Aid groups report renewed fighting in northern Uganda. Over the last six weeks it is clear that the core leaders in the LRA are continuing to fight. In the last week, troops in northern Uganda have killed at least 17 LRA members. On January 28, Sudanese SPLA rebel leader John Garang (after signing the peace deal he's no longer the same type of rebel) said that he would work to end the fighting in Uganda. Garang visited northern Uganda and expressed his "unreserved willingness to help" end the Ugandan conflict. Garang indicated his forces (SPLA) would not "tolerate the presence" of the LRA (ie, in Sudanese territory where the SPLA operates). Garang admitted that in the past the Sudanese government had supported the LRA. Since Garang is now part of the Sudanese government, he believes he is in position to stop any overt (and perhaps covert) Sudanese support of the LRA. At the minimum, Garang's attitude increases the political pressure on holdout LRA factions. The LRA can now expect SPLA forces to participate in counter-LRA operations in Sudan.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/31/2005
9:56:30 AM ||
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Two gunmen riding a motorbike shot dead a leading Sunni Muslim scholar and his bodyguard yesterday in Pakistan's restive southern city of Karachi, police said. "Maulana Haroon Al-Qasmi and his guard have been killed in an ambush," city police chief Tariq Jamil told AFP, describing the victim as a noted scholar.
Oh! I'm just devastated! Poor Haroon!
Dozens of angry youths went on the rampage after hearing the news. The rioters attacked a police post, ransacked several shops and burnt tires on roads, witnesses said.
The standard reaction...
"We have reports of a few violent incidents after the murder. The situation is under control now," Jamil said. Paramilitary rangers had been called in to control the violence.
"After they tapped a few turbans things settled down quick enough..."
Witnesses said Qasmi and his guard were sitting in their car after leaving a mosque where he used to lead prayers in the downtown Tariq Road area when the two men sprayed them with bullets before fleeing.
"Take dat, youse guyz!"
They died on the way to hospital, Jamil said.
"Hang on, Haroon! We're almost there!"
"Rosebud!"
"Kill the siren, Mahmoud! And stop at the chicken stand. I'm hungry!"
The outlawed Sunni militant outfit Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan(SSP) said Qasmi was one of their activists.
Now he's a defunct activist of an outlawed Sunni militant outfit...
"He was a good lawyer and chief of our legal team, which is fighting cases of our workers in the courts," said SSP spokesman Qari Mohammad Shafiq. Qasmi's father Maulana Ishaq Al-Qasmi was shot dead at the same place in 2003, Shafiq said.
Sounds like a family tradition...
President Pervez Musharraf banned SSP in January 2002 but it re-emerged under a new name of Millat-e-Islamia. SSP leader Maulana Azam Tariq, also an MP, was assassinated in Islamabad in October 2003.
To jubilation among some of us...
The murder of a Sunni cleric before the holy Islamic month of Muharram has raised fear of sectarian clashes. "It is a conspiracy to ignite sectarian clashes in the city," said Allama Hasan Turabi, a Shiite cleric.
Uhuh. And where were you on the morning of the 30th, Hasan?
This article starring:
AZAM TARIQ
Millat-e-Islamia
MAULANA HARUN AL QASMI
Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan
MAULANA ISHAQ AL QASMI
Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan
QARI MOHAMAD SHAFIQ
Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan
Posted by: Fred ||
01/31/2005
9:54:54 PM ||
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I thought they just finished a holy month. This is starting to sound like Medieval Catholicism, with saint's days and Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays off limits for various reasons. Or France today.
ROFL! Oh brother! Poor Wells, from icon full circle to anti-icon, lol!
Chicken schwarmas? Heh, loved 'em, though I'd tell the guy to hold the yogurt sauce and pickled celery, take 'em "home" and load up with cheese, tomatoes, onions, sour cream and Pace Picante - when I could find it. Oh, and Nalley's jalapenos - when available. Then it was a soft chicken taco in a thick tortilla, heh.
(2005-01-31) -- Sen. John Kerry. D-MA, said today that history will judge Sunday's landmark election in Iraq as an "utter failure for George W. Bush if the U.S. cannot find a way to give al Qaeda and other disenfranchised so-called 'terror' groups a voice in Iraq's new government."
"We use that word 'terrorist' to marginalize and demonize people whose way of expressing ideas is culturally different from ours," said Mr. Kerry. "But when a man takes up the scimitar to behead an innocent civilian, or straps on the exploding vest for a walk through the marketplace, he's just passionately stating his philosophy. Who are we to judge his methods?"
Mr. Kerry, who told NBC's Tim Russert that he's "keeping his options open" for another failed run for the White House in 2008, denied Republican accusations that he's on the "wrong side of history" in his opposition to Bush administration efforts to bring freedom to the Middle East.
"How can they say I'm on the wrong side of history?" he asked rhetorically. "I'm speaking out against Bush blunders in Iraq, and I plan to vote for another $80 billion to fund the blundering. You tell me which side of history I'm on."
Posted by: Korora ||
01/31/2005
9:46:49 AM ||
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#1
LOL! Ott nails the ethereal Skeery to the barn door, yet again.
#2
Next thing you know, Mr. Ott will be making up silly tales about how Kerry was running guns to the Khmer Rouge. Oops, too late...already on "Meet the Press".
#6
Two counties in Ohio voted for a different party's Presidential candidate in 2004 and 2000. One was Stark County; Bush 2000, Kerry 2004. The other was Clark; Gore 2000, Bush 2004. Those Brits were as persuasive as in 1776.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
01/31/2005 14:47
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Mrs D., has the Guardian fessed up to being instrumental in re-electing GWB? I'm sure their readers would like to know.
#8
Of course, it wasn't their fault. I would agree, though. Clark county is pretty samll in the Ohio scheme of things. Bush's majority in the state was almost twice the total number of voters in Clark County.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
01/31/2005 15:18
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#9
Steve S. Kerry said this on the floor of the senate in 1986...
âMr. President, I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the President of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia"
So now he says he was "running guns' to them ? He just crapped in that boonie hat.
At least five Islamist militants have been killed in a clash with security forces in Kuwait, state TV reports. Five police officers are said to have been hurt in the fighting, which was sparked by a raid on a house in the al-Qurain area, south of the capital. Four suspected militants were reportedly arrested during the operation. Amer al-Enezi, identified by state TV as an Islamic militant leader, was among those captured.
Here's your preacher, Fred: Among those detained was Amer Khlaif al-Enezi, a former mosque preacher who is the alleged spiritual leader of militants involved in a series of clashes with security forces this month. His brother Nasser was killed in a gunfight with police on Sunday.
On Sunday, three suspected militants and one policeman were killed in a shoot-out in Kuwait City, where western embassies have warned of new attacks. Earlier in January, four people died in clashes between security forces and alleged al-Qaeda-linked militants, opposed to the presence of western civilians and US soldiers in the oil-rich Gulf state. More than 25 Kuwaiti and Saudi suspects have since been arrested and accused of planning attacks on western targets.
More, please?
The fighting in al-Qurain neighbourhood was sparked by a police raid on a suspected safe-house for militants. Describing the assault as a "spectacular success", Interior Ministry spokesman, Adel al-Hashash, said police were still pursuing militants holed up in several locations in the neighbourhood. The Kuwaiti Interior Ministry had earlier said "there are several wounded and killed from both parties".
A resident of the area told Reuters news agency of heavy fighting. "There has been a lot of gunfire. There's been literally thousands of rounds of ammunition fired," James Busko said.
Three suspected militants and a police officer were killed on Sunday in a similar clash in a residential neighbourhood of Kuwait City popular with foreigners. US and western embassies have told their citizens to be on guard against attacks. Kuwait is a major oil producer and US ally.
This article starring:
AMER AL ENEZI
al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
AMER KHLAIF AL ENEZI
al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
NASER AL ENEZI
al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
Posted by: Steve ||
01/31/2005
9:24:01 AM ||
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Unless you have a shovel, there's just no place to hide in Kuwait - so as long as there are gun-toting fools who failed to pay off the right Al Sabah then there will be firefights.
Sunday, January 30, 2005
UPDATE: An Iraqi living in London wrote that he heard noices as he was casting his vote in a polling station in the United Kingdom. He turned around and saw Iraqi voters kicking Al Jazeera's crew out of the premise. The crew aparently came to cover the elections in this polling station. Upon seeing the channel's logo on the cameras, several Iraqis got angry and forced the crew to leave the area. He also said that he heard the same incident happen in Holland as well.
--unfortunately this is third hand-- I wish we would have had a video of this event
Posted by: mhw ||
01/31/2005
9:23:37 AM ||
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#1
Take out the papers and the trash
Or you don't get no spendin' cash
If you don't scrub that kitchen floor
You ain't gonna rock and roll no more
Yakety yak (don't talk back)
Just finish cleanin' up your room
Let's see that dust fly with that broom
Get all that garbage out of sight
Or you don't go out Friday night
Yakety yak (don't talk back)
You just put on your coat and hat
And walk yourself to the laundromat
And when you finish doin' that
Bring in the dog and put out the cat
Yakety yak (don't talk back)
Don't you give me no dirty looks
Your father's hip; he knows what cooks
Just tell your hoodlum friend outside
You ain't got time to take a ride
Yakety yak (don't talk back)
Yakety yak, yakety yak....
I dunno, but somehow the Coasters seemed rather wierdly appropriate. Apologize if this song is now stuck in your mind for the rest of the day...
Iraq 's interim leader called on his countrymen to set aside their differences Monday while jubilant Iraqis sifted through millions of ballots, tallying the results of a vote they hoped would usher in democracy and lead to the departure of 150,000 American troops.
Yeah. Ain'tcha happy for them?
But there were fears that not everyone would accept Sunday's results.
I guess you're not...
But who expressed those fears - the MSM?
Sunni participation was considerably lower than other groups, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.
Sunnis, is it? Oh, y'mean the people the people the terrs live with? Y'think that might have something to do with it?
That raised fears Again with the fears?
Oh, yasss. I'm so very frightened!
that Sunni radicals who drive Iraq's insurgency could grow ever more alienated. MORE alienated? WTF - could they BE more alienated? BTW, what do you mean "alienated"? A kid who doesn't call home, that's alienated. People who blow up other people are called TERRORISTS.
I think they're referring to true alienation, not a child sticking his lower lip out. True alienation leads to violence. When that doesn't work it leads to ennui, then to cafard, and finally to slitting of the wrists, which prob'ly also deserves an expensive French name.
Posted by: Spot ||
01/31/2005
9:12:08 AM ||
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LOL Spot.
"...fears that Sunni radicals who drive Iraqâs insurgency could grow ever more alienated."
Alienated? I'd bet most Iraqis would be happy with that. Dead: even better.
#2
Hot damn--I thought terrorists alone were bad enough, and alienated terrorists sound even worse! Thank God they're not seething alienated terrorists--oh, hold me, Fatima!
Posted by: Dar ||
01/31/2005 10:34
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..that many Iraqis hope will usher in democracy and hasten the departure of 150,000 American troops.
Oh really? And how did Keyser come to this determination? Ask a handful of Sunni individuals about their feelings about being occupied and then decide to call that number "most"?
#6
Baathists were truly repudiated in this election, now the US and coalition should drive a wedge between the baathists and the foreign fighters by pointing out that the best case scenerio for the Sunni insurgency is an independent Sunni triangle with no economic prospects (even Jordan wouldn't want to absorb them). A worse case scenerio is chasing the US out and watching the Kurds and Shia fill some mass graves with payback.
You want some punks? Well do you? Time to cooperate and join the team for the big win.
The latest spate of deaths from bird flu in Vietnam is raising fears that the disease is re-emerging after last year's outbreak in 10 Asian countries. This time, however, there is a new, more ominous concern: A recent medical study reports the first case of bird flu transmission among humans.
A report in The New England Journal of Medicine documents a probable case of person-to-person transmission of the avian flu virus in Thailand. Previous cases were traced to contact with infected poultry. In this instance, investigators from the Thai Health Ministry and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control say an 11-year-old girl died after exposure to a sick chicken, but her mother and aunt, who had no such bird exposure, also became ill, suggesting that human transmission occurred. The mother also died.
The president of the vaccine division of the big U.S. pharmaceutical company Merck, Adel Mahmoud, says the new report is a sign of the virus' potential to trigger a global flu outbreak. "That is just a very, very serious warning sign that viruses are recombining, moving from avian to animals to humans and then being transmitted within the human population," he said.
Continuing spread of bird flu between people is the worst fear of public health experts. The World Health Organization's representative in Hanoi, Hans Troedsson, says this would mean that the virus has genetically altered to a form much more easily transmitted. "The major concern we have is, of course, that the virus will change or alter, but we have no indication of that yet," he said. "The other concern we have would be a dramatic increase in the number of cases even if the virus has not changed, because that would put a lot of additional pressure on the existing health care services."
The fact that no further human bird flu transmission occurred in Thailand suggests to experts that the virus has not mutated and is still completely avian. Yet in a New England Journal of Medicine commentary, University of Michigan School of Public Health professor Arnold Monto expresses concern that mutation is only a matter of time. He writes that, given the continued outbreaks of this disease in Asia, the question is when such changes will happen.
#1
If these WHO types want to be of any use, they need to determine what the conditions are that are causing the virus to be passed around from fowl-to-fowl and devise methods to interrupt that cycle. Much cheaper than trying to combat an outbreak of a mutant strain of virus.
Iraq's election will help set the wheel of reform moving in the Arab world and "there is no looking back", Jordan's King Abdullah said today.
"I think what we saw yesterday in Iraq is a positive thing," King Abdullah told CNN a day after Iraq held its first multi-party election in 50 years. "I think this is a thing that will set a good tone for the West Asia and I am optimistic." His remarks were the most supportive yet by an Arab leader of the US-backed political process in Iraq.
"People are waking up, (Arab) leaders understanding that they have to push reform forward and I don't think there is any looking back," said the king, a close ally of Washington.
He said he didn't believe autocratic Arab leaders were "shaking in their boots" because of the voting in Iraq but said political reform was now an open subject in Arab societies.
"Once you open the door to reform and it's allowed to be discussed in society, as it is throughout the Middle East, it is very difficult to close again," he said.
The monarch urged Iraq's new 275-member parliament, which is set to be dominated by Shi'ite Muslims and Kurds, to work for an inclusive administration that would embrace the Sunni Arab minority, which showed little enthusiasm for the election.
#3
This is not reassuring. I prefer it when Kings oppose democracy not co-opt it.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
01/31/2005 21:47
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Ah, an excellent observation. I wonder where his brother is, these days, now that he's been relieved of the burdens of and any pretentions to royalty...
Iraqi security forces detained more than 200 suspected insurgents, including four Arab foreigners, in a crackdown that helped reduce attacks during Sunday's election, the interior minister said today. "What happened yesterday was the result of the security plans put in place by the Interior Ministry and Iraq's security forces for the election," Falah al-Naqib told reporters. He said 129 suspects had been rounded up near Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown in the Sunni region north of Baghdad, out of a total of 202 detained nationwide. The detainees included two Saudis, an Egyptian and a Yemeni, he said. He said Iraqi security forces had also killed four insurgents in shootouts on polling day.
US and Iraqi security forces enforced draconian measures for the election, shutting down Iraq's borders and airspace, banning civilian vehicles, imposing a dusk-to-dawn curfew and putting tens of thousands of security men on the streets. Suicide bombs and mortar attacks, mostly in Baghdad, killed 35 people, but failed to prevent millions of Iraqis from going to the polls in the first multi-party election in decades. In the week before the election, the government announced the arrest of several senior aides to al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, suggesting it was making inroads against the group that had sworn to turn polling day into a bloodbath. However, some government officials cast doubt on the importance of the arrests, suggesting the announcements were designed to generate pre-election publicity.
#1
The success of this operation gives pause. Perhaps, without notice, such operations should periodically be undertaken. The scope and locations would be customized to the intel. At any given moment there are a finite number of asshats - every iteration could bring an appreciable reduction in asshattedness - a difference that would not be lost on the regular Iraqis over time. The key ingredient in this success, IMHO, is the serious border closing effort - to keep that asshat population fixed, or as near as can be. Soon, I hope, this can be the primary focus of the US and UK troops - it's a function where technology can really shine. If I had the call, I'd draw the borders so tight they'd squeak. The pilgrim business would be the rub. The Shi'a south is heavily dependent on the shrine game. There IS a workable solution somewhere in the balance that would yield the highest payoff of reduced asshat activity.
A University of Colorado professor who provoked a furor when he compared victims of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks to Nazis resigned as a department chairman Monday but will retain his teaching job, the university said.
In an essay written after the Sept. 11 attacks, Ward Churchill said the World Trade Center victims were "little Eichmanns," a reference to Adolf Eichmann, who organized Nazi plans to exterminate Europe's Jews. Churchill also spoke of the "gallant sacrifices" of the "combat teams" that struck America.
The essay attracted little attention until Churchill was invited recently to speak at Hamilton College, about 40 miles east of Syracuse, N.Y. Hundreds of relatives of Sept. 11 victims have protested the appearance. Hamilton College President Joan Hinde has said that "however repugnant one might find Mr. Churchill's remarks," the college was committed to his right of free speech and would not rescind its invitation.
Administrators have moved Churchill's appearance to a building that can seat 2,000, instead of the originally planned 300.
Churchill resigned as chairman of Colorado's Ethnic Studies Department, telling university officials in a letter that "the present political climate has rendered me a liability in terms of representing either my department, the college, or the university."
University officials welcomed the move.
"While Professor Churchill has the constitutional right to express his political views, his essay on 9/11 has outraged and appalled us and the general public," interim CU-Boulder Chancellor Phil DiStefano said.
Challenging a basic tenet of the semiconductor industry, researchers at Hewlett-Packard Co. have demonstrated a technology that could replace the transistor as the fundamental building block of all computers.
The devices, called crossbar latches, could be made so small that thousands of them could fit across the diameter of a human hair, enabling the high-tech industry to continue to build ever-smaller computing devices that are less expensive than their predecessors.
For years, engineers have been able to pack more and more smaller transistors onto a fingernail-size silicon chip. The rate of integration, first predicted by Intel Corp. co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965, has driven computer performance and prices for more than 30 years.
But the pace of Moore's Law can't continue forever, and the high-tech industry has been scrambling to develop workarounds for the day - expected in a decade or so - when transistor dimensions become too small for the materials commonly used today.
"If we're going to extend Moore's Law for another several decades, we've got to have an alternative strategy," said Phil Kuekes, one of the paper's authors at HP Labs. "This is the final piece of the puzzle in what HP has been putting together as such a strategy."
The smallest features of today's silicon-based transistors are about 90 nanometers long, a nanometer being roughly one hundred-thousandth the width of a human hair. The crossbar latch, by comparison, can work in a space of about 2 to 3 nanometers.
The HP research, reported in Tuesday's Journal of Applied Physics, scraps the transistor entirely. In its place is basically a series of platinum wires crossed opposite directions. At the junctions are molecules that in the HP research happen to be steric acid.
"It's metal and molecules. Nothing else," Kuekes said. "We're getting away from the physics of silicon."
Like in a transistor, an electrical signal that passes through a crossbar latch is manipulated to perform logic functions. The latest research shows that the technology also can be used for amplifying a signal, allowing multiple functions to be applied.
"The power of this device is not when it's by itself. It's when it glues together other pieces of logic," said Duncan Stewart, another HP Labs scientist and study co-author. "As soon as you're able to do that, we call that a computer."
The researchers have not glued together multiple crossbar latches, though they say it's something they're continuing to pursue. They expect it to be commercially viable as early as 2012. The latches are formed through a specialized stamping process for nano-sized imprints.
They also must persuade an industry built on transistors that an alternative technology can be just as effective, said Stan Williams, director of Quantum Science Research at HP Labs and another of the paper's co-authors.
"There came to be a mantra that you have to have transistors to build computers," he said. "A latch is a different way of achieving that same function, but it turns out it has significant advantages over a transistor."
The crossbar latch not only works at a much smaller scale than a transistor but also can do more, he added.
"In order to do the same thing that a latch can do, you actually need many transistors," Williams said.
In fact, other researchers have been focused on building molecular transistors, which are much more challenging to build at such a small scale, said James C. Ellenbogen, principal scientist in the Nanosystems Group at the MITRE Corp.
"This may enable the field to proceed toward nanoprocessor demonstrations and applications more rapidly and at lower cost," he said.
It also could prove to be less expensive to build because engineers can more easily work around defects that arise during manufacturing than with those that occur during silicon fabrication, where defects are avoided at great cost.
But crossbar latches aren't going to replace today's silicon chips anytime soon. At first, they would likely be used for memory and later for specialized devices. They also will have to integrate with today's silicon chips, which
"Transistors will continue to be used for years to come with conventional silicon circuits," Kuekes said, "but this could someday replace transistors in computers, just as transistors replaced vacuum tubes and vacuum tubes replaced electromagnet relays before them."
...Hundreds of people, mainly academics and religious figures, are reported to have been detained in mass arrests since the beginning of this year. At least 100, including those named above, are held incommunicado, which puts them at risk of torture. Amnesty International is concerned that many may be prisoners of conscience, held solely for the non-violent expression of their beliefs
The government has given no explanation for the arrests, which have taken place in various parts of the country, particularly the capital, Muscat. Many of the arrests have been carried out at night and most of those arrested had their computers and documents seized. Relatives have apparently not been told why the detainees have been arrested, and none of the detainees is said to have been charged or given access to lawyers, or allowed to challenge the legality of their detention in court.
Mass arrests and incommunicado detention of political opponents in Oman has often resulted in allegations of torture and ill-treatment. Torture and ill-treatment are may be used during interrogation in order to obtain information about political suspects or for use as evidence in court to obtain conviction following unfair trials.
The Israeli government has quietly seized thousands of acres of Palestinian-owned land in and around east Jerusalem after a secret cabinet decision to use a 55-year-old law against Arabs separated from farms and orchards by the vast "security barrier".
Most of the hundreds of Palestinian families whose land has been confiscated without compensation have not been formally notified that their property has been transferred to the Israeli state. But plans have already been drawn up to expand Jewish settlements on to some of the expropriated territory.
The move has drawn stinging criticism from the Palestinian leadership and some Israelis, who call it "legalised theft" and say it is evidence that the vast steel and concrete barrier under construction through the West Bank and Jerusalem is less for security than a move to expand Israel's borders.
"The government is walling in east Jerusalem for the first time in six centuries," said Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer fighting the seizures on behalf of several Palestinian families.
"It is turning the eminently reversible step of a barrier into an irreversible step by building immovable homes. It is a move to assert aggressive Israeli sovereignty over east Jerusalem."
Palestinian officials have warned that if the strategy is not reversed it could prove an insurmountable obstacle to a final peace agreement with Israel. The Palestinians want east Jerusalem as the capital of an independent state.
The cabinet secretly decided to seize the land in July last year using a law passed in 1950 allowing the state to confiscate property abandoned by Arabs who fled to neighbouring countries during Israel's independence war...
The paleos could have stayed in place and become Israelis; instead they took their prejudice and hatred and fled in the hope that the other Arabs would destroy all the Jews and the paleos would get their own land and the Jews' land too.
Payback's a bitch, ain't it?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/31/2005 20:02
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*yawns* I wouldn't care if they seized ALL of the mythical "Palestinian" land.
#3
At least they did it quietly. Wouldn't want to disturb anyone.
Posted by: Mark E. ||
01/31/2005 20:12
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#4
I think it's the point at which Israel starts losing American voices of support-is that bright?
There's no need for provocative moves right now. Mobility and growth, yes, seizing Palestinian owned land, no. That is an act of aggression no American here would tolerate against their own property. Over the top.
#5
The wall caused these people to be cut off from their land. This is a BS move that plays into the hands of Israel's detractors and flat pisses me off. I have no lost love for the Paleos but stuff like this ain't right. I have never been a fan of Sharon things like this are why that is so.
#6
I think that headline should read: "Israelis use barrier and 55-year-old law to quietly liberate portions of Palestinian-occupied Israel"
Ah, much better!
Posted by: Sheik Abu Bin Ali Al-Yahood ||
01/31/2005 21:13
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#7
If this isn't right, the thing to do then is to run it through the courts. The Israeli court system seems to operate on an even keel, so let it resolve the question of the seizures' legality.
Personally tho, I'd like to see a piece on this by some other outfit. Quite frankly, I don't particularly care much for news pieces originating from the Guardian.
#8
B-a-R is right. The Palestinians are getting the abandoned Israeli settlements built on the far side of the barrier in exchange -- in many cases former scrubland that the Israelis paid for in cash. So in exchange for some land, they get modern houses with running water and electricity.
This is a Guardian article -- how truth-based do you really expect it to be?
Aljazeera has aired a video showing a purported Iraqi group firing missiles at the British C-130 transport plane which crashed on Sunday afternoon northwest of Baghdad. The video, issued by the military wing of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, also showed an explosion at a distance and what appeared to be the debris of a plane on the ground.
Aljazeera said on Monday it had received a copy of the tape from the group.
Earlier, Ansar al-Islam, an al-Qaida-linked group, posted a statement on a website claiming it downed the Hercule aircraft.
The authenticity of the Ansar al-Islam website could not be verified.
British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said in a statement: "We are aware of reports that the aircraft may have been shot down, but we are not in a position to come to any conclusions until the investigation is complete."
The ministry also declined to comment on reports in The Daily Telegraph and Daily Mirror newspapers that members of Britainââ¬s elite Special Air Service (SAS) were aboard the flight.
Air Vice-Marshall Tony Mason, a military expert, said the crash, which occurred during a spate of attacks aimed at sabotaging the first democratic elections in Iraq for 50 years, could have been caused by hostile action.
"On the face of it we have a fully serviceable aircraft, we have an extremely competent crew, we have the potential indicator that the first statement said the crash site covered a wide area, which suggests impact in the air rather than the ground," Mason said.
Meanwhile Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan hasÃÂ criticised the US for failing to halt what he called Kurdish efforts to dominate the oil-rich city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
01/31/2005
7:36:16 PM ||
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Official comments don't support the idea that any significant number of SF personnel were on board, though I wouldn't bet the house on MoD press releases.
The AII video seems to be a spool of shite. Patched footage from various incidents. From the one glimpse I've had of the video the wreckage seems to be that of a jet - there definitely seems to be a jet engine on the ground, though I could be mistaken, and there's the possibility that the Herc was transporting an aircraft engine.
A privatization of Al Jazeera may not change the content of the news but at least would take the heat off the Qatari government, according to the New York Times. Al Jazeera often has been critical if not misleading in covering the American military presence in Iraq.
The news operation has an audience of between 30 and 50 million people. It also has been the source for broadcasting tapes of Al Qaeda terrorists.
"We really have a headache, not just from the United States but from advertisers and from other countries as well, said a Qatari government official. The media complex has denied allegations that its immediate coverage of bombing attacks in Iraq indicate it has had advanced knowledge of terrorist activities.
Al Jazeera also reports daily on the Israeli "occupation" of Judea, Samaria and Gaza and generally portrays Israel in a negative light.
Arab countries also have been the target of Al Jazeera criticism, which has angered Saudi Arabia, Iran and Egypt. Qatar subsidizes the news operation with $40 million annually, one-third of its budget.
