GIDEON Gono, widely regarded as the world's most disastrous central banker, knocked another 12 zeros off the Zimbabwean dollar yesterday in an attempt to bring the national currency back from the realms of the fantastical.
In a stroke, the governor of Zimbabwe's Reserve Bank slashed the street value of the Zim dollar from dollars 250trillion to one US dollar to 250, because the computers, calculators and people could no longer cope with all the zeros.
To counter an inflation rate that economists now estimate to be 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (five sextillion) per cent, Mr Gono has now struck 25 zeros from the plunging national currency since August 2006. One US dollar would now buy Zdollars 2,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (2.5 octillion) had he not done so.
Mr Gono's announcement came just weeks after the introduction of a Zdollars 100 trillion note, the latest and biggest of 35 denominations he has brought in since January last year but only enough yesterday to buy half a loaf.
"The zeros are too many for our machines to handle," said Obert Sibanda, the chairman of the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce. Mr Gono is now ordering Zimbabwe's red-hot printing presses to produce seven entirely new bank notes ranging from Zdollars 1 to Zdollars 500.
Economists poured scorn on Mr Gono's announcement, pointing out that four months after he knocked ten noughts off last year they had all returned. One western diplomat suggested the Governor's reputation would be buried at "Zeros Acre" - a play on Heroes' Acre, the name of the national monument to Zimbabwe's independence leaders.
Tony Hawkins, a University of Zimbabwe economist who taught Mr Gono 20 years ago, observed that the governor was not the student of whom he was most proud. "He was a good student but forgot whatever economics he learnt when he became a political player."
Mr Gono is not a man plagued by self-doubt, however. In an interview published in Newsweek magazine yesterday he said he printed money simply so that the Zimbabwean people could survive but the rest of the world was now following his example because of the credit crunch.
"I had to print money," he said. "I found myself doing extraordinary things that aren't in the textbooks. Then the IMF asked the US to please print money. The whole world is now practising what they have been saying I should not. I decided that God had been on my side and had come to vindicate me."
Mr Gono, 49, recently published an autobiography - sold only in US dollars in violation of his own currency regulations - in which he claimed that President Bush had offered him the post of senior vice-president at the World Bank last July.
Economists said that knocking off 12 more zeros would make not the slightest difference because hyper-inflation would render the new denominations equally worthless within weeks. The demise of the Zim dollar will also be hastened by the fact that last week the Government sanctioned the use of the US dollar, the British pound, the South African rand, the euro and the Botswana pula as legal tender. In effect, Zimbabwe now has two parallel economies, one using foreign exchange and the other using the increasingly irrelevant national currency.
This is exacerbating the problems facing Mr Mugabe's faltering regime because his security forces and the civil service are paid in Zim dollars. Soldiers have rioted on the streets of Harare, and most of the public sector - teachers, doctors, nurses, municipal workers - is on strike, demanding to be paid in foreign currency.
Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, is trying to make Mr Gono's removal a condition for his party joining a unity government next week.
Mr Gono's record is also coming under fire from within his own Zanu (PF) party. But asked by Newsweek if he considered his governorship a success, Mr Gono replied: "I am modestly credited with the survival strategy of my country.
No other (central bank) governor has had to deal with the kind of inflation levels that I deal with. (The people at) my bank (are) at the cutting edge of the country." He added: "What keeps me bright and looking forward to every day is that it can't be any worse."
Posted by: Rednek Jim ||
02/02/2009 21:15
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#6
2.5 octillion? Anybody remember their high school chemistry? 2.5x10E27 is more than 4000 moles. It is roughly the number of molecules in 75 kg of water...which would be similar to the number of molecules in a full grown man. Wow. I'm worth a ZimBuck per molecule. Better not sneeze. The mass I'd loose could have bought a car last week.
THE prosecutor of the International Criminal Court was conducting a "preliminary analysis" of alleged crimes committed by Israelis during the recent offensive in the Gaza Strip, his office said today.
Any chance they'll investigate how all the Fatah boys got whacked?
Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has received communications on this issue from Palestinian justice minister Ali Kashan, the Palestinian National Authority, and more than 200 other individuals and non-governmental bodies, his office said. "The office of the prosecutor will carefully examine all relevant issues, including on jurisdiction."
"The preliminary analysis conducted by the office of the prosecutor is not indicative that an investigation will be opened."
Mr Moreno-Ocampo's office said he had met Mr Kashan in The Hague on January 22, when "they discussed allegations of crimes committed in Gaza".
The same day, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) lodged a declaration with the ICC registrar, recognising the court's jurisdiction over the alleged crimes, the nature of which the prosecutor's office did not divulge. It also did not say which Israeli individuals have been fingered.
Mr Moreno-Ocampo's office has to date insisted the ICC - which started work in 2002 as the world's first permanent tribunal on war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide - had no competence over the Gaza situation. The court can try an individual if the alleged crime was committed on the territory of, or by a national of, a signatory to the Rome Statute which created the court, or if requested by a state party - which Israel is not.
The prosecutor can also start an investigation into the Gaza situation at the request of the United Nations security council, or if a non-party state accepts the court's jurisdiction - the road the PNA has now sought to take. But the Palestinian territories are not recognised as an independent state.
CLIPS from a porn movie were shown to American football fans as they watched the closing minutes of the Superbowl. The Comcast cable company has described the incident as "an isolated malicious act", the Arizona Daily Star reports.
Part of a movie being aired on an adult channel was broadcast to viewers in Tuscan, Arizona, with less than three minutes left on the clock.
The incident happened just after the Arizona Cardinals scored a touchdown to put the team in the lead. It is not known how many Superbowl fans were affected by the interruption -- which featured full male nudity -- but Comcast said viewers with high-definition televisions would not have seen the clip.
Those that witnessed the mistake told the Star they saw a woman unzipping a man's pants before the pair engaged in a graphic act. Some said they thought it was an advertisement at first.
"I just figured it was another commercial. ... then he did his little dance with everything hanging out," viewer Cora King said.
Comcast spokeswoman Kelle Maslyn said the clip was not a result of a technical problem. "We did an extensive preliminary check on our technical systems, and everything appeared to be working properly when the incident occurred," Ms Maslyn said.
The US Attorney's office said it was looking into the incident.
#1
The MoD is guarding the canons at a secret location, and 39 more guns have been identified on the sea bed, making it the largest collection in the world. In a related story the Royal Navy said today that it expects to be able to finally equip its new frigates with state of the art 18th Century firepower for the 21st Century :D
#1
Tax havens only work when they are limited to a relatively few individuals. Like most money making schemes, when everybody piles aboard, the boat sinks. But there are always new schemes.
Milwaukee Public Schools would reap $88.6 million over two years for new construction under the economic stimulus package just passed by the U.S. House of Representatives - even though the district has 15 vacant school buildings, a large surplus of property and no plans for new construction.
No district in the state would stand to benefit as much as MPS. In addition to the construction money, the district would get $115.5 million for special education and low income students over two years, according to detailed projections developed by congressional staffers. That totals $204.2 million for Milwaukee.
Overall, the 400-plus school districts across the state would get $729.6 million for those uses, including $317.2 million for construction.
In other words, 28% of the total number would come to Milwaukee.
The U.S. Senate is almost certain to change the numbers when it takes up the economic package this week. Then Senate and House negotiators would need to meet to come up with a compromise bill.
But if the amounts come through even close to where they are now projected, they will provide substantial infusions of money to school districts that are, like so many enterprises, under sharp budget pressure.
