lashed out at 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 for "adopting a position that represents the United States and the Gulf... conspiring against Syria."
His position "is beyond the scope of his mandate and has betrayed his mission as a mediator because a mediator does not put one party against the other."
Brahimi has been heavily criticized by Damascus ...The place where Pencilneck hangs his brass hat... after calling a peace plan outlined by Assad earlier this month "one-sided."
Posted by: Fred ||
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Omar Hammami, who left Alabama to join the Somali bad turban group, has been given Saturday deadline to turn himself in
Debra Hammami is hoping for a miracle to save her son from the al-Qaeda-linked Somali Orcs and similar vermin he left his hometown in Alabama to fight alongside.
"It's in God's hands," she said Friday, on the eve of a deadline set by a ... the personification of Somali state failure...
for their former adherent's surrender or death. The threat comes after a public falling-out between 28-year-old Omar Hammami and the leaders of the terrorist group.
Having already lost her son to cut-thoat ideology, his family back in the town of Daphne, Alabama, may now face the prospect of never seeing him alive again.
Living proof that out there in the world is a terrorist whose mother does love him...
Omar Hammami, whom the FBI has named as one of its most-wanted terrorists, joined al-Shaboobs in Somalia in late 2006. Since then his family in the US have had no direct contact with him.
But they, as well as the American authorities, have been able to track his rise and subsequent falling-out with homegrown hard boyz in the strife-torn African country through his appearance in recruitment videos and his own online outbursts.
The American-born fighter become a major leader in the Islamist group, and is said to have helped organise a deadly 2008 attack which left some 20 people dead in Somalia. Among those who took part in that assault was Shirwa Ahmed, a 26-year-old from Minneapolis, who became the first known American jacket wallah in the process.
By the time of that co-ordinated attack, Omar Hammami was already a rising star in al-Shabaab's ranks. Computer savvy and charismatic, he had helped the terrorist organization recruit other American-born Islamists, it is claimed.
In October 2007, under the nom de guerre Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki (the American) he gave an interview to al-Jazeera in which he implored other Mohammedan Americans to join him in Somalia.
But his high profile seems to have led to a rift with other Somali fighters, especially after he used his online presence to air grievances against other al-Shabaab members.
Big mistake. You're still a foreigner, didn't you know that?
In a series of online videos and Twitter postings from an account purportedly owned by Omar Hammami, he has accused the Islamist group's leaders of corruption, murder and ignoring global jihad in favour of internal Somali struggles. He also attacks them for living a lavish lifestyle at the expense of other fighters.
"War booty is eaten by the top dogs, but the guys who won it are incarcerated Keep yer hands where we can see 'em, if yez please! for touching it. A gun, bullets, some beans is their lot," read one tweet from the abumamerican account, thought to be updated by Omar Hammami or one of his associates.
That'll get a fellow in trouble whether he's in Mogadishu or in Moscow...
He has also accused al-Shabaab leaders of operating assassins to kill fellow fighters within the group.
Many of his grievances were aired in an online video he posted in March, during which he expressed fears for his life.
He was publicly slapped down by al-Shabaab in a statement released last month, in which the Islamist group accused him of a "narcissistic pursuit of fame". It added that they were morally obligated to put out his "obstinacy".
The spat has culminated in an apparent demand that Omar Hammami surrender to his former comrades, or be killed.
"Shabaab make off announcement in front of amriki: drop ur weapon b4 15 days or be killed. Its on," a post on his apparent Twitter feed read on 4 January. That deadline will pass on Saturday.
Watching on in anguish from some 8,500 miles away are Omar's parents, Debra and Shafik Hammami.
"The last time I saw my son was in 2006, in Egypt," Debra told the Guardian. "We now follow him via the internet, Twitter and newspaper reports."
And pretty soon in the obits...
Growing up in Daphne, a town of some 22,000 people situated on a Gulf of Mexico inlet, Omar showed no signs of his future life as a bad turban fighter. A hard-working and intelligent pupil, he was voted president of his sophomore class and was in the local high school's gifted students programme.
"He was just so full of life. Always into something, very smart in school, always wanting to be the first to hand in his term paper, very popular. He was just a normal kid," Debra said.
But at around the age of 16 or 17 he started to change.
"I did not notice anything radical. He just wanted to get deeper and deeper into religion," his mother said.
Having been originally brought up as Southern Baptist, the religion of his mother, he had already turned to Islam. But whereas his father followed the mainstream beliefs of the religion, Omar turned to extremism.
Typical. Let me guess: distant but domineering, somewhat abusive father, spineless, door-mouse mother.
He left Daphne for Toronto, before then going to Egypt and finally Somalia. Despite the lack of contact, Hammami's mother refuses to accept that he has turned his back on the family.
"I never give up hope. Even if I make 100 years old, I'll still be waiting for him."
Speaking from her home in Alabama, Debra explained that she still talks to him at home as if he is still there and can hear her.
"We do not agree with his philosophy. But we still love him as the son we had, we still love him," she added.
But the threat from al-Shabaab has put in jeopardy any chance she has of seeing her son alive again.
Debra doesn't expect her son to hand himself in to authorities -- he is wanted back in the US on terrorism charges. She said the best hope she has is that he can get out of Somalia and live the rest of his life in peace.
Maybe he could move to Mali...
"I would like to see him be able to leave Somalia if possible, go somewhere and just be safe."
Experts suggest that such an eventuality may be his only option, and even then his chances of survival may be slim.
Clint Watts, a former executive officer at West Point's Combating Terrorism Center said that even if al-Shabaab's death threat isn't carried out on Saturday, it will be pursued by the ruthless al-Qaeda-linked cell.
"He's always going to be looking over his shoulder in Somalia. They're not going to forget and eventually they're going to come after him," said Watts, now a senior fellow at the Homeland Security Policy Institute and the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
"And I think he still ends up being killed in the long run," he added.
Meanwhile his parents have turned to prayer -- his father at the local mosque, his mother at the town's church.
"It is in God's hands," Debra told the Guardian, adding: "We are just praying that God can perform a miracle."
Continued on Page 49
[Dawn] The health authorities in 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... postponed the scheduled polio ...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set... campaign starting from Jan 21 to cope with the measles outbreak which claimed lives of three more children in Haleemzai tehsil on Saturday.
On the directives of political agent Amir Ali Khan, the health authorities have started taking urgent steps to arrest the measles epidemic, which has so far killed over a dozen children and affected scores of others in last two weeks in the militancy-plagued Mohmand tribal region.
Residents said that the children who died of measles on Saturday included one-year-old daughter of Tahir Mohammad of Babikhel, five-year-old daughter of Wali Mohmmad and two-year-old daughter of Nasim Khan of Barokhel, while several others seriously affected children had been hospitalised.
They said that scores of children were affected as the measles broke out in various villages of Haleemzai, sub-district of Mohmand Agency. The residents complained that lack of medicines and other facilities at the health centres caused the deaths.
Anti-measles vaccination campaign has been launched in the agency headquarters' hospital in Ghalanai, which was inaugurated by agency surgeon Dr Dawood.
The surgeon said that over 40 teams had been sent to the affected areas in Haleemzai to administer anti-measles vaccine to children in the age bracket of nine months to 10 years.
Dr Dawood claimed that so far over 10,000 children had been vaccinated in different localities of the tribal agency.
He said that in this connection anti-polio campaign scheduled to be started from Jan 21 had been postponed for the time being so as to focus on protecting maximum children from measles.
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[An Nahar] Kachin ethnic minority rebels in war-torn northern Myanmar accused the military of launching a fresh attack Sunday, just days after a ceasefire pledge by the country's reformist government.
The festivities came despite a new offer by President Thein Sein of peace talks to end Myanmar's last active civil war, which has marred widespread optimism about the regime's dramatic political reforms.
"They're still fighting," said James Lum Dau, the Thailand-based front man for the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), the political wing of the rebel Kachin Independence Army (KIA).
He said the military was battling to retake control of a strategically important hilltop just several kilometers away from the KIA headquarters in Laiza, and was using artillery shells and ground forces.
"They want to take all their artillery on the hilltop and then they will immediately do something to occupy Laiza," he said.
Witnesses reported seeing hundreds of government troops involved in the operation.
The government announced on Friday that it would end a military offensive against the Kachin rebels with effect from Saturday morning, but within hours the KIA reported coming under fire again.
The government pledge came amid growing international concern about the use of air strikes in the conflict, although there have been no reports of further air raids since its ceasefire vow.
The Kachin rebels have not announced any ceasefire of their own, saying the regime is just trying to deflect international criticism. They say any negotiations should also address their demands for greater political rights.