Posted by: Destro ||
01/31/2005
6:45:05 AM ||
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mhw - I'm not really sure how much relevance a "survey of almost 2,000 ad executives, brand managers and academics" can claim to have. And they were rating some nebulous concept called 'influence', not recognizability.
Think about it, Bulldog, you and I know about Al Jazeera, even though we don't watch it. And I think the sample group is indeed appropriate -- who would be more concerned with which brands are most recognized and/or influential? Both are critical realities in their eyes -- recognized is for selling product, but influential is for placing ads where they do the most good.
Counter terrorism authorities today descended on Sydney's west after a shooting linked to the Iraqi election added to tensions heightened by the historic ballot. Witnesses said two men with guns aimed at a number of cars and shops, and fired five shots during a melee involving 100 people on the main street of Auburn, about 11pm (AEDT) yesterday. Police said four men, including one hurt by a ricocheting shotgun pellet, were treated for minor injuries. They said the shooting followed a clash on Saturday involving protesters from an anti-election group and voters outside a polling booth in Auburn - one of Australia's nine out-of-country polling stations for Iraq's first election in 50 years.
"People involved in the disturbance on Saturday, and last night's incident, have told us that the election has heightened tensions," Superintendent Harding said. "What concerns us is that these heightened tensions have escalated into violence, which is unacceptable. All the security organisations, including counter terrorist organisations, have been taking an active role in managing this." Ahmad Attabi, who voted in the election and had his shopfront blasted, said he thought the attackers were "terrorist people wanting to kill somebody". He said 30 men associated with the anti-election protest walked up Auburn Road and began fighting with men outside his tobacconist store. Mr Attabi, whose two brothers were murdered under Saddam Hussein's regime, said the election was the source of all the weekend's problems.
Iraqi community leader and voter Kamil Alhamid said yesterday's attackers comprised men from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Lebanon, but not Iraqis. Mr Alhamid, the secretary of the Australian Ahl-Al-Bait Islamic Centre in Auburn, said the group were fundamentalists sympathetic to al-Qaeda and the terrorist group of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He said the group's core had been meeting at a mosque a few blocks from his store for more than two years and had taken action in the past against Shiites by posting notices, but this was the first time they'd used guns. Mr Alhamid refused media access to any of the injured men for fear of reprisals. It's nice to know I live so closely to these kind of people. If I had to guess, i'd say they might have something to do with the Ahlus ul Sunnah group, which is the most radical Islamist group I know of that operate in South West Sydney.
This article starring:
ABU MUSAB AL ZARQAWI
al-Qaeda in Iraq
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
01/31/2005
6:03:17 AM ||
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Poor dears, freedom has got to be like spraying a can of R.A.I.D. on the little bug thugs.
Posted by: Duke Nukem ||
01/31/2005 6:30
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The stupidity of al-Zarqawi and his and Osama's followers. If they had just let the people vote, and ask them to write in, "American's leave", half the Shite's would of joined in. They would of got thier point accross, and not hurt the Iraq's, who they say they don't want to hurt.
#3
Yeah, right. The Shia, who are going to win the election, would write in, "America Leave".
We should try that in our next election, though. Apparently those with BDS, like plainsow, are so unstable that instead of vo,ing for "Kerry", we might be able to get them to write in "Bush is a Chimp".
#4
A thought differnet than yours, unstable. Interesting. Since I voted for Bush, and finacially support the troops, through organizations such as Wounded Warrior Hospital Fund, does that make those thoughts unstable as well? Or just the ones differnt than yours?
The Department of Local Administration has confirmed that Doramae Kuteh, also known as Chae Kumae Kuteh, the man arrested in Malaysia last week on suspicion of having been a key mastermind behind the spate of insurgency in Thailand's deep South, is almost certainly the same as Chae Kumae Kute, a Thai national believed to head the Pattani Mujahideen group of insurgents, Interior Minister Bhokin Bhalakula revealed today. "If he's the same man, but holds dual nationality, we will have to see what amendments we need to make", he said, adding that Thailand would have to send evidence to Malaysia, including the suspect's 13-digit ID card number and his fingerprints. Asked about intelligence reports indication that the suspect's son could be preparing to take militant action in the southern border region, Mr. Bhokin said that, according to the Department of Local Administration, his son was possibly living abroad. The arrest of Chae Kumae could represent the capture of one of the most important kingpins behind the country's southern insurgency, which has claimed hundreds of lives since the beginning of last year.
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton fainted Monday after complaining of a stomach virus before a scheduled speech on Social Security. She received medical attention at the scene and then went on to give another speech at a Catholic college Monday afternoon. "It wasn't as dramatic as it sounds," Clinton said after the 30-minute speech.
Clinton aides said doctors believed she had a stomach virus. They said she felt weak at the private club where she was to speak, needed to sit down, and then fainted briefly. Clinton, 57, was smiling when she walked out of the club, the general manager said.
"I saw her walk out the door by herself, she smiled and said 'thank you'," said Saturn Club general manager Vincent Tracy.
Later Monday, she delivered a speech about health care at Canisius College. She was introduced by former U.S. Rep. John LaFalce, who told the crowd that Clinton went against doctor's advice because she was committed to talking about health care.
Clinton was to return to Washington after the speech, the last event on her public schedule.
During an earlier editorial board meeting Monday at The Buffalo News, Clinton complained about suffering from a flu-like bug that affected several of her staff members during a weekend retreat in Westchester County, where she lives.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/31/2005
5:01:20 PM ||
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Dear RBs:
Thank you for all your prayers and comforting words during my momentary anal blockage. Yes, I was suffering from the shitz do to a bout of eating my own words, but, as you see, I bounced right back up and gave the speech of my life.
It could never of happened though without your kind expressions of well wishing.
As your president, I will promise to always be on every side of every issue and never again eat my own words -- they do cause one to lose their grib (if you know what I mean). Gotta run now, off to power my behind.
A Launceston man facing a fine of up to $50,000 for flying an Australian flag outside his home is refusing to take it down.
Launceston City Council notified Ian Garwood, 72, that his flag, which is on a three-metre flagpole, is in a heritage area and contravenes the city planning scheme.
Mr Garwood says he has been invited to submit a development application to keep the flagpole but says he has no intention of doing so.
Launceston City Council general manager Chris Brooks says under the city's planning scheme, all structures erected in a heritage area must have planning approval.
But Tasmanian Liberal Senator Guy Barnett says people should not need approval to fly a flag.
"I think it's unnecessary and I think it's bureaucracy going mad," he said.
"We should be encouraging all Australians to fly the flag and if they have a flagpole which is reasonable in size and shape, it should be [a] right and you should not require a piece of paper from the Launceston City Council or any other council for that purpose."
Posted by: God Save The World ||
01/31/2005
4:58:57 AM ||
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The Indonesian President says a Malaysian who allegedly played key roles in a series of deadly bombings in Indonesia narrowly escaped a police dragnet recently. Former university professor Azahari Husin has become the most wanted terrorist suspect in Indonesia, accused of building the bombs used in the worst extremist attacks in the country in recent years. "I have always kept track and the police chief from time to time informs me about the development [of the hunt]," President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said in an interview with the Koran Tempo daily. "I was told [he] was almost caught but slipped away."
Dr Yudhoyono, also known as SBY, said he had told police to intensify their hunt for Azahari and his Malaysian associate, alleged chief recruiter Noordin Mohammed Top. The President, who was sworn into office last October, has made arresting the pair among his top priorities in his first 100 days in office, but the deadline has passed and the two remain at large. Police said they were close to catching Azahari and Noordin in late 2003. Officers said they had trouble recognising them because they frequently changed their appearances, sometimes disguising themselves as beggars or professors.
This article starring:
AZAHARI HUSIN
Jemaah Islamiyah
Posted by: God Save The World ||
01/31/2005
4:57:19 AM ||
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An earlier report I read said that Azahari had bribed his way out of a police checkpoint after the embassy boom...and I bet he still has some "spare cash" lying around...
Palestinians prepared to assume security control from Israel in four West Bank cities as their leader Mahmud Abbas saw an historic chance for peace, although a lull in violence was broken. The fatal shooting of a 10-year-old Palestinian schoolgirl and retaliatory shelling by Hamas of Jewish settlements in southern Gaza cast a shadow over the burgeoning hopes for a breakthrough in the four-year-old conflict.
The little girl was probably killed by Palestinian reveleres returning from Hajj (and shooting their rifles into the air.)
A senior Palestinian official said the transfer could take place as early as Tuesday if talks with Israel later Monday progressed smoothly. "If we reach agreement tonight (Monday) with the Israeli defence minister (Shaul Mofaz), we expect that the army will withdraw from the four cities tomorrow," said the official, who has been closely involved in the talks with Israeli counterparts. The transfer would take place in Ramallah, Jericho, Tulkarem and Qalqilya, the source told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Mofaz was due to meet former Palestinian security minister Mohammed Dahlan later on Monday to finalise the transfer agreement after holding a similar meeting on Saturday. The two were also expected to discuss Palestinian demands for the release of large numbers of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. Militant groups such as Hamas, which is meant to be observing a temporary albeit unofficial truce, have indicated they will declare a temporary formal ceasefire if Israel ends its military operations in the Gaza Strip and releases prisoners. The bloodshed has not ceased completely however, with a 10-year-old girl killed on Monday at a United Nations-run school in the southern Gaza town of Rafah. Medical sources said that Nuran Deab died instantly after being shot in the head at the school by Israeli soldiers manning a observation post on the nearby border into Egypt. The armed wing of Hamas said it had responded by firing a total of seven mortars against the settlement of Neve Dekalim and also targeted the nearby Atzmona settlement. An Israeli military spokeswoman reported that six mortar shells had been fired in southern Gaza but without causing injuries.
#1
Medical sources said that Nuran Deab died instantly after being shot in the head at the school by Israeli soldiers manning a observation post on the nearby border into Egypt.
How can the 'medical sources' know where the bullet came from? And why would Israeli shoot a 10-year old girl -- they aren't muslims so it isn't a religious requirement (see: honor killing).
My bet is that Hamas shot the girl themselves so they could have an excuse to get a 'hit' of murdering an innocent person. Maybe she flerted with a boy or something.....
The Federal Government has revealed it is reviewing the role and number of Australian troops in Iraq after deciding to move diplomatic staff in Baghdad to a coalition military camp. Labor leader Kim Beazley is taking credit for the Government's decision to move diplomats after last week's attack on the embassy. "I'm glad we've had an effect - chalk one up to us," Mr Beazley said.
But the Government insists it had already decided to move the staff. Defence Minister Robert Hill says while Australian troops will continue to provide transport protection for officials, there may be some changes to troop numbers and functions in Baghdad. "Defence have started an assessment of that," Senator Hill said. The Federal Opposition says it is time to start pulling coalition forces out of Iraq now that democratic elections have been held. But the Government insists Australian troops will be there for some time.
The Government and the Opposition have praised the Iraqi people for turning out to vote. But they still differ on a timetable for withdrawing troops. "We should be starting to pull back," Labor leader Kim Beazley said. "The Americans should be starting to pull back too." Senator Hill says now is too early but it appears an exit strategy for coalition forces may be being planned. "They may well be able to significantly reduce that number in another 18 months but it really depends on the pace of development of Iraq on security forces," he said.
Posted by: God Save The World ||
01/31/2005
4:55:54 AM ||
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The Australian Defence Department has confirmed an Australian man was among at least 10 British military personnel killed in a military plane crash in Iraq today. Paul Pardoel, 35, a former Royal Australian Air Force officer from Victoria, had been serving with the British Royal Air Force and living with his family in the UK for several years. The Defence Department has confirmed he was on board the British Hercules transport plane which crashed about 40 kilometres north-west of Baghdad this morning.
British authorities say at least 10 military personnel are dead but the final toll may rise to 15. Australian consular officials in Baghdad are discussing the incident with British authorities. Mr Pardoel leaves behind his wife Kelly and three young children. His parents, who live in Australia, say their son was due to return home for good in a few months. His mother, Margaret Pardoel, says she cannot believe her only son is gone. "Paul was coming out of the Air Force in July and he was going into something completely different because of the children," she said. "That was very dangerous - too dangerous - and that was his last flight. He wasn't going to be doing any more and he never came back. It's very, very sad."
In other developments:
Iraq remains locked down and under strict curfews and restrictions as an estimated 8 million ballot papers from yesterday's elections are ferried under armed guard to Baghdad to be counted. The Federal Government has revealed it is reviewing the role and number of Australian troops in Iraq after deciding to move diplomatic staff in Baghdad to a coalition military camp.
Posted by: God Save The World ||
01/31/2005
4:53:06 AM ||
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May he rest in peace and may his loved ones be comforted that through his death many others will live in freedom.
Posted by: Duke Nukem ||
01/31/2005 10:54
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May God bless him and keep him, and give him peace. Words cannot express our gratitude to him and his family for the sacrifice they made to protect us all.
The Australian government will no longer detain illegal foreign fishermen on board their boats. Canberra has confirmed plans to refurbish an unused detention centre in the northern city of Darwin to house fishermen who face charges or who are to be sent home. There will also be a new detention centre on Horn Island in the Torres Strait. The Federal Fisheries Minister, Ian McDonald, says the government will also build new boat-burning facilities in Darwin and Gove, also in the North Territory. Boat burning facilities are also planned for Broome in Western Australia. The OZ (Howard) government takes border security very seriously and it is consistently a very popular policy despite the Left's seething over the issue.
Posted by: phil_b ||
01/31/2005
4:42:49 AM ||
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Boat Burning....?
Centigrade 1370
Posted by: abu Bradbory ||
01/31/2005 14:22
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Seems to me that a gallon (or Liter if you want to destroy a metric-based boat) of gas in a suitable container is about all the 'facilities' you need. That and a lack of rain to get the conflagration going. But with government being government, there is always a little pork that needs spreading I guess.......
#3
Well, in order to prevent damage to the enviroment you'lll have to burn those boats in a sealed chamber with a scrubber stack. Should only set you back a few hundred million.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/31/2005 15:14
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#6
Usually they are POS and worthless. All you need to get rid of them is a thick concrete slab and a large crane and a heavy weight. Burn the splinters.
#7
Or grind 'em up and feed the pieces into a boiler with a stoker. But if it's fiberglass, that would be nasty. How 'bout serving the artificial reef market. More environmentally friendly.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/31/2005 23:18
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A senior US military officer in Iraq said the aircraft was on its way to the large US base at Balad, which is used by allied special forces to mount operations in a number of towns inside the so-called Sunni Triangle. It was not immediately clear what caused the crash but the most likely explanation seemed to be that it had been shot down by insurgents. The incident is believed to mark the largest single loss of British personnel since the start of the war, almost two years ago. A "special duties" aircraft would normally carry a crew of five or six. It could carry up to 128 passengers but in a special forces role, a maximum of 70 is more likely. 70 UK SF in one plane over hostile ground? Methinks not. Probably nearer 7.
The Ministry of Defence was unable to say how many people were killed, but Tony Blair confirmed that British servicemen had died including members of the Army. "This country and the wider world will never forget them," he said, in a televised address from Downing Street. "This is the true face of the British Army: brave, committed, professional the world over, doing an extraordinary job on behalf of their country. "Yet again today we see the sacrifice that they make. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those who lost their lives today." President George W Bush added his own tribute, saying: "We also mourn the American and British military personnel who lost their lives today." That appeared to suggest that there could have been US special forces on board the aircraft as well. The SAS operates in northern Iraq alongside its American counterparts. The worst loss of life for the SAS since the Second World War was in the Falklands when 18 members were killed. Another air crash, when a Sea King ditched transferring men between ships in rough weather.
If the aircraft was shot down, it would represent a major success for the insurgents who have been trying to disrupt the Iraqi elections. US aircraft and helicopters have been regularly targeted with shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles. But although dozens of US helicopters have been brought down, until now no fixed-wing aircraft has crashed as a result of enemy attack.
One US C130 Hercules transport aircraft was hit by a missile last November in the same region and three other fixed-wing aircraft, including a civilian airliner, have been hit by missiles after taking off from Baghdad. But none crashed as a result. RAF Hercules operating in Iraq are fitted with several types of so-called DAS counter-measures against the heat-seeking guidance sensors of the missiles. They are based at Basra International Airport or al-Udeid base in Qatar and make regular "milk run" flights to Baghdad airport with supplies for personnel at the British Embassy and nearby US military headquarters. The only RAF C130s known to operate north of Baghdad are the "special duties" aircraft of 47 Sqn based at Lyneham.
Posted by: Bulldog ||
01/31/2005
3:55:20 AM ||
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#1
Good rumor has it that the personnel loss was in the mid-teens. Cause truly not yet determined and under investigation. May their brave souls rest in peace.
#4
A vivid illustration that freedom is never free. May they rest in peace. They have made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of their country and for which it stands.
Posted by: Duke Nukem ||
01/31/2005 6:36
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#5
One presumes that the Syrians' SAM missile deal with Russia went through without any hitches, then? As expected, the Beeb is conveniently focussing on this story to take the public's gaze away from the success of the Iraqi elections.
Posted by: Howard UK ||
01/31/2005 6:45
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#6
I expect a world-wide shortage of Kool Aid is imminent.
#8
The SAS do a fair amount of training in Norway, do they not? Mullah Krekar, spiritual leader of AAI, has been sponging and recruiting there as an exile since 1991...
Some of the world's most thoughtful greens have discovered the logic of nuclear power, including Gaia theorist James Lovelock, Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore, and Britain's Bishop Hugh Montefiore, a longtime board member of Friends of the Earth (see "Green vs. Green," page 82). Western Europe is quietly backing away from planned nuclear phaseouts. Finland has ordered a big reactor specifically to meet the terms of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. China's new nuke plants - 26 by 2025 - are part of a desperate effort at smog control.
Even the shell-shocked US nuclear industry is coming out of its stupor. The 2001 report of Vice President Cheney's energy task force was only the most high profile in a series of pro-nuke developments. Nuke boosters are especially buoyed by more efficient plant designs, streamlined licensing procedures, and the prospect of federal subsidies.
In fact, new plants are on the way, however tentatively. Three groups of generating companies have entered a bureaucratic maze expected to lead to formal applications for plants by 2008. If everything breaks right, the first new reactors in decades will be online by 2014. If this seems ambitious, it's not; the industry hopes merely to hold on to nuclear's current 20 percent of the rapidly growing US electric power market.
#1
One standardized DoE approved design of medium economical size, instead of massive custom and unique cost overrun white elephants, will make the reintroduction of nuke power viable. Hold the government bureaucrats head in the chopping block to finalize the design. No going back two dozen times to retrofit something while the bugger is still being built.
Maybe we need a "Loon" column, via NRO/Hewitt/others:
One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington.
Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.
Remember James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's first secretary of the interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back."
#6
bill moyers is from Marshall, Texas...just a hop, skip and a jump down Interstate 20, from where I live. He might as well be from another planet. I have no idea how he got so full of shit.
moyers is no Texan. He should be buried up to his chin in a fireant mound.
Posted by: Tom Dooley ||
01/31/2005 22:28
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"He should be buried up to his chin in a fireant mound."
Lol - now that's a Texan talking. Being from Foat Wuth, I hear ya, lol!
Moyers probably spent too much time hanging out with Pierre Salinger...
"MEET THE PRESS" transcript, for the "No Horse Too Dead To Beat" file:
MR. RUSSERT: Now, the New York Daily News editorial wrote an editorial, and it said this. "As for Kerry, he might ask why the Swifties' attacks have been effective. The answer is his propensity to exaggerate. ... It's looking more likely that he exaggerated, if not worse, when he claimed through the years that he was in Cambodia on Christmas Eve '68. He said the memory was `seared' into him, but it's now clear Kerry was elsewhere, at least at that time. He has yet to explain. Until he does, the Swifties will have a powerful weapon in their arsenal."
And they refer, Senator, to a speech on the floor in which you said that you were there, that the president of the United States was saying you were not there, that there were troops in Cambodia. You have the memory seared in you. In a letter to the Boston Herald, you remember spending Christmas Eve '68 five miles across the Cambodian border. You told The Washington Post you have a lucky hat given to you by a CIA guy "as we went in for a special mission to Cambodia." Were you in Cambodia Christmas Eve, 1968?
SEN. KERRY: We were right on the border, Tim. What I explained to people and I told this any number of times, did I go into Cambodia on a mission? Yes, I did go into Cambodia on a mission. Was it on that night? No, it was not on that night. But we were right on the Cambodian border that night. We were ambushed there, as a matter of fact. And that is a matter of record, and we went into the rec-- you know, it's part of the Navy records. It's been documented by the other guys who were on my boat. And Steve Gardner, frankly, doesn't know where we were. It wasn't his job, and, you know, he wasn't involved in that. But we did go five miles into Cambodia. It was on another day. I jumbled the two together, but we were five miles into Cambodia. We went up on a mission with CIA agents--I believe they were CIA agents--CIA Special Ops guys. I even have some photographs of it, and I can document it. And it has been documented.
MR. RUSSERT: You'll release those photographs?
SEN. KERRY: I think they were shown. I gave them to the campaign, but...
MR. RUSSERT: And you have a hat that the CIA agent gave you?
SEN. KERRY: I still have the hat that he gave me, and I hope the guy would come out of the woodwork and say, "I'm the guy who went up with John Kerry. We delivered weapons to the Khmer Rouge on the coastline of Cambodia." We went out of Ha Tien, which is right in Vietnam. We went north up into the border. And I have some photographs of that, and that's what we did. So, you know, the two were jumbled together, but we were on the Cambodian border on Christmas Eve, absolutely.
MR. RUSSERT: Nixon was president-elect, not president, at that particular time. He wasn't sworn in until...
SEN. KERRY: In 1968, he wasn't sworn in yet.
MR. RUSSERT: But he was president-elect, not president.
SEN. KERRY: That's correct.
MR. RUSSERT: Many people who've been criticizing you have said: Senator, if you would just do one thing and that is sign Form 180, which would allow historians and journalists complete access to all your military records. Thus far, you have gotten the records, released them through your campaign. They say you should not be the filter. Sign Form 180 and let the historians...
SEN. KERRY: I'd be happy to put the records out. We put all the records out that I had been sent by the military. Then at the last moment, they sent some more stuff, which had some things that weren't even relevant to the record. So when we get--I'm going to sit down with them and make sure that they are clear and I am clear as to what is in the record and what isn't in the record and we'll put it out. I have no problem with that.
MR. RUSSERT: Would you sign Form 180?
SEN. KERRY: But everything, Tim...
MR. RUSSERT: Would you sign Form 180?
SEN. KERRY: Yes, I will. But everything that we put in it, Tim--everything we put in--I mean, everything that was out was a full documentation of all of the medical records, all of the fitness reports. And I'd call on those who have challenged me, let's see their records. I want to see the records of each of those people who have put up a challenge, because some of them have some serious questions in them, and it hasn't been appropriate...
MR. RUSSERT: So they should sign Form 180s for themselves as well?
SEN. KERRY: You bet.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/31/2005
2:26:33 PM ||
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A quesion for Senator Kerry:
On what dates were you in Cambodia, and under whose orders? And if I may have a follow-up; what was the substance of your "mission"? Further, will you present all evidence known to you or in your posession, including the photographs and this hat you keep talking about, for forensic evaluation?
Posted by: Mark E. ||
01/31/2005 15:11
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Ok, maybe I'm just too dumb to grab it but...
WHY would the CIA deliver weapons to the Khmer Rouge??? What importance did the Khmer Rouge have in 1968 and didn't they support the North Vietnamese then?
And then, can somebody educate this geographically challenged German who can't reconcile "Cambodian coast" with "going up North from Vietnam"?
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
01/31/2005 16:13
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#5
Hey, wait a second. I was the guy in Cambodia...and a black guy and a bunch of spaceshots took me in on a PBR. And, no, I didn't give away any "lucky hats".
I got something for you to sear in your memory right here, douchebag!
#6
WHY would the CIA deliver weapons to the Khmer Rouge??? Because the Vietnam War was just a big plot to enrich the Military / Industrial Complex, see? The CIA was arming our enemies to keep it going. Oh, and to pay off the Khmer Rouge for the heroin they used to fund the arms.
What importance did the Khmer Rouge have in 1968 and didn't they support the North Vietnamese then? Yes
And then, can somebody educate this geographically challenged German who can't reconcile "Cambodian coast" with "going up North from Vietnam"? Vietnam curls around the bottom of Cambodia, so if you were going "up the river" to Cambodia, you would be going north.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/31/2005 16:33
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Yes but you wouldn't go to the coast when going upriver?
#10
TGA's got a point (as usual). Just checkd the globe and the only way to get to the coast of Cambodia is via the Gulf of Thailand.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
01/31/2005 19:14
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It was different back then. When I was in Nam, the CIA "spooks" (as we called them) had a different map. It's seared, seared in my mind. The Cambodian coast then was northwest of Saigon and east of Laos. I told you about the montagnards, didn't I? Plucky little guys! Carried one on the boat. He gave me a lucky spear.....
#12
Well it seems that I have to correct myself. Just looked up the big atlas. Ha-tien is right on the coastal border between Vietnam and Cambodia so you would go north(west) indeed up de Cambodian coastline.
I just don't get why nobody asked Kerry why he peddled arms to the Khmer Rouge. They did support the Vietcong back then.
#13
TGA, I think the "Khmer Rouge" part of the story is a new detail that the interviewer, Tim Russert, just missed and didn't follow-up on. Kerry is just making this up as he goes along.
Posted by: Matt ||
01/31/2005 20:48
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#14
Actually I think the name Khmer Rouge wasn't in common use in 1968, they called themselves the Communist Party of Cambodia. It was only after Lon Nol came to power when Pol Pot's nationalist and maoist faction (that had not fled to North Vietnam), came to be known under the household name of Khmer Rouge.
I think indeed that Kerry is America's Baron Münchhausen (historic German figure known for his bombastic fairy tales).
#15
Lol! I think you've definitely got it, TGA. The name was not in common usage in the war - and at least 75% of Skeery's tales ring like lead. Indeed, he's an amazing confabulation of bullshit, lies, and ideological (and if tested fairly, sans the "Do you know who I am?" BS, probably clinical) insanity. And he was only a 1.5% swing away from being the President - back here in the real world.
#16
.com, I believe that the Vets for Truth had some bigger ammunition ready had Kerry been elected.
Kerry's post Vietnam actions were far more troublesome than his "bandaid heroism". I guess the Bush campaign was smarter than many and believed in victory without pulling the dirtiest laundry out (which would have enbittered parts of the US electorate).
Kerry might have become the first U.S. President to face impeachment hearings BEFORE being inaugurated (if such a thing is possible).
Again, we can only thank the people of Ohio for their wisdom.
#17
I'm sure you're right. I am much relieved that he was prevented from reaching office. The embitterment has already occurred - I even ended up in a pointed and heated "debate" with a clueless fool at the grocery store a few days ago. A bona-fide Bush Hater with no, and I mean zero, knowledge of events or issues, just a burning visceral hatred of a man he's never met, knows next to nothing about, and upon whom his future depends. It was surreal.
Hat tip: Kim du Toit. Check out the story and picture of this brave Marine.
Posted by: Dar ||
01/31/2005
2:24:11 PM ||
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This guy has balls the size of coconuts. God bless.