The amounts for MPS are particularly eye-catching, and not only because they are the largest in the state. Enrollment is declining every year, and the last major wave of construction in MPS - the $102 million Neighborhood School Initiative launched in 2000 - resulted in projects that are underused, have not met enrollment projections or have closed. A series in the Journal Sentinel in August detailed how tens of millions of dollars in construction spending did not produce the expected results, and the project as a whole has not led to a higher percentage of students attending neighborhood schools.
In general, MPS facilities have been described by school officials as being in good to better-than-good condition. The kind of situations that create urgent needs for renovation or new construction in some cities have not been on the priority list for MPS officials in recent years.
A Cleveland immigration lawyer who won a stay of deportation for Barack Obama's aunt is confident that the presidential relative will win her plea for asylum.
Margaret Wong and Associates will represent Zeituni Onyango, the 56-year-old Kenyan half-sister of Obama's late father, at an immigration hearing April 1 in Boston.
The stay of the deportation order was issued Dec. 17, and an immigration judge reopened the request for asylum Dec. 30.
"The judge will be looking at evidence that they may not have been aware of four years ago," said Michael Rogers, spokesman for Wong. "Wong is optimistic. We would have preferred to not conduct this case in the media spotlight, but that's not going to happen."
U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement officials could not be reached to comment on Onyango's case.
Onyango left her home in public housing in Boston in December and took a train to Cleveland to escape the media attention. Once here, she hired Wong to represent her in her attempts to remain in the United States.
She stayed with relatives in Cleveland's African immigrant community, said Wong. Rogers said she moved back to Boston sometime later in December.
Onyango attended some of this month's inaugural festivities. She enjoyed seeing relatives from Kenya, Rogers said, but she did not meet with the president.
Rogers stressed that Onyango has neither asked for nor received any assistance from Obama.
Onyango came to the United States in 2000 to join her son and asked for asylum in the United States. In 2004, Immigration Customs Enforcement officials rejected the request and ordered her to leave the country.
Kenya has been shaken by violence in recent years, including a period of two months in 2007 in which 1,500 people died in the East African nation.
Onyango was thrust into the national spotlight when her ancestry emerged during the height of the presidential campaign and she was identified as Obama's aunt.
Posted by: ed ||
02/02/2009
16:07 ||
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#1
Kenya has been shaken by violence in recent years, including a period of two months in 2007 in which 1,500 people died in the East African nation.
Kenya, population 40 million.
1,500 homicides in two months is 9,000 per year, or 23 per 100,000 at its worst.
Compare to Washington, DC at 69 per 100,000.
Go back to Kenya -- even at its worst, it's safer than Washington, DC by a factor of 3.
#1
No argument, my grandson (Highly intelligent) has NO concept of (Say) visualizing, I had to show him how to wind a coil of wire to make a magnet, stack plates and create a transformer, THEN he got it.
Posted by: Rednek Jim ||
02/02/2009 16:26
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#6
This is purely annecdotal, but my experience is that current college age students have far less skill and endurance in following a line of reasoning through multiple steps, far less comfort with rigorous abstractions common in, say, mathematics and far more superficial multitasking than I did/do.
But it is not universal - the young Chinese students taking classes next to me do just fine. And that may well be tied in part to a culture that is stressing discipline in extended study, classical music and other practices that build those skills.
#8
Using tech that was developed a while ago, mostly by older generations.
We've been eating our intellectual seed corn for over 20 years now and some of those bins are looking pretty damned empty now. And we are not turning out the skills we need, especially in advanced areas.
Certain areas of high tech are my expertise. I *know* what skills our domestic kids have - and how they compare with those of some other countries. I'm not alone in being more than concerned about it, either.
#10
Its not technology causing the decline. Its the crap culture and by extension, crap schools. The some of both cannot exceed 100 percent. IOW, as liberalism rises in a society, critical thinking decreases. Its axiomatic.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
02/02/2009 20:16
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#11
Case in point. Sum.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
02/02/2009 20:17
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#12
Both the legal and financial rewards system steer bright people away from technical fields. Why study grueling subjects when you can party and make millions in law or wall street.
There are more lawyers than scientists and engineers combined. What do these million+ lawyers add to the nation's productivity or wealth? Why shoot for $100-150K/year when you can make $million+/year at an investment bank?
Posted by: ed ||
02/02/2009 20:51
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#13
There are more lawyers than scientists and engineers combined.
Let me qualify that with R&D scientists and engineers combined. I was looking at electrical engineering employment per the IEEE and noticed that from 2000-2005 a quarter of the electrical engineers left the field. That's even with the flood of foreigners educated at US universities and then seeking employment in the US.
Posted by: ed ||
02/02/2009 21:27
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Oh, boy. Looks like another sprocket...
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia Moammar Gadhafi of Libya was elected today as leader of the African Union, a position long sought by the eccentric dictator pushing his oil-rich nation into the international mainstream after years of isolation.
Some African leaders offered tepid praise for the choice of Gadhafi, who grabbed power in a 1969 coup. Rights groups called him a poor model for Africa at a time when democratic gains are being reversed in countries such as Mauritania and Guinea.
Once ostracized by the West for sponsoring terrorism, Gadhafi has been trying to increase Libyas presence on the global stage and its regional influence mediating African conflicts, sponsoring efforts to spread Islam on the continent and pushing for the creation of a single African government. And...what a showman!
He attended the session dressed in a gold-embroidered green robe and flanked by seven extravagantly dressed men who said they are the "traditional kings of Africa." Gadhafi told about 20 of his fellow heads of state that that he would work to unite the continent into "the United States of Africa." Gadhafi arrived at the summit Sunday with the seven men, one carrying a 4-foot gold staff, and caused a stir when security officials did not admit them because each delegation gets only four floor passes. All seven "kings" were seated behind Gadhafi when he accepted the chairmanship. I think I saw this in Vegas when Seigfried and Roy were still around...
Sounds like a tribute band on the state fair circuit."
Nope, Halliburton - state fairs have much higher standards.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/02/2009 19:20
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#4
Have you ever looked closely at some of the ribbons these third-world despots wear? Quite a few of the ribbons,and some of the medals, look like US decorations. Kahdaffy looks like he's wearing the Berlin Airlift ribbon and the Purple Heart ribbon, plus the Army Commendation Medal ribbon.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/02/2009 19:50
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#5
Have you ever looked closely at some of the ribbons these third-world despots wear?
Hey! A ribbon is a ribbon. Besides, some of them are so pretty.
Posted by: ed ||
02/02/2009 21:05
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#7
That top medal on his green sash looks like a gear off of an old Norden bombsight. Or it could have been lifted off a chart recorder for a river flow gauge.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/02/2009 22:50
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#8
we lifted sanctions off this mrorn with the ribbons though
Click to see a great picture
There are some games in which cheering for the other side feels better than winning.
They played the oddest game in high school football history last month down in Grapevine, Texas.
It was Grapevine Faith vs. Gainesville State School and everything about it was upside down. For instance, when Gainesville came out to take the field, the Faith fans made a 40-yard spirit line for them to run through.
Did you hear that? The other team's fans?
They even made a banner for players to crash through at the end. It said, "Go Tornadoes!" Which is also weird, because Faith is the Lions.
It was rivers running uphill and cats petting dogs. More than 200 Faith fans sat on the Gainesville side and kept cheering the Gainesville players onby name.
"I never in my life thought I'd hear people cheering for us to hit their kids," recalls Gainesville's QB and middle linebacker, Isaiah. "I wouldn't expect another parent to tell somebody to hit their kids. But they wanted us to!"
And even though Faith walloped them 33-14, the Gainesville kids were so happy that after the game they gave head coach Mark Williams a sideline squirt-bottle shower like he'd just won state. Gotta be the first Gatorade bath in history for an 0-9 coach.