In a speech to local civil society groups in Yangon on Sunday, Thein Sein said the military was trying to be patient with the rebels. He said his government was ready to hold peace talks with the Kachin.
"The Laiza headquarters of the KIO/KIA is within just an arm's reach of our government's army. But I already commanded the army not to wipe out the headquarters of the KIO/KIA. This is evidence that our government army wants genuine peace," the former general said.
"Based on international experience, it usually takes decades to build peace. During that time, festivities often flare up and down. But we will solve the problem at the table without betraying the grinding of the peace processor," he added.
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced in Kachin state since June 2011, when a 17-year ceasefire between the government and the KIA broke down.
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Bradley Manning, the US soldier accused of being behind the largest leak of state secrets in America's history, has been denied the chance to make a whistleblower defence in his upcoming court martial in which he faces possible life in military custody with no chance of parole.
He just keeps digging deeper and deeper...
The judge presiding over Manning's prosecution by the US government for allegedly transmitting confidential material to WikiLeaks ruled in a pre-trial hearing that Manning will largely be barred from presenting evidence about his motives in leaking the documents and videos. In an earlier hearing, Manning's lead defence lawyer, David Coombs, had argued that his motive was key to proving that he had no intention to harm US interests or to pass information to the enemy.
Of course not. He just wanted classified information out in the public realm for people to see. Our enemies would never think of checking Wikileaks...
The judge, Colonel Denise Lind, ruled that general issues of motive were not relevant to the trial stage of the court martial, and must be held back until Manning either entered a plea or was found guilty, at which point it could be used in mitigation to lessen the sentence. The ruling is a blow to the defence as it will make it harder for the soldier's legal team to argue he was acting as a whistleblower and not as someone who knowingly damaged US interests at a time of war.
"This is another effort to attack the whistleblower defence," said Nathan Fuller, a spokesman for the Bradley Manning support network, after the hearing.
The judge also blocked the defence from presenting evidence designed to show that WikiLeaks caused little or no damage to US national security.
That's also a judgment for a forum other than the trial.
Coombs has devoted considerable time and energy trying to extract from US government agencies their official assessments of the impact of WikiLeaks around the world, only to find that he is now prevented from using any of the information he has obtained.
Sure hope you're being paid by the hour and not by the score...
The 25-year-old intelligence analyst faces 22 charges relating to the leaking of hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic cables, war logs from the Afghan and Iraq wars, and videos of US military actions. The most serious charge, "aiding the enemy", which carries the life sentence, accuses him of arranging for state secrets to be published via WikiLeaks on the internet knowing that al-Qaida would have access to it.
The US government is expected at trial to present evidence that allegedly shows that Osama bin Laden personally requested to see some of the WikiLeaks publications attributed to Manning and that documents were found on his computer following the US navy Seals raid that killed him.
That rather guts the argument, if it ever is admitted to trial, that the information didn't help our enemies.
In a limited victory for the defence, Coombs and the defence team will be allowed to talk about the soldier's motives on two narrow counts: where it can be used to show that he did not know that his leaks would be seen by al-Qaida; and as evidence that he consciously selected certain documents or types of documents in order to ensure they would not harm the US or benefit any foreign nation.
Sure. Out of over 750,000 documents Manning personally curated and reviewed to ensure that releasing them wouldn't harm the country. Go for it, counselor...
Lind's ruling means that some of the most impassioned statements by Manning about why he embarked on the massive transfer of information to WikiLeaks will now not be heard at trial. In the course of a now famous web chat he had with the hacker-turned-informer Adrian Lamo, Manning wrote : "information should be free / it belongs in the public domain / because another state would just take advantage of the information ... try and get some edge / if its out in the open ... it should be a public good."
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/21/2013
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#1
Ignorance of the law is not a defense. Willful stupidity doesn't fly, either. The best they can hope for would be to sow the seeds of doubt and hope to tip the scales in favor of some kind of deal.
#2
This is another effort to attack the whistleblower defense.
Yeah right. You might get some mileage out of the whistleblower thing with the gullible hoard. Maybe theyll even chip in for your bill. But you might want to play it safe and stick with the Failure of superiors to recognize a threat defense. You know, play up the Bradleys gender confusion and his irrational impatience. Good luck traitors.
[AFP] A man who pointed a gas pistol at the head of Bulgaria's Turkish minority party while he was speaking at a party conference will face hooliganism and death threat charges, prosecutors in Sofia said Sunday.
Police identified the attacker as 25-year-old Oktay Enimehmedov, an ethnic Turk from the eastern city of Burgas, who targeted Ahmed Dogan while he was addressing a conference of his liberal Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) party on Saturday.
Deputy chief prosecutor Borislav Sarafov said Enimehmedov faces up to five years in prison on the grave hooliganism charge and up to six years on the death threat charge.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
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Top|| File under:
#1
He got his 5 minutes of fame, Now he'll get 1 Minute of death.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
01/21/2013 18:04
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#1
Yes, but if its the Sun, then all those grants and taxes go 'puff' just like the other blood suckers exposed to the cleansing sunlight. Pols and eco-weenies power grabbers will be pining for the fjords.
#3
A few years ago, I read about a climate modelling program that had just been developed; it accurately predicted all the ice ages for the past muillion years or so.... except one. It predicted that we should be in one already. So perhaps all that reduction in greenhouse gasses and carbon has stripped us of the one thing that was holding off the coming ice age.
Posted by: Barbara ||
01/21/2013 16:03
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#6
As I recall back in the Jimmy Carter era (or disaster as many say), global cooling was the big concern. "The sky is falling morons" would have us all do their bidding. These progressives would shut down any progress. Modern day Luddites. A hearty STFU to all of them.
#7
Livingston & Penn have shown that, due to a decrease in the sunspot magnetic field strength, the number of visible sun spots is steadily decreasing. Since magnetic fields cool sunspots, a decreasing field means that sunspots are getting warmer reducing their contrast with their surroundings, which in turn makes the spots harder to see.
If the trend continues, the number of visible sun spots may fall to values not seen since the Maunder Minimum AKA the little ice age.
Posted by: Mike Ramsey ||
01/21/2013 20:54
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[BBC.CO.UK] Nigeria gunnies have attacked the convoy of the prominent religious leader, the Emir of Kano. The emir survived, but his driver and two guards were killed.
No-one has admitted the attack, but suspicion is bound to fall on the thug group Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... , which has previously killed Mohammedanholy mans.
The emir is highly revered by Mohammedans and the attacks have caused shock in northern Nigeria, says the BBC's Lagos correspondent, Will Ross.
Men on cycle of violences and in a car opened fire on the emir's convoy as he was returning from a ceremony at a mosque.
"There was an unfortunate incident today. The emir's convoy was attacked by unknown gunnies as he was returning from Koranic graduation ceremony in Kano city, Kano state governor Musa Rabiu Kwankwaso told AFP news agency.
"Three people in his convoy were killed but the Emir is unhurt," he said.
Emir al-Haji Ado Bayero - who is in his 80s - has been on the throne for almost 50 years and has been careful not to openly denounce the activities of the Islamist thugs, he says.
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[REUTERS] French troops advanced cautiously toward northern Mali on Sunday amid fears of ambush by al Qaeda-linked fighters, while its fighter jets pounded the Islamists' strongholds in the desert near Timbuktu.
Forces were moving slowly toward Diabaly after reports that Islamist fighters had abandoned their turbans and flowing robes to blend in with local residents
In the central Malian town of Diabaly, seized by Islamist fighters on Monday, the wreckage of the Islamists' charred pick-up trucks lay abandoned among the mud-brick buildings, television images showed.
Residents of the town, some 350 km (220 miles) from the capital Bamako, said Islamists had fled into the bush after French Arclight airstrikes.
The commanders of French and Malian forces, who set up their operations center in the nearby town of Niono, said their forces were moving slowly toward Diabaly after reports that Islamist fighters had abandoned their turbans and flowing robes to blend in with local residents. Simple enough: intern all men of fighting age, starting with anyone who looks like he's had a beard lately. Then separate all the locals from the immigrants from places like Soddy Arabia or Pakistain. Shoot the immigrants. Separate the local beards. Shoot them in public. Let the rest go.
"There are risks of mines and booby traps in houses, that is why we have to be careful," a French commander who would be identified only as Colonel Frederic told news hounds sheltering from the sun in a grove of trees.
La Belle France has deployed 2,000 ground troops and its war planes have pounded rebel columns and bases for 10 days, turning back an Islamist advance towards the riverside capital which Gay Paree said would have toppled Mali's government.