Posted by: Jonathan ||
01/31/2005 15:12
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Hardcore, man. I love this guy - and what he did for his fellow Marine. I hope he recovers full use of his legs. 7 hits. Shit! Man, the medical biz has come a long long way.
Jan 30: Three armed cadres of Purba Banglar Communist Party (ML-Janajuddha) were killed in separate crossfire incidents with the police last night. The deceaseds are Idris Ali (38), son of late Moniruddin of village Kutubpur in Sadar Upazila, Ekramul Hoque Shanto (32), son of Korban Ali of village Moheshpur in Alamdanga upazila and Hasibul (37), son of Abu Bakar Siddique of village Nilmonigonj in sadar upazila of the district.
I'm sure they were all fine boys who loved their mothers
Police said, Idris Ali was arrested by Islami University police from Jhaudia village in sadar upazila of Kushtia district on January 27 and was handed over to Chuadanga thana police on January 28. On his confessional statement he was taken to his home to recover arms and ammunition by police-van.
We all know how this is going to turn out.
When they reached near the village Kutubpur, a group of armed cadres opened fire on police-van, police also retaliated. At that time Idris Ali tried to escape from the police. But he was killed in the crossfire. All accomplices of Idris Ali managed to flee.
They always do, leaving no witnesses, just a dead body
Idris Ali was accused in six cases including three murder cases. He was an armed cadre of PBCP ML (Janajuddha). Later police rushed to Idris Ali's house and recovered one pistol and three rounds of bullet.
On the other hand, Akramul Hoque Shanta and Hasibul were arrested by RAB from Dhaka on January 26. Later they were handed over to Alamdanga thana police. On their confessional statement, they were taken to Kalu's house of village Rangpur in Alamdanga upazila of the district by a police-van, when they reached near the village, some armed cadres opened fire on the police, who also returned the fire.
Wow, it's like deja vu, or something!
Akramul Hoque and Hasibul started to run to escape.
"Follow me, Hasibul! It's our only...ouch!"
But they were killed in the encounter. Police recovered two Shot guns and four rounds of bullet from the place of incident. They were accused in 16 cases including 12 murder cases. Two separate cases were lodged with the police. All bodies were taken to Chuadanga hospital for post-mortem.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/31/2005
2:17:28 PM ||
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Makes my day to read about this fine police work.
Posted by: SPOD ||
01/31/2005 14:42
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'Tis a fine RB day indeed. "The Crossfire Gazette" and "Pirate Watch" together... makes a gal giddy!
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/31/2005
17:21 ||
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#1
actually the same people deny the holocaust happened and a day later they praise it; its similar to the people who blame the Mossad for the WTC atrocity but then say that it was a great victory for Islam
Continued from yesterday, EFL ...
A video obtained by NEWSWEEK shows some of al-Shayea's half-whispered testimony, prompted by the commanding voice of an interrogator. He seems terrified, confused. Yet according to Kamal, the information he supplied offered startling insights into the relentless insurgency that has grown dramatically since U.S. troops toppled the statue of dictator Saddam Hussein on April 9, 2003. Al-Shayea claimed the Iraqi police even had Zarqawi himself under arrest in Fallujah last October, but despite a $25 million rewardand perhaps not knowing whom they hadthey let go the most ruthless and notorious killer in Iraq. (According to the deputy minister, security officials who have checked the circumstances now believe that may well be true.)
General Kamal says information supplied by al-Shayea helped Coalition forces round up several of Zarqawi's key lieutenants within a matter of days. Among them is Abu Umar al-Kurdi, real name Sami Muhammad Saeed al-Jafi, a terrorist demolition man who confessed to 32 car bombings over the last two years. Even if Zarqawi continues to elude capture, nailing al-Kurdi was a critical score. It mightjust mighteventually help change the course of this war that has seemed to defy political or military solutions, despite last weekend's elections, and despite an enormous toll in blood that included the loss just last week of 31 Americans in a nighttime helicopter crash.
The key to defeating the insurgents, Iraqi officials now believe, is to find ways to separate and eliminate the most radical groups, like Zarqawi's, from those others that may be willing to make peace. (Similar strategies were tried, and succeeded, in Algeria and Egypt in the 1990s.) Taking out a key bombmaker producing Zarqawi's arsenal is a solid step in the right direction. But to understand how this might work, it's important to look at the very beginnings of the insurrection, in those months when the Bush administration first seriously threatened war against Saddam and started massing its troops, but hadn't yet made its move. As the world pondered the question of whether Saddam would give up the weapons of mass destruction that, in fact, he no longer had, he was preparing another kind of surprise for the Americans.
Continued on Page 49
This article starring:
ABU OMAR AL KURDI
al-Qaeda in Iraq
SAMI MUHAMAD SAID AL JAFI
al-Qaeda in Iraq
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/31/2005
1:59:12 AM ||
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#1
1st warning this was an MSM hack job:
the relentless insurgency that has grown dramatically since U.S. troops toppled the statue
2nd and final warning for me that any conclusions reached by this article would be complete and utter bullshit:
It mightâjust mightâeventually help change the course of this war that has seemed to defy political or military solutions, despite last weekendâs elections
#2
I stopped getting Newsweek when I realized that it frequently bashes Christianity right before Christmas and Easter with "religious" spreads that subtly undermine Christian doctrine using left-leaning liberal theologians and such. Time is somewhat better, but many of the articles in these "news magazines" are just a tad more credible than the tabloids. For example, they select photos for shock value rather than representative photos. Watch -- next week they'll cover the Iraqi election with more bombing photos than voting photos.
Posted by: Tom ||
01/31/2005 10:19
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Newsweak is an insurgent whore
Posted by: Duke Nukem ||
01/31/2005 10:56
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Subtly undermine? Nothing they write about for those issues is new news. Often, it is years old for the archeology community. Not to mention that Newsweek presents argued hypothesis as settled fact.
#8
Forget the article, the video is powerful. This guy realizes he's been lied to by these terrorist. It's just confirmation that these sons of bitches are evil and we don't need to show mercy.
Via Drudge. I saw this yesterday but was too busy to take notes... Leading Democratic Party critics of US President George W. Bush's Iraq policy cautiously welcomed the successful staging of elections and distanced themselves from calls for the start of an immediate US troop withdrawal.
Purely a temporary phenomenon...
Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who lost the November presidential election against Republican President George W. Bush, described the Iraqi elections as "significant" and "important" but said they should not be "overhyped."
Meaning, simply, that he doesn't want Bush to get any credit for them...
"It is significant that there is a vote in Iraq," Kerry said in an interview with NBC television's Meet the Press. "But ... no one in the United States should try to overhype this election. This election is a sort of demarcation point, and what really counts now is the effort to have a legitimate political reconciliation. And it's going to take a massive diplomatic effort and a much more significant outreach to the international community than this administration has been willing to engage in. Absent that, we will not be successful in Iraq."
Let's try to wade through the nuances in that mess. Don't overhype it means that there's gotta be something wrong with it, otherwise Bush would deserve credit for bringing them to this point. There are "demarcation points" all over the landscape, but all "demarcation points" aren't created equal. This one's significant. "What really counts" is that the Iraqis got a chance to vote on what kind of government they're actually going to have, rather than having one imposed on them by a bunch of guys with uniforms and tin hats or turbans. That he can dismiss the significance of that demonstrates his own shallowness and underscores the fact the he's a purely political creature with no real values. The "legitimate political reconciliation" is an Iraqi matter, and the mechanism to achieve it is a representative form of government, the details of which are precisely what the Iraqis were voting on. The fact that a segment of the populace doesn't want to reconcile presents a problem, but it's not one that's amenable to diplomatic solution. The Iraqis have to hunt down the Bad Guyz and kill them, not make up with the Frenchies and have roundtable discussions with the Belgians.
Kerry also said he did not support fellow Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy's call last week for the immediate pullout of at least 12,000 US troops from Iraq following the elections.
Probably because it's not politically expedient. Kennedy looks like the ass he is, and most people who aren't regular posters on DU seem to agree. That's the way the wind blows, so that's the way JFnK is going.
"I wouldn't do a specific timetable, but I certainly agree with (Kennedy) in principle, that the goal must be to withdraw American troops," Kerry said.
Eventually. When the job's done. Expending lives and resources to halfass a job doesn't make a lot of sense.
Another influential Democrat, Delaware Senator Joseph Biden, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also rejected Kennedy's call for an immediate withdrawal of some American forces. "I think pulling American forces out now would be, quite frankly, a serious mistake," Biden said on CBS television's Face the Nation. "I think it's much too premature. I think there would be a collapse, quite frankly, of any sense of order in the country."
Which is, of course, the whole idea. Collapse would lead to revulsion, directed not at the dipsticks like Kennedy who called for it, but at the president who was dumb enough to do it. That's the way the system works in practice, and they all know it. The public either doesn't pay attention or forgets the fact.
Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, whose name has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2008, described the Iraqi elections as a "great day for democracy" but cautioned that "this is only one step in what is going to be a long and difficult process."
Who said it wasn't?
"It's a good day, but we need to see it through to a successful conclusion," Bayh said. "And frankly, I'm concerned, given some of the past mistakes, whether this leadership team will be capable of that."
I'm not in the least concerned, given some of the past successes. We're fighting a war to the death against a vicious and tenacious enemy, something the guys with the expensive suits seem to forget. The fact that they're vicious doesn't mean they're stoopid; every time we make a move they try to counter it, and if they can't counter it, they try something else that'll lessen its value. It's move and countermove, not a steamroller Master Plan. Things are going to go wrong; what's important is how well we can recover from setbacks.
He said he disagreed with Kennedy's call for the start of a US troop withdrawal from Iraq. "We've planted our flag," Bayh said. "I think that we need to be successful now, and unfortunately that's going to require our presence for some time. I think to cut and run at this juncture would be a terrible mistake."
Looks like eventual success might be in sight, huh?
Michigan Senator Carl Levin, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said challenges remain. "I'm afraid there were some areas where the turnout is extremely low, and that's the Sunni Triangle areas or parts thereof," he said. "And that's the challenge that we now face. But Iraqis that did turn out in large numbers, at least in some areas and in some places, took their lives in their hands in doing so, and we're very delighted with that." Levin said it was too early to talk about a troop withdrawal. "I think that is putting the cart a little bit ahead of the horse," he said.
I think that horse is dead for a month or so, until the attention span's worn off. In fact, it might be time for the Dems to trot out the need for more troops again.
"As important as it is that we finally obtain some kind of an exit strategy, we have to negotiate that with the sovereign government and see whether or not the Iraqis will step up to their own security as well. We've got to see whether or not the Iraqi people will put their lives on the line in joining the security forces. There are very few trained Iraqi security forces in Iraq. That is a huge challenge."
Look hard enough, you can always find something to kvetch about, can't you?
Posted by: Fred ||
01/31/2005
1:45:31 PM ||
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#1
You gotta admit, he knows "overhyped". Sees it every morning in his bathroom mirror.
#4
You can tell the French elitist blood by his blather. All he had to say was "it's a good start and I'm hoping for the best." Its obvious we've got a long way to go, heck, everyone in the country knows that.
#5
Y'know, if you were to slam his elbow upward with about 40 lbs of force, it would drive his finger out the back of his head. Not like I'd do anything like that, if anyone was watching.
#6
.com, so cruel, I mean afterall, that's the elbow w/all the shrapnel in it! He was a war hero ya know. If ya don't believe it, just ask him, he'll tell ya.
For which side... I dunno. Now he's claiming he supplide weapons to the Khmer Rouge.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
01/31/2005 14:34
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#8
I think he's holding his lips on.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/31/2005 14:35
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#9
Fred, you missed the part that got my blood boiling just before the "overhyped" comment:
it is significant that there is a vote in Iraq. But no one in the United States or in the world -- and I'm confident of what the world response will be -- no one in the United States should try to overhype this election.
Once again, M. Kerry proves himself able to speak more knowlegeably for Old Europe and the Arab League than for the country he hoped to lead...
* he still has the "lucky hat" from the fictitious CIA guy he helped to deliver weapons to the Khmer Rouge
* he promised to finally sign Form 180. I sure hope somebody follows up with this.
#11
Kerrys yesterdays news - the dems dont renominate folks who've lost. Havent done so since Adlai, and that didnt work out so well.
Good for Biden and Bayh. Even Levin is talking pretty sane, for him.
And yes, more troops probably WOULD have been better - 150,000 troops is probably enough for now. That, BTW, is an increase from the 130,000 we had for a long time, which was itself an increase. And the admin is FINALLY supporting an increase in the endstrength of the army, and is increasing the number of brigades.
Good for the people of Iraq, and for the US and UK and other coalition troops who made this possible, and good for ALL Americans who supported the US in Iraq, INCLUDING those, like Belgravia Dispatch, Daniel Drezner, Andrew Sullivan David Adesnik, PAul Berman, Christopher Hitchens, John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Bill Kristol, Michael Rubin, et al who did so while criticizing admin policy.
#12
The increase in troop levels strikes me a a real Brer Rabbit move. Where would all the Dems have been on that issue in mid-2002?
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
01/31/2005 15:03
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well shinseki was pretty strong on it, Mrs D. Teddy and Grand Kleagle would have been agin it, since they were against the war. Most dems i think would have been for, based on statements of commentators at the time deferring to Shinseki. A few quasi neocons might have gone with a smaller more transformationist force.
I dont think Bill Kristol is pulling a brer rabbit, and he too called for more troops.
Hell the admin INCREASED the troop strength by 20,000, and thats helped to pull this election off. Brer rabbit indeed.
#15
âThis election is a sort of demarcation point, and what really counts now is the effort to have a legitimate political reconciliation.â Translation: Sure they had election in Iraq, but the French and the un were not part of that! How can any election be called legitimate without the participation of my beloved Phrance and the honorable un. Hey John, whenever Phrance and the un want to joint eh coalition of the willing they are more than welcome, but I think any âreconciliationâ needs to come from that side and not ours.
#17
The Dem position calling for increased troop strength is indeed a "Brer rabbit" position, but it had a twist. They called for more troops before the war - not because they thought that there was genuinely a need for greater numbers to get the job done. They took the position that greater troops were needed because they hoped that would prevent the war. Remember the simple Brer Rabbit logic - Bush was in favor of the war, therefore the Dems were against it, but they didn't want to appear to be against it, so they threw up road blocks, one of which was the call for greater numbers. No matter the number the administration proposed, it would not have enough, because in their mind, the number had nothing to do with military tactics, but instead political tactics.
Posted by: Carlos ||
01/31/2005 16:16
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#18
The Administration and the military have been systematically working through very difficult problems in the WoT, which includes Iraq. Remember when Turkey screwed us and we had to move the entire 4ID around? That messed up the Plan, it hurt, caused more US casualties, but we adjusted and made it happen. The dems will keep anklebiting and sniping until they go the way of the Whigs. As long as the Administration keeps the vision, and implements with that vision always in mind, we will achieve our goals and the dems will fade into irrelevance.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/31/2005 16:23
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#19
This election is a sort of demarcation point, and what really counts now is the effort to have a legitimate political reconciliation. And it's going to take a massive diplomatic effort and a much more significant outreach to the international community than this administration has been willing to engage in.
Sorry, but that's not our obligation. WE went in with allies and set the stage for these elections, so we have nothing to reach out for. It's the ones that opposed us, that OPPOSED freeing Iraq from the clutches of the likes of Hussein that need to begin with the reconciliations by admitting they were/are on the wrong side. Until they do, SCREW THEM.
Senator Kerry needs to realize that he's a U.S. Senator, and not a representative of the "international community".
#20
Kerry's interview was such a target-rich environment that it's hard to focus on just one thing. But what caught my attention was that, given a national forum on the subject of Iraq, Senator Kerry (again) forgot to share with us peasants his plan for Iraq. You know: the plan he kept saying he had during the election campaign.
Forgive me for thinking this, Senator Kerry, but could it possibly be that you never had any such plan? Heaven forbid.
Posted by: Matt ||
01/31/2005 16:35
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#21
I say we trade the Iraqis Kerry, Dean, Barbara Boxer, Harry Reid, Shela Jackson and a player to be named later for Saddam Hussein.
#23
For a contrarian point of view, I hope that the Dems "keep on keeping on" with this garbage. I and every member of my family have switched parties since the Clinton Administration, and I truly think that the current Democratic Party needs to die as an organization. I don't think that it is any more salvagable than the Whigs were at the point of their demise. It is a totally enthralled captive of the LLL, and needs to be replaced with a centrist loyal opposition party.
``I'm short the dollar,'' Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corp., told Charlie Rose in an interview late yesterday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. ``The ol' dollar, it's gonna go down.''
Gates's concern that widening U.S. budget and trade deficits are undermining the dollar was echoed in Davos by policymakers including European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
The dollar fell 21 percent against a basket of six major currencies from the start of 2002 to the end of last year. The trade deficit swelled to a record $609.3 billion last year and total U.S. government debt rose 8.7 percent to $7.62 trillion in the past 12 months.
``It is a bit scary,'' Gates said. ``We're in uncharted territory when the world's reserve currency has so much outstanding debt.'...
Gates reflected the views of his friend Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor who has bet against the dollar since 2002. Buffett said last week that the U.S. trade gap will probably further weaken the currency.
``Unless we have a major change in trade policies, I don't see how the dollar avoids going down,'' Buffett said in an interview with CNBC Jan. 19.
. I would think that Asian central banks, by buying U.S. dollars, have been driving a massive distortion of real exchange and interest rates.
2. I would think that the U.S. economy is overinvested in non-export durables, most of all residential housing.
3. I would think that we have piled on far too much debt, in both the private and public sectors.
4. I would think these trends cannot possibly continue. Asian central banks may come to their senses. Furthermore the U.S. would be like an addict who needs an ever-increasing dose of the monetary fix. This, of course, would eventually prove impossible.
5. I would think that the U.S. economy is due for a dollar plunge, and a massive sectoral shift toward exports. Furthermore I would think it will not handle such an unexpected shock very well.
6. I would buy puts on T-Bond futures and become rich.
7. I would think that Hayek's Monetary Nationalism and International Stability, now priced at $70 a copy, is the secret tract for our times.
Of course that is not me. But at least someone appears to believe in Austrian business cycle theory. By the way, here is one summary of the theory, although I do not agree with the characterization in all respects.
#4
We need more gold, we must get all the gold. When we have more gold it means we are winning.
Posted by: abu GoldBug ||
01/31/2005 14:27
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Dollar goes down, exports go up. Exports go up, deficit goes down. Dollar goes down, it becomes cheaper for foreigners to invest in US real estate, housing market goes up. Housing market goes up in CA or East Coast - building new homes becomes more profitable in the midwest where land and building costs are cheaper. Housing supply goes up, housing costs go down.
It may be profitable for Bill Gates and Warren Buffet - who invest in currency - to short their dollars - but I fail to understand why it hurts me, as an American, to see the dollar fall and thus... exports go up and defict go down. Seems like the Euros have far more to lose over this than I do. It might make purchasing a foreign car and travel abroad more expensive, but I can buy and travel domeestic.
#7
Gold and real estate purchases represent negative expectations. Neither grow as cash or stocks do. Rising gold and real estate prices represent the top of a long term cycle as Japan over the last 25 years has shown.
Posted by: Mahmoud, the Weasel ||
01/31/2005
13:20 ||
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As she clutched her stomach in agony, she cried out, "No! Not yet! Gatekeeper, give me another year! Snaaaaarrrrrrrlllll! Cthulu! Astaroth! Beezelbub! Belphegor! I have a contract!!!"
#6
Somebody explain to me why I'm supposed to care if the Hildabeest is sick.
She doesn't give a rat's ass if I'm sick.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/31/2005 20:04
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#7
Barb, you're not 'possed to be reciprocal in compassion. But you have a point, so let me ask someone to ak her if she gives a rat's ass if you were sick and I will get back to ya with what she sez.
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) collapsed at the Saturn Club in Buffalo, New York just prior to giving a speech at Catholic Canisius College... Developing...
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/31/2005 13:15
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I would expect it's a reaction to the "Moderateâ¢" pills she's been taking lately
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/31/2005 13:15
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#3
Hope everything comes out OK. I don't like her politics, and think her party is a serious problem for the US, but don't wish her any pain or disaster.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
01/31/2005 13:19
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#4
ROFLMAO, Frank!!!
Dunno what's wrong with her, but that was awesomely over the top funny! *Applause*
Posted by: Mike ||
01/31/2005 13:35
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#10
"Authorities deny reports they are looking for a young girl with a small dog who threw a pail of water on Sen. Clinton."
Posted by: Steve ||
01/31/2005 13:40
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#11
Hope everything comes out OK. I don't like her politics, and think her party is a serious problem for the US, but don't wish her any pain or disaster.
RC - for all the partisan disagreements we've had, you are a man of honor.
#14
Fox sez she was feeling weak from a bout with the flu and, after receiving treatment from paramedics (Is that you, Chuck Simmins? Buffalo, NY, right?), she refused hospitalization.
Posted by: Dar ||
01/31/2005 14:04
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#15
Neither do I wish pain and disaster on anyone, xcept people that deserve it in heaps (like jihadi scum).
On the other hand, checking my Hildebeast sympathy meter... tap, tap ... sorry, must be stuck or sumthin'.
#16
Of course I don't want anything bad to happen to her.
*Waits expectantly for Lh pat on head, heh*
*waiting*
*waiting*
*lol, fuck it*
I'm with Sobiesky here. If you guys are all gonna be so honorable and upstanding and everything, sorta like Good Cops, can I be a Bad Cop and say I hope the bitch witch melts?
#18
I plan to vote for a woman in '08 myself. Condi all the way, baby!
Posted by: Dar ||
01/31/2005 14:16
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#19
Don't bet on that, TGA.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
01/31/2005 14:17
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#20
Out of respect for my fellow RB posters who are clearly better human beings then I. I will be coy as to my personal feelings about the junior senator from the state of New York. I hope her passing isn't painful either. Though I do pray for lots of bad things to happen to Abu Zarqawi, Saddam Hussein, Teddy Kennedy, Khameni, Jesse Jackson, Fidel Castro, Jaques Chirac, and that bitch from the pretenders.
#23
.com, nice one. Is that the subliminal world famous "this is bullshit" signal? Often used by U.S. servicemen when wanting to show their true feelings about a photo op or when being illegaly asked to make "official" statements from the Viet Cong. Or, is the young paratrooper demonstrating how he intends to give Mrs. Clinton a body cavity search with his left hand?
#24
Heh, I'd guess the latter - he's certainly not the Skeery type. Note she prolly picked his poor ass out of the crowd as the "hunky" type she thought would make the pic more appealing. His subtle message served her right. Sorry he's RA - I don't think she's mustered the nerve to approach a Jarine, so I don't have an appropriate pic, lol!
Well, in case she's more seriously ill than we think, here are 2 more images so we can remember her fondly... --1-- --2--
Thx Mac. Must be an Army thing. I'm used to the 'longhorn' salute or subliminal "heavy metal" hand gesture to display one's feeling in such a situation.
#29
jarhead, dot com, how did you feel when loony lefties expressed happiness at the death of Ronald Reagan? Disgusted, huh? That people put partisanship above humanity? It goes all ways folks. And dot com, i thought it only appropriate to thank RC. Wasnt a "pat on the head"? what, sorry if i wasnt belligerent like you like. Try DU or Kos, you'll have better luck finding sparring partners there.
#30
No matter how I feel about her politics, I hope that she is ok. I would never wish ill health on anyone. (Unless they had already taken a shot at me, but that's a different story.)
Posted by: Mark E. ||
01/31/2005 15:20
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#31
Since LH brought it up in #29... I was frankly FAR more disgusted by the folks on TV who pretended they didn't hate RR with a passion during his presidency.
#33
Lh - I was kidding with you. Your heart's in the right place - and I didn't mean to offend you. What I think of Hillary Clinton is between me and my own conscience. Sorry to have involved you or made you feel awkward. Honest.
#34
I don't wish anything bad on Senator Clinton, but I think since she was talking at a Cathoilic College, God has spoken! W.O.G. (Wrath of God) will get you everytime.
#35
I wish ill upon no American, lest they be a criminal or traitor, or upon any human being provided they are a decent person - ie, not a jihadi, etc.
#39
I don't want to see anything bad happen to Hillary or her health; I'm hoping she at least recovers enough to actually do something feminist for a change, and divorce that schmuck Bill.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
01/31/2005 17:10
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#40
Lh - What? You owe me an acknowledgment, son. When I apologized it was directly to you because you took offense. You want good manners? Fine, I obliged - now let's see yours. Show some grace, jerk.
23.01.2005 at 0340 LT at Panjang port, Indonesia. Three robbers armed with long knives boarded a tanker at berth. D/O raised alarm and crew mustered. Robbers jumped overboard and escaped empty handed in a speedboat.
19.01.2005 at 0135 LT at berth no.2, Rio Haina port, Dominican Republic. Two robbers armed with long knives boarded a tanker during cargo operations. Duty a/b raised alarm and robbers jumped overboard and escaped.
16.01.2005 at 0010 LT in posn: 20:39N - 106:51E, Haiphong anchorage, Vietnam. Several robbers boarded a general cargo ship at forecastle. Duty a/b raised alarm and crew mustered. Robbers stole ship's stores and fled in an unlit boat. Port authorities informed.
14.1.2005 at 0430 LT at Nanjing anchorage, China. Three robbers boarded a chemical tanker. They broke padlock on a locker and stole safety equipment. Alert crew raised alarm and robbers escaped in a speedboat. Master attempted to contact local authorities but no response was received.
Posted by: Pappy ||
01/31/2005
12:58:59 AM ||
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#1
"Yar! We be.......Oop's, that's the alarm, gotta go"
Posted by: Steve ||
01/31/2005 10:54
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#2
With cat-like tread, upon our prey we steal
With silence dread- oops, the alarm bells peal!
Cos jurors need less info, not more, to make an informed decision. This has major ramifications for terror trials, if the "international community" decides that, f'rinstance, the Rantburg archives might reflect negatively on those poor misunderstood freedom fighters...
A(n Australian) Supreme Court judge has called for the internet to be purged of any material likely to prejudice a trial, to prevent jurors conducting their own investigations into cases they are sitting on.
Purge the internet. Yeah. That'll work.
Justice Virginia Bell, of the NSW Supreme Court, told a conference in Darwin of Supreme and Federal court judges from across the country yesterday that the ready availability of archived press reports on the internet could jeopardise the trial of an accused person. Justice Bell recommended that to prevent jurors from researching cases online, Crown prosecutors in any pending case should "carry out searches on the internet and, in the event that prejudicial material is identified . . . request any Australian-based website to remove it until the trial is completed". She said prejudicial material relating to the trial of a prominent business identity had been removed from the website Crikey.com.au at the request of the NSW Supreme Court's public information officer.
And the information, of course, existed only on crikey.com.au, nowhere else in the entire world...
Justice Bell said publication of material that had a real and definite tendency to prejudice a trial amounted to contempt of court. "The difficulty arises with material published on the internet by individuals and interest groups who may be difficult to trace or, in widely publicised cases, by the publication of prejudicial material on the internet by persons outside the jurisdiction."
She means where her jurisdiction doesn't extend. I'm trying to figure how it came to extend to the internet based in Australia. As far as I know, there's no one "in charge" of the internet. Or have they changed that?