But then you saw the 12 uniformed officers escorting the 14 Gainesville players off the field and two and two started to make four. They lined the players up in groups of fivehandcuffs ready in their back pocketsand marched them to the team bus. That's because Gainesville is a maximum-security correctional facility 75 miles north of Dallas. Every game it plays is on the road.
This all started when Faith's head coach, Kris Hogan, wanted to do something kind for the Gainesville team. Faith had never played Gainesville, but he already knew the score. After all, Faith was 7-2 going into the game, Gainesville 0-8 with 2 TDs all year. Faith has 70 kids, 11 coaches, the latest equipment and involved parents. Gainesville has a lot of kids with convictions for drugs, assault and robberymany of whose families had disowned themwearing seven-year-old shoulder pads and ancient helmets.
So Hogan had this idea. What if half of our fansfor one night onlycheered for the other team? He sent out an email asking the Faithful to do just that. "Here's the message I want you to send:" Hogan wrote. "You are just as valuable as any other person on planet Earth."
Some people were naturally confused. One Faith player walked into Hogan's office and asked, "Coach, why are we doing this?"
And Hogan said, "Imagine if you didn't have a home life. Imagine if everybody had pretty much given up on you. Now imagine what it would mean for hundreds of people to suddenly believe in you."
Next thing you know, the Gainesville Tornadoes were turning around on their bench to see something they never had before. Hundreds of fans. And actual cheerleaders!
"I thought maybe they were confused," said Alex, a Gainesville lineman (only first names are released by the prison). "They started yelling 'DEE-fense!' when their team had the ball. I said, 'What? Why they cheerin' for us?'"
It was a strange experience for boys who most people cross the street to avoid. "We can tell people are a little afraid of us when we come to the games," says Gerald, a lineman who will wind up doing more than three years. "You can see it in their eyes. They're lookin' at us like we're criminals. But these people, they were yellin' for us! By our names!"
Maybe it figures that Gainesville played better than it had all season, scoring the game's last two touchdowns. Of course, this might be because Hogan put his third-string nose guard at safety and his third-string cornerback at defensive end. Still.
After the game, both teams gathered in the middle of the field to pray and that's when Isaiah surprised everybody by asking to lead. "We had no idea what the kid was going to say," remembers Coach Hogan. But Isaiah said this: "Lord, I don't know how this happened, so I don't know how to say thank You, but I never would've known there was so many people in the world that cared about us."
And it was a good thing everybody's heads were bowed because they might've seen Hogan wiping away tears.
As the Tornadoes walked back to their bus under guard, they each were handed a bag for the ride homea burger, some fries, a soda, some candy, a Bible and an encouraging letter from a Faith player.
The Gainesville coach saw Hogan, grabbed him hard by the shoulders and said, "You'll never know what your people did for these kids tonight. You'll never, ever know."
And as the bus pulled away, all the Gainesville players crammed to one side and pressed their hands to the window, staring at these people they'd never met before, watching their waves and smiles disappearing into the night.
Anyway, with the economy six feet under and Christmas running on about three and a half reindeer, it's nice to know that one of the best presents you can give is still absolutely free.
Hope.
Fast forward to NFL Commish Roger Goodell's Friday news conference
Remember Kris Hogan, the Grapevine, Texas, high school football coach who asked half his fans and cheerleaders to cheer for the other team one night?
Story goes, Hogan's guys were playing a prison team from Gainesville that not only hadn't won a game all year, but had to play every game on the road. So over 200 fans sat on Gainesville's side of the field and cheered on the players by name.
They made a spirit line and a banner for the team, and even sent them off with dinner and some gifts.
Well, Troy Aikman read it, then made sure NFL commissioner Roger Goodell read it. Goodell thought so much of Hogan he brought him Tampa for the Super Bowl. The Commish even honored Hogan during his Friday news conference. "I hate it that this thing that we did is so rare," Hogan said. "Everybody views it as such a big deal. Shouldn't that be the normal?"
The facts are these: Just after 1 a.m. February 3, 1959, a three-passenger Beechcraft Bonanza went down about five miles northwest of Mason City Municipal Airport, near Clear Lake, Iowa. The plane crash took the lives of the pilot, Roger Peterson, and three musicians: Charles Hardin Holley, better known as Buddy Holly, 22; Ritchie Valens (originally Valenzuela), 17; and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, 28.
It has become famous, in Don McLean's "American Pie" formulation, as "the day the music died."
The event has echoed through rock 'n' roll history for 50 years, representing, if not the end of rock 'n' roll itself, the close of an era, the end of the first bloom of rock anarchy and innovation.
"It was like a curtain coming down," said Terry Stewart, president of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, which is co-hosting a series of events in Clear Lake for the anniversary, including classes putting the event in historical context.
As they have for decades, visitors have been making the pilgrimage to the resort town about 110 miles north of Des Moines. On Monday night, the 50th anniversary of the trio's deaths, the city's Surf Ballroom and Museum will host a huge concert in conjunction with the Rock Hall.
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd says he'll refinance two mortgages that he received through a VIP program from Countrywide Financial Corp.
Dodd told reporters Monday that the mortgages for his homes in Washington and East Haddam, Conn., will be refinanced with a different company. Undoubtedly at a better interest rate.
Dodd has acknowledged receiving mortgages in 2003 through a VIP program at Countrywide, which was sold to Bank of America Corp. earlier this year and has been the focus of allegations that it gave favorable loan terms to lawmakers. Dodd says he's moving the loans in part because he was wrongfully labeled a friend of Countrywide's former CEO, Angelo Mozilo. Dodd says he never sought special treatment.
The chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Dodd says a third party will be involved in choosing the new bank.
PORTLAND, Maine -- With an alarming number of tankers and cargo ships getting hijacked on the high seas, the nation's maritime academies are offering more training to merchant seamen in how to fend off attacks from pirates armed not with cutlasses and flintlocks but automatic weapons and grenade launchers.
Colleges are teaching students to fishtail their vessels at high speed, drive off intruders with high-pressure water hoses and illuminate their decks with floodlights. Anti-piracy training is not new. Nor are the techniques. But the lessons have taken on new urgency -- and more courses are planned -- because of the record number of attacks worldwide in 2008 by outlaws who seize ships and hold them for ransom.
At the California Maritime Academy in Vallejo, Calif., professor Donna Nincic teaches two courses on piracy. Students learn where the piracy hotspots are and how they have shifted over the years. "If I've done anything, I've shown them that this isn't a joke, it's not about parrots and eye patches and Blackbeard and all that," Nincic said. "It's very real and it's a problem without an easy solution."
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#1
What's the point, it was posted here that the "Law of the Sea" will not allow arms aboard ships, you teaching Karate? Kung-fu? Neither are bulletproof.
Posted by: Rednek Jim ||
02/02/2009 16:20
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Ships don't have firehoses anymore. Or we worried about the ghost of Bull Connor
Criminal gangs in the USA have swelled to an estimated 1 million members responsible for up to 80% of crimes in communities across the nation, according to a gang threat assessment compiled by federal officials.
The major findings in a report by the Justice Department's National Gang Intelligence Center, which has not been publicly released, conclude gangs are the "primary retail-level distributors of most illicit drugs" and several are "capable" of competing with major U.S.-based Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.
"A rising number of U.S.-based gangs are seemingly intent on developing working relationships" with U.S. and foreign drug-trafficking organizations and other criminal groups to "gain direct access to foreign sources of illicit drugs," the report concludes. The gang population estimate is up 200,000 since 2005.
Bruce Ferrell, chairman of the Midwest Gang Investigators Association, whose group monitors gang activity in 10 states, says the number of gang members may be even higher than the report's estimate.
#1
A reminder of the 2005 Army War College monograph warning that street gangs are increasingly morphing into urban insurgency in their methods and effects.