French now aims, with international support, to dislodge the Islamists from Mali's vast desert north, an area the size of Texas, before they use it to launch attacks on the West.
The Islamist alliance, grouping al Qaeda's North African wing AQIM and home-grown Malian krazed killer groups Ansar Dine and MUJWA, has imposed harsh sharia law in northern Mali, including amputations and the destruction of ancient shrines sacred to moderate Sufi Mohammedans. The locals will likely be happy to point out who did what to whom.
Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said French Rafale and Mirage planes had bombed Islamists' camps and logistics bases around the ancient caravan town of Timbuktu as well as Gao, the largest city of the north. The strikes were aimed at preventing Islamist fighters from recovering to launch a counterattack.
"The terrorists...have diversified tactics. They can leave a town at any time or mingle with the population to avoid air strikes," he said. "It's urban guerrilla warfare as well as a war so it's very complicated to manage." It's a little easier to separate the wheat from the chaff, though.
In Sevare, the main military base in central Mali, a French military commander told Rooters his forces were hanging back to allow Malian troops to mop up Islamist resistance near the town of Konna. Malian troops lost several vehicles and soldiers to Islamist counterattacks, Colonel Didier Dacko said.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius denied Mali could spiral into another Afghanistan, saying that Islamist fighters did not have the support of the local moderate Mohammedan majority.
The stakes in Mali rose dramatically this week when Islamist gunnies cited La Belle France's intervention as their reason for attacking a desert gas plant in neighboring Algeria, seizing hundreds of hostages. Algeria carried out an assault on Saturday to end the siege and said on Sunday it expected a heavy corpse count.
Veteran jihadist Mokhtar Belmokhtargrabbed credit in the name of al Qaeda for the Algeria attack, Mauritanian news website Sahara Media said on Sunday.
"We are ready to negotiate with the West and the Algerian government provided they stop their bombing of Mali's Mohammedans," Belmokhtar said in a video, according to Sahara Media. Except that Mokhtar isn't a Malian, nor are the Algerians and other riff-raff that invaded the country. And the (Moslem) Tuaregs have already said they'll help root the bastards out. And they weren't offering to negotiate until they were slapped around a little.
This article starring:
Mokhtar Belmokhtar
al-Qaeda
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[Libya Herald] The siege of Ghadames reported by its local council yesterday, Saturday, is being carried out by border guards from Zintan according to a senior member of Ghadames Shura Council.
Speaking by phone today from the border town, the official said there had been festivities between the guards and Ghadames revolutionaries but there had been no serious injuries. The Zintanis, he claimed, were refusing to allow anyone in or out of the town and had yesterday managed to close the airport. However, there's no worse danger than telling a mother her baby is ugly... a flight to Tripoli ...a confusing city, one end of which is located in Lebanon and the other end of which is the capital of Libya. Its chief distinction is being mentioned in the Marine Hymn... had finally left this morning, Sunday, he said. There were no problems in the town itself, he stressed.
Town leaders had complained to the government, the official told the Libya Herald. "We have informed the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Interior and the Prime Minister's Office," he explained. However, denial ain't just a river in Egypt... he was unsure whether that would have any effect. "Probably this will be solved socially with Zintan," he added. A team of Zintani officials were due to arrive in Ghadames today, he said.
He said he did not know why the hard boyz had taken action. There had been a number in Ghadames for the past year and a half, controlling the nearby border. But numbers had "signignificantly" increased in the recent weeks, he added.
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[Dawn] Tribal elders from Khyber Agency on Saturday threatened to resume protest against the recent Bara killings after two days if the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... governor failed to address their grievances on the matter in line with the recent bilateral decisions.
They had gathered in Bagh-e-Naran area of Hayatabad here for a jirga to review the progress on the implementation of the decisions they had taken with the governor on last Wednesday, and finalise their future course of action.
The elders-governor meeting had taken place after a large number of people from Bara staged a sit-in on Sher Shah Soori Road adjacent to the Governor's House along with bodes of 18 people, including three women, allegedly killed by security forces on last Tuesday.
The rustics had agreed to disperse after the governor assured their elders of immediate implementation of bilateral decisions, including the holding of an independent inquiry into Bara killings; provision of Rs0.4 million special compensation to the families of the dead people along with Rs0.3 million normal compensation; interrogation of the accused; release of innocent persons, and that security forces would never stay in Bara for a single day if local rustics guaranteed peace there.
The Saturday jirga was attended by former federal minister Waris Khan, former MNA Mohmood Shah, former senator Nasir Khan, Awami National Party leader Imran Afridi, Pakistain Tehrik-e-Insaf ...a political party in Pakistan. PTI was founded by former Pakistani cricket captain and philanthropist Imran Khan. The party's slogan is Justice, Humanity and Self Esteem, each of which is open to widely divergent interpretations.... leaders Iqbal Afridi and Javed Afridi, Jamaat-e-Islami ...The Islamic Society, founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka The Great Apostosizer. The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an independent branch there since 1975. It maintains close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores... leader Shah Faisal and traders' representative Maqbali Khan.
The participants said they were assured by the relevant authorities that there would be no indiscriminate artillery shelling in Khyber Agency to prevent collateral damage, but on the contrary, a mortar shell hit a house in Shalobar area on Friday, killing a couple.
They regretted that the government had yet to provide compensation to the families of those killed in Bara on last Tuesday.
Some complained that the authorities misbehaved with the residents of Khyber Agency on their way Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. .
It merits mentioning here that all roads leading to Peshawar from Bara have been closed for four days affecting patients and students bound for Peshawar the most.
Meanwhile, ...back at the shouting match, the spittle had reached unprecedented levels... PML-N and PTI leaders from Fata declared the Bara killings the worst example of barbarism and brutality.
In separate news conferences at Peshawar Press Club, PML-N leaders Wali Shah, Faqir Afridi and Zahir Shah and PTI leader Dr Bashir said also flayed torture of peaceful protesters by police.
They said curfew had been imposed in Bara for three years and that security forces had killed 2,200 innocent people, including women and kiddies, there in the name of search operations.
They also complained that all major Bara markets had been closed since imposition of curfew.
In Landi Kotal, a local jirga formed to handle the post-Bara killings situation has developed differences, it is learnt.
Since the killing of 18 people allegedly by security forces in Alamgudar area, the jirga met thrice but failed to agree on the members of the proposed jirga.
A member said the jirga was powerless as it was not fully authorised to negotiate its demands with the government.
He said the jirga had been awaiting response from the governor to its demands.
The member said the residents of Bara, especially youths, were angered by the non-compliance with the assurances the governor had given to the jirga members on January 16 when the bodies of the victims of Bara shelling were placed outside the Governor's House in Peshawar.
Some jirga members voiced displeasure over the behaviour of some political figures saying they wanted to hijack the jirga to serve their own interests.
Bazaar Gul, a member of the jirga, said some jirga members affiliated with political parties wanted to score political points instead of finding a lasting solution to the problem.
Hashim Khan, another jirga member, said a fully authorised and a truly representative jirga could negotiate with the government.
He said the existing members were too weak and inexperienced and could be easily influenced by the government functionaries.
It is learnt that MNA Hamidullah Jan wanted more representation of local elders and inclusion of the relatives of those killed in Alamgudar shelling.
Meanwhile, ...back at the cheese factory, all the pieces finally fell together in Fluffy's mind... the jirga on Saturday agreed to meet the political agent of Khyber Agency tomorrow (Monday) to apprise him of their viewpoints and demands about Bara killings.
When contacted, political agent Mutahir Zeb confirmed that he would meet the jirga members on Monday.
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Up to five of the al Qaeda-linked Islamists who carried out the most spectacular and bloody hostage situation in recent years were employees of the gas plant, security sources have revealed.
One of those involved in the "inside job" was of French nationality, the sources told the Daily Telegraph, in what appears to be a blow to those in charge of safety at the highly strategic In Amenas plant, which accounts for 12 per cent of Algeria's gas production.
The unnamed French accomplice is said to have changed sides once his comrades in arms had broken into the desert site in southeastern Algeria after attacking bus at a false checkpoint. He then took part in the kidnapping operation before being killed during the Algerian army assault on the site.
Some gun-hung tough guys are reported to have known internal procedures at the plant as well as the room numbers of expatriates.
Gendarmes are understood to have opened an investigation into four other workers who survived the attack on suspicion of helping the kidnappers enter the tightly-guarded facility, the sources said, without providing further details.
"One gave himself up after running out of munitions, while two more were picked up by Algerian special forces after being injured," one local security source told The Daily Telegraph.