A NSW study which examined 41 trials held between 1997 and 2000 found that in three cases jurors admitted to having carried out internet searches despite being instructed not to by judges.
If the jurors did it when the judge said not to do it, then it should be on the jurors' heads, not those of the entire worldwide web...
Queensland and NSW have introduced legislation making it an offence for jurors to conduct investigations on the internet, punishable by a maximum of two years' jail.
... a reasonable response. Draco would yawn.
Justice Bell said the potential for the internet to threaten the integrity of jury trials was highlighted by the promotion of CrimeNet, a national police site which published criminal histories. After concerns were raised about CrimeNet, the site was modified so anyone searching its criminal records database must now open an account and furnish credit card details. A subscriber must agree "not to search for details of any person whilst I am a juror in a trial of that person, in a jurisdiction that prohibits such information". But her call was branded "silly and unworkable" by the media union, while the internet industry said it would be impossible to police offshore sites. Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance federal secretary Christopher Warren said it was an attempt at censorship which highlighted a "disturbing trend" in judges' decisions. "It's silly and it's unworkable, we've already seen in the Gutnick case how dangerous that can be for Australia," Mr Warren said. The 2002 Gutnick v Dow Jones case in the High Court established that, in law, internet articles are published where they are read. Courts could already compel Australian ISPs to remove material from websites in Australia, Peter Coroneos, chief executive of the Internet Industry Association said. "The problem is much more difficult if someone puts up a website in Argentina," Mr Coroneos said.
#1
Oh the sheer horror. Judges and lawyers do not get to pick and choose the evidence heard at a trial. Why real fact might get in the way of a decision. A defence lawyer can Google his client and demand a mistrial.
Posted by: john ||
01/31/2005 13:46
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#2
Virginia doesn't seem to grasp the internet. Just because she decrees all info be purged, it won't happen. More likely she's just set up a whole group on interested people who'll dissect her puny case.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/31/2005 13:53
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#3
ROFLMAO!!!
And the Internet, as one, looked up and said, "Huh? Piss up a rope, fool." and went on about its business.
#4
"...has called for the internet to be purged of any material likely to prejudice a trial, to prevent jurors conducting their own investigations into cases they are sitting on."
Oh, yeah. Purge the internet...
Thus proving that judges can be total idiots.
Q.E.D.
#6
Next up: A(n Australian) Supreme Court judge has called for the sun to not shine, to insure jurors are kept in the dark.
Posted by: DO ||
01/31/2005 14:45
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#7
I wonder if someone will invent a "jury nullification" virus, otherwise harmless, that will just flash on computer screens the definition of jury nullification. I know that the mere mention of it makes a lot of judges apoplectic, and it is impossible to outlaw or prohibit unless the judge *directs* the jury to find the defendant guilty. I know that defendants have been held in contempt and mis-trials declared for even *mentioning* it in court, and some lawyer might demand that any infected computer be destroyed.
#3
Bluster, that's all it is. They should all be brought up on Federal Elections tampering charges. I'll bet we would get a FULL story the first time we make Mapes do the perp walk to a holding cell.
Soldiers on Sunday killed an Abu Sayyaf bandit who was among those who bolted the Basilan Provincial Jail in April last year. Southern Command chief Lieutenant General Alberto Braganza said Abdulajid Awalal alias Jaid Awalal was killed in an encounter in Sitio (hamlet) Batolareg, Barangay (village) Mahatalang in Sumisip town, Basilan province Sunday at dawn. Colonel Raymundo Ferrer, 103rd Army Brigade commander, said residents earlier reported the presence of Abu Sayyaf bandits inside the rubber plantation of Tumahubong Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Incorporated. Ferrer said Awalal, who had been convicted for kidnapping, carried a 150,000-peso reward on his head.
This article starring:
ABDULAJID AWALAL
Abu Sayyaf
JAID AWALAL
Abu Sayyaf
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/31/2005
12:30:21 AM ||
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Driving across Mogadishu in a battle wagon full of machine-gun-toting, khat-chewing militiamen, crossing an area of inter-clan fighting involving mortar attacks in densely populated urban areas, we felt we were in a time warp. This could easily have been a decade ago, when 30,000 U.S. soldiers were deployed in Somalia, a country then and still without a permanent national government.
But things have indeed changed, and the way they have changed matters to U.S. national security. During the last decade, international Islamist groups, including Al-Qaeda, have invested with Somali partners, building a commercial empire in the country that rivals that of any other faction and which is increasingly asserting itself as a political and military force.
It is crucial not to paint every Islamist group as an inherent threat to Western interests or values. Islamic organizations of various stripes have been at the forefront of restoring education and health care, Sharia (Islamic law) courts have provided security in some areas, and sheikhs are prominent in reconciliation. But a small network of Islamist extremists in Somalia has helped facilitate the activities of Al-Qaeda in terrorist attacks over the years, namely against the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the attack on a tourist hotel on the Kenyan coast, a failed attempt to shoot down an Israeli charter flight near Mombasa, and an unrealized plot to crash an airplane into the new U.S. embassy in Nairobi last year. The same extremists are preparing to unleash attacks on Somalia's new government, as well as African Union peacekeeping forces, when they eventually return to Mogadishu.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/31/2005
12:26:04 AM ||
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#1
Somalia falling into it's own cesspool by weight should cause no concern for the US! They're already in hell, just provide the handbasket!
#2
So, the whole thing is America's fault. Good to know.
And if America was taking an active interest in Somalian reconstruction, you'd hear unconstructive criticism of the same from this very outlet, methinks.
#3
This paper, "The Daily Star", is headquartered in Beirut, Lebanon. That's about all we need to know. Just one more festering mess of a place whose own people have given up and allowed foreigners and radical Islam to crap in their nest.
Posted by: Tom ||
01/31/2005 8:17
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#4
Now there is a glowing example of the Democratic Party exit strategy. Peace, love, and warm puppies.
#6
I'm afraid I stopped caring about Somalis in general, after those pictures of a Somali mob dragging the dead bodies of American soldiers through the streets of Mogadishu were published. Seal the borders and let them slaughter each other, or starve, or whatever. As the great Lileks said (and I am approximating the quote by memory) "I am out of care. The care well is run dry. The dog ate my care..."
Posted by: Duke Nukem ||
01/31/2005 10:37
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#8
So what they are calling for is a recolonization program, like the post-WWI mandates given to Britain and France in the Middle East -- Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon...
At some point the peepul have to decide law and order cost less than all-against-all chaos. And until they are willing to pay the cost, nothing the US or anyone else does will fix it. My heart weeps to say it, but in the end kindness is more cruel: Surround the place with an Iron Curtain, and wait them out.
#9
Not recolonisation, just lots of money, diplomats with endless tolerance, patience and enthusiasm for 'process', and perhaps a few technocrats to keep the fax machines running.
#11
It's not "Islam" per se that we have a problem with - it's the way some people interpret and apply Islam to terrorize, extort, kill, maim, murder, and destroy others that we have a problem with. If that's not "part of Islam", then get rid of it. IF, however, that is the part of Islam you intend to extend to us, you're going to have a problem - a BIG problem.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
01/31/2005 17:23
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#12
We all have our little foibles, and one of mine is that every now and then I work up a good grudge and won't let go of it. The Somalis mutilated our soldiers and dragged their bodies through the streets. Now they want some more of my tax dollars? Go screw.
Posted by: Matt ||
01/31/2005 17:43
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Senior former Taliban officials arrested in Balochistan and suspected of links to Al Qaeda will be handed over to Afghanistan if nothing can be proved against them, police said on Sunday.
"If nothing is proved against them except living without any legal documents in Pakistan, they will be handed over to the Afghan government for being Afghan nationals," said Pervez Rafi Bhatti, the Quetta police chief. The 17 Afghan suspects were picked up by police in a swoop on Thursday on hideouts in Quetta in Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, AFP reported.
AP quoted Bhatti as saying that the police had gleaned "useful" information from the suspects, but he would not give further details.
He said six suspects were released late on Saturday after questioning proved they were Pakistanis with no links with the Taliban.
A security official in Quetta, who asked not to be named, said on Saturday that the Taliban suspects were being interrogated to know where Mulla Omar was hiding.
"The suspects are being questioned about their links to Al Qaeda," Bhatti said.
Investigators have identified one detainee as Mulla Abdur Razzak but on Sunday still could not confirm whether he is the former Afghan interior minister of the same name during the Taliban's rule.
The former deputy governor of southern Helmand province, Mulla Khush Dil, and ex-Kabul police chief Mulla Ibrahim were also among the arrested group.
This article starring:
MULA ABDUR RAZZAK
Taliban
MULA IBRAHIM
Taliban
MULA KHUSH DIL
Taliban
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/31/2005
12:24:41 AM ||
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A powerful bomb exploded near the Askari Park, without causing any casualty or damage to property. However, a second blast partially damaged an oil tanker in the Kuchlak suburb of the city.
The bomb disposal squad defused a third bomb planted inside the Askari Park. Capital City Police Officer Pervaiz Bhatti confirmed the incidents, saying that unidentified persons had planted the bomb near the park which exploded at 3am. Another one, weighing 3kg, was planted inside the park which was defused.
About the Kuchlak blast, the police official claimed that a small bomb partially damaged the oil tanker but said it was not a subversive act. He said two private companies had a dispute with each other, and one of them had filed an FIR against the other for the incident.
When asked why blast incidents were on the rise despite tight security measures, he said a key saboteur had been arrested two days ago while 24 suspects had also been taken into custody. "We are investigating the matter from different angles," he said.
About the arrests of suspected Taliban three days ago, Mr Bhatti said that investigators were quizzing six senior Taliban while 11 others had been sent to jail.
He acknowledged that six activists of Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI-F), who had been held during raids to apprehend the Afghans, had been released the next day.
He said that 17 Afghans were arrested on charges of entering Pakistan without legal documents. Upon completion of the interrogation process, the detained people would be sent back to Afghanistan. He acknowledged that six activists of Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI-F), who had been held during raids to apprehend the Afghans, had been released the next day.
This article starring:
MAULANA AGHA MUHAMAD
Taliban
MAULANA IBRAHIM
Taliban
MAULANA KHUSHDIL
Taliban
MAULANA NABI
Taliban
MUFTI RAZZAK
Taliban
MUFTI REHMATULAH
Taliban
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
01/31/2005
12:22:21 AM ||
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#1
"Didja set the bomb for 3 o'clock?"
"Yeah, boss."
"3 P.M.?
"Ummm...whudduz 'P.M.' mean, chief?"
Terrorists used a disabled child as a suicide bomber on election day, Iraqi interior minister Falah al-Naqib said today. to the depths of depravity...and beyond!
In all, 44 people were killed in a total of 38 bomb attacks on polling stations. Police at the scene of one the Baghdad blasts said the bomber appeared to have Down's syndrome. Mr Al-Naqib praised an Iraqi citizen who was killed while preventing one suicide bomber from reaching a crowd of people outside a polling station. What scum these insurgent "leaders" are. First there was the report of a driver who didn't know he was on a suicide mission (the remote was in another car a safe distance behind), and now this. I can't imagine a lower degree of respect for humanity. Disgusting.
#3
I don't know why anyone here is shocked. Remember the mentally-retarded Palestinian suicide bomber? Remember Saddam's prison for children of political adversaries? Remember the Oil-for-Food Program corruption essentially stealing aid from needy children? Remember the gasing of Kurd villages? Heck, this is just business as usual.
Posted by: Tom ||
01/31/2005 13:30
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#4
Anderson Cooper actually mentioned this story on CNN this morning. I almost spilt my coffee.
Posted by: john ||
01/31/2005 13:49
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#5
Tom's right on. To my western mind, these f*ckers are not just evil, but total cowards ta boot. As this is a shock to most of the civilized world one cannot forget what type of culture were dealing w/here. The respect for life is not just the same as you see in other parts of the world. These people are extremist religious-fascist goofballs, they will use whatever means necessary to kill whoever stands in their way. Then they'll rationalize the whole thing by using whatever koranic verse they can find. Its all about control as usual. I truly believe all humans are created equal, but all cultures do not develop equally.
#8
"...44 people were killed in a total of 38 bomb attacks..."
I keep hearing that this number includes 9 homicide bombers. It is disgusting that these scum continue to be reported as though they are among the victims.
God bless that poor boy. From what I know of Down's Syndrome, he was most likely just trying to please those he thought loved him... then they called his cell phone.
#9
Apparently some are forgetting That some of these "insurgents" are actually Saddam's guys not persons driven by religion. This is just the way they do business sending a handicapped kid to he death is just fine with them.
Posted by: SPOD ||
01/31/2005 15:45
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#10
John,
I heard another surprizing thing on CNN today. They mentioned that 93% of Iraqi exiles in the US voted. Of course they meant 93% of Iraqi exiles who registered to vote. A rare case of a CNN mistake being in the direction of pro US policy.
#11
Jarhead, you raise the point that I just can't get my mind around.
The Bad Guyz are evil on the order of comic books or space opera villains, Fu Manchu with turbans. They admit to being evil, they don't try to even hide the fact, even revel in it. They are Nazis reborn, Fascism resurgent. To me, that requires a war of extermination. Yet here are Kennedy and Kerry and all their slimy ilk demanding we bring the troops home, bemoaning what are really very low casualty figures for the amount of combat being waged, wanting to quit and pretend it's 9-10-2001.
It just doesn't make sense. I sometimes feel like I'm living in a funhouse. But I'm coming to a better understanding of the people who ignored the smell coming from Dachau. I'm just glad I'm not one of them.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/31/2005 15:57
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#12
Didn't the US have the same situation in the 30's when confronting Hitler? IIRC, lots of people wanted America First, and wanted an isolation policy with respect to Europe. Nobody realized that Lufthansa was pioneering air routes in South America for Nazi strategic purposes in the future. Lots of nefarious things going on.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/31/2005 16:56
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#13
Didn't the US have the same situation in the 30's when confronting Hitler?
Indeed, AP. We've been through all this before. The recurrent weakness of democracy tends to be a reluctance to act until all other avenues are exhausted and the fight is one of survival. It's easy to be pessimistic about history repeating itself but perhaps the robust actions in the ME this time round, with the low toll that Fred points out, does actually represent a leaning from the past. Despite the shrill calls for inaction, the sentient West, with US leadership, is nipping this one in the bud...
#14
Perhaps a practical implementation of the principles of eugenics. It's a well known fact that Islamic fundamentalists are big fans of Hitler's philosophy.
OSLO - Humanitarian aid group Save the Children, Ukraine's new President Viktor Yushchenko and former US secretary of state Colin Powell are seen as likely candidates for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize ahead of Tuesday's deadline for nominations.
I'd be happy with any of these.
While Asia copes with the disastrous effects of the December 26 tsunamis, some have argued that humanitarian organisations involved in the largest and fastest relief effort the world has ever seen would be deserving candidates for the prestigious prize. Former US president Bill Clinton recently said he believed that the aid effort would help to increase "religious reconciliation" and contribute to "reducing the likelihood of terror".
But choosing just one relief organisation would be hard, observers say. The International Red Cross could be considered an obvious choice, but it has already received the prize three times—in 1917, 1944 and 1963. The founder of the Red Cross, Henri Dunant, was also awarded the very first Peace Prize in 1901. Many children were orphaned in the catastrophe and will need support for many years, and thus Save The Children International could appear as a judicious choice. The organisation has operated in the hardest hit countries like Indonesia and Sri Lanka for decades.
The annual deadline for nominations is Tuesday, and the laureate is announced every year in October. As tradition dictates, the Nobel Institute never reveals the identities of the candidates. However, those entitled to submit nominations for the prize—including past laureates, members of parliament and cabinet ministers from around the world and some university professors—are allowed to disclose their suggestions.
The Ukrainian president is thus known to be on the list, having been nominated by a group within the Ukrainian academic community for his peaceful fight for democracy in his country.
But some observers stressed that it was still early days to be speculating about who the Nobel Committee would honour later this year. "I haven't started thinking about this year's nominees yet," admitted Stein Toennesson, director of the Norwegian Peace Research Institute, PRIO, who is considered a local expert on the committee's inclinations. "If one would follow the committee's policy the last few years, it will be a woman who represents something special."
So, ok, Laura Bush would work.
Last year, the prize went to Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai, and the year before to Iranian activist Shirin Ebadi. Rebiya Kadeer could be a possible candidate. She is a prisoner of conscience in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, also known as East Turkistan, in China. She is a prominent symbol of the Uyghurs' struggle for basic human rights, and just a few days ago her family received the Norwegian Rafto Prize—often seen as a forerunner to the Nobel Prize—on her behalf at a ceremony in Washington.
The conflict in Sudan, Africa's longest running war which ended in January when the government and Sudan People's Liberation Army signed a peace treaty, could also earn Colin Powell the prize, a candidate vigorously supported by US Senator Frank Wolf. "President Bush and Secretary Powell should be considered for the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts" in Sudan, he said at a peace ceremony in Naivasha, Kenya on January 9.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/31/2005
12:16:59 AM ||
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#1
What about Ronnie Reagan? He only freed about 750 million people....and they gave one to Jimmy the peanut farmer Carter over Ronnie...
Fuck that whole process. What a sham!!
#6
Arafat, Carter and Gerry Adams. IMO, if they're going to give the prize to an individual they ought to wait till they can't stumble around being idiots and/or psychopaths with the Peace Medal dangling round their worthless necks for another twenty or thirty years. Wait till they're dead, and then wait another fifty years for the dust to settle, and then make them eligible. You know, maybe that'd work for the Oscars, too...
#7
The best thing possible is for the Nobel committee to award a prize and the recipient denounce the Nobel committee at the awards ceremony. Alas, Powell is too polite to do this.
Pakistan will propose a series of confidence-boosting joint projects with India, which it hopes will pave the way to progress in ending difficulties such as the dispute over Kashmir, the Financial Times reported on Monday. A gas pipeline to connect India with Iran via Pakistan and a move to open banking links were among possible measures which "would improve the atmospherics", Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told the FT in an interview.
"All we need is someone to talk sense to the Bugtis ..."
The paper quoted Aziz as adding there were "many other possibilities which we want to explore". Aziz would make the proposals to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at a regional summit in Bangladesh next weekend.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/31/2005
12:10:55 AM ||
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In a pre-State of the Union challenge to President Bush, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid intends to call Monday for the administration to outline an exit strategy for Iraq. Reid plans to raise the issue as part of back-to-back speeches in which he and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi will sketch outline their differences with Bush on two issues likely to dominate Congress' work this year, the war on terror and Social Security. ``The president needs to spell out a real and understandable plan for the unfinished work ahead: defeat the growing insurgency, rebuild Iraq, increase political participation by all parties, especially moderates, and increase international involvement,'' Reid will say, according to his prepared remarks. ``Most of all we need an exit strategy so we know what victory is and how we can get there; so that we know what we need to do and so that we know when the job is done.''
Bush keeps telling you, but he uses such simple words it flies right over your pointy heads: we'll leave when we're done and the new Iraqi government asks us to leave.
Apart from Iraq, the Nevada senator's prepared remarks include a broader criticism of Bush's foreign policy, and accuse the president's actions of falling short of the words he used in his Inaugural Address earlier this month. ``There is a gap between saying to reformers that the `United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors,' and an administration that stands by in virtual silence as Saudi dissidents disappear,'' one portion of Reid's speech says.
If you want to come out in favor of deposing the House of Saud, just say so. That would twitch the surprise meter.
Bush is scheduled to deliver his State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress and a prime time nationwide television audience on Wednesday. While he is expected to discuss Iraq, and the national elections that were held on Sunday, he has signaled he intends to make Social Security a focus of his speech.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/31/2005
12:02:42 AM ||
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#1
..we'll leave when we're done and the new Iraqi government asks us to leave.
Seems pretty self-explanatory to me. Now why can't Reid, Pelosi, and their ilk get this through their extra-thick skulls?
#2
how about--we leave when we win and the baathist and islamofascists lose--why is that complicated?--did the dems used to ankle bite fdr about his exit strategy for ww11--fer gawd's sake its a volunteer army dude
Posted by: SON OF TOLUI ||
01/31/2005 4:24
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#3
I'll settle for a military victory as a gauge for when we should leave.
#4
I wonder if the Z-man asked them to do this or if it is just an effort to tie down the votes in Dearborn. Reid is starting to look dumber than Daschle. Why don't they give the job to Boxer? I see no reason to prolong the agony.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
01/31/2005 7:47
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#5
Nancy Pelosi is going to be in on it tells you all you need to know. She is only happy when U.S. Service men are dead.
Posted by: SPOD ||
01/31/2005 8:02
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#6
Harry and Nancy stomp their feet in outrage. Challenge, call, raise, and sketch outline anything you want, you jerks. You have freedom of speech, but you would never help the Iraqi's to gain it.
Posted by: Tom ||
01/31/2005 8:07
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#7
Four more years of temper tantrums so their core base will keep giving them cookies.
#11
The Democrats are in difficult times. They stubbornly stick to their "Brer Rabbit" foreign policy. They don't know what they are for, they just know they are against everything the Bush administration is for and for everything they are against. Their positions can be summarized by "don't" - "can't" - "wrong" - "miscalculation" - "colossal mistake" - "arrogant" - "misleading" - "lied."
I can hear myself telling the story to my great-grandkids. And then Bush said, "please Mr. Democrats, please don't support the terrorists, and legitamize their efforts to intimidate the Iraqis into not voting. Please don't align your selves with the America-hating factions in Europe. Please don't try to undermine the cause for which 1000s of young Americans risk their lives, health and honor, for it might make people free." That was all they needed to hear - the Democrats did these thngs - they supported the terrorists, aligned themselves with the America-haters, and tried to undermined the Iraqi elections. And then Bush won the US election and the Iraqis won theirs too.
#12
I still remember Polosiâs âNightmareâ when we threw out Grey Davis. She canât stand it when people have elections and vote for themselves. Luckily she is from the really red part of California so her seat is very safe. They (the LLL DNC) had to be watching in horror as the results came in and now they are trying to put a negative spin. God bless the brave voters in Iraq for stepping up and being counted, what a blow to Islamofacists!
#13
Time for regime change. Get rid of the whole lot: Pelosi, Kerry, Teddy, Reid, Byrdbrain. The Dems should let Obama and The New Hillary step to the forefront and keep moving the party in the direction of sanity and suburban-friendly common sense.
#14
I am coming to the conclusion that the Democratic party is where the Republicans were with the defeat of Hoover. At first, the strongest faction wouldn't, couldn't, admit that the US was in a new paradigm--many went to their graves still bitterly opposed to everything the New Deal represented. And then, a "moderate" faction arose, which were later called the "country club Republicans". The "moderates" ascended to power in the Republican party by doing whatever the democrats wanted, not resisting, and getting payback in the form of largesse. This also kept the Democratic extremists in check, taking the marginal vote away from them, moving everything to the center. Finally, the demise of the CCRs and the rise of the Democratic far left happened at about the same time, in the late 1960s. Since then, the Republicans have been in ascendancy, and the Democrats have been in decline. If this theory is correct, what will happen next is that the Democrats will evolve a "near-Republican" centrist faction that will almost always vote with the Republicans. This in turn will exclude both the Democratic far left and the Republican far right from policy making. This evolution may take 20 years, so I hope you aren't in a hurry.
#15
Good lord, is that the Democrat "Topic of the Week"? Last week it was Dr Rice. What's it going to be next week?
This groupthink is REALLY getting old....
BTW, where's the exit strategy for Europe and Korea while we're at it, Harry & Nancy?
#17
I like the sound of that, GT. Now that I'm a NV resident - at least for the moment - I'll do my part if I'm still around when he comes up.
Can you picture the ritual where he was "crowned" Minority Leader and they gave him the hemlock Kool Aid? Amazing that this quiet little mouse, from whom I had never heard a single word, is now a regular SocioFascistIslamoBat⢠and quoted every day on the news as if his words suddenly mean something?
#18
I think Hank (#11) hit on the reasoning behind the Democratic foreign policy - the Brer Rabbit policy. There is no other reasonable way to explain it. How else could they get to a point where they say every single administration decison is wrong. If they used x number of troops, they should have used x+y. If they disbanded the old Iraqi army, the old army should have been the main stay of the new security. If they pulled out of Falujah, they should have gone in. If they went into Falujah, they were too brutal and were going to incite the Arab street. If they transferred power, it was too late. If they did it earlier, it was too soon. If elections were set in January, it was too late, unless it was too early. If there is no exit time table, there should be. If there is an exit time table, it is too long if it isn't too short. The election is sure to be a disaster and success is hugely important. Now, the elections were no big deal, and the Sunni turnout was light. Woe - things are still terrible, all this talk about freedom.
The Democrats have have no position now. They had no position throughout the campaign. They stand for nothing, unless Bush does, in which case they stand for anything.
Posted by: Sam ||
01/31/2005 14:51
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#19
Damn, Sam! *wipes tear* That is a beautiful, and spot-on, summary!
#21
"The Democrats have no position now. They had no position throughout the campaign. They stand for nothing, unless Bush does, in which case they stand for anything." #18 Sam
Yes.
Posted by: Carlos ||
01/31/2005 18:28
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#22
I have seen in my lifetime the South go from "The Solid South", i.e, solidily Democrat, to Solid Republican. I personally know many Democrats who voted for The President because their party no longer has any place for anyone who doesn't agree with the "Party Line". I have voted Democrat and Republican and it just seems to me that most Republicans, regardless of what the screechers say, do welcome a lot of different viewpoints. These Democrats could not stomach Kerry's transparent pandering to every group he spoke to. They saw him as a shallow, political entity who had no position on anything except "International Community". They resent being called stupid and insane by their fellow Democrats and I doubt they would ever vote for Hillary. She showed her true Socialist colors in the past election.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
01/31/2005 20:13
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HOWARD DEAN, the favorite to be the next head of the Democratic National Committee, made his case in midtown yesterday, promising to make his party operate more like the GOP - at least when it comes to elections. "I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for, but I admire their discipline and their organization," the failed presidential hopeful told the crowd at the Roosevelt Hotel, where he and six other candidates spoke at the final DNC forum before the Feb. 12 vote for chairman. "We'd rather be dingbats and beauzeaux."
But Dean said the Democrats should not change their beliefs to be "Republican lite." "We can talk about our faith, but we cannot change our faith," he said, echoing themes he sounded in his presidential bid. "We need to be people of conviction." "Corrupt UN officials good, America bad."
Later, he said that what "95% of Americans are really concerned about" is national security. But he said Americans also do not want to sacrifice the nation's values. "They want America to be the moral leader of the world again," he said. Dean came into the event riding a fresh wave of momentum. A day earlier, he was endorsed for the top Democratic spot by Clinton ally Harold Ickes amid speculation over whether Bill and Hillary Clinton would try to block Dean. Ickes, who briefly considered running for the DNC chairmanship himself, said he was not speaking for the Clintons, but it was a sign the former First Couple won't oppose Dean, who would be chairman for any run Hillary makes at the White House. Also vying for the seat are grass-roots moonbat activist Donnie Fowler, former Texas Rep. Martin Frost, 9/11 commission member Tim Roemer, Simon Rosenberg, former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb and lawyer David Leland.