From the summary:
The primary thrust of this monograph is to explain the linkage of contemporary criminal street gangs (that is, the gang phenomenon or third generation gangs) to insurgency in terms of the instability it wreaks upon government and the concomitant challenge to state sovereignty. Although there are differences between gangs and insurgents regarding motives and modes of operations, this linkage infers that gang phenomena are mutated forms of urban insurgency. In these terms, these "new" nonstate actors must eventually seize political power in order to guarantee the freedom of action and the commercial environment they want. The common denominator that clearly links the gang phenomenon to insurgency is that the third generation gangs' and insurgents' ultimate objective is to depose or control the governments of targeted countries.
Locally, we might note that MS-13 has targeted US police and drug enforcement officials for assasination, demonstrating that the analysis has domestic as well as foreign relevance.
#3
Gang crime is really up and not just on the borders. Chicago's murder rate is about Iraq and Afghanistan's combined. Even sleepy Omaha averages a murder a week, attributed to rival gangs. How would respond to an urban insurgency, especially one trained by the US School of the Americas, like the Zetas, when it is illegal to deploy the military on home soil? Obama was really short-sighted on this one--should have kept Gitmo open for these guys. They have deported many of the illegal members, although the connections haven't been severed, and some just continue business elsewhere. Our overcrowded prisons let them go but they need separated from society. Maybe the ACLU will start an Adopt-a-Gangbanger program and take them home to learn multicultural values in the privacy of their own homes.
#5
...when it is illegal to deploy the military on home soil?
Oh, that only applies to non-liberal activity, whether its federal troops to integrate a high school in Little Rock or a college in Jackson, troops are employable in domestic law and order. They just can't be subordinated to local law enforcement. Andy Jackson had no more trouble implementing martial law in New Orleans than the commander in Hawaii did after that nasty bit the Japanese did one December. When the fed's do it, it's ok [or as least as long as there's a -D after the name or something THEY approve of].
#6
Don't most major cities have some sort of "gang taskforce" as part of their police departments?
How's that working out? (That's not a snark, btw ... serious question: Are cities with effective gang taskforces seeing the same rate of increase in gang activity?)
#7
Probably they mean 80% of violent crime, not all crime and only in urban areas with systemic gang warfare.
I don't think so. As the article makes clear, there is gang activity in a lot of smaller towns and rural areas now - this is not just an urban problem and its effects go way beyond gangbanger red on red.
Re: gang task forces, the FBI is a participant / sponsor of many of them. The list is online here
#8
We had a murder here in Colorado Springs when two rival gangs duked it out over an iPod. The guy that did the shooting is looking at 30 years to life. The shooting took place about three miles from my house. We've heard of gang activity in all the "small" towns between Denver and Cheyenne - bedroom communities, for the most part. Robberies, assaults, and vandalism are all up.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/02/2009 19:23
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#9
They're up in my town 50% over last year. Which for a town of less than 30,000 is a huge jump. Our police have managed to catch quite a few of them, and I'm not sure it's gang related though as most of them are usually in their 40's and tend to be druggies. Might be increased drugs is forcing addicts to find more money. Dunno.
Im madder than a hillbilly with a busted banjo string because Obama isnt helping those poor folks in Kentucky!
Seems they had a big ice storm and dozens of people are dead. More than a million homes havent got electricity. Its a state of emergency but the funny thing is: I dont see the midstream media filming folks looting plasma TVs or huddled together at Churchill Downs, yelling about cannibalism, or shooting the National Guard from the roofs of their hillbilly shacks.
I guess because none of thats going on! All those crazy stupid hicks are just taking care of themselves and their neighbors, and clinging to their guns and bibles and Klan robes and moonshine to keep warm like they have for countless inbred generations.
But whats our new Communist-in-Chief doing? Chowing down on arugula steaks at that fancy pants Buckwheat Dinner, then watching the Super Bowl in his toasty warm office. (Guess you heard that the same guy who told us we cant keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times insists his Oval Office be kept hotter than an orchid greenhouse because hes from Hawaii.)
Obama doesnt want to make a fuss about the Kentucky ice storm, and not just because those hillbillies didnt vote for him. Its because if he does, his whole global warming scam goes right out the single-pane window! Boy, does Obama have slush on his face now!
The Teleprompter Kid better fly his magic unicorn over the rainbow and down to Kentucky pronto if he wants to keep that Spike Jones fella from making a nasty movie called When the Generators Broke. Obama said hed stop the oceans from rising but he cant melt a little snow?
That Obama! I tell you he sure puts the F in FEMA!
Posted by: Mike ||
02/02/2009
13:36 ||
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If an ice storm happens in Kentucky and there is no MSM who wants you to hear it, does it make a sound?
Increasing quantities of China-made military equipment have been finding their way to Africa, traded for oil, mineral resources and even fishing rights. Zambia has used its copper resources to pay China in a number of military deals, for instance, and Kenya has been negotiating with China to trade fishing rights for arms.
Details at the link. The arms in question range from rifles to fighter aircraft.
#2
One company of Chinese auto-propulsion 155-mm howitzers consists of six artillery vehicles, one 704-1 positioning radar and one 720-D meteorological radar. One battalion is composed of 18 155-mm howitzers, one command vehicle and one surveillance vehicle.
Not much good without instructors/advisors. Oh, those were included as well?
#3
Besoeker---they like the hardware. They like the shiny stuff.They don't like the studying part.
Kinda like spending for sewage collection and treatment in Abu Dabai.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/02/2009 22:43
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WORLD MIL FORUM > US MEDIAS: DESPITE GLOBAL RECESSION AND DOMESTIC TROUBLES [increasing unemployment], CHINA'S STRATEGIC INVESTMENT IN AFRICA AND AMERICAS CONTINUES UNBATED.
Also, SAME > RUSSIA STAKES MORE CLAIMS ON ARCTIC OCEAN REGIONS [Arctic EEZ = Expansion of Offshore/Sea Claims]. RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT TO BEGIN BY YEAR 2020. RUSSIA'S MILITARY TO AMPLIFY ARCTIC PRESENCE IN DEFENSE AND PROTECTION OF RUSSIAN NATIONAL, ECONOMIC SOVEREIGNTY???
A PROTESTER overnight threw a shoe at Chinese premier Wen Jiabao as he was giving a speech at Britain's Cambridge University, just missing him. "This is a scandal" he shouted before security staff bundled him out of a concert hall at the university, where Mr Wen was speaking on the last day of a five-nation tour of Europe.
The protester, a young Western-looking man in a T-shirt, said: "This dictator here, how can you listen to the lies he's telling? You are not challenging him."
"How can the university prostitute itself with this dictator?", he said.
Echoing the incident in December when an Iraqi journalist hurled two shoes at US president George W. Bush in Baghdad, he threw the well-worn trainer from near the back of the auditorium. It landed about a metre from the Chinese premier, but did not hit him.
Security officials went on to the stage and kicked it off and a Chinese official took it away under his jacket.
The protester also blew a whistle. As he was bundled out, he said: "Stand up and protest".
Audience members retorted: "Shame on you, shame on you."
Mr Wen said after the interruption: "This despicable behaviour cannot stand in the way of friendship between China and the UK."
He received a round of applause from the audience, who were apparently mostly Chinese students.
The premier appeared unruffled by the incident and resumed his speech before taking questions.
Pro-Tibet protesters questioning China's human rights record have demonstrated throughout Mr Wen's three-day visit to Britain.
Mr Wen was to return home later today at the end of a trip that has also taken him to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and to Germany, the EU headquarters in Brussels and Spain.
As Charlie Brown once noted, "There are three things in life that people like to stare at: a flowing stream, a crackling fire, and a Zamboni clearing the ice."