With the military operation over, forensic scientists from Algeria's national gendarmerie arrived yesterday to begin the macabre task of identifying the bodies.
Civil protection workers said they had spent Sunday retrieving a gruesome list of body parts -- "fingers, hands, feet, legs" -- as they sought to piece together who had been killed in a deadly mix of machine gunfire, terrorist kabooms and helicopter gunship attacks.
Security services said 25 further bodies were recovered yesterday, with differing reports over how many were hostages.
Citing security sources, Anis Rahmani of private television channel Ennahar said all 25 were captives, but The Daily Telegraph was told that 15 of their number were cut-thoats.
Either way, Algerian communications minister Mohamed Said made it clear that earlier provisional figures for the number of dead -- 23 hostages and 32 kidnappers -- would likely have to be "revised upward".
A civil protection source said that the overall corpse count, including kidnappers and hostages was between 55 and 60, with roughly half foreign hostages.
Last night, bomb squads were still combing the area for bombs, with the army saying the kidnappers had placed mines beneath the sand around the factory to hinder the army's advance, but also inside the plant.
Sonatrach, the Algerian state oil company running the Ain Amenas site along with BP and Norway's Statoil, confirmed the entire refinery had been mined.
"They had decided to succeed in the operation as planned, to blow up the gas complex and kill all the hostages," said communications minister Mohamed Said.
The revelation though of the possibility of an 'inside job" follows expressions of surprise by security experts at the apparent ease with which the gun-hung tough guys loyal to Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the one-eyed Islamist who formed his own brigade, the "Signatories in Blood", penetrated the plant.
It was commented upon here at Rantburg, as well.
It was the first successful terrorist attack against a petrol or gas plant in Algeria.
"These installations are highly protected. The operation must have been prepared over quite some time. Either there was a slip up or it was internal complicity," said Louis Caprioli, adviser at GEOs, the risk management group and a former domestic intelligence agent.
A front man for BP refused to be drawn on the possible security beach: "We wouldn't comment on this," he said.
Last night it was confirmed that the apparent leader of the cut-thoats, Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri, was ready at any time to blow up the hostages. Another of the kidnappers was identified as Abdallahi Ould Hmida.
An al Qaeda veteran of 14 years loyal to Belmokhtar, he played a role in the liquidation of Frenchies in Mauritania in 2010, earning himself the nickname of the "Mauritanian Zarkaoui". Yesterday, the local population in In Amenas was in a state of total shock. "This is the first time we have heard the name of our town in the mouths of David Cameron ... has stated that he is certainly a big Thatcher fan, but I don't know whether that makes me a Thatcherite, which means he's not. Since he is not deeply ideological he lacks core principles and is easily led. He has been described as certainly not a Pitt, Elder or Younger, but he does wear a nice suit so maybe he's Beau Brummel ... and Barack Obama My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it... . We are furious about this terrorist strike," one local [told] The Daily Telegraph.
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#1
"Insiders" have been a recurring problem in Afghanistan, Iraq and now in North Africa. Good trustworthy allies are hard to come by in this part of the world. Security seems slim to non-existent for areas that are at high risk.
In many ways, BP's state-of-the-art gas facility in the middle of Algerian nowhere was a symbol of Western Europe's idyllic isolation from the growing chaos just across the Mediterranean. For the last two years, the West has looked at the region through the rose-tinted lens of the 'Arab Spring'. Democracy was supposed to be transforming the Arab world.
But last Wednesday's assault on the In Amenas gas production facility was a 'surprise' attack which everyone should have been expecting. And while the post-mortems currently underway will attempt to explain why the BP complex was so easily taken, this narrow focus on security is a simplistic view. The broader threat to local governments in the area and to the West in general from the Islamic fundamentalist groups across the vast Sahara region needs to be urgently assessed.
The continuing flow of Libyan oil was one reason why David Cameron and his Nato partners were happy to take credit for their part in Colonel Gaddafi's downfall. But it went almost unnoticed that Algeria greeted the celebratory gunfire of Gaddafi's lynching with a deafening silence. To them, Gaddafi was a useful neighbour because he shared the same enemies -- the Islamist rebels who want to take over the entire region. Unlike Gaddafi, the rulers of Algeria are not a flamboyant lot. They are mainly generals in and out of uniform. They regarded the Arab Spring as a threat to their regime. To them democracy is a bad idea not just because people might vote them out of power, but because it could mean chaos. In 1990, when fundamentalist candidates looked set to win, the generals stepped in to stop the elections. A decade of horribly brutal civil war followed.
This explains why there was such a disconnect between Whitehall and Algiers over how to handle the hostage crisis.
See the comments of the Diplomad (cited today) also in this regard: western governments place the value of the lives of the hostages above the goal of stopping the terrorists. Most governments in the rest of the world reverse that order.
Our Government was bewildered by the Algerian decision to open fire without consulting us or other foreign leaders. But the Algerian army had -- and still has -- three simple reasons for cracking down at once: it wanted to stifle the crisis quickly and to destroy the terrorists; they wanted to show their own people that the regime is still firmly in charge and they were also desperate to avoid any chance of Western special forces getting to play a role on their territory. North African governments may share a common Islamic fundamentalist enemy, but sharing a common enemy doesn't mean they share the same values.
From Afghanistan via Iraq to Libya, the West has shown it can knock down tyrannical Humpty-Dumpties, but putting the societies back together again has eluded us which is why Algeria sees the Arab Spring as part of the problem, not part of the solution.
In some ways it is surprising how few people have been radicalised. But we cannot let ourselves rely on their moderation for ever. Unless ordinary life can be made better Islamic radicals will offer a brutally simple solution to too many people. As the Libyan example shows, exporting democracy at gunpoint is not enough. Without governments genuinely concerned for the well-being of the people in the lands south of the Mediterranean, hopes for a peaceful future for North Africa -- and Europe -- will be no more than a mirage.
#3
Upper management at BP doesn't seem to do terribly well with warnings about potential crises. They seem to thrive on a more "reactive" approach to problems. :-)
#4
He left out the most important reason the government attacked the kidnappers - to prevent them from getting what might have been $100m in ransom money from the West.
[Dawn] Punjab Governor Makhdoom Ahmed Mehmood three sons have joined the Pakistain Peoples Party (PPP), DawnNews reported.
Syed Mustafa Mehmood an MNA, Makhdoom Syed Murtaza Mehmood an MPA and Ali Mehmood have all joined the PPP.
During a gathering in Rahim Yar Khan, former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani ... Pakistain's former prime minister, whose occasional feats of mental gymnastics could be awe-inspiring ... made the announcement, in which he also said that the three brothers will work for the welfare of the masses.
He said that holding free and fair elections is the prerogative of the PPP.
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KIRKUK (IRAQ) - Authorities on Sunday opened what they billed as the first Christian cultural centre in Iraq in a decade, despite a dramatic decline in the countrys once significant Christian population.
The building was inaugurated in the northern city of Kirkuk, home to a diverse population of Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen, and is to host conferences and meetings to promote inter-faith communications between Muslim and Christian communities.
This centre is the first of its kind in Iraq since 2003, it sends a message of peace, and promotes the language of dialogue, said Louis Sakho, Chaldean archbishop of Kirkuk. The communities of Kirkuk are one family."
Iraqs Christian community is one of the oldest of its kind in the world, but they suffered persecution, forced flight and killings in the aftermath of the 2003 US-led invasion. Before 2003 there were more than a million Christians living in Iraq. Now they number around 450,000.
According to the UN refugee agency, many fled after an October 2010 attack on a church in Baghdad.
The pound risks losing the 'safe-haven' status it has enjoyed among international investors as doubts grow over Britain's future in the European Union, one of the world's largest currency traders has warned.
Sterling has fallen more than 2pc against the dollar and 3pc against the euro already this year, marking a departure from 2012 when it was one of the most stable major currencies.
Prime Minister David Cameron is under intense pressure from Conservative MPs to renegotiate Britain's 40-year old membership of the EU, as the 17 countries that use the euro move towards closer political union.
In a major speech expected this week, Mr Cameron is expected to stress that he would prefer Britain stays in the EU but will raise the prospect of the country exiting without significant changes.
The Coalition government has been at pains to stress that political stability has been an attractive asset in the UK since the financial crisis even as the economy struggles to recover. The fear in foreign-exchange markets is that even if Britain remains in the EU, uncertainty over its role and a potential renegotiation of its membership could extend into next year.