Posted by: Korora ||
01/31/2005
11:55:48 AM ||
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#1
Doesn't it make you dems a teensy bit concerned that the Republicans back Dean as DNC chairman 100%? Does that not throw up all sorts of red flags? Dayum!
#2
"I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for, but I admire their discipline and their organization"
What an ass. Dean governed as a fiscal conservative who IIRC supported gun ownership rights and opposed gay marriage.
Dean's rise represents the triumph of attitude, of pretending that sneering and rollin' up yer sleeves, mad-as-hell posturing can substitute for a coherent and relevant policy platform.
#4
Dean's the anti-Clinton. Clinton was a liberal who mastered the art of soothing, centrist rhetoric couched in clever aphorisms ("Make abortion safe, legal and rare"; end welfare as we know it").
Dean's a centrist who's mastered the art of far-left rhetorical posturing, couched in grunts, insults and screams.
#8
Bummer - State Party Chairs Choose Fowler over Dean...so the runaway train hits a temporary siding
Not to worry, Frank: Howard Dean won the backing of state Democratic Party leaders Monday, putting him in a strong position to win the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee. The party's presidential front-runner in 2003 won 56 votes from the state chairs and Democratic activist Donnie Fowler won 21 during a national conference call. The state chairs ignored a recommendation made Sunday by the executive committee to back Fowler. Other candidates' support Monday was in single digits.
"We're asking all of our state chairs and vice chairs to follow our endorsements," Brewer said, noting that would bring 112 votes. "And we think they will."
Posted by: Steve ||
01/31/2005 14:01
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#9
I drank three cases and he is still no goood...slurp
Just about the time you think the Demos may be regaining some sanity....and up jumps Boxer, Reid, Pelosi, Kennedy....and the biggest gift of all Dean!!
There is no hope for the Demo Party at a national level...they are nailing the nails in their own coffin.
ZAMBOANGA CITY Seven bodies of suspected terrorists were recovered by government forces as the death toll in the air bombardment of an alleged terror base in Maguindanao rose to 48, the military said yesterday. The remains found late Friday, however, could not easily be identified as "most were mutilated," said Col. Jerry Jalandoni, chief of the 604th Army Brigade based in Datu Piang, Maguindanao.
More casualties from the rebels' side are expected, Jalandoni said, as the airstrikes and artillery barrage launched Thursday hit Butilan Marsh where suspected renegade commanders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) were meeting with Abu Sayyaf leaders and about five to six Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) members. "So far, we have received reports that there were 48 missing fighters who were believed killed in the airstrike, including a certain Commander Aguila," Jalandoni said.
The ground military commander believes the two JI militants reported killed were a certain Dulmatin and Muayha. A military intelligence report also showed that an unidentified Indonesian died in the massive air raid.
Keeping my fingers crossed
The government suffered only one fatality and one slightly wounded. There were no civilian casualties, according to Brig. Gen. Alexander Yano, spokesman for the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), after an inspection of the devastated area by the joint committee on cessation of hostilities with members of the International Monitoring Team (IMT). Military officials said the situation has returned to normal in Datu Piang. Not a single firefight was reported since yesterday morning although Jalandoni said movements from fleeing Abu Sayyaf and radical MILF rebels were monitored. Yano said residents have made their way back into their homes from evacuation centers.
Amid renewed hostilities in Mindanao, President Arroyo has said peace talks with the mainstream MILF does not stop government forces to run after "renegade" guerrillas behind attacks such as the raid on two Army outposts in Mamasapano and Shariff Aguak towns also in Maguindanao on Jan. 9.
The Mamasapano assault was blamed on Abdul Wahid Tondok, a renegade leader of a breakaway MILF faction. The MILF heirarchy has disowned the raid, saying it was not sanctioned. Tondok was believed to be with his men, Abu Sayyaf leaders including chieftain Khadaffy Janjalani and JI members before the terrorist haven in the marshy area of barangay Butilan was bombed. As the identities of those killed remained unclear, the military nonetheless warned Tondok that his days are numbered.
AFP Southern Command (Southcom) chief Lt. Gen. Alberto Braganza called on Tondok to surrender, saying a relentless military offensive against him will not stop. "With the (casualty) figure given on the ground from our intelligence unit, I better advise him (Wahid) to give up because I will not stop running after him and his cohorts," Braganza vowed.
The Southcom chief expressed belief that the Abu Sayyaf, a ragtag extremist group said to have links with the al-Qaeda, has been working with JI forces hiding in the southern Philippines amid reports that the two groups meet occasionally with some renegade members of the MILF. Braganza said last Thursday's gathering of the band of terrorists showed that the JI was indeed training guerrillas in the South. "We have been receiving reports on the training activities being conducted by the JI with the local fighters here," Braganza said. He said the reported death of two JI members from the airstrike "is a big blow" to the Indonesian militants' activity in Mindanao.
The MILF, which has repeatedly denied having ties with the Indonesian-based JI, complains the latest air attack violated its ceasefire agreement with the government. Resumption of formal negotiations are scheduled next month with Malaysia as third party facilitator. Malacañang, however, said it had prior clearance from the joint ceasefire committee and Malaysian-led IMT.
Presidential Spokesman Ignacio Bunye reiterated yesterday in a radio interview the government's policy against terrorism carried out in the Maguindanao military offensive should not disturb the peace process. "Terrorism is our common fight. It is not just a fight of the government but I believe it is also a fight of the MILF," Bunye pointed out. The attack "was not aimed at the MILF," he clarified, but at terrorist cells "that pose a threat not only to national security but to the cause of peace itself." "Very clearly, the objective of the military was to really run after terrorist cells," Bunye stressed.
Nonetheless, MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said they have filed a protest before the Joint Coordinating Committee on the Cessation of Hostilities against the military for alleged violations of the ceasefire pact. Palace communications director Silvestre Afable Jr., head of the government peace panel, told The STAR yesterday that they are still awaiting official notice from Malaysia as to the specific date when formal talks resume. The Malaysian government, he said, had expressed its "wish" to see a final peace treaty reached by middle of this year.
This article starring:
ABDUL WAHID TONDOK
Abu Sayyaf
ABDUL WAHID TONDOK
Jemaah Islamiyah
COMANDER AGUILA
Moro Islamic Liberation Front
DULMATIN
Jemaah Islamiyah
EID KABALU
Moro Islamic Liberation Front
KHADAFY JANJALANI
Abu Sayyaf
MUAIHA
Jemaah Islamiyah
Posted by: Steve ||
01/31/2005
11:24:22 AM ||
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North Korea's media has for the first time raised the issue of a possible hereditary transfer of power from dictator Kim Jong-Il to one of his sons. Kim, who turns 63 next month, inherited power from his father Kim Il-Sung in 1994 as North Korea established the world's first communist dynasty. Kim was anointed by his father when the elder Kim was 62. Kim Jong-Il is now believed to be ready to anoint one of his own three sons, none of whom was mentioned by name in the North Korean radio report.
South Korea's JoongAng Daily said talk of the succession was aired publicly in North Korea for the first time on state radio on Thursday in a political commentary. "Our founder Kim Il-Sung, when he was alive, emphasized that if he falls short of completing the revolution, it will be continued by his son and grandson," the newspaper quoted the commentary as saying, noting that the term grandson referred to one of Kim Jong-Il's heirs apparent. Yonhap news agency also reported the commentary which quoted the words of Kim Jong-Il in the context of passing on power to a new generation. "A couple years ago, our dear leader Kim Jong-Il told workers, 'I will keep the will of my father....'," the newspaper quoted the commentary as saying. "This is a philosophy that revolution should be completed even if it takes place in the next generation ... If our tradition is great, then the inheritance of it should be great as well."
Kim's eldest son Kim Jong-Nam, 33, is in contention to inherit power in arguably the world's most isolated country though he may be losing out in a power struggle, according to experts. Jong-Nam's mother is Song Hye-Rim, Kim's former companion who reportedly died of heart disease in Moscow in 2003.
"She's dead, Kim"
His two rivals for the succession are Kim Jong-Chul, 23, and Kim Jong-Woon, 21. They are sons of Ko Yong-Hui, a former actress who died last year. Kim Jong-Nam is believed to have fallen from grace after he was deported from Japan for illegal entry in 2001.
Let the games begin!
Posted by: Steve ||
01/31/2005
11:19:02 AM ||
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#1
nothing like inheriting a corrupt, starving, bankrupt hermit-kingdom, surrounded by nations that either resent having to support you or are ready for war with you and don't trust anything you say... good luck, kids!
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/31/2005 12:33
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#2
"From each according to his genes, to each according to his genes."
#3
Who the hell is going to want to follow any of those lusers? Put six or eight Nork Generals and Colonels in a room and they will have a new dictator or junta in five minutes--these clowns all look to them like some damn private who doesn't have his stuff together. No way in hell are they going to just *give* them power.
#9
Kimmies been silent since Team America premiered. My guess is the brutal mocking sent him into a crying fit that caused his generals to lose respect.
DENIA, Spain (Reuters) - A bomb exploded in a seaside hotel in southeast Spain on Sunday, slightly injuring a tourist, after a warning call in the name of the Basque separatist group ETA, officials said. The bomb, the second claimed by ETA in two weeks, was hidden in a backpack and left in a courtyard in the hotel in Denia, near the resorts of Benidorm and Alicante, the Interior Ministry said. About 160 people, including several British tourists, were evacuated before the explosion, but one guest's eardrums were damaged by the blast, a ministry source said.
The blast, which ripped a hole 10 meters by 5 meters (33 ft by 16 ft) in an outside wall and shattered windows, followed a warning call to the Basque roadside assistance authority in the name of ETA, a spokesman there said. "There's a device in Hotel Port Denia, in Denia. In 40 minutes it will explode," the spokesman quoted a woman as saying. "Long live ETA," she added in Basque. The Interior Ministry said the bomb exploded 35 minutes after the call.
Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso condemned the attack in a statement saying: "Terrorist attacks will never manage to change ... the government's policy of absolute steadfastness against terrorist violence." Less than two weeks ago a car bomb exploded in a Basque coastal town, injuring a police officer and crushing growing expectations of a cease-fire by ETA, which has killed nearly 850 people since 1968 in a campaign for an independent Basque state.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/31/2005
11:03:59 AM ||
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EFL:THE seriously delayed and massively over budget Eurofighter Typhoon is so unreliable it is barely airborne, according to the German government, which has just taken delivery of a squadron of the £60m planes. The new fighter-bomber, being jointly built by the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy, also lacks some of the most basic systems to protect it over the modern battlefield and has been plagued with technical problems. A report prepared for the defence committee of the German parliament said that the eight aircraft bought for the air force spent an average of just one hour a week in the air because components had to be replaced so frequently.
German officials - whose reluctance to go ahead with the project in the 1990s delayed it by several years - have tried to play down the problems, but have admitted "teething troubles" with the new aircraft. The report indicated that each aircraft had spent an average of only one hour in the air per week since they came into service last April. They also lack one of the most basic defences against missile attack - decoy flares.
The flares, which are often made from magnesium, are fired from aircraft and used to fool heat-seeking missiles. The reason that the lack of decoy flares is so much of a concern is the fact that many terrorist organisations have access to shoulder-launched heat-seeking missiles which are easy to carry and use and can destroy an aircraft. During the Cold War, the US and Soviet Union distributed thousands of the missiles to their allies, such as the US-backed Muslim fighters in Afghanistan and Soviet-backed Syria.
British MPs have admitted that they are concerned by the difficulties with the project. One blamed the large number of countries involved in the aircraft and suggested it was a matter of "too many cooks spoil the broth".
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A spokesman for the Eurofighter project admitted that the first deliveries of fighters did not posses the decoy flare systems but said that future deliveries would have the flares and that air forces would be able to 'retro-fit' them to their existing machines.
He said claims that planes had been grounded because of a lack of spares were based on information that was current last November and that the problems were "rapidly" being addressed now the fighters were in service and that the plane was well-liked by pilots.
However, a defence committee source, based in Berlin, told Scotland on Sunday that there had been a number of "issues" with the new aircraft, although they were the "normal teething problems". A British Ministry of Defence spokesman said: "The MoD is unable to comment on the reports in the German media on their Typhoon aircraft."
Posted by: Steve ||
01/31/2005
10:54:34 AM ||
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#1
Typhoon: from the Chinese, "Tai Feng", Supreme Wind
#3
FOund this from a poster at EU Referendum, kind of OT:
Ahhh, the F-18. Good choice. Unfortunately, it is not built anymore, and the F-18 A/E i much larger, so depending on the exact specs of your Aircraft Carrier, it might not do.
The Swiss air force is very happy with the F-18 they bought. Of course, they had to be heavily modified to meet the expected performance: all the electronics â not one in their right mind would trust us military electronics; but also the air frame, so that it can withstand the accelerations required of it in the alps. And the tanks and engine were rebuilt â did you know that the swiss F-18 actually use 30% less fuel than their US counterparts? Some people wonder why they did not make a plane alone⦠Of course, it is because the dev. costs would have been staggering for switzerland.
So if you are a big country like England, with al long and brilliant engineering tradition, you probably had better develop your own programs.
#8
The poster on EU is unaware that the Swiss F-18s were stripped of alot of weight that goes into making the F-18 carrier capable. A/c that are lighter accelerate better and use less fuel. The bit about electronics is simply national pride speaking,w/a tint of anti-Americanism.
Problems w/spare parts for a new a/c are not that unusual. The US had a ton of F-15s sitting on ramps in mid 70s that couldn't fly. The USAF finally started ordering spare parts and the a/c matured beautifully. Now if Eurofighters start falling out of the sky,then I'd say there was a problem. Until that happens the Eurofighter is a nice hot rod that doesn't have a mission.
Posted by: Stephen ||
01/31/2005 18:03
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#9
..It's not at all unusual for new a/c to have seemingly 'serious' problems - look for the blazing headlines about the F-22 'hangar queens' that will be showing up about this time next year. And early production aircraft often have some odd quirks of their own - some of the early F-15E Strike Eagles came off the line before LANTIRN was integrated into the design - so you could mount LANTIRN and use it, but the mounting point was directly beneath a flare launcher. (The location of the launcher was later moved)
Everything I've heard so far is that Typhoon is having no more than the usual amount of teething troubles, but they're getting more than the usual scrutiny.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/31/2005 22:49
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January 30, 2005: In combat, speed kills. Or saves lives if you happen to be the faster team. In Iraq, American troops have learned the value of drills (exercises that increase speed). These drills are the precise sequence of movements you make in combat situations. The scariest ones involve clearing buildings. You want to hit uncleared rooms so fast that any enemy fighters inside won't have time to react, or will react too slowly to be effective. These same drills have been used to good effect in the hundreds of raids conducted every month. In most cases, there is no one waiting with a weapon, but if there is, it is rare for them to even get a shot off. Speed also limits the ability to hide weapons or documents.
Many troops coming to Iraq thought they had their drills down pretty good. But they found that a little more speed could be a life saver. Fire teams (4-5 troops) can sometimes be seen practicing in their bases. Even marines aboard their amphibious ships, on their way to Iraq, will take over small portions of the ship and practice for hours, in the hope of shaving a second or two off their time. The moves become automatic, and buy you a few seconds for when the unexpected does happen, and you need a few seconds to get out of it alive.
Even non-combat troops have been introduced to battle drills in Iraq. Every soldier and marine gets some exposure to these drills in basic training. If you are assigned to a combat support unit (in a combat unit), there is some refresher training. Just in case. But in Iraq, it became a matter of life and death how well, and how fast you can open fire from inside a truck, or get out of the truck and get in the best position to fight back. The army opened a special school in Kuwait, where non-combat troops can learn how to survive, when they come under fire while driving supply trucks through dangerous areas.
New tactics have been developed as a result of so many troops getting involved in combat. When speed is needed just to get near the building to be cleared, a hummer will be used. The vehicle can approach a building more quickly, and quietly, than an M-2 Bradley. The Stryker, because it's on wheels, is almost as fast, and the Stryker brigades have used their armored vehicles speed and low noise level to quickly get close to targets, before the troops jump out and into the building. Even getting out of a vehicle quickly can be improved with practice. Nothing like a few close calls to generate a lot of enthusiasm for practice, lots of practice.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/31/2005
10:23:20 AM ||
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#1
Talk about speed, how about the short time it took to nap those seven freakazoids who fired the missle on the embassy annex? (within two hours)
They gotta be shitting in their sneakers.
Smile, you are on camera losers.
Posted by: Duke Nukem ||
01/31/2005 10:49
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#2
Immediate Action Drills (IADs) i.e. vehicle dismounting, room clearing, magazine exchanges while engaging targets create muscle memory and familiarity. Thus usually increasing ones chances of survivability on the battlefield by shaving off wasted time.
#5
Ship, I think so. There's a phrase that some of the combat vets I talked to say: "The training just takes over." Reference to doing a thousand drills/repetitions under stressful conditions, hence the muscle memory just takes over from the conscious thought. Albeit, I'm sure there's a certain percentage of people who freeze up for whatever reason. Such is the horrible nature of war. The main thing is to minimize injuries/deaths as much as possible.
On the average, if you out cycle your opponents OODA loop you put him at a disadvantage. If you know your IADs down to the gnat's ass you stand a better chance of not getting killed.
#7
Ugh.... Do you know how many times I have reloaded a 1911 or a m16 in my living room or brought it to aim back in the day.... Or practicing throwing practice greandes in the same bunker with the same guys assaulting over and over and over again. You get so you don't even think about it at all.
Posted by: Mark E. ||
01/31/2005 15:04
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January 31, 2005: For over half a century, kits have been sold that enable military history buffs to assemble scale models of military ships, aircraft and vehicles. But that era is coming to an end, as the manufacturers of the original equipment, especially aircraft, are demanding high royalties (up to $40 per kit) from the kit makers. Since most of these kits sell in small quantities (10-20,000) and are priced at $15-30 (for plastic kits, wooden ones are about twice as much), tacking on the royalty just prices the kit out of the market. Popular land vehicles, which would sell a lot of kits, are missing as well. The new U.S. Army Stryker armored vehicles are not available because of royalty requirements. Even World War II aircraft kits are being hit with royalty demands. This move grew out of the idea that corporations should maximize "intellectual property" income. Models of a companys products are considered the intellectual property of the owner of a vehicle design. In the past, the model kits were considered free advertising, and good public relations, by the defense firms. The kit manufacturers comprise a small industry, and the aircraft manufacturers will probably not even notice if they put many of the model vendors out of business. Some model companies will survive by only selling models of older (like World War I), or otherwise "no royalty" items (Nazi German aircraft) and ships. But the aircraft were always the bulk of sales, and their loss will cripple many of the kit makers.
Multi-billion dollar military contracts aren't enough, they have to squeaze a few bucks out of little kids.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/31/2005
10:17:32 AM ||
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#1
Aw, fer the love of Pete! What the hell is this? I built dozens and dozens of Revell and Monogram kits when I was growing up of everything--cars, tanks, planes. This is a good way to kill off the industry altogether, and then the greedy corporate bastards won't get one red cent!
Posted by: Dar ||
01/31/2005 10:30
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#3
This move grew out of the idea that corporations should maximize âintellectual propertyâ income.
Hmm. A few pennies per kit versus no pennies 'cause there are no kits... How exactly are the Stryker manufacturers maximising their intellectual property income?
Multi-billion dollar military contracts aren't enough, they have to squeaze a few bucks out of little kids.
I don't see what this royalty thing is all about. I mean, these plastic models aren't exactly functional, so how do these people get off demanding a royalty payment?
#5
Kinda like how comic books used to be 25 cents, until a bunch of adult speculators fans started hoovering up every last issue on the unlikely chance that they will appreciate faster than, say, stocks?
#6
especially since R&D is financed by and large by gov't contracts?
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/31/2005 10:48
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#7
Pardon me, the US military designs are paid for by DoD, which owns the rights to them and if some SOB thought he had the government agent sign away those in some buried clause in some oversized contract, he as an invalid contract. Now the Stryker IIRC is based upon an original Canadian design. However, if these chicken s**ts want to play hardball, a little rider to a congressional bill will take care of their tokus in a heart beat. And its cheap political points with local news coverage as Representative 'Doe' saves children's happiness.
#8
...The situation isn't quite as bad as it looks, but it's grim enough: a typical 1/72 model of, say, an F-16, is going to run about $10-15 based on the manufacturer - the royalties will easily add around $5 to the cost of the kit. The floodgates my have been opened with a recent release of a 1/32 F-16 kit from Tamiya, where the Japanese company didnt even blink when they paid LockMart it's extortion royalty.So far though, MOST of the manufacturers are holding back to see how hard this gets fought. The worst offender right now is NorthropGrumman, which is playing some serious hardball and apparently couldnt care less about the publicity.
Even if the worst happens, there will be more than a few ways around it, and more than a few modelers I've met have suggested that if it gets manufacturers to build more 'no-royalty' kits (rather than the 158th F-16 release) it might not be so bad.
I do agree with Elmomoting, however - drop your Congress critter a line and remind them that these people are working to wipe out a truly wonderful hobby.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/31/2005 22:59
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January 30, 2005: U.S. Marines in Iraq have had much success with yet another recently developed, low cost ($100,000 per system), UAV. The 40 pound Scan Eagle only has a seven pound payload. But with smaller, cheaper and more effective cameras and electronics, it can carry a vidcam capable of clearly seeing people on the ground, and whether or not they are carrying weapons. The Scan Eagle can stay in the air for 19 hours using only 1.5 gallons of gasoline. It can carry a day, or night vision, stabilized (the image remains locked on the same area, even if the UAV is being buffeted by wind) camera. Using GPS, the UAV can either fly a pre-programmed route, or proceed under operator control. The UAV is launched via a pneumatic catapult, and lands via a fifty foot pole and a "skyhook" system. It has a top speed of 93 kilometers an hour. Development began in 2002, and it entered service in February 2003. Scan Eagle operates from ships as well. The marines have one or more Scan Eagles operating over combat zones, most of the time, to better enable commanders to see where friendly and enemy troops are. The real time images are sent to a commanders laptop, or a large screen LCD. Enemy fighters try to avoid the Scan Eagle by always moving under cover. But this is not always possible, and simply makes their movements more difficult. For marines, having something like Scan Eagle overhead has changed the way battles are fought. Giving commanders a full time "God's Eye View" of the combat area provides the marines with a much better idea of who is where and doing what. Enemy ambushes are much more difficult to set up, and enemy troops get found, and killed, much more quickly.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/31/2005
10:14:36 AM ||
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#1
19 hours on 1.5 gallons? That's outstanding! I love just the idea of these UAVs forcing the nutters to keep their heads up at all times--just keeping them paranoid and forcing them to stay under cover has got to make these priceless psychological weapons.
Posted by: Dar ||
01/31/2005 11:09
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#2
That's excellent endurance. I get 7.5 gallons per hour. I will leave the mil observations to the Remote Professionals.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/31/2005 11:15
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#3
That is impressive "mileage"... but I can hear it now... You have too many Global Hawks. They're like the SUVs of UAVs!
#4
AFR-Iraq must be playing a lot of Alan Parsons Project these days.
"I am the eye in the sky, looking at you . . ."
Posted by: Mike ||
01/31/2005 11:36
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#5
AFR-Iraq must be playing a lot of Alan Parsons Project these days. "I am the eye in the sky, looking at you . . ."
You know, there's the seed of a truly wonderful mindf*cking right there - put the word out on the street that whenever that song plays over AFR, we have a bad guy sighted and locked in...and then play it at random intervals...
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/31/2005 22:28
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Italy's transport minister has refused to take the blame for traffic chaos which has caused misery for hundreds of people stuck on snow-blocked motorways, and has told people to stop complaining.
"Wudn't me. Now shuddup!"
Some people were trapped for days as an unusually strong snowfall brought parts of southern Italy to a standstill. The opposition accused Transport Minister Pietro Lunardi of failing to deal with the problem and called on him to resign. Lunardi rejected such calls on Sunday and said Italians should stop complaining and blaming the state. "We need to cure the Italians of their childish illness -- moaning," he told Libero newspaper.
Yeah. That'll happen. Vespasian used to say the same thing.
"The state cannot prevent exceptional snowfalls, even if Italy is the country of the sun and people think they have the right to have the snow melted immediately by the authorities." Although Deputy Prime Minister Marco Follini apologised on Friday on behalf of the government, Lunardi said he would not say sorry. "I am not apologising. The government has managed the emergency well, there have been no victims." By Sunday, the authorities finally reopened a major motorway between Salerno and Reggio Calabria which had been blocked for four days as snow continued to fall.
Workers were burying more tsunami victims in Aceh province as a premature end to cease-fire talks between the Indonesian government and separatist rebels dampened hopes for a quick resolution to a 30-year-old conflict in the devastated province. There had been optimism that the immensity of the disaster in Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra island would spur Indonesia's government and rebels to find a way to end fighting and focus on rebuilding. But hopes were dashed when truce negotiations in Helsinki, Finland, broke off. There was no word on why the meeting ended late Saturday, a day earlier than planned. Indonesian Communications Minister Sofyan Djalil described the talks as "quite hopeful." But former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, who convened the meeting, said neither party had accepted an invitation to a second round.
Can someone pull the quote from DU and put it in comments, I need a good laugh.
Here's the whole thing...
ShinerTX (96 posts) Sun Jan-30-05 12:31 PM
Original message The Iraq vote is making me sick this morning
All the media keeps talking about is how happy the Iraqis are, how high turnout was, and how "freedom" has spread to Iraq. I had to turn off CNN because they kept focusing on the so-called "voters" and barely mentioned the resistance movements at all. Where are the freedom fighters today? Are their voices silenced because some American puppets cast a few ballots?
I can't believe the Iraqis are buying into this "democracy" bullshit. They have to know that the Americans don't want them to have power, because they know that Bush is in this for the oil, and now that he finally has it he's not going to let it go. This election is a charade. The fact is that the Iraqis have suffered during the past two years more than any people on earth at the hands of the American gestapo. Maybe they're afraid and felt they had to vote. That's the only way I can explain it to myself.
OR--I just thought of this--maybe they're smiling because they're using the Americans own game to defeat them. They're voting in candidates who they know will widen the resistance, take the fight to the streets, and finally drive the occupying forces out of their country. Perhaps they're smiling because--right under the American's noses--they're planting the seeds of a bigger and more effective resistance movement. Wouldn't that be fitting? Use *'s own tools against them?
We can only pray that this is the case. Becuase if it's not--and if the Iraq vote is seen as a success that spread "freedom"--the world is screwed. Bush's inaugural speech left little doubt that he has other countries on his list to spread "freedom" to. They will be his next targets, and the world will burn because of it.
Let's hope the resistance got voted in, or if not, they only increase the fight and take down those who betrayed their country today by voting in this fraud election.
#1
All the media keeps talking about is how happy the Iraqis are, how high turnout was, and how "freedom" has spread to Iraq. I had to turn off CNN because they kept focusing on the so-called "voters" and barely mentioned the resistance movements at all. Where are the freedom fighters today? Are their voices silenced because some American puppets cast a few ballots?
I can't believe the Iraqis are buying into this "democracy" bullshit. They have to know that the Americans don't want them to have power, because they know that Bush is in this for the oil, and now that he finally has it he's not going to let it go. This election is a charade. The fact is that the Iraqis have suffered during the past two years more than any people on earth at the hands of the American gestapo. Maybe they're afraid and felt they had to vote. That's the only way I can explain it to myself.