There will be no Zambonis at the 2010 Winter Olympics because they're not "green" enough. Hit the link for details.
Posted by: Mike ||
02/02/2009
12:51 ||
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#1
I think this has to do more with "Buy Canadain" than anyhting else. Zambomi also makes electric powered rink resurfacers.
#2
I remember the old gasoline resurfacers. We'd get woozy skating around in those fumes. The propane was a big improvement. But electric does sound like the way to go if a rink can afford the initial outlay
Fun fact: Clarkson University, an engineering school with a great college hockey tradition, awarded an honorary degree to old Frank Zamboni before he passed away. He deserved it.
#3
Mmmm, clean, pollution-free electricity. Produced by rubbing balloons on wool blankets, no doubt. In the olden days, they rubbed them on cats, but that get the PETA people charged up nowadays.
Radical environmentalists accused Japanese whalers of attacking them with high tech sound guns which can cause nausea, disorientation and hearing damage in the latest round of their annual confrontation in the frozen seas off the Antarctic.
Members of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society claimed that crew members of the whaling ship Nisshin Maru used the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) against rubber launches attempting to disrupt their annual hunt in the Southern Ocean.
The LRAD is a non-lethal weapon used for crowd control by soldiers and riot police, as well as by ships travelling through pirate-infested waters. It consists of a round disc three feet across which directs a beam of shrill sound, extremely loud and off-putting at a range of several hundred yards, and capable of causing permanent ear damage at close range.
This is a military grade weapon system that sends out mid to high frequency sound waves designed to disorient and possibly incapacitate personnel, Sea Shepherd said in a statement. It is basically an anti-personnel weapons system.
The self-styled environmental pirates claimed that two of its crew members were slightly injured over the weekend when the Japanese sailors fired water hoses and threw metal balls at them as they attempted to obstruct the launch of smaller harpoons from the Nisshin Maru.
It is a very dramatic scene out here as ships zig zag back and forth in thick ice and heavy swells, said Paul Watson, captain of the Sea Shepherd ship, Steve Irwin. The whalers are deploying water cannons, concussion grenades, acoustic weapons, and throwing solid brass and lead balls at Sea Shepherd crew members.
If we were to do any of the things these thugs are doing, we would be denounced as eco-terrorists. There certainly is a double standard where whale killers can use violence without fear of condemnation from their government, and we can't even defend ourselves without condemnation from our governments. Y'know, Bill Ayers makes pretty much the same argument.
In Japan, the governments Fisheries Agency admitted that water sprays and beeping warning tones had been used against the environmentalists. A spokesman for the Institute of Cetacean Research, a government funded organisation which campaigns in the whaling cause, did not deny that the LRAD had been put to use. All legal means available will be used to ensure these pirates do not board Japanese ships or threaten the lives of the crews or the safety of the vessels," Glenn Inwood said. If the "pirate" meme sticks, it won't be just whale blood in the water.
The hunting of whales was banned in 1986 by the International Whaling Commission after evidence that the world's largest mammals were being driven towards extinction. Japan continues to hunt whales every year in the guise of scientific research, although most of the 935 minke and 50 fin whales which it hopes to harvest this year will be sold as whale meat.
Every year Tokyo has sought to overturn the moratorium to allow a full and uneuphemistic return to commercial whaling; in recent IWC meetings, it has edged closer to the required three-quarters majority.
Opponents of whaling accuse it of using overseas aid to buy the votes of small countries which have no interest in the industry, but great interest in winning the favour of Japan among the pro-whaling faction expected to be present in Tokyo are tiny island states such as Tuvalu and Kiribati, and Mongolia, which has no coastline.
Captain Watson was a founder of Greenpeace who broke away to form his own more radical group. Sea Shepherds confrontational and sometimes violent tactics are opposed even by those who denounce Japans whaling programme, including Greenpeace and the governments of Australia and New Zealand.
What is important, however, is that despite the violence from the whalers, no whales are being killed, Captain Watson said. They can't get away from us and if we keep on their tail they can't kill whales.
Notable terrorist actions by Paul Watson the media neglects to tell you about:
1979 - He sank the commercial whaling ship the Sierra by ramming it. His ship was equipped with a cement-filled bow.
1980 - He sank the the whaling ships Isba I and Isba II in Vigo, Spain.
1980 - He sank the the whaling ships Susan and Theresa in South Africa.
1981 - He sank the whaling ships Hvalur 6 and Hvalur 7 in Iceland
1986 - Sank half a fleet of Icelandic whaling boats.
1987 - Founded the practise of tree spiking for his other terrorist group the Heart of the Wood.
1992 - He threatened to sink a fleet of ships reenacting the Columbus voyage of the discovery of America.
1992 - He sank the whaling ship Nybraena in Norway.
1994 - He sank the whaling ship Senet in Norway
1997 - He was imprisoned in the Netherlands for ramming a Norwegian coast guard vessel and trying to ram a whaling ship that was tied up at dock.
1998 - He sank the whaling ship Morild in Norway
2002 - He tried to ram a 13 foot shark boat with his ship the Farley Mowat (previously named the Ocean Warrior).
2005 - He attempted to ram the Japanese whaling ship the Oriental Bluebird.
2007 - He attacked the Japanese whaling ship the Kaiko Maru with bottles of butyric acid.
2008 - He attacked the Japanese whaling ship the Yushin Maru with bottles of butyric acid.
Posted by: Aussie Mike ||
02/02/2009 17:28
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Mike, those would be useful for the ships off Somalia as well.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
02/02/2009 18:10
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Mongolia? Did it say freaking Mongolia I have no problems with banning whaling. I do have a problem with Japans Holier-Than-Thou attitude on enviromental issues then they practice this crap.
#7
tu3031---good posting!!! These guys try to foul the propellers with stuff. I am not a fan of large scale commercial whaling, but this guy is over the top. Turn the LRAD on to Max and blast away. The Sea Shepherd people are using the same propaganda playbook as Hamas. Sink em.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/02/2009 19:44
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#8
By reading that list, I fully expect this man to not make it home some day.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
02/02/2009 20:29
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#9
Greenpeace was started by Brigitte Bardot
who was an employee of a Parisian fake fur
manufacturer.
They managed to destroy the seal hunt in the
Gulf of St Lawrence, which in turn caused a population explosion of the seals, who ate ALL the fish of the grand banks, and poisoned those they missed with a parasite worm.
Now, there is no fishing industry in the North Atlantic, fish prices are gone through the roof
and millions are starving to death, which
is the main objective to the hippie filth
of greenpeace, the peace of the grave for the majority and nature enjoyment for these millionaire parasites.
Of note, Bardot started her anti-fur campaign wearing a REAL MINK FUR COAT in Blanc Sablon, Canada.
Cant blame her, it was damn cold that spring.
Posted by: Ming the Merciless ||
02/02/2009 20:47
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Greenpeace was started by Brigitte Bardot
Huh? Wikipedia: The origins of Greenpeace lie in the peace movement and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament generally, and particularly in the Don't Make A Wave Committee co-founded by Jim Bohlen, Patrick Moore, Paul Coté, and Irving Stowe, followed by an assortment of Canadian and expatriate American peace activists in Vancouver in 1970. Taking its name from a slogan used during protests against United States nuclear testing in late 1969, the Committee had come together with the objective of stopping a U.S. nuclear bomb test codenamed Cannikin beneath the Aleutian island of Amchitka, Alaska.
Posted by: ed ||
02/02/2009 21:02
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Before Bardot, Greenpeace was virtually unknown...
An estimated 26 million desperately poor rural Chinese are jobless after pinning their hopes on factory jobs that dried up due to the global economic slowdown, an official said Monday, noting that widespread unemployment could threaten the country's social stability.