A weakening in the pound may be welcomed by the government and the Bank of England, which are hoping that a weaker currency will help drive the country's exports this year. However, authorities will not want to see concern over the uncertainty surrounding Britain's future in EU trigger a sell-off in UK government bonds. Such a move would force up the Treasury's borrowing costs even as the recovery remains fragile.
#4
Actually put your money in things that politicians cannot change the amount of by fiat, like land and gold and the time of people you trust.
Whiskey, fine horses, antibiotics and fish-hooks?
[Ynet] It has been released for publication that in a joint Shin Bet-Police Central Unit in the Negev operation, two Bedouin brothers from the Negev were locked away Into the paddy wagon wit' yez! at the beginning of the month. The two admitted to their intention of carrying out terror attacks in Israel, having contact with terror organizations in the Gazoo Strip and abroad, preparing bombs and attempting to assemble rockets to be shot at Israeli targets.
Two Jewish Israelis are also involved in this case; one is an IDF soldier who in exchange for narcotics provided the locked away Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! with stolen IDF weapons. They have been arrested by the police.
[An Nahar] Four people were killed overnight Sunday in a northern Cairo district as festivities erupted after a police officer accidentally killed a man while chasing a drug pusher, official sources said.
The festivities broke out outside a cop shoppe in the Shubra el-Kheima district when relatives and neighbors of the dead man gathered and then attacked the police with guns and Molotov cocktails, a security source said.
Three of the attackers were killed in festivities, taking to four the total number of people dead, according to a ministry of health report, which added that 12 others were also maimed, including two coppers and a soldier.
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[An Nahar] Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ... Prime Minister of Iraq and the secretary-general of the Islamic Dawa Party.... and the leader of the Kurdish region traded barbs on Sunday, each blaming the other for an ongoing political crisis amid weeks of anti-government protests.
The two issued rival statements in the latest in a series of disputes that have hardened opposition against Maliki and pitted him against several of his erstwhile government partners, including Iraq's main Kurdish political faction, who accuse him of authoritarianism and sectarianism.
"The federal government... has increased the crisis through neglect and threats that have led to dangerous consequences," Kurdish regional president Massud Barzani said in a statement issued late on Saturday.
"Iraq has, for a long time, been going through a major crisis because of the neglect of services for citizens, and not implementing the constitution and agreements."
Barzani also backed "the legitimate demands" of demonstrators in mostly Sunni areas of Iraq who have for weeks railed against the Shiite-led authorities for allegedly holding members of their community without charge and misusing anti-terror laws to target Sunnis.
Maliki, meanwhile, issued his own statement on Sunday in which he expressed surprise at Barzani's statement, which he said "reveals a desire to hinder dialogue among the Iraqi people and components, and revive ugly sectarian strife."
"It seems that these factions do not like to see agreement between Iraqis," he said, in the statement issued by his office.
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[India Express] Rahul Gandhi may like his appointment as Congress vice-president to be seen as the rise of youth and a harbinger of change in the party. However, at the AICC meeting on Sunday at least, it was hard to spot either. Another political dynast, from an even less distinguished lineage than the Bhutto boy.
In their speeches, Youth Congress as well as NSUI leaders showed unmistakable continuity in the culture of sycophancy in the ruling party.
Youth Congress as well as NSUI leaders showed unmistakable continuity in the culture of sycophancy in the ruling party
Some even outmatched party veterans, promising to shed their blood to match the sweat of "desh ke yuvaon ki dhadkan (the heart-throb of the youth)" Rahul Gandhi. Others promised that for him, "jawani luta denge (sacrifice their youth)".
It was Uttar Pradesh PCC chief Nirmal Khatri, a Rahul appointee, who set the tone, exhorting Congress president Sonia Gandhi to "hand over your powers" to Rahul to ensure timely and quick decisions. Next speaker Amarinder Singh Raja, a Youth Congress leader from Punjab, followed it up saying, "A new revolution will come in the country under Rahul Gandhi."
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[Dawn] The Frontier Corps, 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... , tossed in the calaboose You have the right to remain silent... on Saturday night three senior coppers of the CID for their alleged involvement in a case of kidnapping for ransom.
Official sources said an FC team raided CID police office in Quetta and arrested SP Tariq Manzoor, DSPs Qutab and Bilal and five other personnel.
The senior coppers were alleged to have kidnapped Abdul Qudoos from Dalbandin, the district headquarters of Chagai, on Jan 16. They then contacted the family of the kidnapped man and demanded Rs5 million for his release. Later, they agreed to release the man on payment of Rs2.5 million.
The family contacted FC officials and informed them about the incident.
On the advice of FC officials, the family put special marks on the currency notes for identification and later paid the same to the kidnappers in Sariab area of the city.
The police officials were traced after they used the currency notes and were arrested by the FC. FC personnel started a search for other members of the gang.
A special investigation team has been interrogating the suspects.
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[Yemen Post] A riot erupted in the central prison of Hajja governorate in northern Yemen on Sunday and there have been reports of deaths and injuries, Almasdar reported.
The website quoted statements by locals as saying they heard fire inside the prison.
It also quoted one of the inmates who said by telephone that some prisoners have been killed and others injured after the prison guards fired at them, but no officials or independent sources were available to confirm that.
However, it was a brave man who first ate an oyster... the website reported the names of three inmates who were maimed in the riot that came amid disagreements between the governor of Hajja and the newly appointed security director by the council of ministers.
Furthermore, sources were quoted as saying the governor had ordered the prison director to ignore the security director.
Some of central prisons in Yemeni key provinces have witnessed riots, most of which led to deaths and injuries.
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[An Nahar] French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Sunday the end goal of La Belle France's military action in Mali was to retake control of the whole country from Islamist gunnies who have seized the north.
"The goal is the total reconquest of Mali. We will not leave any pockets" of resistance, Le Drian said on La Belle France 5 television.
"The goal is to ensure that AFISMA, the African force, can take the baton from our own intervention," he said.
Asked if French forces could move as far north as Timbuktu, Le Drian indicated that it was up to African forces to get there first.
"If necessary, the African forces can appeal for support from French forces when they arrive in Timbuktu," he said.
Le Drian also said Malian forces had not yet been able to retake the town of Diabaly, seized nearly a week ago by Islamists and then heavily bombed by French planes.
"At this moment the city of Diabaly has not yet been retaken by Malian forces," he said, adding, the situation there should improve "in the hours to come".
"The Malian army with the support of French ground forces are approaching Diabaly," the minister said.
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#1
Then they better be ready with more than 2,500 troops.
[Libya Herald] The Comgressional Committee of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs met with the Saudi Ambassador, Muhammed Al-Ali, on Wednesday to discuss improving relations between the two countries in the field of Islamic Affairs.
During the meeting Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in their national face... presented a gift of 10,000 copies of the Koran to the Libyan people.
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In 1865, Stanley Jevons (one of the most recognized 19th century economists) predicted that England would run out of coal by 1900, and that England's factories would grind to a standstill.
In 1885, the US Geological Survey announced that there was "little or no chance" of oil being discovered in California.
In 1891, it said the same thing about Kansas and Texas. (See Osterfeld, David. Prosperity Versus Planning : How Government Stifles Economic Growth. New York : Oxford University Press, 1992.)
In 1939 the US Department of the Interior said that American oil supplies would last only another 13 years.
1944 federal government review predicted that by now the US would have exhausted its reserves of 21 of 41 commodities it examined. Among them were tin, nickel, zinc, lead and manganese.
In 1949 the Secretary of the Interior announced that the end of US oil was in sight.
In 1952 the US President's Materials Policy Commission concluded that by the mid-1970s copper production in the US could not exceed 800,000 tons and that lead production would be at most 300,000 tons per year. They get better...
#1
I'm willing to stipulate that Paul Ehrlich is a jackass, but Peak Oil is a serious problem.
We use oil to lubricate our machines and light our homes. Demand increases daily. Meanwhile, there are only so many whales in the world. What is going to happen when we run out of whale oil?
#2
I couldn't find this one in the cited article:
28 March 2007
"At this juncture . . . the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime markets seems likely to be contained," Bernanke said in prepared testimony to Congress' Joint Economic Committee.
[MAGHAREBIA] Libyan Defence Minister Mohammed Mahmoud al-Barghati was uninjured Saturday (January 19th) after being caught in a fire fight between his bodyguards and former rebels in Tobruk, AFP reported.
"As the minister prepared to leave the airport by car, his bodyguards shot it out with angry soldiers and ex-rebels, but the minister was not hurt," the minister's deputy, Khaled al-Sherif, said.
Al-Barghati had been meeting with military brass to discuss means of bolstering the armed forces, according to the defence ministry.