OR--I just thought of this--maybe they're smiling because they're using the Americans own game to defeat them. They're voting in candidates who they know will widen the resistance, take the fight to the streets, and finally drive the occupying forces out of their country. Perhaps they're smiling because--right under the American's noses--they're planting the seeds of a bigger and more effective resistance movement. Wouldn't that be fitting? Use *'s own tools against them?
We can only pray that this is the case. Becuase if it's not--and if the Iraq vote is seen as a success that spread "freedom"--the world is screwed. Bush's inaugural speech left little doubt that he has other countries on his list to spread "freedom" to. They will be his next targets, and the world will burn because of it.
Let's hope the resistance got voted in, or if not, they only increase the fight and take down those who betrayed their country today by voting in this fraud election.
#2
Wow. This guy seems to have the BDS too, .com. Maybe it is indicated by the prefix "2" in the username. I'll be sure of this when "2Aris" starts posting. Perhaps Dr. Steve can prescribe drugs.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
01/31/2005 9:47
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2B was quoting ShinerTX at the DU. The stuiff that passes for insightful at DU is mind blowing. There is more of that bile at DU if you follow the link Mr D.
Don't get to DU too often. Folks of my persuasion wern't welcome there way back when I went to college, so I've always had an aversion. And they drank too much.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
01/31/2005 9:55
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#7
"Let's hope the resistance got voted in, or if not, they only increase the fight and take down those who betrayed their country today by voting in this fraud election."
Take down? So the DUmmies want most of the Iraqis dead?
#8
I think this is the thread Steve Stirling was posting on. It should be fun to watch.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
01/31/2005 10:10
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This is indeed the thread to which Mr. Stirling is posting. Instapundit had the story yesterday. It's hilarious. ShinerTX is a prevaricating moron. Not just Stirling, but others as well, nail him to the wall.
You know it's bad when other DU'ers start accusing the original poster of being a Freeper troll :-)
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/31/2005 10:20
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#10
I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this idiot--I saw the same comments with some fisking linked by Instapundit last night. I imagine there were probably complete morons like this in the 50's bitching and moaning that Japan and Germany's election process and new democracies were also shams. What planet are these fools on?
Posted by: Dar ||
01/31/2005 10:23
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#11
Shiner is a regional beer sold in Texas.
Dr Steve - Is that similar to the phenomenon in nature when the mother becomes so agitated (or hungry, that works, too, heh) that she eats her young?
Until Iraqi insurgents deliver a pillow case full of fingers dipped in ink to the nearest American commander because thatâs what I would do if I were an insurgent leader
All weâve heard the past few weeks was how bad the violence was going to be, how Iraqi turnout was in question, how much of a disaster this was going to be, et al. In other words, we were lured into believing this was going to be a mess, but the reality is it wasnât so bad. There was violence, but there was also a huge voter turnout ... These guys are adept at making us believe that all will be a disaster, but when the reality shows itself to be not-that-bad, they look better in the aftermath than they deserve.
Posted by: Steve ||
01/31/2005 10:51
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#13
Haven't been to DU yet,not a word mentioned at Juliusblog.The guy above ain't nuttin but a cry-baby.
#17
FrankG - Maybe this guy was in charge of the English-Metric thrust conversion for that Mars probe a couple of years ago.
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
01/31/2005 12:02
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#18
Purge time for the Dems. Beinart's right: this is like 1947 all over. Time to get rid of the fellow travelers, or else resign yourselves to permanent minority status.
#19
Of course no one was purged in 1947, theres no mechanism in the US for ousting someone from the party, and candidates for Senate, etc are nominated by state parties - theres even less party control now, with the thorough dominance of the primary process. All we can do is make choices.
I liked the words of Evan Bayh on ABC yesterday, saying it would be a disaster to cut and run. No one important is backing Teddy on this. Reid by asking for an exit strategy, NOT a timetable, is trying to skirt the divisions within the Dems.
All kind of silly, as the results from Iraq are going to be what determins negotiations for a timetable, but I guess its hard for Reid to simply ignore Ted.
#24
The DUs are democratic supporters of democracies as in Peoples' Democratic Republics. They don't support democracy in Iraq anymore than they support democracy in America. One Party, One Vote - Ein Volk.
#25
Stirling did make one mistake on that thread. He wrote that the US didn't attack Sweden or France during WW II. Actually, the first US invasion in the European war was of the Vichy French territories in Africa. And, they shot back.
That tells you something about the French. It also tells you that to bring freedom to the world, you do sometimes have to do other unpleasant things.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
01/31/2005 21:30
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#26
I read a few more of ShinerTX's posts on DU - make no mistake - ShinerTX is the enemy here in America. Worse - he/she is a traitor and an enemy within. This piece of shit disrespects the sacrifices made by 1400 soldiers/marines and their families as well as the thousands wounded some horribly. Freedom of speech has its limits during war. If you identify yourself as the enemy - you should be treated as such.
#1
Interesting take on the whole conspiracy issue; on the other hand, would they even bother to believe us? They ask their holy men which hand to use when wiping their asses; I wonder whether our counter-propaganda wouldn't just be dismissed as infidel lies. Although there's always the chance that we'll reach people who use their brains instead of their Korans . . .
The thing about conspiracy theories in the Middle East is that they've been around for a very, very long time. Their systems of tribal/cultural interaction have moved on them for centuries (probably since before the birth of Mohammed, but that's just a guess on my part). It's always going to be easier for them to believe that it's a conspiracy then it will be for them to accept certain facts which they might not appreciate.
Of course, if the tsunami was caused by decadent practices, one wonders what caused those Iran earthquakes. Allah not too happy with the mullahs?
Posted by: The Doctor ||
01/31/2005 17:46
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A stripper mauled by a tiger in an Ontario safari park has won $650,000 in damages because her scars meant she could no longer work, Canadian media said on Friday. Jennifer-Anne Cowles was driving through the park nearly nine years ago with her then boyfriend when a tiger jumped into their car and tried to drag them away.
"Hello, OnStar? There's a tiger in our car, trying to drag us away!"
The two insisted their windows had been shut when the tiger charged, although the park had challenged that. The judge accepted the couple's testimony that the power windows had been inadvertently lowered when one of the big cats bumped against the car, frightening them.
"Jennifer-Anne! We're being attacked by tigers!"
"Right. I'll just lock the doors and... Oops. That was the power window button, wudn't it?"
In a ruling delivered on Thursday and reported in a number of Canadian newspapers, Justice Jean MacFarland said she could only imagine the "stark terror experienced by these young people during this horrendous event."
"The horror! They're chewing the fine Corinthian leather!"
She awarded Cowles some $650,000 in damages, almost half of it to compensate for income she would have made as a stripper.
"You think anybody's gonna part with a twenty when they see these?"
"Whoa! Are those stretch marks?"
"No! They're... Ummm... Tiger claw marks!"
Her musician boyfriend, David Balac, won C$1.7 million, because his injuries left him unable to work as an accordion player.
An accordion player. That makes it perfect. And he'll never play the violin again...
African Lion Safari, near Hamilton, Ontario, west of Toronto, said it is reviewing the ruling, but it insisted the park was safe. "Hundreds of millions of people drive through safari style parks worldwide every decade and there are very few incidents causing injury," it said in a statement. "It is one of the safest activities you can do with your family." Cats in the bag?
Posted by: Duke Nukem ||
01/31/2005
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Sheesh. I want this halfwit judge if I ever go to court. Wotta tool.
#2
Her musician boyfriend, David Balac, won C$1.7 million, because his injuries left him unable to work as an accordion player.
Fred, if you hilighted that line, it could easily be misinterpreted as one of your clever, humorous, and snarky comments. But it was part of the article. Accordion player! LMAO!
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/31/2005 0:48
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#3
The tiger is still reviewing the matter with his lawyer and will decide whether or not to countersue.
Posted by: Duke Nukem ||
01/31/2005 6:46
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#4
Wow--those accordian players get all the hot babes. Why did I ever bother with the guitar?
Posted by: Dar ||
01/31/2005 7:42
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#6
The judge accepted the coupleâs testimony that the power windows had been inadvertently lowered when one of the big cats bumped against the car, frightening them.
If that's what they testified, then that must be what happened.
.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
01/31/2005 9:01
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#7
Dar: Canada's enlightened socialism understands that some people may, through no fault of their own, be lacking in a certain "hotness" or be unable to produce killer licks because of historical oppression. Therefore it has been mandated that all dorks will have equal access to hotties, and that a certain quota of dork/hottie couples must be maintained.
#9
BH: Does that mean I can get into the top graduate school program if I am hottie deficient?
Posted by: Duke Nukem ||
01/31/2005 11:06
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#10
Duke: Yes, but don't buy any cookies from the College Republicans - they'll charge you an arm and a leg.
I actually tried to get laid on this argument once. Well, sorta. This girl I know said she was a socialist and went on and on about social justice, so I asked if she would sleep with me. I pointed out that it was not my fault that I was unattractive to her, and that it was selfish and unfair of her to withhold from me on the grounds of her body being personal property. I was mostly trying to show the absurdity of her political beliefs, but I allllmost got her thinking about it. At least, that's what I tell myself. ;)
#12
Lol, Doc! Hey, bro, you're thinking of college dives, methinks. Out here in Sin City, at the better Gentlemen's Establishments, it's 10's and 20's, bro!
#15
At the risk of making Barbara, Emily and all the other lurking Rantburgettes blush, if that stripper could pick up a $100 bill out of the beer bottle and fold it without using her hands! maybe the $650,000 is a fair figure after all.
#21
I saw a woman in Hong Kong do some amazing things with a boiled egg.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
01/31/2005 20:42
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#22
The cat thing reminds me of the time when I tried to teach my cat swimming in a bathtub with sliding door. She literaly defied gravity, running on the enclosure sides and ceiling. Then she found the opening and consequently my arm.
mojo - 'Twas magic... All we can do is write in the snow.
DB - How far?
Mark E / Sobiesky - Years back I knew a guy who got a kitten at 8 weeks. Never had a cat before, so he treated it like all the dogs he'd had. Only cat I ever saw who would actually stand in the sink and get bathed, walk on a leash, come when called (not just to the sound of the can opener), fetch balls, etc. The Whole Nine Yards. Poor cat, lol!
#24
.com, my X got a cat (5 weeks old) that thought that he is a dog. She did not train him to be a dog, he just was (except for barking--the meows were replaced by eh, eh, eh yappy dog style sounds, albeit higher pitched) for all practical purposes a dog. Leash, chasing away posties, fetching, all natural. Fierce too. For some reason, dogs in the neighborhood avoided him by a wide arc. Perhaps understandably... how do you deal with a cat that is a dog?
Somebody messed up in the incarnation department, I reckon. ;-)
Kuwait takes on the ME conventional wisdom and authorizes its first political party! Congratulations, I guess.
Kuwaiti Islamists announced Saturday, January 29, the creation of the first political party not only in the emirate but also the Gulf region, with political reforms high on the agenda.
Kuwait looking for change! No longer bound by the status quo! Viral democracy breaks out as they watch their Arab brothers in Iraq break free from the chains of centuries of tyranny!
"We will work to set up a society ruled by the teachings of Islam. It will seek the implementation of Islamic Shari`ah laws in all political, economic, legislative and social sectors," the nascent Ummah (Nation) Party's spokesman Jaber al-Murri said in a statement reported by Reuters.
(sound of screaching brakes) Or not.
Women's legitimate rights will be guaranteed, in addition to backing political pluralism, peaceful transition of power, commitment to majority rule and rejection of all forms of political tyranny, added the statement.
No! To political tyranny! Yes! To glorious submission to the will of Allan, as interpreted by His worthy holy men (and a couple of shaykhs and a smattering of Emirs...and one big, gleaming, bejeweled curlytoed Turban...)
Kuwait is the only Gulf country to have an elected parliament, but women are not allowed to vote or stand for public office. The country's 1962 constitution says that both men and women are equal. But an all-male parliament, in seeming direct opposition to the constitutional edict, has adopted laws barring women from voting. In 1999, the country's ruler, Sheikh Jabir Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, issued a decree giving women full political rights. But the move was defeated in the National Assembly by 32 votes to 30. In January 2001, Kuwaiti court rejected a request by women rights advocates granting women the right to vote in parliamentary elections.
I'm not fully sure how an Islamist party plans to change this...
The Ummah party said it would endeavor to achieve political, economic and military unity among the Gulf countries to protect the region and to dispense with the infidel foreign military presence which threatens its sovereignty and independence. There are thousands of US forces deployed in Gulf countries, including 30,000 in Kuwait alone.
Threatening Kuwait's sovereignty each and every day.
The fledging party further added that the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the world's largest Muslim body, must be revamped to support the Palestinians and other Islamic causes.
Cos the Arab League is always taking Israel's side, y'see...
Women's legitimate rights will be guaranteed, in addition to backing political pluralism, peaceful transition of power, commitment to majority rule and rejection of all forms of political tyranny, the statement added.
Only in Islam can wimmin have "legitimate" and "illegitimate" rights.
"This is the first party in the Gulf region," al-Murri told Reuters. "It presents the concept of political pluralism through popular participation," he said.
"Yepper! All male Moose limbs from the right familiies are hereby included in the Ummah Party. Everyone else can just...give us money and stay out of sight. Unless we need coffee or a massage."
Letters had been sent to Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, the parliament speaker and lawmakers to amend laws to allow formation of political parties, Mutairi added. "We hope that your government will amend laws restricting freedom in order to enable peaceful parties and political groups to operate freely," read the letter sent to the Kuwaiti premier. Mutairi said it is not expected that the government, which backs political pluralism and rotation of power in war-torn Iraq, will refuse to license this particular the party's formation. Political parties are not allowed in Gulf countries. There are some political groups operating in Kuwait, including a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Constitutional Movement and the Salafist Movement. There are also 15 Islamists in the 50-member Kuwaiti parliament.
Anyone can see that the Allenists are certainly under-represented in Kuwait. Perhaps the Ummah Party can convince one of the lions of Enezi tribe to stand for Parliament.
The launching ceremony of the new party were attended by officials from the US embassy in Kuwait.
Gah. I expect better of Condi...
Posted by: Seafarious ||
01/31/2005
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Eh.
What kinda party can Islamists have? No booze, no broads...
From the Rantburg Diplomacy Desk:
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza is engaged to marry one of Mexico's richest women, an embassy official said Sunday. Maria Asuncion Aramburuzabala is vice chairwoman of Grupo Modelo, the maker of Corona and Negra Modelo beers. Aramburuzabala's grandfather, a Spanish immigrant, founded the brewery. With an estimate fortune of $1.5 billion, Aramburuzabala was ranked 377th among the world's billionaires, Forbes magazine reported last year. Garza, a second-generation American whose four grandparents were from Mexico, was appointed ambassador in 2002 by President Bush. U.S. Embassy spokesman Jim Dickmeyer confirmed the engagement, but declined to provide further details.
Posted by: Seafarious ||
01/31/2005
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#1
Well, isn't this special... our US Ambassador to Mexico, who in theory is supposed to be looking out for US interests, is a dual citizen himself. And to add to the magic of this image, our Mexican-American Ambassador announces his engagement to a Spanish-blooded oligarch in Mexico. Lessee... since our Attorney General is Mexican-American, and our Ambassador is Mexican American engaged to a Mexican, don't anyone hold his breath about border control. Crap.
#3
Love will conquer all. That is what I am afraid of.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/31/2005 0:49
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#4
Geez, 2x. Tell me you're kidding. Tell me you forgot the /sarcasm tags.
If not, you need to lay off the Kool Aid and see if you can go a day without chalking every freakin' hangnail on the planet up to Bush, personally. You're one of a rash, the ugly itchy-bitchy type, that has infested RB over the last 14-15 months - mainly sufferers of both pre and post election stages of virulent BDS and purest wankerism. Your tripe never varies, not one iota, from the "It's all Bush's fault!" Kool Aid line.
Try a new approach, like taking reality into account. The US Amb to Mexico is of Mexican heritage (Oooh, that's really really bad - how stupid could Bush be?) and he lives and works in Mexico - so he's probably going to meet more MEXICANS than any other nationality - another very very bad thing, I guess, huh? Obviously, his loyalty to the US must be questioned - 2x sez so! Based on what, wank-off? Who'd you think he'd logically find attractive, given his ethnicity? Duh, fool. Who do you think comes to embassy parties? Duh, wanker. Who do you think he'd be attracted to? Duh, Looney. Shit, wotta 'tard.
This story actually makes perfect sense, whereas your leap off the highest cliff you could manufacture in your overheated mind doesn't. Get a grip. Best do it in private, wanking off in public, especially at RB, in poor etiquette. Thanks.
Now if you either admit you're over the top or were kidding and left your smilies and HTML tags in your other pants, then no harm, no foul. If not, well, FOAD.
#5
Yes, sir, master, #4, whatever you say is my command. In case you don't go out much, let me clue you in. Illegal immigration is a sore point with conservatives. Dissension may not sit well with a uni-focus,blow 'em up, kind of a macho guy like you, but limited gov't, respect for law, fiscal responsibility are not exactly new "rash, itchy, ugly, bitchy" items to conservatives.
GWB is not a conservative by a long shot but he was voted into office by conservatives, so folks like me have every right to bitch, fuss, and get ugly about things he is not carrying through on. Even Rushbo, consummate GWB sycophant, is now saying that illegal immigration/open borders need to be addressed by the WH. Get used to bitchin' from conservatives-you're going to hear alot more of it!
http://magic-city-news.com/article_2926.shtml Well, Rush Limbaugh has gone and done it now! He's sided with the 80%+ of Americans who want immigration laws enforced and speaks openly about the negative effects of illegal immigration on this country and its citizens. He's joined the rest of his fellow Americans and become "anti-immigrant," "racist," "bigot," and a "xenophobe." What did it take for him to finally recognize that all the hype of illegal immigration was phony? Small things really (1) Hollywood's elite demanding drivers' licenses for illegal aliens and (2) Mexico's continuing its blatant interference in US affairs by challenging the vote of Arizonans in passage of Prop 200.
#6
And you offer perfect proof that you're the itchy-bitchy asshole I suspected. There is nothing in this tiny little story, so your fevered imagination creates it out of thin air. No substance, but that doesn't dissuade you, oh no, your anger is so righteous and so pure. Yeah, yeah, big fucking deal, asshole. Another member of the dime-a-dozen BDS Kool Aid Krowd. You just come here for therapy.
You're a troll. Too full of yourself to admit you blew this way out of proportion to the info you have. Another wank-o-matic who doesn't need facts, he knows all he needs to know.
#7
If you are not too drunk or stoned read this:
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050131-121524-8562r.htm
"Immigration officials hit lack of new hires" The Bush administration's decision not to hire 2,000 new Border Patrol agents for fiscal year 2006 will seriously hamper efforts to control illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border, said current and retired officials.Agents on a 260-mile stretch of Arizona-Mexico border, known as the Tucson sector, are being assaulted at a rate of once every two days, according to Border Patrol statistics. Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, told reporters last week that he was "disappointed in Secretary Ridge's comments" because they seemed to go against what Mr. Bush had promised in the letter.
"Foreign terrorists continue to pose an extreme threat to the safety of our nation, and illegal immigration remains out of control," said Mr. Bonner, a 27-year Border Patrol veteran.
He also described as "unwise" a Bush plan to substitute $64 million for sensors and surveillance technology and $10 million for unmanned aerial vehicles instead of increasing the number of agents, saying, "While such technology can be useful in pinpointing the location of those who cross our borders illegally, it cannot catch a single violator.
"As long as our borders remain porous, they are just as open to terrorists and other criminals as they are to illegal aliens," he said.
Michael W. Cutler, a retired U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) senior agent who lead major INS drug-trafficking investigations for more than two decades, said it was "difficult to understand" why the administration would not fund authorized staffing increases as Border Patrol agents face a significant increase in assaults, particularly in the volatile Tucson sector.
"Just last week, the State Department issued a traveler's warning about escalating violence in the northern regions of Mexico, including incidents of kidnapping and murder," Mr. Cutler said. "These crimes are being committed on our southern doorstep, many of them against our own agents. It's time they got a little help."
#8
And let's see if you're too wrapped up in your personal fantasy to understand this:
There is nothing in this story to back up your fantasy, but you're too fucked up to admit it.
You're a simple BDS fuckwit - and no volume of linkage will change the fact that you manufactured a fantasy out of thin air so you could take a swipe. Your subsequent posts are irrelevant ass coverage for your BDS.
It would've been so much more honorable, and excusable, to say, "Yeah, I was over the top - teased it out to make an argument on immigration, but..." -- But noooo, you couldn't do it cuz you're brim-full of your own bile and too much an asshole to back off and fessup. A personal problem unrelated to the article and to Rantburg.
#9
He's only started over here because Writchard the Cat finally got sick of him and banned his ass.
Posted by: Pete Stanley ||
01/31/2005 3:07
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#10
Pete - Thanx for the link on his highness, heh. Yep. He's been the same monotone here, as well. It is spooky how this breed of jackass gravitates to blogs for their thumb sucking / screeching therapy. I find it amazing that they can't see why reality should get in the way of either getting what they want, immediately, or else the object of their obsession should be run out of town on a rail... and insist on doing it on someone else's hard-won dime / site.
He should start his own blog. His opinions and authoritative voice should make him an internet star overnight. Yewbetcha.
This fuckwit has the same signature approach as Rex and others of the not too distant past, methinks.
Again, thx for the heads up, bro.
************************************************
Fred, I think we have a bona-fide shithead troll, here, deserving of some personal attention. Just my $0.02. I dunno if others agree, but he is an arrogant poseur - and Pete's got the goods on him, lol!
#11
.com, Pete -- 2xstandard is, as she informed us the other day in reference to her panties, a girl. Show the proper respect -- especially wrt wanking off in public, ok?
#12
Also, if you must use the terminology, you're going to have to resolve the critical question: trollette or trolless for the feminine? or do we follow modern American custom and use the masculine for both male and female (think the disappearance of the word actress). This has repercussions for the entire English-speaking world, so make your arguments carefully!
#13
Two things. What is BDS? I thing 2xs is not yet as bad as on Belmont Club, but if the "S" stands for syndrome, I think the remission was slight and is ending.
TW I still call female administrators administrixes. Some terms are gender neutral by definition and include male, female, eunuch, gay, lexbian, transexual, pedophile and beasitan and the differently inclined; European, for example. We have never said Europeaness. It seems to me troll falls in the same category. I suspect this is because, unlike chickens, you cannot pay anyone enough to sex them.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
01/31/2005 7:33
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#14
Mrs. D, you are one of my favorite people in the whole world! I hadn't heard the term administrixes before -- stunning! (Not related to the formation dominatrix, I'm sure) Your logic is impeccable, but I do hope others won't be too intimidated to weigh in with their own thinking on the matter.
#17
TW, It's standard form. Amelia Earhart was an aviatrix. I think the usage fell from form when Margaret Chase Smith was the first elected U. S. Senator. I think no one wanted to call her a Senatrix.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
01/31/2005 7:54
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#18
That would make 2xstandard "lunatix"?
Posted by: Tom ||
01/31/2005 8:24
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#24
tw - You do not know if 2x is male or female. Period. You believe it is a female.
tw / Mrs D. - Look at the story. Tiny little piece of fluff - 6 sentences long. My point was that 2x went into fantasy mode, fabricated an onanistic scenario, and found a way to turn this little dust bunny into some sinister Bush plot. That's classic BDS. I spoke plainly in my first post - and offered an out. I was met with the typical Rex response (#5) - a load of screech and links, but not a word about the fact that none of it was supported by the facts of the story - confirming BDS. IT repeated the pattern in #7.
I said what I meant and meant what I said in #8.
When you've got the troll gender thingy squared away, post a note. Meanwhile...
2x is an asshole - a non-gender-specific term for one who's sphincter muscle is either inoperative or, at the very least, ineffective. It suffers from BDS and I am more than fed up with assholes who are deranged enough to believe that every problem on the planet has a magical genealogy which allows blame to be traced directly back to Bush. Bull. Shit.
#32
I'd hit it. Rich too, and unlimited beer. Cripes! Why would anybody NOT hit it
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/31/2005 11:20
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#33
Frank, no arguments here as to Garcia's intelect, heck, I'd like to be the first to shake his hand & then get the autograph. He's achieved the trifecta that so many men dream, yet so few will ever realize.
As far as #1's post goes, I think it looks bad as well. Unfortunately as w/most things in life perception over rides reality. Politics is even worse imho. If Garcia was no longer an ambassador I'd say no biggie, but since he is still one then I'd venture that the average American is going to raise the same questions (& w/some validity). Even if everything's above board it still looks bad. Though I'm not sure how much our Amb to Mex has to do w/actually fixing the illegal immigration problem. I'm not blaming this on the prez as he can't control the personal lives of his 100+ ambassadors, but let's be honest, our policies wrt illegal immigration have sucked. I don't see our congress or wh doing everything they can to curtail it either.
#34
the form depends on whether gender is appropriate. Chair replaces Chairman, cause it dont matter whether a man or woman leads the meeting. Actress, OTOH, should remain, as it makes a HUGE difference if someone, say, casts an actress in the role of Hamlet. Princess should remain, just because.
#35
.com, if I'd disagreed with the points of your post, I'd have said so in tiresome detail, right? 2xstandard made the claim to femininity to Frank, insisting that he refer to the dropped item of clothing as panties rather than pants. (Not vocabulary I use, but there are those who make a linguistic distinction *shrug*) I can't find the thread, otherwise I'd link -- maybe Frank can. Anyway, you are right that such a claim is unverifiable, although if It continues to wank off in public, verification may quickly occur. And we must be impressed that 2xstandard didn't mention Jews, neocons or Israel even once.
#36
I have no relation to double standard. I am a woman. I am not a troll. However these are all good empty insults to tar & feather a person who suggests anything that challenges the Party's' group think.
An open southern border is a far more immediate risk to America's national security than what the mullahs are doing or not doing in Iran. Rowan Scarborough, national security reporter for Washington Times, wrote a recent article on the stealing of weapons by Central American nationals, who then pass along the weapons to terrorists. Mexicans are embracing Islam as religious converts and added to their simmering anti-American sentiments because they perceive our federal gov't supporting a racist oligarchy in Mexico that keeps the majority of them poor, that makes for a bad combination of attitudes to be growing in a region noted for its corruption. Mosques and religious schools are being built in Mexico and other Latin American countries at a rate that has never been seen before. In addition to the co-operation of Hispanics with terrorist types, crime and drug trafficing is spilling across our southern border from Mexico. In the past 6 months 25 Americans have been kidnapped, 2 later were found to be murdered, others are still missing. Just a week ago the State Dept. issued a warning to Americans to curtail travel to Mexico in light of this violence. Then a few days later after US Ambassador Tony Garza met with Mexican gov't officials, Garza back-peddled on the State Dept's warning. Now if you can't see Garza's conflicted loyalties not working to Americans' disadvantage then you all are truly brain dead.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/01/29/us.mx.travel.alert.ap/index.html
"Mexico, U.S. settle spat on border warnings"
I will not retract my comments about the unseemly and inappropriate relationship that our US Ambassador has with Mexico. And I will never conform my reasoned political views to please an unstable personality who hasn't seen a swear word he can't use in a post nor will I stroke the egos of the harpies who support him.