The figures were announced one day after Beijing warned of "possibly the toughest year" since the turn of the century, calling for development of agriculture and rural areas to offset the economic fallout. Though many Chinese cities have seen double-digit growth in recent years, the countryside has lagged far behind, forcing peasants to seek urban factory jobs churning out goods that are sold around the world.
But a recent government survey showed that slightly more than 15 percent of China's estimated 130 million migrant workers have returned to their hometowns and are now unemployed, said Chen Xiwen, director of the Central Rural Work Leading Group, a central government advisory body. Another 5 or 6 million new migrants enter the work force each year, he added.
"So, if we put those figures together, we have roughly 25 to 26 million rural migrant workers who are now coming under pressures for employment," he said. "So from that perspective, ensuring job creation and maintenance is ensuring the stability of the countryside."
In comparison, the U.S. unemployment rate climbed to a 16-year high of 7.2 percent in December, meaning about 11.1 million Americans are without jobs, or less than half the number of unemployed migrants in China.
Chen's 26 million figure is separate from China's official jobless tally, which only counts registered urban workers, and was estimated last November to total 8.3 million. The official government rate is widely believed to underrepresent the true number of unemployed because it leaves out large swaths of the private or informal economy.
Neither count includes the millions of Chinese college graduates trying to enter the work force.
Chinese authorities have stressed that their priority in 2009 will be ensuring development in the countryside, where many have come to rely on remittances from migrants working in factories and on urban construction sites, amid fears of social unrest.
Many factory workers have already taken to the streets in recent weeks, demanding pay and protesting layoffs.
Chen outlined a raft of existing policies geared toward helping migrants including encouraging companies to retain workers, investing in public projects to absorb rural workers and helping returning migrants set up businesses in their hometowns. "Maintaining the stability of the countryside is a focal point of upholding overall social stability," Chen said.
China's economic growth once red-hot plunged to 6.8 percent in the three months through December, compared with a year earlier. Analysts have cut forecasts of 2009 economic growth to as low as 5 percent.
Premier Wen Jiabao said in comments published Monday that Beijing was considering new steps to boost economic growth. The Financial Times report did not give details of the potential plan, which would follow a 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion) package unveiled in November with heavy spending on public works projects. Unlike "Dear Leader's" $900 billion spending spree that allocates less than 5% to public works.
Meanwhile, China's communist rulers have told the military to strictly obey the Communist Party, reflecting insecurity among authorities as a result of the global downturn. Similar calls have been made in the past, underscoring the important role China's massive military plays in supporting one-party rule and maintaining social stability.
Posted by: ed ||
02/02/2009
11:28 ||
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#5
LH: we kind of prefer actual tax cuts, as opposed to one-time welfare grants wearing novelty glasses and a fake mustache. Not that Bush didn't repeatedly pull the same crap stunt...
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
02/02/2009 13:31
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I'd put them to work putting out coal mine fires.
#9
True public works like real infrastructure development in the interior versas dig a hole - fill in a hole would let off a lot of social steam and would improve China as a whole. As for 26 million not being that many people in China, who many did Mao start out with in the 1930s?
#10
I read many years ago that the main purpose of wars was to eliminate the excess male population.
Posted by: Rednek Jim ||
02/02/2009 20:16
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#11
How ya gonna keep em, down on the farm
After they've seen Beijing?
*rimshot*
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/02/2009 22:45
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"How ya gonna keep em, down on the farm
After they've seen Beijing?"
How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen the farm, AP?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/02/2009 22:54
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#13
WORLD MIL FORUM > BRITISH SCHOLARS PREDICT COLLAPSE OF "CHINESE STATE/ECONOMIC MODEL" DUE TO HEAVY ECONOMIC FOREIGN-DEPENDENCY; + CHINA LENDS THE USA AN AVERAGE OF APPROXIMATELY US$40,BILYUHN EVERY DAY???
* SAME > THE NEW OBAMA ADMINISTRATION WILL DIG THE GRAVES OF AMERICA AND US-WORLD CAPITALISM; + AMERICA OR AMERIKA: WHAT KIND OF USA WILL SURVIVE AND EMERGE FROM THE GLOBAL RECESSION?
POTUS OBAMA + ADMIN [Bam-Man's POTUS Policies] will lead the way and "MAKE OR BREAK" the USA into the OWG World-conquering USSA, or the weak Global SSR USRoA!?
Even as the economy collapsed last year and many financial workers found themselves unemployed, the dozen U.S. banks now receiving the biggest rescue packages requested visas for tens of thousands of foreign workers to fill high-paying jobs, according to an Associated Press review of visa applications.
The major banks, which have received $150 billion in bailout funds, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years for senior vice presidents, corporate lawyers, junior investment analysts and human resources specialists. The average annual salary for those jobs was $90,721, nearly twice the median income for all American households.
The numbers of visas sought by the dozen banks in AP's analysis increased by nearly one-third, from 3,258 in the 2007 budget year to 4,163 in fiscal 2008.
The AP reviewed visa applications the banks filed with the Labor Department under the H-1B visa program, which allows temporary employment of foreign workers in specialized-skill and advanced-degree positions. Such visas are most often associated with high-tech workers.
It is unclear how many foreign workers the banks actually hired; the government does not release those details. The actual number is likely a fraction of the 21,800 foreign workers the banks sought to hire because the government only grants 85,000 such visas each year among all U.S. employers.
During the last three months of 2008, the largest banks that received taxpayer loans announced more than 100,000 layoffs. The number of foreign workers included among those laid off is unknown.
Foreigners are attractive hires because companies have found ways to pay them less than American workers. Companies are required to pay foreign workers a prevailing wage based on the job's description. But they can use the lower end of government wage scales even for highly skilled workers; hire younger foreigners with lower salary demands; and hire foreigners with higher levels of education or advanced degrees for jobs for which similarly educated American workers would be considered overqualified.
"The system provides you perfectly legal mechanisms to underpay the workers," said John Miano of Summit, N.J., a lawyer who has analyzed the wage data and started the Programmers Guild, an advocacy group that opposes the H-1B system.
David Huber of Chicago is a computer networking engineer who has testified to Congress about losing out on a 2002 job with the former Bank One Corp. He learned later the bank applied to hire dozens of foreign visa holders for work he said he was qualified to do. "American citizenship is being undermined working in our own country," Huber said in an AP interview.
Beyond seeking approval for visas from the government, banks that accepted federal bailout money also enlisted uncounted foreign workers, often in technology jobs, through intermediary companies known as "body shops." Such businesses are the top recipients of the H-1B visas.
Posted by: ed ||
02/02/2009
11:20 ||
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Now they need the stats on the visa holders, not just their sponsors. This is a legal means of sleeper agents entering the country, and quite a few I have seen are from countries of concern, working in areas ripe for espionage.
Consumer spending fell for a record sixth straight month in December as recession-battered households, worried about surging layoffs, boosted their savings rates to the highest level since May.
Economists expect consumer spending, which accounts for the largest portion of total economic activity, to remain weak this year, prolonging an already painful recession.
The Commerce Department reported Monday that personal consumption spending dropped by 1 percent in December. That was slightly worse than the 0.9 percent decline economists expected.
Incomes, reflecting a wave of layoffs, fell for a third straight month, but the 0.2 percent drop was slightly better than expected.
Still, Americans worried about the possibility of more job cuts boosted their savings rate to 3.6 percent of their after-tax incomes in December. That was the highest level since tax rebate checks temporarily pushed the rate up to 4.8 percent in May.
For the year, consumer spending rose by just 3.6 percent, the smallest annual increase since 1961. Incomes rose by 3.7 percent, the weakest gain since a 3.2 percent advance in 2003.