In other Libya security news, the local council of Ghadames appealed for help in lifting a siege by an unknown militia group, Libya Herald reported.
The rogue militia is refusing to let people in or out of the border town and threatening to enter the city itself, according to a posting on the council's Facebook page.
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[Dawn] A 60-year-old prayer leader was rubbed out early Saturday morning near his house in Korangi, police and witnesses said.
They added that Haji Ghulam Hussain, son of Mohammad Bukhsh, was returning home after offering Fajr prayers at a nearby mosque when he was bumped off.
The police said he was a resident of Sector 33-E, Korangi 1 ½ and a local chief of the Tableeghi Jamaat.
The police quoted his family as saying that he had left for Tahajjud prayers in the early hours of Saturday. He was targeted by two gunnies riding a cycle of violence near the mosque as he was returning home, the police said.
The victim was fatally maimed in the attack and died before he could be shifted to hospital.
Later, the police shifted the body to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre where medico-legal sources told Dawn that the victim received four bullets in his upper torso from a very close range as all the bullets went through his body.
The police found four spent bullet casings at the crime-scene and said that the attackers had used 9mm pistol in the murder.
They said that the elderly victim ran a provision shop in the locality.
The police said no case had been lodged as the victim's family was still engaged in the funeral.
Young man kills self
A 30-year-old man shot himself dead in his house in Gulshan-e-Hadeed, police said.
Steel Town police said that Saleem Ahmad Kanasro, son of Mushtaq Ahmad Kanasro, was an ex-employee of the 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... Electric Supply Company.
Sub-Inspector Baqar Hussain told Dawn that the man, who got married two years ago, left a suicide note in his diary that was found lying beside the body. He had been sacked from the KESC and had since been jobless, the police said, suspecting that he, driven to despair, killed himself.
The police said that the victim's wife was a teacher at a nearby private school and her husband was alone in the house when he did away with himself with his pistol.
They said that the woman had left for school at her usual time and she found her husband dead in their house when she returned home at around 2pm.
The body was shifted to the JPMC for medico-legal proceedings and later handed over to the victim's family.
The couple hailed from Larkana, the police said.
Hand grenade hurled at mill
Panic gripped parts of Ittehad Town, Baldia Town, after a hand grenade was hurled at a silk mill in the early hours of the morning.
The Mochko police said that no one was hurt and no damage was caused to the mill in the kaboom.
They said that the mill owners had earlier received an extortion demand of Rs500,000.
A case against unidentified culprits was later registered at the Mochko cop shoppe.
Two killed in accident
Two people were killed and four others injured in a collision between a truck and a pick-up near 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... Colony within the remit of the Mauripur cop shoppe.
The dead and injured were shifted to the Civil Hospital Bloody Karachi where the dear departed were identified as Farman, 30, son of Haji Ashraf, and Asghar, 25, son of Gul Hasan.
The injured were identified as Khalid, Salim, Tariq and Rashid.
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[An Nahar] Anisa Makhlouf, the mother of Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Leveler of Latakia... , has left the war-torn country and joined her daughter in Dubai, Syrian expatriates in the United Arab Emirates and an activist said on Sunday.
Makhlouf has been living next to her daughter, Bushra, the only sister of Assad, in Dubai since around 10 days, Syrian expatriates told Agence La Belle France Presse.
Bushra's husband General Assef Shawkat, an army deputy chief of staff, was killed along with three other high-ranking Syrian officials in a July 18 bombing at the National Security headquarters in Damascus ...The place where Pencilneck hangs his brass hat... In September, Syrian residents in the Gulf emirate said that Bushra had enrolled her five children at a private school in Dubai where she had moved.
Makhlouf's "departure from Syria is another indication of Assad losing support even from within his family," said Ayman Abdel Nour, head of the newly-formed group Syrian Christians for Democracy and editor-in-chief of opposition news website all4syria.com.
Analysts say that Assad is increasingly relying on the tightly-knit circle surrounding him, which includes Maher, his only brother still alive and who commands the army's notorious Fourth Brigade.
Assad's two other brothers Bassel and Majd are dead. The embattled president also relies on relatives from his mother's side, analysts say.
A large number of businessmen and wealthy Syrians who had close ties with the regime have fled the deadly bloodshed in Syria to Dubai in the past few months.
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#1
"I came for the waters"
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/21/2013 14:24
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After failing to settle a final peace agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in a self-imposed deadline last month, the Aquino administration on Sunday said that much work is still needed to finish the four annexes needed to complete the accord.
The two panels resumed formal talks in Kuala Lumpur the same day, and government chief negotiator Miriam Ferrer called the talks crucial.
He said, Much work is still needed to find a middle ground on certain core issues. Both parties are open to consider options on the remaining difficulties across the annexes, including the technical impasse pertaining to the Bangsamoro Transition Authority.
Ferrer expressed optimism it would take just one more round of negotiations before the annexes were signed. She said, There may be some items over which we would have to confer once more with our respective principals before we seal the texts. With conviction, goodwill and earnest partnership with the MILF, we can make this [the signing of the peace pact] happen very soon.
Earlier, presidential peace adviser Teresita Deles claimed the normalization process with the MILF would also result in the disarmament of other armed groups in Mindanao.
You dont just talk about the arms of the MILF, but also of everyone else. That is part of normalization, Deles said.
How can you ask the MILF to completely disarm if other groups or some families are armed? We are looking for a real partnership among the government, the MILF and other governance constituencies to look at this matter on how to make a life more secure, to trust in the state forces to make them secure, and be engaged in other productive activities.
President Aquino has said he wants a new law creating the Bangsamoro - the new autonomous political entity embodied in the framework agreement with the MILF to be enacted by 2015.
It's worth noting when people are still willing to use the word.
A British holidaymaker was hailed a hero today after wrestling a shark away as it swam towards children paddling off a beach in Australia.
Paul Marshallsea, 62, was enjoying a barbecue with his family and friends when he heard cries of "shark".
He sprinted to the shoreline and found the two-metre long dusky shark in shallow water close to where toddlers were paddling.
The father-of-three grabbed the shark by the tail and dragged it out to deeper water. He narrowly avoided being bitten in the process when the shark lunged at his leg.
The shocking scene, at Bulcock Beach on the Sunshine Coast, was captured by an Australian TV news team who were filming nearby.
Helicopters and lifesavers on jet skis later lured the shark out to sea with the tide.
Now, there's a headline you don't see every day.
[An Nahar] One person was killed and five others were maimed on Sunday in an kaboom at a banana fermentation plant in the southern city of Sidon, state-run National News Agency reported.
Future TV said that three Lebanese citizens, a Syrian and an Egyptian national were maimed in the blast in Sidon's Hasba area.
It identified the Lebanese nationals as Samer al-Zaatari, Hassan Ghaddar, and Ashraf Khalifeh.
The kaboom was caused by a chemical reaction at the plant, it revealed.
The National News Agency identified the person killed as Yahya al-Sayyad and the maimed as Ibrahim Abdul Rahman Othman, Samer al-Zaatari, Hassan Ghaddar, Deeb al-Nammar and Ashraf Khalifeh.
Future TV said that five nearby establishments were damaged in the kaboom.
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[Bangla Daily Star] A politician took away an offender from a mobile court in Rajshahi city yesterday after it handed down a sentence.
Lawmaker Enamul Haque from Rajshahi-4 constituency (Bagmara) first rebuked the mobile court's magistrate over the phone for convicting Ahsanul Kabir of operating a brick kiln illegally.
As the magistrate refused to withdraw the verdict, the MP went to Ahsanul's aid, said Executive Magistrate M Sujauddoula.
The mobile court, comprised of officials of the Department of Environment, police and fire service, went to the kiln at Sikdari Kalapara village around 12:00 noon.
"We found the kiln was still functioning without any licence," said Sujauddoula.
The kiln was fined last year for the same reason. There was also a high court directive following a writ petition to stop its operation.
The mobile court sentenced Ahsanul to six months' imprisonment and ordered that the brick kiln be shut down. It doused the kiln's fire with assistance from the Fire Service and Civil Defence.
Owner of the kiln, Ahsanul was seated in a minibus guarded by a havildar and seven constables when the politician's motorcade turned up at the site around 4:00pm.
The MP asked police to leave the accused with him, said Saidur Rahman, acting officer-in-charge of Bagmara Police Station.
Lawmaker Enamul threatened the magistrate of "dire consequences", even though the magistrate repeatedly told him to put up bail for the accused or appeal to a higher court.
At one stage, the executive magistrate took shelter at Bagmara Upazila Nirbahi Office as the situation worsened, said witnesses.