#37
I couldn't care less about 2x's gender - funny, that's the modern goal, is it not? Total equality? It's an asshole. But I'll certainly grant your points in the last sentence, lol! Seems that the wank-o-matics do only have two targets these days, the Jooos or Bush. Both of whom are more honorable and worthy than the lot of moonbats. I am well and truly fed up with this crap. Facts matter, not fluffy puffy fantasies.
When Bush is actually at fault, fine. But the links don't prove shit most of the time - as often there are hooks on the funding which are typical legislative wanking. For example, sure you can build a new NIS HQ with the latest gear and staff it, but it has to be built in KKK Byrd's W. Virginia - or similar stupidity. All Presidents have the same congressional quagmire to wade through and often find the funding will end up being wasted. A good President won't spend your money just because it has been funded - the legislative specifics often make a joke of the intent and high-sounding bill title.
When Bush doesn't do what common sense tells you he should do, I'd suggest the benefit of the doubt should be offered and looking deeper is called for. People like 2x hear what they want to hear and off they go, screeching at the heavens. One layer deeper and they may find that it made good sense to go back and push for a cleaner bill. But this entire discussion is beside the point of this thread, actually. There is no evidence whatsoever that the US Amb to Mexico has been compromised or his loyalties subverted in any way. Jeez Louise, wotta load of crap when a simple, "Yeah, I was over the top - teased it out to make an argument on immigration, but..." would've sufficed.
#38
2x - You make assertions regards Garza, and by extension Bush, but proved none of it.
No one thinks the immigration laws are being adequately enforced. Unfortunately, wanker, you can't wave a magic wand.
Had you been around more than a few weeks, you'd know that I was the person here who coined the "Friendship Fence" joke - and applied it to both the Southern and Northern borders. Kanada's immigration policy is just as much a threat as Mexico's.
What you want to ignore is reality. Bush can't give you immediate gratification. No one can. Go stew somewhere else if you can't deal with reality.
#41
2x is a most excitable young man. Perhaps he and Sullivan would hit it off.
Seriously, the mexican political elite has largely been corrupted but that's not likely the case among those mexicans who run world-class multinational companies that actually make and export things (instead of just sucking resources out of the earth). If you draw your paycheck from the government or a govt-protected monopoly, sure, you're likely to be part of the problem in mexico. But not if you and your family produce and sell the best kick-ass dark beer this side of Belgium.
#43
wow, TW - good memory! I'd forgoten the thread...like Fred's articles, I reset at midnight... :-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/31/2005 12:37
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#44
It was 2xstandard's first or second day posting here -- she's calmed down a lot, since. And a couple of our boys stoutly defended my honour, which brought me to tears, it did indeed! And, I accused you of being a gentleman... now do you remember?
Besides, I'm perfectly willing to believe people are what they claim to be. Why, I believe that Mrs. Davis is a wronged woman, and Aris is a Greek university graduate killing time before he is called up for mandatory military service, which he does not anticipate with great pleasure. My little brain isn't clever enough to hold all the doubting details.
Separately, I wonder if the new Senora Aramburuzabala-Garza plans to take American citizenship? I don't believe in dual citizenship, myself, for all that Daddy never let go of his Israeli passport... and paid double taxes on a professor's salary as a result (in those days Israeli taxes were confiscatory at best. But what's money when there's a principle involved?). But surely, conflict of interest concerns would then go away re: the Ambassador's loyalty. Especially as it appears from the photo that she is old enough that all of her children were born long since, so their citizenship is not in play.
#51
Thank you for your confidence TW. We weaker vessels must stick together. Unity in numbers, that sort of thing. Especially in a testosterone saturated environment like the Burg.
I'll have a Negra Modela.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
01/31/2005 19:25
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#52
Mrs. Davis, I mean no offense but weaker vessels my ass! My housekeeper, Connie the Short Bus Lady, really makes me toe the line. Negra Modelo is a fine beer. I guess Negra Modela would be femimine and a Modelo would be masculine.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
01/31/2005 20:20
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#53
...And to add to the magic of this image, our Mexican-American Ambassador announces his engagement to a Spanish-blooded oligarch in Mexico...
"I say, seems old Jeeves in our Congo office has gone native. He's living with a gorilla."
#54
Of course we shall stick together, dear Mrs. D. And we'll allow the menfolk to continue thinking of themselves as the stronger vessels, if that makes them happy. Especially as the strongest vessels get to hold the most beer, while the more delicate ones get the brandy and the tequila (to stay on theme here). Besides, Mr. Wife may have married me for my brains, as he is wont to say, but he fell for my one-armed push ups (really, truly, true! He used to call me over to demonstrate the technique when one of the boys on his dorm hall would get uppity ;-) *sigh* ahh for the days of my youth).
P.K. Abdul Ghafour, Arab News Saleh Al-Asheikh, minister of Islamic affairs and endowments, yesterday called upon religious scholars, intellectuals, academics and writers to stand together with the government in its fight against terrorism and extremism. "You have a great responsibility in enlightening the youth on confronting deviant thoughts," the minister said on the occasion of the international anti-terrorism conference in Riyadh and the nationwide anti-terror campaign.
In a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency, Al-Asheikh also urged all Saudis and expatriates to support security forces in their bid to defeat the "deviant group" from realizing its nasty goals. He was referring to Al-Qaeda terror network which has carried out a series of bombings and shootings across the Kingdom since May 2003 killing more than 100 people. Crown Prince Abdullah is scheduled to open the four-day anti-terror conference on Saturday at the newly established King Abdul Aziz Convention Center in the capital. Delegates from 49 countries, including the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Russia, as well as representatives of several international organizations are expected to take part.
The conference, which underlines the Saudi government's call for joint international efforts to confront and root out terrorism, will discuss ways to eradicate the root causes of global terrorism and measures to help tackle money laundering as well as drug and arms smuggling. Al-Asheikh revealed his ministry's programs in support of the nationwide anti-terror campaign. "We have set up a working team to carry out a variety of programs including lectures and seminars to educate the public on the danger posed by the deviant group," he said. The minister also called upon scholars delivering Juma sermons to focus on such subjects as the importance of protecting non-Muslims living peacefully in an Islamic country and the need to stop corruption on earth and killing of innocent people. The khateebs or prayer leaders have also been advised to expose the terrorist group that creates division in the Islamic nation and commits horrendous crimes. The ministry has instructed Islamic propagation centers in various parts of the country to hold special lectures and seminars on the occasion. The lectures will deal with topics such as the need to obey rulers, moderation in Islam, peace and justice in Islam and Islamic unity. The ministry, which has prepared a number of special radio and television programs to air during the occasion, will also distribute booklets and cassettes enlightening the public on terrorism and extremism. It has set up a website on the Internet to enhance public awareness on terrorism and extremism.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/31/2005
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#1
kinda like nazis having a conference on racial tolerance--who do these islamofascists think they are kidding--its only when the "deviants" threaten saudi royal wealth and the expats who do all the work that this bogus meeting is held--piss on wahabbi/salafis and the camels they rode in on--fuck the nejdis--break up the saudi entity--free the hijaz--set up a shite republic in the eastern province--let them eat locusts in the rub al khali--restore the al rashhid to riyahd and the hashemites to mecca and medina--dismantle wamy--burn king khalid university and jeddah u.--napalm asir--er...also...free the chicago seven
Posted by: SON OF TOLUI ||
01/31/2005 3:58
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#2
SoT, it sounds like you have a busy day ahead of you. ;-)
DAVOS: Pakistan is exerting behind-the-scenes pressure on Iran to compromise in its acrimonious dispute with Europe and the United States over its nuclear programme, Pakistani diplomatic sources say. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri passed on their concerns during a meeting at the weekend with Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi. Kasuri, for his part, said Pakistan supported negotiations led by Britain, France and Germany, to reach a lasting deal that would allay US charges that Iran is covertly developing nuclear weapons.
"We feel the role the (EU three) are playing is positive, because we feel that a peaceful resolution to this dispute is highly desirable," Kasuri told AFP on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. "Being their neighbours, and already with the Iraq situation being what it is, we wouldn't want another turmoil on our border," he said. "We paid a big price" in Afghanistan. "We don't want a similar destabilisation on our border again, so we have a vested interest in a peaceful resolution of this dispute," Kasuri added. Sources said the ministers "tried to convey the European position" to Kharrazi during Friday's meeting.
Pakistani officials said that Tehran had been warned "bluntly, bordering on rudeness," of their concerns and urged "not to make the mistake" of ignoring the Europeans. "We have not minced our words," a diplomatic source said.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/31/2005
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"So like hey Khomeini, bro, chill. You're bringing the heat down on everyone, y'know? Take 5, do some deep breaths, say some Suras, and play along. You're ruining it for Egypt, dood. If I'd known you were like a Nazi Mullah I wouldn't have cut you in on the action. 'Tard."
-Khan
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush called Sunday's elections in Iraq a success and promised the United States will continue trying to prepare Iraqis to secure their own country. ``The world is hearing the voice of freedom from the center of the Middle East,'' Bush told reporters at the White House on Sunday, four hours after the polls closed. He did not take questions after his three-minute statement.
Bush praised the bravery of Iraqis who turned out to vote despite continuing violence and intimidation. Bush said voters ``firmly rejected the antidemocratic ideology'' of terrorists.
Iraqis defied threats of violence and calls for a boycott to cast ballots in their first free election in a half-century Sunday. Insurgents struck polling stations with a string of suicide bombings and mortar volleys, killing at least 44 people, including nine suicide bombers. ``Some Iraqis were killed while exercising their rights as citizens,'' Bush said. He also mourned the loss of American and British troops killed Sunday.
Bush cautioned that the election will not end violence in Iraq, but said U.S. forces will continue training and helping Iraqis ``so this rising democracy can eventually take responsibility for its own security.''
In a statement Sunday, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass, said Bush ``must look beyond the election.''
Just as Ted must look beyond the bottle.
``The best way to demonstrate to the Iraqi people that we have no long-term designs on their country is for the administration to withdraw some troops now'' and negotiate further withdrawals, Kennedy added.
Still beating that dead horse, is he?
Earlier Sunday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Iraqi will now work to reduce ethnic or sectarian differences, and the United States will discuss the continued need for outside security forces with the newly elected Iraqi government. ``We all recognize the Iraqis have a long road ahead of them,'' Rice said on CBS' ``Face The Nation.'' ``The insurgency is not going to go away as a result of today,'' Rice added.
Rice would not say whether U.S. forces will leave the country in great numbers after the vote, and Bush did not mention any U.S. military withdrawals. Rice said the election went better than expected, but did not elaborate on U.S. predictions for turnout, violence or other measures.
In Iraq, officials said turnout among the 14 million eligible voters appeared higher than the 57 percent they had predicted. Complete voting results are not expected for days.
Polls were largely deserted all day in many cities of the Sunni Triangle. In Baghdad's mainly Sunni Arab area of Azamiyah, the neighborhood's four polling centers did not open at all, residents said. A low Sunni turnout could undermine the new government and worsen tensions among the country's ethnic, religious and cultural groups.
Yup, get ready, here's the "but ... " part --
``It is hard to say that something is legitimate when whole portions of the country can't vote and doesn't vote,'' Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said on NBC's ``Meet The Press.''
Even with lower turnout among Sunni Arabs, the government can be representative of all Iraqis, Rice said. She also downplayed concerns that a Shiite-dominated government will morph into a theocracy. ``I'm sure that they will have a healthy debate about the role of Islam, about the role of religion in that society,'' Rice said on CNN's ``Late Edition.''
Sorta like the conversation Democrats need to have with themselves, only I'm betting the Iraqis figure it out first.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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Meanwhile, former President Jimmy Carter said the Iraqi elections validated the legitimacy of Yassir Arafat's leadership.
Informed that Arafat was dead (and that Carter himself had visited the grave), he shrugged and said "Maybe it was Castro. He kinda looks like Arafat. It's the beard...".
#6
Ah, so "J" is a Kool Aid addict. Shoulda guessed - er, actually I did guess, but was reserving the post until proof arrived. What flavor is it today, "J"? Huckleberry? Got any spiffy DUmmy Dhimmi Talking Points / Memes you'd like to share? Even freshly-minted memes can be fun.
You see, you've just proven, yet again, RC's Good News Theorem: When there is Good News, the fuckwits come out of the woodwork to post.
Thanks, he'll be pleased to know it still holds. Prolly ought to upgrade it from a theorem to a SocioFascistIslamoBat⢠Law. Yeah, I think I will.
A third suspected Islamic militant arrested in a police sweep against an alleged recruiting ring was placed under investigation Saturday for suspected membership of a network that sent young people to fight in Iraq. The court decision came after two other suspected Islamic militants, Farid Benyettou, 23, and Thamer Bouchnak, 22, were likewise placed under investigation Friday, accused of organising an operation to send volunteers to fight against US-led forces in Iraq. An examining magistrate Saturday placed the third man, 23-year-old Cherif Kouachi, under investigation for criminal association linked to a terrorist enterprise. The three - who all possess French citizenship - were arrested in Paris last Monday and Tuesday together with eight others since discharged from custody.
Benyettou is alleged by investigators to be the mastermind. Kouachi and Bouchnak, believed to be his lieutenants, were planning to take a plane to Syria last Tuesday and to continue from there to Iraq when they were arrested. Court sources said at least seven people out of about a dozen recruited by the network had fought or been killed in Iraq. The sources said the network had allegedly considered violent attacks on French targets, but had never got to the planning stage. The arrests were part of an anti-terrorist investigation launched in France last September after evidence emerged of a so-called "Iraqi network" recruiting Islamic militants in to fight US forces there. Intelligence agents believe there are between 15 and 30 French nationals with the insurgents in Iraq, and that four have been killed in clashes with the US military. The French foreign intelligence service DGSE has identified a Frenchman, named only as Fawzi D., as the head of a group of some 20 Islamic militants in Iraq, officials said.
"We are determined to stop young people going to make Jihad (Holy War) in Iraq because if they come back they will have greatly enhanced prestige, and be in a position to recruit more people to the cause - or even mount terrorist operations," said one official who wished to remain anonymous.
This article starring:
CHERIF KUACHI
al-Qaeda in Europe
FARID BENYETTU
al-Qaeda in Europe
THAMER BUCHNAK
al-Qaeda in Europe
Posted by: Seafarious ||
01/31/2005
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#1
I hope that France becomes part of the AXiS of EvIl.
Switzerland has agreed to a Spanish request for the extradition of suspected bomb plotter Mohammed Achraf. But Achraf has 30 days in which to lodge an appeal against the decision, the Swiss government said. Spain had earlier requested the extradition of Achraf, an Algerian national who has been held in custody in Switzerland since August. The Spanish authorities suspect him of involvement in plotting to carry out a bomb attack against the country's highest court in Madrid and other landmarks including the Real Madrid stadium in the capital. He has been held in Switzerland over alleged immigration offences, and had earlier sought political asylum in the country.
This article starring:
MOHAMED ACHRAF
al-Qaeda in Europe
Posted by: Seafarious ||
01/31/2005
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MULTAN: The district administration has banned the entry of 26 clerics and outlawed 28 others from making speeches during Muharram to tackle any sectarian incident, while mourners will be under tight screening during Majalis-i-Aza. Arif Nawaz, the district police officer, told reporters on Sunday that public meetings, rallies and demonstrations have also been banned.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Associated Press
Israel will transfer security control over several West Bank towns to the Palestinians in coming days, Israel's defense minister said yesterday, hours after he met with a Palestinian negotiators to work out the details of Israel's troop redeployment. A senior Palestinian security official said the first four towns — Ramallah, Tulkarem, Qalqiliya and Jericho — would be handed over on Wednesday. The planned handover is the latest sign of rapid changes on the ground. It is accompanied by a rebuilding of trust after more than four years of fighting and a flurry of diplomatic meetings. The announcement comes as Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas took the peace initiative to Moscow yesterday in the first direct engagement of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the conflict in four years.
Posted by: Fred ||
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The planned handover is the latest sign of rapid changes on the ground. It is accompanied by a rebuilding of trust after more than four years of fighting and a flurry of diplomatic meetings. .
#3
It would be nice if the Paleos were not so ungrateful, they think they have it coming, according to their spokespeople.
They are completely unconcerned about the settlers having to forego land where their family members are buried. They have absolutely no regard or human dignity.
Posted by: Duke Nukem ||
01/31/2005 11:01
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Iraq's influential Association of Muslim Scholars has told Aljazeera that the low turnout by Sunni Arabs in elections was due to a lack of real choice and military occupation.
As anyone can see, the Kurds and Shiites and Chaldeans and Turkmen had lots of choices and are completely unoccupied...
In an interview broadcast before polling stations closed on Sunday, Muhammad al-Kubaysi said low turnout in places such as Baghdad, Baquba and Samarra could have been prevented if there had been more time to create a genuine election.
"Yeah! You shoulda put the elections off for awhile."
"Like how long?"
"'Bout 30 years should do it..."
"The voter goes to the polling stations not knowing who he is voting for in the first place. There are more than 7700 candidates, and I challenge any Iraqi voter to name more than half a dozen."
There aren't quite that many parties, luckily, and they were voting by slate...
He also criticised the huge number of groups on voting lists in which it was virtually impossible to know who was standing for election and what the candidate's background was.
"Impossible. Simply impossible. Maybe Kurds and Shiites and Chaldeans and Turkmen could cope with it, but not Sunnis."
The AMS spokesman added that it would be wrong for the US to assume that any new government could legitimise the continued US military presence in the region. "The elections are not a solution to the Iraqi problem, because this problem is not an internal dispute to be resolved through accords and elections. It lies in the presence of a foreign power that occupies this country and refuses even the mere scheduling of the withdrawal of its forces from Iraq", he said. Al-Kubaysi said AMS believed political consensus among Iraqi parties could only be reached once the foreign military presence left the country and all parties had to rely on debate rather than use of force.
"And what'll you do for a government until then?"
"The Association of Muslim Scholars could run things until then. Trust us..."
"We have consistently argued that elections can only occur in a democracy that enjoys sovereignty. Our sovereignty is incomplete. Our sovereignty is usurped by foreign forces that have occupied our land and hurt our dignity." Asked whether the influential group was looking to upset a transition to democracy by rejecting elections, al-Kubaysi replied: "These elections ... are a means of establishing the foreign forces in Iraq and keeping Iraq under the yoke of occupation. They should have been postponed."
I'd call that a "yes."
This article starring:
MUHAMAD AL KUBAISI
Association of Muslim Scholars
Posted by: Fred ||
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There is nothing quite like Arab Logic. It needs a warning label. methinks...
The Surgeon General has determined that Arab Logic may be seriously hazardous to your mental health. If you delve too deeply, it has been shown to cause fundamental physical changes in the brain... first it severs the corpus collosum causing grande mal seizures and convulsions... then you begin speaking in tongues as your right and left hemispheres engage in a battle for dominance... text no longer makes sense - and you must rely upon the pretty pictures... then it fries the myelin from all your intercranial neurons, effectively shorting out all but the simplest thought patterns, and turns Schwann cells into Schwinn cells. As the event unfolds, your synapses begin to fire in perfect syncopated rhythm with Led Zeppelin's Kashmir and a puff of smoke comes out of your ears. Afterwards, when the event has completed, of course, you're a shoo-in to qualify for the Tour de France and you'll find yourself inexplicably drawn to the NYT Fashion & Style Section and consider vacationing in Paris as a rational act. In the final death-sprial of what was, once, your shining intelect, you'll consider haute couture as normal daywear.
#2
"Iraqâs influential Association of Muslim Scholars..." I think there is a minor grammatical error here. I think the word "influential" should be capitalized, as part of their self-given title. So instead of IAoMS, it should be IIAoMS.
#3
Iraqâs influential Association of Muslim Scholars
. . . destined to take its place alongside Pat Buchanan's American Conservative magazine, Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential bid, and the Cleveland Browns offense, in the Organization of the Overrated and Overconfident Hall of Fame Obscurity.
Posted by: Mike ||
01/31/2005 8:51
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#8
"The elections are not a solution to the Iraqi --problem, because this problem is not an internal dispute to be resolved through accords and elections. It lies in the presence of a foreign power that occupies this country and refuses even the mere scheduling of the withdrawal of its forces from Iraq",--
Then it becomes an internal dispute which cannot be solved by accords and elections.
#10
I don't know about "Arab logic", but I've read plenty this morning that convinces me that Sunnis are morons and "Sunni logic" is an oxymoron.
Posted by: Tom ||
01/31/2005 10:55
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#11
Al-Kubaysi said AMS believed political consensus among Iraqi parties could only be reached once the foreign military presence left the country and all parties had to rely on debate rather than use of force.
So does this mean AMS WONT take part in the upcoming constitutional discussions?? If they do all the above is simply rhetoric. If they dont, I think they will simply marginalize themselves.
I also note that some Sunni groups DID participate, notably the party led by Adnan Pachachi. Also there was considerable Sunni voting in parts of Baghdad and Mosul, and even some in Fallujah of all places.
#13
foreign forces that have occupied our land and hurt our dignity
He just said it, the Sunni's can blame whoever they want, but it's really their own fault because all they care about is pride, and noone elses dignity for over 30 years.
Sorry about the lack of choices, Sammy wasn't on the Ballot this time!
#15
40% of the Sunni voted. This is just a bunch or trubaned retards. A far as I can tell all you need to be a Muslim Scholar is a turban and some people stupid enough to follow you.
The reporters hanging out in the green zone love this crap they can drink all day and report this nonsense as news. It plays to their bias so of course they love it.
Lamia Radi, Agence France Presse
Mothers carrying babies and blind men helped by relatives were among thousands of Shiites who rushed to vote across southern Iraq yesterday, driven by fervor to shake off decades of oppression. "I insisted on coming despite my handicap because voting is a religious duty according to Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani," Iraq's Shiite religious leader, said blind Jawwad Shkeir, 56, as he went to vote in the holy city of Najaf.
Eighty-year-old Mahdeya Saleh, covered from head to toe in a black chador robe, beamed with pride at being part of Iraq's first democratic elections in 50 years. "I was often forced to vote under Saddam Hussein. Today I came freely to choose the candidate of my choice. This is the first and last time in my life," to vote, she said.
Long queues of voters desperate to end those miserable decades began forming outside polling stations from the minute they opened at 0400 GMT. Samir Hassan lost his leg in a Baghdad bombing but that did not stop him voting in Iraq's election yesterday, determined to defy the men who maimed him. "I would have crawled here if I had to. I don't want terrorists to kill other Iraqis like they tried to kill me," said Hassan, 32, at a polling station in western Baghdad.
Posted by: Fred ||
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He was going to include that in his report, of course, but then Muammar jumped the gun on him...
WASHINGTON: Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has said that before he leaves, he would like to "get to the bottom of the "AQ Khan network" that provided a "complete kit" for a nuclear weapon to Libya.
How long have you been working on it?
In an exclusive interview with Lally Weymouth of the Washington Post published on Sunday, the Egypt-born head of the nuclear watchdog agency that he has headed for two terms was repeatedly asked why the United States wants to get rid of him. He is the only candidate for a third term. He replied that it was the US view that no head of an international organisation should serve for more than two terms. He said there was a "security imbalance" in the region. Iran looked at Pakistan, Russia and Iraq and it was clear that more countries were trying to acquire nuclear weapons or nuclear know-how. "So there are going to be 20 or 30 countries with nuclear weapons, or we must move to say nuclear weapons are a recipe for disaster and we need a security system that does not rely on them," he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
He seems capable of "dicovering" only those programs where he is invited in, shown everything, handed a complete inventory, fed a fine catered meal, and fawned over. In other words, he's a pluperfect UN official. I think he was separated at birth from Henry Waxman (D, CA).
why the United States wants to get rid of him. Because the people at can rantburg can provide more accurate info from their own homes, in their pajamas, without the lunch tab?
#4
Fascinating, the US and its partners discover the Khan network long ago, to the complete surprise of the IAEA, and now ElBaradei wants to include it on his c.v.
The US has learned to manage around this boob long ago, but would prefer to see someone with a clue replace him.
Posted by: Duke Nukem ||
01/31/2005 6:27
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#5
Libya is a done-deal and old news. What about the other countries that Khan sold "complete kits" to? Every Tom, Dick, and Harry Tin-pot Dictator has a "kit", you jerk. What did you do to stop it?
Armed police were out in force across Port Sudan yesterday following two days of riots by ethnic minority protesters in which at least 17 people were killed, witnesses said. Tensions ran high as hundreds of mourners turned out for the funerals of those killed in what Beja leaders described as a "deliberate, premeditated" attack against their community by the Arab-dominated regime in Khartoum.
The protests sparked a security clampdown across eastern Sudan, with arrests of Beja activists also reported in the region's other main towns of Kassala and Jebeit, officials of the opposition Beja Congress said. "Everywhere you go and look, you see groups of police and army troops giving you the impression that they are going to shoot at you," witness Abdullah Bakash said. "The atmosphere is tense and one feels it can explode any time," he said, adding that there were nonetheless no new protests yesterday. The Beja Congress's leader in Red Sea state, which includes Port Sudan, said separate funerals were held yesterday for 17 of the protesters killed by the security forces.
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Imran Rahman & Agencies The son of assassinated former Bangladeshi Finance Minister Shah A.M.S. Kibria has accused the ruling Nationalist-Islamist coalition of killing his father, officials said yesterday. "My father has been killed in a pre-meditated manner," Dr. Reza Kibria told reporters, adding that an international probe into the grenade attack would uncover the true culprits.
That's assuming the turbans on top allow one to happen. Didn't happen last time, when they grenaded the Awami League rally, did it?
The 74-year-old Kibria was killed in a grenade attack on an opposition rally carried out by unidentified assailants in northeastern Habiganj district on Thursday. Deeply shocked by the brutal killing, Kibria's daughter, Nazni, blamed the coalition government of denying her father timely medical treatment after he was struck down by an exploding grenade along with four other people attending the rally organized by the main opposition Awami League. "From whom will we seek justice?" said Nazni Kibria, expressing doubts about getting justice from the government or any of its organizations. Kibria, a retired diplomat and lawmaker, was finance minister in the Awami League government for five years from 1996 to 2001.
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Senior former Taliban officials arrested in Balochistan and suspected of links to Al Qaeda will be handed over to Afghanistan if nothing can be proved against them, police said on Sunday. "If nothing is proved against them except living without any legal documents in Pakistan, they will be handed over to the Afghan government for being Afghan nationals," said Pervez Rafi Bhatti, the Quetta police chief. The 17 Afghan suspects were picked up by police in a swoop on Thursday on hideouts in Quetta in Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, AFP reported.
AP quoted Bhatti as saying that the police had gleaned "useful" information from the suspects, but he would not give further details. He said six suspects were released late on Saturday after questioning proved they were Pakistanis with no links with the Taliban. A security official in Quetta, who asked not to be named, said on Saturday that the Taliban suspects were being interrogated to know where Mulla Omar was hiding. "The suspects are being questioned about their links to Al Qaeda," Bhatti said. Investigators have identified one detainee as Mulla Abdur Razzak but on Sunday still could not confirm whether he is the former Afghan interior minister of the same name during the Taliban's rule.