Posted by: ed ||
02/02/2009
11:17 ||
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A suicide bomber in a police uniform detonated his explosives inside a police training center in southern Afghanistan on Monday, killing 21 officers and wounding at least 20, officials said. The Taliban claimed responsibility.
The bomber entered the training facility in Tirin Kot, the capital of Uruzgan province, as the police reservists were exercising, said Juma Gul Himat, the provincial police chief.
Posted by: ed ||
02/02/2009
11:15 ||
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So, whaddya say, boys? Am I approved?
Awwwww, sure, ya big lug ya...
WASHINGTON Tom Daschle, President Barack Obama's choice to head the Health and Human Services Department, apologized Monday to the Senate panel that will decide his fate, saying he was "deeply embarrassed and disappointed" about failing to pay more than $120,000 in taxes. I can't use "honest mistake"?
Sorry, been taken, sir.
Determined to salvage his nomination, Daschle wrote a letter to the top leaders of the Senate Finance Committee in which he sought to explain how he overlooked taxes on additional income for consulting work, the use of a car service and paperwork to support claims for charitable contributions. C'mon, boys. You know me. I'm in the club. I know the secret handshake and...everything.
Daschle recently filed amended tax returns for 2005-07 to report $128,203 in back taxes and $11,964 in interest. "I am deeply embarrassed and disappointed by the errors that required me to amend my tax returns," said Daschle, the former Senate Democratic leader. "I apologize for the errors and profoundly regret that you have had to devote time to them." I am even more sorry that I got caught.
Daschle explained in his apology letter that the presidential transition team flagged charitable contributions they concluded were deducted in error. When his accountant realized amended tax returns would need to be filed, he suggested addressing another matter that Daschle raised with him earlier in the year: whether the use of a car service provided by a close friend and business associate, Leo Hindery, should be reported as income. The unreported income for that car service totaled more than $250,000 over three years. At about the same time, Hindery's company informed Daschle's accountant of a clerical error it made on a form it provided to Daschle that he subsequently reported to the IRS. The error resulted in an additional $88,333 in unreported consulting income for 2007. Geez, Tom, helluva accountant you got there.
"I disclosed this information to the committee voluntarily, and paid the taxes and any interest owed promptly," Daschle wrote. "My mistakes were unintentional." ...and I forgive you for calling me on them.
A financial disclosure form Daschle filed about a week ago shows that he made more than $200,000 in the past two years speaking to members of the health care industry that Obama wants him to reform. The speaking fees were just a portion of the more than $5.2 million the former senator earned over the last two years as he advised health insurers and hospitals and worked in other industries such as energy and telecommunications, according to a financial statement filed with the Office of Government Ethics. I blame Bush. We can still do that, right?
Jenny Backus, a spokeswoman for Daschle, said the money he earned in speaking fees from health care interests do not pose a conflict for the health care reform Obama wants him to lead. How can you say that, you mean spirited bastards! This stinks of the Right Wing Hate Machine!!
"He welcomed every opportunity to make his case to the American public at large and the health industry in particular that America can't afford to ignore the health care crisis any longer," she said. ...and he's been very well paid for it!
Among the health care interest groups paying Daschle for speeches were America's Health Insurance Plans, $40,000 for two speeches; CSL Behring, $30,000; the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, $16,000; and the Principal Life Insurance Co., $15,000. Daschle said in a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services ethics office that if he's confirmed by the Senate, he will resign as a senior policy adviser at the Washington law firm of Alston and Bird LLP. He reported earnings of more than $2 million from that firm during the past two years. Well, isn't that big of Tom. I'm sure the "ethics" committee will put in a good word for him...
Daschle also earned more than $2 million in consulting fees from InterMedia Advisors LLC of New York, an investment firm specializing in buyouts and industry consolidation. He said he also intends to resign from that firm upon his confirmation. Doesn't he kinda...have to?
Final entry...
DAY 57:
Most people up by 0400hrs. Then at 0534hrs: THE LAST PIRATE LEFT THE SHIP. At 0536 we are on stand-by, and at 0642, we're away on passage to freedom. The company have not yet decided on a destination for the ship. US helicopter came by and gave us a wave. I waved back. FREE TODAY! BBC reported a pirate source said five pirates died when their boat capsized. Very good news to us all.
COUPLES who have more than two children are being "irresponsible" by creating an unbearable burden on the environment, the government's green adviser has warned. Jonathon Porritt, who chairs the government's Sustainable Development Commission, says curbing population growth through contraception and abortion must be at the heart of policies to fight global warming. He says political leaders and green campaigners should stop dodging the issue of environmental harm caused by an expanding population.
Hasn't anyone told him that Malthus was wrong?
A report by the commission, to be published next month, will say that governments must reduce population growth through better family planning.
Better living through eugenics ...
"I am unapologetic about asking people to connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint and how they decide to procreate and how many children they think are appropriate," Porritt said. "I think we will work our way towards a position that says that having more than two children is irresponsible. It is the ghost at the table. We have all these big issues that everybody is looking at and then you don't really hear anyone say the "p" word."
The Optimum Population Trust, a campaign group of which Porritt is a patron, says each baby born in Britain will, during his or her lifetime, burn carbon roughly equivalent to 2œ acres of old-growth oak woodland - an area the size of Trafalgar Square.
So? Humans have been burning carbon since we evolved from apes.
The British population, now 61m, will pass 70m by 2028, the Office for National Statistics says.
Assuming no one migrates to other countries, and assuming immigration from Pakiwakiland slows down ...
The fertility rate for women born outside Britain is estimated to be 2.5, compared with 1.7 for those born here. The global population of 6.7 billion is expected to rise to 9.2 billion by 2050.
Porritt, who has two children, intends to persuade environmental pressure groups to make population a focus of campaigning.
"Many organisations think it is not part of their business. My mission with the Friends of the Earth and the Greenpeaces of this world is to say: 'You are betraying the interests of your members by refusing to address population issues and you are doing it for the wrong reasons because you think it is too controversial," he said.
Porritt, a former chairman of the Green party, says the government must improve family planning, even if it means shifting money from curing illness to increasing contraception and abortion.
Because we can't sit still when it means killing people ...
He said: "We still have one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancies in Europe ...
Isn't that a little, um, 'conservative' of you?
... and we still have relatively high levels of pregnancies going to birth, often among women who are not convinced they want to become mothers.
So let's make sure we convince them otherwise.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/02/2009
09:43 ||
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This POS is one who should have NO children. Let his idiocy die with him. We have four children - three are adopted. I'm not one bit disgruntled by having "more than the politically correct" number of children. Screw all the "population control" idiots.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/02/2009 13:48
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Does that mean we can finally shoot my little brother?
#4
Two children is only replacement level, in effect it's a slow reduction in total population.
Obviously his goal, proving him insane beyond all doubt.
Posted by: Rednek Jim ||
02/02/2009 20:37
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Well, he is leading by example. Now the real question is: how is he going to sell this one to the muzzies? You can do what he wants with his social circle, but you will be overrun by a rookery.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/02/2009 22:39
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Washington, DC - December 29, 2008, - President-elect Barack Obama and the Democrat controlled Congress is considering sweeping legislation that will provide new benefits for many Americans. The Americans With No Abilities Act. AWNAA is being hailed as a major legislative goal by advocates of the millions of Americans who lack any real skills or ambition.
'Roughly 50 percent of Americans do not possess the competence and drive necessary to carve out a meaningful role for themselves in society,' said Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA). 'We can no longer stand by and allow People of Inability to be ridiculed and passed over. With this legislation, employers will no longer be able to grant special favors to a small group of workers, simply because they have some idea of what they are doing.'