"This is sad. A politician should not behave like this," M Sujauddoula told The Daily Star.
The politician's mobile phone was found switched off around 6:00pm. The phone was switched on an hour later when his assistant personal secretary received the call and said Enamul was in a meeting.
Around 8:00pm, the APS said Enamul was playing badminton, adding that the politician had not snatched the accused from the court. None of the calls made by this correspondent were answered since then.
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#1
Another righteous blow against assault brickbats.
Crazy Cat will be pleased.
The Obama 2012 campaign used data analytics and the experimental method to assemble a winning coalition vote by vote. In doing so, it overturned the long dominance of TV advertising in U.S. politics and created something new in the world: a national campaign run like a local ward election, where the interests of individual voters were known and addressed.
#2
If the GOP had been using technology to such an extent, and had won, want to bet how much we'd be hearing about this? Calls to 'ban individual-tageted campaigning', constant references to 'the Sinister Reach of the Republican Campaign Machine', the Republican Campaign Computer photoshopped as Time's Man of the Year...
#3
Not so sure about the "ward election" and big data theory. When you have 48 million people on Food Stamps, who are they going to vote for, the guy that say's he's..."going to put America back to work" ?
A more likely scenario is that the Dems have reached the gov't dependency tipping point. If the Champ is successful in granting "amnesty to illegals", we really are finished.
Despite what all the Republican pundits were saying about "broken glass" conservative voters before November, the real broken glass voters were ever person (outside of active duty military) who gets a check from the government.
No person who gets a government check can ever be made to understand an argument for its diminishment or removal, even if the result of keeping their precious brings down the nation.
The times we are living through prove this.
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01/21/2013 8:08
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#5
That's exactly how a former roommate of mine voted; says he went for Obama because he'd keep the unemployment checks rolling in.
#6
I've been seeing a lot of this stuff recently about how the Dems had a magic bullet and the Republicans were incompetent or absent at data analysis (especially the threads on slashdot where they not only said both of these, but also said that apparently democrat-leaning people working for the repub effort were above reproach and still to be regarded as competent...)
Anyway, to make a long story short, whenever this topic has come up before in places other than the MIT Technology Review, it came attached to a whole bunch of 'tells' of the sort I've come to associate with con artists.
I don't really expect anything different from present-day MIT, they're probably too deep in the academic-liberalism mindset to do anything else. Someone let me know if this is really worth reading instead of more of the same.
The other thing bugging me... if the Democrats really did have a "magic bullet" technical advantage _like_ this, would they talk about it or make up something fake-but-semi-plausible to divert from what they really did?
I think this whole "Big Data" thing is fake-but-plausible to distract from what they really did.
What that is, I dunno, maybe Beo is partly right.
My personal hunch: they worked to suppress the Republican vote in some not-very-obvious ways that will keep them from trying that strategy again if the details become public.
But it explains why they keep trying to get the Republicans in Congress to swallow poison pills.
#7
tl;dr: they're not telling us the whole truth, and some of what they're telling are lies. The whole truth is probably something else. I dunno, I have a lot of hunches. HTH, HAND.
#8
As a data analyst I question whether this administration used the unemployment, welfare, Medicare, SS disability... rosters as seed files for the data mining.
Posted by: Barbara ||
01/21/2013 16:04
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#11
Snowy, it's basically a true account. The O campaign leveraged big data analytics, including Facebook and Twitter, to identify people who would vote for him, and then people connected to those people who could be socially persuaded / pressured to vote for him, etc.
In addition, they bussed everyone they could get onto a bus to vote, early, with free food etc. as the reward. So a much larger proportion than usual of e.g. students and welfare recipients cast ballots.
Meanwhile, on the libertarian/right side we had purists who decided not to sully themselves by casting a vote for Romney, who has cooties.
It wasn't just the big data analytics, it was translating that to a get out the vote effort that produced the small majority for O. And that effort in turn was successful because it was based on a solid understanding of their demographic, including the horizontal, peer-affiliation of current 20 somethings, which made them very susceptible to the peer pressure ploy and to the 'coolness' factor of celebrity endorsements.
#12
Meanwhile, on the libertarian/right side we had purists who decided not to sully themselves by casting a vote for Romney, who has cooties because he's actually competant.
Yah, I don't think that "just happened." I think they _worked_ for that. And that's part of what they're not talking about.
#13
"the real broken glass voters were ever person (outside of active duty military) who gets a check from the government. "
Sorry no mo uro, I'm getting less than 30% of what I paid for SSDI per month. Major back surgery from three shoot downs in Nam and no compensation is fraud on our gumt's part. A gum't check, in some cases, does not indicate the recipients fraud.
#15
Obviously, sir, you are the exception that proves the rule. You deserve a government check. That doesn't negate the fact that legions of others do not.
Thank you for your service, #13.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
01/21/2013 19:20
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ARTIC = Until 2010 Elex + MR. GHANI, US Dems previously were unable to effectively or accurately streamline Datas in favor of reliable or realistic, streamlined forecasts.
[Dawn] Encouraged perhaps by the people's response to the four-day sit-in by Tehrik-e-Minhajul Koran in Islamabad, Tehrik-e-Insaaf chief Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who is the lightweight's lightweight... has threatened to launch a 'tsunami march' if a 'neutral' caretaker prime minister is not appointed before elections.
"The PTI will take out a huge tsunami march if a neutral umpire (caretaker prime minister) is not appointed. We will protest to save democratic process from a total disaster," the cricketer-turned-politician said at a news conference on Saturday.
The PTI, he said, would go for its own protest plan, when required, stating that the party workers had already been told to remain prepared for his call.
Referring to the long march led by Dr Tahirul Qadri, Mr Khan said it was the first step towards a 'true change' and the next elections would herald a major change in Pakistain. "The status quo forces are now claiming that the long march has failed. Actually this was the first step towards change as thousands of people came out on roads to bring about a change," he said.
Mr Khan, who had refused to join the TMQ's sit-in at the last moment, on the one hand termed Dr Qadri's march a positive step but on the other called it 'unconstitutional', saying the PTI did not participate in the long march because it always resisted 'unconstitutional moves'.
He said the nation had already endured the PPP government for five years and now when polls were just a few weeks away the PPP would not be allowed to become 'a political martyr'.
The declaration signed by the government with Dr Qadri, he said, had no legal or constitutional status and it was not binding on the rulers.
Responding to a question, Mr Khan did not rule out possibility of electoral alliance with Dr Qadri. However, it was a brave man who first ate an oyster... he said that Dr Qadri was yet to decide about participation in elections.
Mr Khan said both the TMQ and PTI had similar demands and views regarding change, but their approaches were different. The PTI, he said, wanted change only through the ballot.
The PTI chief reiterated his demand that President Asif Ali Ten Percent Zardari ... husband of the late Benazir Bhutto, who has been singularly lacking in curiosity about who done her in ... immediately resign as under him holding of free, fair and transparent election was almost impossible.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/21/2013
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[An Nahar] Five members of one family were killed in air raids on a town in Damascus ...Capital of the last overtly fascist regime in the world... province on Sunday, as Syrian warplanes bombarded a battleground town southwest of the capital, a watchdog said.
A couple and their three children were among seven civilians killed in air strikes on the village of Baraka, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that the toll may rise as a number of people were buried under debris.
The Britannia-based watchdog also reported artillery shelling and air raids on Daraya as army reinforcements arrived in the town, strategic for its location next to Al-Mazzeh military airport east of Damascus.
Pro-regime daily Al-Watan said on Sunday that "the cut-throats on the outskirts of Daraya and Moadamiyet al-Sham have appealed for help after being hit very hard by the Syrian army, which destroyed several of the hideouts where they barricaded themselves."
Syrian authorities use the term "terrorists" to describe rebels against the rule of Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators... "The army continued its assault yesterday and completely destroyed these hideouts and plans to conduct a qualitative ground operation to root out the remaining terrorists," the newspaper said on Sunday.
In Damascus on Sunday, a man was rubbed out in the southern district of Qadam as troops and rebels clashed, and another man was killed in shelling on the northeast suburb of Douma, the Observatory reported.
The army also bombarded several districts in the central city of Homs which have been under siege for months, as well as locations in the northern province of Aleppo, the northwest province of Idlib and Latakia on the coast.
In the southern province of Daraa, two rebels died in festivities near Busra al-Harir, while one civilian was killed and another critically maimed by regime gunfire in the town, the watchdog said.