This article starring:
MULA ABDUR RAZZAK
Taliban
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TEHRAN: Iranian officials on Sunday hailed Iraq's elections as a "great step" towards full independence, but repeated a warning from the Islamic republic's supreme leader that the United States may not accept the result. "The organisation of the elections in Iraq constitutes a great step for Iraqis towards an independent and popular regime," top MP Alaeddin Boroujerdi was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency. But influential former Iranian president Akbar Hasemi Rafsanjani warned that Washington may not accept Iraq becoming a country that is "free and independent and that does not stand next to America and Israel."
Israel! Oh, horrors! Quick, Ethel! My pills!
"If a free and clean election happens in Iraq, an Arab country, self-rule will be a good example for many countries. I think the Americans and Iraqi Baathists do not want this to happen," he told the student news agency ISNA.
[Scratches head] Then why'd we let them have elections? The Sunnis wanted them postponed indefinitely. Kofi wanted them postponed. The Euros wanted them postponed. We could have gone along...
Rafsanjani said the United States "could either rig the results of the elections," or otherwise stage a coup d'etat — a warning expressed earlier this month by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei..
Brilliant. Simply brilliant.
For his part, Iranian Defence Minister Ali Shamkhani told ISNA that "a massive participation in the election will put an obstacle in front of the occupiers."
Sounds like they're just as confused as al-Jizzles.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#2
Not that declaring he'd nuke Israel the instant he had the means was insufficient, but this pretty much closes the book on Rafsanjani: he's simply insane. None of this makes any freakin' sense whatsoever. Thus it is perfect for PakiWaki & Arab consumption, of course.
#3
But influential former Iranian president Akbar Hasemi Rafsanjani warned that Washington may not accept Iraq becoming a country that is âfree and independent and that does not stand next to America and Israel.â
That doesn't matter. We removed a potential threat, set the Iraqis free from tyranny, and started them on their way to whatever awaits them, the only desire being that they not be a member of Terrorists Inc. That's all.
If Rafsanjani isn't careful, he might find himself the next one in the crosshairs.
#4
poor rafi--this is what happens from eating too many pistashio nuts and being the most corrupt mullah in iran--gawd--i'd love to see him dangling from a lampost by his turban on a street in north tehran
Posted by: SON OF TOLUI ||
01/31/2005 4:09
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#5
"Rafsanjani said the United States 'could either rig the results of the elections,' or otherwise stage a coup dâetat..."
After all, that's what he would do.
#6
Boyo! What are the arabs going to say now? We have once again defied the sentiment of the UN and Europe and went ahead with successful and relatively calm Elections. Again the US has done the right thing in contrast to the views of the rest of the World. How can the arab press be critical of a process they long to have in their own countries? Mullah Ras is tinkling in his turban over the fact the success next door could happen at home and so is Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan etc. etc. My father told me Bush was a dreamer and a visionary - I didn't see it now it's glaringly apparent.
K.S. Ramkumar, Arab News
The 60 percent turnout of voters in the first phase of civic elections held in Jammu & Kashmir on Saturday is "yet another evidence" of the waning support to militancy in the state. The other evidence is the figure of nearly one million tourists visiting the state last year and heavy bookings from visitors for 2005. "Sixty percent turnout at the state's civic elections is better than the average in the national parliamentary election. People have been feeling neglected and isolated and lagging behind the rest of the country due to militancy, and the civic election turnout should be serve as the right message to whatever militants remaining in the state. They are keen to have their share of globalization and industrialization," India's federal Urban Development and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad who led a 36-member Haj goodwill delegation, told reporters at Hotel Trident shortly before his return home. Hinting that there was already a perceptible change in the troubled Kashmir's tourist industry, Azad said some tourist infrastructure was still in tact, although part of it was destroyed during the past 15-year militancy.
"Honey, I just can't decide. Where should we go this year? A cruise? Or Kashmir?"
"Oh, Herb! It's so hard to decide!"
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Gosh! You don't suppose that democracy stuff is catching? Or even the attitude expressed in Iraq: by voting we make the violence end. That commercial about the community grouping together to show the terrorists that they are the minority was absolutely spot on. GWB should pay to air it on CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera during their prime times -- the results would be highly amusing (for us, at least. The tyrants would be considerably less amused, and all the antis would go berserk.)
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei held an emergency meeting with leaders of the Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip on a day Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian. Quraya has been holding talks with members of the Higher Follow-up Committee for Intifada (HFCI), Aljazeera's correspondent in Gaza reports. Sunday's meeting was the second in less than 24 hours. AFP reports that the talks in Gaza City were part of efforts to reach an agreement for a halt to anti-Israeli attacks.
If you're not there, you're not committed to anything...
"We discussed the prospects for a mutual ceasefire which would see an end to the Israeli violations against us," Quraya said after the meeting. "We also talked about our (Palestinian Authority) contacts with the Israelis and how best to present our case." With deployment of police, there has been a downturn in violence Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas has persuaded the factions to observe a temporary "cooling down" period but wants Israel to match any formal ceasefire declaration by ending its military operations in the occupied territories and starting to release Palestinian prisoners. Nafaz Azzam, a local leader of Islamic Jihad, said that the meeting took place in a positive atmosphere. "We talked about a ceasefire, but everybody, including Abu Alaa (Quraya), agreed that this ceasefire should be not just be from one side and not for free," he said.
This article starring:
NAFAZ AZZAM
Islamic Jihad
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LAHORE: Law enforcement agencies arrested three men here on Sunday for suspected links with Al Qaeda, Geo news channel reported. The three men, arrested on a tip, were accused of working for Al Qaeda, the channel said. They are being interrogated at an undisclosed location.
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Shucks. My illusions are shattered. I may go into seclusion. Maybe I'll enter a monastery...
WASHINGTON: The Musharraf regime is "unlikely to evolve into a long-term ally in the war on terrorism," though the United States should seek to "prevent Pakistan from descending into chaos in the short term," according to the Cato Institute, a leading liberal think tank. The Institute set up in 1977 to pursue libertarian values issues a handbook every year for the consideration of Congress and the administration. In its section on South Asia, Cato urges the US to vigorously pursue Al Qaeda and Taliban elements inside Pakistan's territory - "preferably" in cooperation with the Musharraf government - mobilise international support to contain Pakistan's nuclear proliferation and hold it accountable for allowing the export of nuclear military technology, and focus on India as a potential long-term military and economic partner of the United States in the region.
Quoting the 9/11 Commission's recommendations on Pakistan that it described as "hard choices," Cato said the United States should commit itself to a period of sustained aid, including military assistance, to Pakistan, but only on condition that Gen Pervez Musharraf proves that he stands for ''enlightened moderation'' by confronting Islamic extremism, curbing nuclear proliferation, and paving the way for the return to democracy. Cato said the "fundamental conundrum" the United States has faced in its dealings with Pakistan both before and after 9/11 lies in the recognition that Islamabad's pre-9/11 alliance with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and its strong ties to radical Islamic terrorist groups helped to create the environment that gave birth to Al Qaeda. However, Cato noted that the 9/11 Commission report portrays Pakistan as "dramatically different" than it was before 9/11. The report implies that the decision by Musharraf to sever his country's links to the Taliban and provide logistical support for the US invasion of Afghanistan marked a dramatic reversal in Pakistan's approach to radical Islamic terrorism.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Musharraf is smarter than the average bear. The USA gives him great leverage against India.
#2
cato was a lawyer and a roman sophist orator for sale--a libertarian is not a liberal--who do they want in charge--hamid gul--these people better live in the real world--mushareff went to christian high school and college--his brother is a doctor who lives in chicago--his son went to mit and does high tech in boston--both his parents became american citizens--wtf do they want john galt as president of pakistan--mushareff will do
Posted by: SON OF TOLUI ||
01/31/2005 3:41
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#3
Cato shares the Indian Hawk analysis of Pakistan, that entire system in Pakistan (like Saudi Arabia) is hopeless, and it is better to have as little to do with the nation as possible, while strengthening the alliance between India and the US.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
01/31/2005 4:18
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And is India going to occupy the entire nation of Pakistan for us? Dont think so. And India's going to pursue its own agenda, not do what we want. And what does all out alliance with India and against Pakistan do for us in the rest of the muslim world. Basically Cato is interested in complete US withdrawl from the region including KSA, Iraq and Israel.
#9
CATO? LIBERAL?! Not only are there a bunch of members of CATO in the Bush administration, there are CATO followers all over the place. The most high-profile was Michael Powell, head of the FCC.
They are convinced that there is no such thing as a naturally occuring monopoly in business, and oligopolies are fine. They are rigid in their orthodoxy and bizarre interpretation of free markets. You don't talk with them. They are either talking or arguing at you. And having had a similar experience with one of them, this quote really summarizes them at work and play: "Theyâre ideologues, like Trotskyites. All questions must be seen and solved within the true faith of libertarianism, the idea of minimal government. And like Trotskyites, the guys from Cato can talk you to death." --Nat Hentoff
#10
I think the Cato liberal thing came from the Pakistani paper's misunderstanding of the difference between liberal and libertarian. Stupid error, but it doesn't really change the guts of the article.
Fact is Bush just said dictatorship bad, and Mushariff is running a dicatorship which could make things kind of funky between them. Besides that Mushariff has been questionable on the cleaning up Taliban across the border position.
I think the world would be better off if Pakistan split into three as long as the nukes were secured before hand.
#11
In the rest of the world, liberal still means whatit did 100 years ago, Classical Liberalism. Instead of having socialists and communists, we evolved the term liberal into what the Democrats believe today. Our bad.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
01/31/2005 16:18
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#12
Indeed. In the rest of the world "liberal" tends to mean fiscally right-wing.
#14
Hmm, "pro-free market", then? I thought that "fiscally right-wing" still tends to be globally understood in roughly the same manner.
Unless you mean that in this article they don't mean *only* that, they probably also mean in its more general 'freedom-supporting' sense, which means libertarian-leaning ideas across the spectrum of politics.
#15
I suspect right wing is understood in the same manner golbally. It is just incomplete. It must be further modified, vast, far, extremist, fascist, conspiracy etc.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
01/31/2005 17:04
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#16
May I defend the word liberal as its used in the US, Canada, and to a lesser degree the UK? In fact liberalism in the mid-19th century didnt always mean "liberal" as the euros use it - (IE free market classical liberalism - which BTW, is also not libertarianism - many "classical liberals" accepted state intervention in traditional moral realms and even some economic ones that Libertarians dont) Liberal was those who opposed the conservative establishment - IE those who supported constitutional reform efforts, the basis of politics on rights, rather than on traditional elites, and the end of established churches etc. While not always insistent on immediate universal suffrage, they tended in the direction of "democrats" They were NOT Marxists, who subordinated political rights to a theory of economic justice. However they were not ALL opponents of social welfare systems, and other state interventions in the economy. In Germany and Austria "Progressives" moved to the left of the more traditional business liberalism. In England this was led by Lloyd George, who maintained his membership in the Liberal party for some time, and still considered himself a liberal. In France the term radical was used by those favoring progressive taxes and a limited welfare state, and apparently over time in Germany the term liberal for these faded as well. When a movement paralellel to Lloyd George liberalism emerged in the US, it was first called Progressivism, but came to be called liberalism following the UK model. In the UK the business liberals ended up merging into the old Conservative party - theyd been heading there since the time of Joseph Chamberlain. The tories thus ended up a combination of old 'conservative' interests - established church and landed wealth - but absorbed "business liberalism" - the US never really had "conservative interests" in that sense, outside the south, so the business liberal GOP was called conservative (once its mugwump-progressive wing had departed, a gradual process)
AFAIK in europe most "liberal" parties accepted some degree of welfare statism - they continued to be called "liberal" in contrast to the social dems, who called for a more extensive welfare state, and extensive state ownership of industry. Today most soc dem parties have given up on state ownership of industry, and accept a more limited welfare state. Social democracy thus blurs with "progressivism" as it does in the US, where the left wing of the dem party, heir to a socdem-progressive alliance still calls itself liberal.
If we want to use 19thc usage, we would have to depart from BOTH current US usage, and current euro usage. In fact the entire US spectrum from Ronald Reagan to Ted Kennedy is "liberal" - you have to go beyond ted to get real socialists, and beyond Reagan, to the paleocons and theocons to get real "conservatives". Ditto in Europe, most thirdway leaning soc dem parties are liberal as well. As are most "conservative" and CD parties.
To revert to the 19th century usage, wed have to admit a far wider usage of
Two bombs exploded in and around Quetta on Sunday, officials said, the latest in a series of attacks that have targeted government installations and security forces in the region. No injuries were reported. A bomb hidden in a plastic shopping bag went off near a park fence in a northern neighbourhood of Quetta, said Pervez Rafi Bhatti, the city's police chief. The second bomb exploded near a roadside restaurant in Kuchlak, a small town about 20 kilometres north of Quetta, damaging a trolley parked nearby, Bhatti said. No injuries were reported in the blasts. Elsewhere in the province, security forces seized a cache of arms and munitions in a dry stream in Naukundi, said Lt Col Rizwan Malik. No one was arrested and it was not known who dumped the cache there, Malik said. BLA spokesman Mir Azad Baluch claimed responsibility for Saturday's explosions in telephone calls to newspaper offices in Quetta.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#5
Phetora, I don't know what's more dazzling....the brilliance of that statement, or your complete disregard of capitalization, grammar and punctuation.
Omar Hasan, Agence France Presse A policeman, a wanted terrorist and a Bahraini civilian were killed in a gunbattle here yesterday in the third deadly clash this month, as the government vowed to crush terror. "The government reaffirms its determination to crush this deviant group and deter all those who attempt to disrupt the security and stability of our beloved homeland," a Cabinet statement said after the firefight.
Vow as much as you please, but it's not gonna happen until you round up a few holy men...
An Interior Ministry statement said one terrorist and four security men were also wounded in the clashes in the Salmiya district, 20 km east of the capital, after police cordoned off an area in search of wanted terrorists. The wounded terrorist and a third suspect were arrested by security forces who stormed a building where "terrorists" were hiding and a heavy exchange of gunfire took place, the statement said.
I'm not sure about the use of quotes there. They were holed up in a building, they were shooting it out with the coppers. We can prob'ly assume they were terrs...
Interior Ministry spokesman Adel Al-Hashash told state television that the three suspects involved the shootout were among those most wanted by security forces. An AFP correspondent heard grenades and heavy gunfire throughout the hour-long exchange. Two helicopters hovered above the area, with access made off-limits by a massive police presence and armored vehicles. A security source identified the dead terrorist as Nasser Khlaif Al-Enezi, one of those most wanted and a brother of the terror group's alleged leader Aamer Khlaif Al-Enezi.
[Cue Family Affair theme music...]
The suspects had rented a flat on the sixth floor of the 10-story furnished apartment block, the source said. The incident came two weeks after a shootout between terrorists and Kuwaiti security forces left one gunman dead in Umm Al-Haiman. That gunbattle, near the largest US military base in Kuwait, came five days after another clash closer to Kuwait City left two security officers and a Kuwaiti suspect dead. The American, British and French embassies in Kuwait have advised their nationals to avoid certain areas in the country and warned of the danger of more unrest. Kuwaiti authorities have seized arms and explosives in subsequent raids around the country and, according to Interior Minister Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, arrested about 15 suspected terrorists. However, an unspecified number, including the group's leader, are still at large while up to 13 have been referred to the public prosecution.
Sheikh Nawaf acknowledged that the terrorists belonged to an "organized group", but the country's national guard chief, Sheikh Salem Al-Ali Al-Sabah, has said some of the group's members were linked to Al-Qaeda. Sheikh Nawaf said on Saturday that Kuwait was in constant touch with Saudi Arabia over the confrontations between their security forces and terrorists.
This article starring:
AAMER KHLAIF AL ENEZI
al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
NASER KHLAIF AL ENEZI
al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
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BAGHDAD: A group that organised 10,000 independent observers for Sunday's Iraqi election said there had been "very little fraud" seen during the historic vote. As polling stations started to close, a spokesman for the Ain (Eye) non-government organisation told a press conference "our observers remarked that in general the elections went ahead in an excellent way and there was very little fraud or violations."
"We have not reported any violations by the electoral commission," Najem al-Rubaie said. He noted that turnout in the Kurdish provinces in northern Iraq had been exceptionally high. "In Sulaimaniyah, we have had problems in two polling centres where electoral commission staff did not allow observers to enter. But we quickly solved this problem," Rubaie said. Even in the ethnic tinderbox of Kirkuk, where attacks against polling stations had intensified in recent days, he reported only minor attacks against one of them. "But the operation continued normally," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
I love that image. It captures so many aspects of the event, and her eyes aren't conveying some imaginary grudge or complaint - they emote joy. Fox is using this as the signature image of the election, as well.
The UN guy (can't recall his name at the moment) is waxing ecstatic about the way the election came off. Gee, ya think that means Kofi & Co will have to *gasp* admit it was "legitimate"? Is Ethel standing by with your pills?
Lol! If the wankers want to know, I suggest they ask the Lady in Black.
#2
I also like it because it reflects the changes that are occuring in this society. She's got relatively traditional dress, but it sure looks like lipstick to me and the V sign may now be universal, but we all know who made it famous. And I see not just joy but the quiet confidence and satisfaction of those who know they will prevail.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
01/31/2005 7:43
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#3
Congratulations to the people of Iraq. Their courage and determination is deeply moving.
#6
Im a donk and this is exactly the good news ive been looking for. This is a triumph for Iraq, for democracy, and for the American military - this is NOT a partisan victory for one American political party or the other
#7
Unfortuanately, LH, your opinion is in the minority in the opposition, or at least the vocal minority. Too many Democrats define their success as Bush's failure not the country's success. It is part of their descent into minority and then marginality. Whether they can rebound is the question of the hour.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
01/31/2005 15:22
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#8
Can we borrow some of the Iraqi poll-watchers in 2006 in Washington and Wisconsin?
One of the main rebel groups in the Darfur region of western Sudan has asked the African Union to send peacekeeping forces to the area with a mandate to disarm Janjaweed militias. Abd al-Wahid Muhammad Ahmad Nur, chairman of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), said in a statement on Sunday that peacekeepers should replace AU observers sent only to monitor a ceasefire agreed upon in April.
African leaders were meeting in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, on Sunday, with the Darfur conflict a major agenda item. The humanitarian coordinator of the SLM, Sulayman Adam Jamus, accused government forces of violating a much-abused ceasefire by bombing two villages on Saturday in South Darfur state, southeast of the capital Nyala. He said that all 450 villagers fled their homes, which were burned to the ground. One person was killed, six were wounded and many were still missing, he added. AU officials said they were checking the reports.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Is it just me or does Janjaweed Militias sound like something vaguely Jamaican? At the least something to do with the magical herb . . . but that would be Ganjaweed militia, wouldn't it?
Posted by: Jame Retief ||
01/31/2005 0:16
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#2
Damn people are trying to live, we told them to die.
Posted by: Duke Nukem ||
01/31/2005 10:38
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#3
Similar situation as Somalia. Surround it, isolate it, and let them do what they wish to each other. Clean up the mess when it's over.
#4
I disagree, Rightwing. In Somalia it looks like all against all -- no innocents except for some of the peasantry. In Sudan, it is the Arab Muslims against each group of their dark-skinned citizens in turn. Perhaps we could somehow wall in the Arab overlords, until they outgrow it, while letting the rest of the people live in peace.
Yes, I do realize that is a totally unrealistic idea -- maybe some of our Special Forces guys could teach them how to defend themselves instead?
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.
Aid groups report renewed fighting in northern Uganda. Over the last six weeks it is clear that the core leaders in the LRA are continuing to fight. In the last week, troops in northern Uganda have killed at least 17 LRA members. On January 28, Sudanese SPLA rebel leader 
Two gunmen riding a motorbike shot dead a leading Sunni Muslim scholar and his bodyguard yesterday in Pakistan's restive southern city of Karachi, police said. "
from an Egyptian blogger's Jan 30 posting
Iraqi security forces detained more than 200 suspected insurgents, including four Arab foreigners, in a crackdown that helped reduce attacks during Sunday's election, the interior minister said today. "What happened yesterday was the result of the security plans put in place by the Interior Ministry and Iraq's security forces for the election," Falah al-Naqib told reporters. He said 129 suspects had been rounded up near Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown in the Sunni region north of Baghdad, out of a total of 202 detained nationwide. The detainees included two Saudis, an Egyptian and a Yemeni, he said. He said Iraqi security forces had also killed four insurgents in shootouts on polling day.
Counter terrorism authorities today descended on Sydney's west after a shooting linked to the Iraqi election added to tensions heightened by the historic ballot. Witnesses said two men with guns aimed at a number of cars and shops, and fired five shots during a melee involving 100 people on the main street of Auburn, about 11pm (AEDT) yesterday. Police said four men, including one hurt by a ricocheting shotgun pellet, were treated for minor injuries. They said the shooting followed a clash on Saturday involving protesters from an anti-election group and voters outside a polling booth in Auburn - one of Australia's nine out-of-country polling stations for Iraq's first election in 50 years.
The Department of Local Administration has confirmed that 
Palestinians prepared to assume security control from Israel in four West Bank cities as their leader Mahmud Abbas saw an historic chance for peace, although a lull in violence was broken. The fatal shooting of a 10-year-old Palestinian schoolgirl and retaliatory shelling by Hamas of Jewish settlements in southern Gaza cast a shadow over the burgeoning hopes for a breakthrough in the four-year-old conflict. 
Jan 30: Three armed cadres of 
Leading Democratic Party critics of US President George W. Bush's Iraq policy cautiously welcomed the successful staging of elections and distanced themselves from calls for the start of an immediate US troop withdrawal. 
23.01.2005 at 0340 LT at Panjang port, Indonesia. Three robbers armed with long knives boarded a tanker at berth. D/O raised alarm and crew mustered. Robbers jumped overboard and escaped empty handed in a speedboat.
Soldiers on Sunday killed an 
Terrorists used a disabled child as a suicide bomber on election day, Iraqi interior minister Falah al-Naqib said today.
In a pre-State of the Union challenge to President Bush, Senate Democratic Leader 
North Korea's media has for the first time raised the issue of a possible hereditary transfer of power from dictator 
Workers were burying more tsunami victims in Aceh province as a premature end to cease-fire talks between the Indonesian government and separatist rebels dampened hopes for a quick resolution to a 30-year-old conflict in the devastated province. There had been optimism that the immensity of the disaster in Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra island would spur Indonesia's government and rebels to find a way to end fighting and focus on rebuilding. But hopes were dashed when truce negotiations in Helsinki, Finland, broke off. There was no word on why the meeting ended late Saturday, a day earlier than planned. Indonesian Communications Minister Sofyan Djalil described the talks as "quite hopeful." But former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, who convened the meeting, said neither party had accepted an invitation to a second round.
A stripper mauled by a tiger in an Ontario safari park has won $650,000 in damages because her scars meant she could no longer work, Canadian media said on Friday. Jennifer-Anne Cowles was driving through the park nearly nine years ago with her then boyfriend when a tiger jumped into their car and tried to drag them away. 
DAVOS: Pakistan is exerting behind-the-scenes pressure on Iran to compromise in its acrimonious dispute with Europe and the United States over its nuclear programme, Pakistani diplomatic sources say. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri passed on their concerns during a meeting at the weekend with Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi. Kasuri, for his part, said Pakistan supported negotiations led by Britain, France and Germany, to reach a lasting deal that would allay US charges that Iran is covertly developing nuclear weapons.
A third suspected Islamic militant arrested in a police sweep against an alleged recruiting ring was placed under investigation Saturday for suspected membership of a network that sent young people to fight in Iraq. The court decision came after two other suspected Islamic militants, 
Switzerland has agreed to a Spanish request for the extradition of suspected bomb plotter 
MULTAN: The district administration has banned the entry of 26 clerics and outlawed 28 others from making speeches during Muharram to tackle any sectarian incident, while mourners will be under tight screening during Majalis-i-Aza. Arif Nawaz, the district police officer, told reporters on Sunday that public meetings, rallies and demonstrations have also been banned.
Iraq's influential 
Lamia Radi, Agence France Presse 
WASHINGTON: 
Armed police were out in force across 
The son of assassinated former Bangladeshi Finance Minister 
Senior former Taliban officials arrested in Balochistan and suspected of links to Al Qaeda will be handed over to Afghanistan if nothing can be proved against them, police said on Sunday. "If nothing is proved against them except living without any legal documents in Pakistan, they will be handed over to the Afghan government for being Afghan nationals," said Pervez Rafi Bhatti, the Quetta police chief. The 17 Afghan suspects were picked up by police in a swoop on Thursday on hideouts in Quetta in Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, AFP reported.
TEHRAN: Iranian officials on Sunday hailed Iraq's elections as a "great step" towards full independence, but repeated a warning from the Islamic republic's supreme leader that the United States may not accept the result. "The organisation of the elections in Iraq constitutes a great step for Iraqis towards an independent and popular regime," top MP Alaeddin Boroujerdi was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency. But influential former Iranian president Akbar Hasemi Rafsanjani warned that Washington may not accept Iraq becoming a country that is "free and independent and that does not stand next to America and Israel."
Palestinian Prime Minister 
LAHORE: Law enforcement agencies arrested three men here on Sunday for suspected links with Al Qaeda, Geo news channel reported. The three men, arrested on a tip, were accused of working for Al Qaeda, the channel said. They are being interrogated at an undisclosed location.
WASHINGTON: The Musharraf regime is "unlikely to evolve into a long-term ally in the war on terrorism," though the United States should seek to "prevent Pakistan from descending into chaos in the short term," according to the 
Two bombs exploded in and around Quetta on Sunday, officials said, the latest in a series of attacks that have targeted government installations and security forces in the region. No injuries were reported. A bomb hidden in a plastic shopping bag went off near a park fence in a northern neighbourhood of Quetta, said Pervez Rafi Bhatti, the city's police chief. The second bomb exploded near a roadside restaurant in Kuchlak, a small town about 20 kilometres north of Quetta, damaging a trolley parked nearby, Bhatti said. No injuries were reported in the blasts. Elsewhere in the province, security forces seized a cache of arms and munitions in a dry stream in Naukundi, said Lt Col Rizwan Malik. No one was arrested and it was not known who dumped the cache there, Malik said. BLA spokesman Mir Azad Baluch claimed responsibility for Saturday's explosions in telephone calls to newspaper offices in Quetta.
A policeman, a wanted terrorist and a Bahraini civilian were killed in a gunbattle here yesterday in the third deadly clash this month, as the government vowed to crush terror. "The government reaffirms its determination to crush this deviant group and deter all those who attempt to disrupt the security and stability of our beloved homeland," a Cabinet statement said after the firefight.
BAGHDAD: A group that organised 10,000 independent observers for Sunday's Iraqi election said there had been "very little fraud" seen during the historic vote. As polling stations started to close, a spokesman for the Ain (Eye) non-government organisation told a press conference "our observers remarked that in general the elections went ahead in an excellent way and there was very little fraud or violations." 
One of the main rebel groups in the Darfur region of western Sudan has asked the African Union to send peacekeeping forces to the area with a mandate to disarm Janjaweed militias. 