The Observatory, which relies on a network of activists and medics, said that 138 people were killed nationwide on Saturday: 62 civilians -- including 13 children -- 35 soldiers, 39 rebels and two Kurdish fighters.
Posted by: Fred ||
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President Hugo Chavez is gaining strength as he finishes post-operative care and entering a new phase of cancer treatment, Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro said Sunday.
And if you can't trust a Venezuelan VP, who can you trust?
Chavez is finishing the post-operative period and will enter a new phase of treatment, Maduro said. His vital signs and organ function are stabilizing, he is conscious and gaining strength for the next stage.
The longtime figurehead of the regions anti-American left could not attend his scheduled inauguration on January 10 because of his poor health and the swearing-in has been postponed indefinitely. The Venezuelan government has admitted that Chavez suffered complications, including a severe pulmonary infection that resulted in respiratory insufficiency, but has given no long-term prognosis from doctors.
Almost six weeks after he left Venezuela he is yet to be seen in public and remains, presumably, in a Havana hospital.
Speaking to private Venezuelan television network Televen, Maduro said he had spoken with Chavez on several occasions, including a January 14 visit when he described the president as being very interested in oil prices.
Were always optimistic in the sense that sooner or later we will have the president here with us, Maduro said, adding that El Comandante was in good spirits and focused on his treatment.
Venezuelas opposition on Friday canceled a march planned for January 23, saying it feared Chavezs ruling party would incite violence with its own parallel mass demonstration.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/21/2013
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#1
"How do I look?"
Prisoners in solitary said this before they died in the movie, "Papillion."
"You look great!"
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/21/2013 0:30
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#2
"I'm not dead yet!
You're not fooling anyone, you know.
I feel happy..."
When current events parallel Monty Python, we have indeed entered the bizarro universe.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
01/21/2013 7:25
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[Yemen Post] Gunmen shot up the headquarters of the cop shoppe in Yemen's Hajja province Sunday injuring four people including two soldiers and two passersby, Almasdar reported quoting eyewitnesses.
A bullet pierced the neck of one of the victims and emerged from the other side leaving him at death's door, according to the eyewitnesses.
"The gunnies from the Sheraqi area carried out the attack from the Heswi mountain which looks over the cop shoppe and the governmental complex in Hajja," they added.
The attack triggered the local security committee to meet and decide to take action to prevent all armed scenes in the province.
Earlier this week gunnies who were believed to be fans of the General People's Congress of the former president President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh ... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, but he didn't invite Donna Summer to the inauguration and Blondie couldn't make it... tried to prevent the newly appointed security director Abdul Malik Al-Madani from entering his office.
Apart from the Hajja incident, three people including a woman were maimed after an unknown attacker detonated a bomb at the Juhaim market in downtown Yemen's southern Taiz province on Sunday, the website reported.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/21/2013
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Egyptian authorities have seized a record 1 tonne of explosives bound for the Palestinian Gaza Strip, a security official said Sunday, DPA reported. The official said the explosives were seized when a suspicious-looking lorry was searched at a checkpoint between mainland Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula, which borders Gaza and Israel.
The shipment was the largest single haul of explosives captured by Egyptian authorities in Sinai, which has been the scene of turmoil in recent months.
Police have seized a total of 5 tonnes of explosives as well as disassembled rockets and automatic weapons in the past three months, according to local media reports.
Egyptian authorities say the weapons are shipped from Libya, which is awash with arms, and smuggled into Gaza by gangs operating in Sinai.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/21/2013
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It seems that the nations highest levels of military leadership have succumbed to the false promise of diversity. How much of this is politically mandated? Admitting and graduating under- or unqualified midshipmen will eventually undermine the institution and the officer corps with potentially tragic consequences, but it resonates with the political elite because diversity has become an end unto itself.
Our nations civilian and military leadership evidently desire a more diverse military, one that better reflects demographic currents and those to come.
What they are overlooking is that military effectiveness is predicated on discipline, professionalism, and competence. Effective leadership is based on, among other qualities, trust, confidence, fairness, and competence. Everything else, including ethnicity and gender, is, or at least ought to be, irrelevant.
Winning wars, like winning in sports, requires the best talent, irrespective of race and gender. If our military is comprised of all white males or all Hispanic females because they merit the position, so be it. But to artificially construct a military based on a desired composition simply because it reflects the nations changing demographics or satisfies a political fetish is egregiously foolish.
#5
In his book Of Africa, Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, reveals "Africa as it truly is: a land of black victims at the mercy of a world of too many nations that have sought, at one point in their histories or another, to deprive it of its dignity". (note operative word "victim")
Soyinka completely ignores the fact Africa experienced a dozen millenniums before the arrival of the first white colonialists, and had made few advances into what one might call modern civilization. To acknowledge this fact would be combative to the narrative and destructive of the mantra of guilt and victimization.
Ironically the downside of American slavery wasn't slavery, it's beginning or it's very bloody end. The true downside is the Soyinkan view shared by many and taught everywhere, that someone else is to blame for African outcomes and that every effort should be made to promote universal guilt and financial restitution through direct grants, Affirmative Action, or by insisting...."the rich to pay a little more."
#8
In his book Of Africa, Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, reveals "Africa as it truly is: a land of black victims at the mercy of a world of too many nations that have sought, at one point in their histories or another, to deprive it of its dignity". (note operative word "victim")
[Yemen Post] Yemeni intelligence authorities have launched a massive hunt for a number of explosives-laden cars that were prepared by Al-Qaeda gunnies to attack key installations in key cities, Alahale reported quoting a statement by official sources on Sunday.
"The intelligence authorities have got information about the boom-mobiles and are not searching for them in Sanaa and other main cities," the sources were quoted as saying.
The boom-mobiles come a week ahead of an extraordinary meeting of the United Nations ...an international organization whose stated aims of facilitating interational security involves making sure that nobody with live ammo is offended unless it's a civilized country... Security Council which will be held in the capital Sanaa on January 28.
In the meantime, the Yemeni government is continuing a campaign to control the situation before the meeting with large forces and patrols dispatched to all streets.
After mass protests in late 2011,the UN issued resolutions to back the GCC-brokered power-transfer deal in Yemen and has since held several meetings on the transition.
Yemen has been hunting Al-Qaeda operatives killing many and targeting their hideouts with direct support from the US whose drones have killed key AQAP leaders since last year.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/21/2013
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
I ran across this article in the Economist which answered a question that had been nagging me; why are cell phones banned on airplanes during flight?
Following up on 
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
CAIRO - Riot police fired tear gas on Saturday to disperse dozens of 
[Dawn] US President Barack Obama was sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts for a second term in office on Sunday in a brief, intimate private ceremony at the White House.
[An Nahar] Syria's opposition umbrella group met Sunday in a bid to name a prime minister-in-exile, a day after the 
... an Arab news network headquartered in Qatar, notorious for carrying al-Qaeda press releases. The name means 
Police have killed the leader of an armed group in Russia's North Caucasus republic of Kabardino-Balkaria. The 
By Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set...
cycle of violence
[REUTERS] French troops advanced cautiously toward northern Mali on Sunday amid fears of ambush by al Qaeda-linked fighters, while its fighter jets pounded the Islamists' strongholds in the desert near Timbuktu.
Up to five of the al Qaeda-linked Islamists who carried out the most spectacular and bloody hostage situation in recent years were employees of the gas plant, security sources have revealed.
Last night it was confirmed that the apparent leader of the
In many ways, BP's state-of-the-art gas facility in the middle of Algerian nowhere was a symbol of Western Europe's idyllic isolation from the growing chaos just across the Mediterranean. For the last two years, the West has looked at the region through the rose-tinted lens of the 'Arab Spring'. Democracy was supposed to be transforming the Arab world. 
[Dawn] Punjab Governor Makhdoom Ahmed Mehmood three sons have joined the Pakistain Peoples Party (PPP), DawnNews reported.
The pound risks losing the 'safe-haven' status it has enjoyed among international investors as doubts grow over Britain's future in the European Union, one of the world's largest currency traders has warned. 
Nouri al-Maliki
"Iraq has, for a long time, been going through a major crisis because of the neglect of services for citizens, and not implementing the constitution and agreements."
[Dawn] The Frontier Corps, 
[MAGHAREBIA] Libyan Defence Minister Mohammed Mahmoud al-Barghati was uninjured Saturday (January 19th) after being caught in a fire fight between his bodyguards and former rebels in Tobruk, AFP reported.
[Dawn] A 60-year-old prayer leader was 
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
President Asif Ali 
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
President Hugo Chavez is gaining strength as he finishes post-operative care and entering a new phase of cancer treatment, Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro said Sunday.