In a Capitol Hill press conference, House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) pointed to the success of the U.S. Postal Service, which has a long-standing policy of providing opportunity without regard to performance. According to Reid, approximately 74 percent of postal employees lack any job skills, making this agency the single largest U.S employer of Persons of Inability.
Private-sector industries with good records of non-discrimination against the Inept include retail sales (72%), the airline industry (68%), and home improvement 'warehouse' stores (65%). At the state government level, the Department of Motor Vehicles also has an excellent record of hiring Persons of Inability (93%).
Under The Americans With No Abilities Act, more than 25 million 'middle man' positions will be created, with important-sounding titles but little real responsibility, thus providing an illusory sense of purpose and performance.
Mandatory non-performance-based raises and promotions will be given so as to guarantee upward mobility for even the most unremarkable employees. The legislation provides substantial tax breaks to corporations that promote a significant number of Persons of Inability into middle-management positions, and gives a tax credit to small and medium-sized businesses that agree to hire one clueless worker for every two talented hires.
Finally, the AWNAA contains tough new measures to make it more difficult to discriminate against the non-abled, banning, for example, discriminatory interview questions such as, 'Do you have any skills or experience that relate to this job?'
'As a Non-abled person, I can't be expected to keep up with people who have something going for them,' said Mary Lou Gertz, who lost her position as a lug-nut twister at the GM plant in Flint, Michigan, due to her inability to remember 'righty tightey, lefty loosey.' 'This new law should be real good for people like me,' Gertz added. With the passage of this bill, Gertz and millions of other untalented citizens will finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Said Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL): 'As a Senator with absolutely no abilities, I believe the same privileges that we elected officials enjoy ought to be extended to every American with no abilities. It is our duty as lawmakers to provide each and every American citizen, regardless of his or her inadequacy, with some sort of space to take up in this great nation and a good salary for doing so.'
KiloBravo reports heavy snow at her mum's house near the Mersey in the Northwest. LONDON, England (CNN) -- The worst snowstorm to hit Britain in 18 years forced the cancellation of more than 650 flights at London's Heathrow airport Monday and shut down the city's bus network, partially paralyzing the British capital.
Heathrow, one of the busiest transport hubs in the world, closed both its runways for more than two hours Monday morning and operated with just one for the rest of the morning, according to BAA, the company which runs it. London City airport is also closed, while the British capital's other two airports, Stansted and Gatwick, were operating with severe delays, BAA said. British Airways canceled all flights out of Heathrow until 5 p.m. except for Edinburgh and Lisbon routes.
One of the city's largest cab companies was in such high demand it stopped taking cash and credit card bookings, serving only customers with accounts, it said. Dial-a-Cab, which has a fleet of over 2,500 vehicles, served mainly blue-chip companies trying to get employees into work, said Keith Cain a Control Room manager for the company.
Jochen Jaeger, 36, found himself stranded at Heathrow, unable to fly home to Zurich or to get back into the apartment he rented in London. "I will stay here at the airport," he told CNN. "There is no other option. I may have to spend the night here."
Jenny Leslie, a shop worker at Heathrow's Terminal 2, said it was so quiet at the airport "you can hear a pin drop."
Southampton Airport, southwest of London, was also closed for several hours Monday morning, but re-opened by noon (7 a.m. ET).
London's famous red buses were pulled off the roads on Sunday night as the snow got deeper. "Bus services were suspended throughout London last night on the grounds of passenger safety due to the unsafe road conditions resulting in a large number of traffic incidents across London," Transport for London, the city's transit agency, said. "Services remain suspended but we aim to restore services as soon as possible once roads have been treated and it is safe to recommence services."
The city's subway system was experiencing severe delays, leaving normally bustling central London something of a ghost town. Snow in the Underground?
On a regular weekday, London's transit system handles more than three million passenger journeys.
The Federation of Small Businesses estimated that at least one in five workers nationwide -- about 6.4 million employees -- failed to make it into work Monday morning. But the figure was estimated to be far higher -- around two in five -- in London and southeast England, which is home to around a fifth of all British businesses.
Monday's disruptions are likely to cost businesses £1.2 billion ($1.7 billion), FSB spokesman Stephen Alambritis told CNN.
Britain's national weather service, the Met Office, issued severe weather warnings for all of England and much of Scotland and Wales for both Monday and Tuesday. It reported eight inches of snow in Balham, south London, and six inches at Canary Wharf in east London.
The last time such widespread snowfall affected Britain was in February 1991, the Met Office said.
The snow meant a break from school for the region's children as classes gave way to snowball fights. In the southern English seaside resort of Brighton there was a carnival atmosphere as dozens of people who were unable to get to work threw snowballs and built snowmen on the beach.
Mother-of-three Fiona Robbins, 45, added: "Everyone is very excited to be able to show their children proper snow for the first time."
Tuesday's forecast is expected to bring some relief, with the snow expected to stop and temperatures to rise above freezing.
Two climbers were found dead Monday morning on Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales, after being reported missing Sunday night, North Wales Police said. It was not clear if their deaths were related to the storm.
#1
Yes, snow in the underground. The way the Underground is designed you have several sub-surface lines like the District & Circle and Hammersmith which have large sections above ground. Also, a number of the deep lines like Picadilly and Northern have surface sections. It affects the whole system. Not as bad as wet leaves on the tracks of the passenger rail systems:)
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
02/02/2009 10:38
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#2
A train should be able to get around in snow, even on above-ground tracks. I have never seen trains stopped from snow unless it is so deep that the locomotive can not push through it. Even when the rails are covered in ice, as soon as the wheel hits, the ice shatters and exposes the bare rail.
I have seen trains moving after an ice storm back East and you can see the ice flying from the first set of wheels.
#3
Keep in mind this is like having snow in Columbia, SC, which happened when I got to Ft. Jackson in early 70. Inch or two paralyzed the place. They just don't know how to drive in snow.
Or ice in Dallas. My daughter got a day off because of that last week.
Further north? No biggie, until the lines come down and there's no power and the trees block the roads.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
02/02/2009 12:03
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#4
Crosspatch:
Its not so much the snow as freezing temperatures. Unless the points (switches) have heaters then you can't switch since they freeze. Also ice on tracks for transit cars is different than ice on the track for a heavy diesel or electric-diesel engine. Snow and freezing temps screw up systems like London's where this is more unusual than usual.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
02/02/2009 13:18
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#5
Obviously the Gore Effect is increasing in both power and distance. Is there no way we can stop The Goracle before his cryogenic monsterousness sends us all into the next Ice Age?
In a rare phenomenon, residents of Dubai were pleasantly surprised as heavy snowfall blanketed a mountain region in neighbouring Ras Al Khaimah with many rushing there to witness the dazzling white snow.
Most newspapers carried out front-page photographs of snow fall on the mountains of Ras Al Khaimah on Friday night, leaving the Jebel Jais range covered in a thick white blanket of snow. The government news agency Wam said about 20cm of snow covered the mountains.
"The sight up there this morning was totally unbelievable with the snow-capped mountain and the entire area covered with fresh, dazzling white snow," Major Saeed Rashid Al Yamahi, Manager of the Air Wing of RAK Police, who flew a helicopter to the top of the Jebel Jais mountain said.
"The snowfall started at 3 pm on Friday afternoon and heavy snowfall began at 8 pm and continued till midnight, covering the entire area in a thick blanket of snow," he said.
He told the media that the entire area was covered with 10cm of snow.
This spell of snowfall brought the temperature on top of the mountain cluster, situated at a height of 5,700feet, to as low as -3 degree celsius on Friday night, as the snow blanketed an area extending over 5kms.
Anecdotal evidence suggest this as the second instance of snowfall in the emirate after December 2004.
The temperature on top of the mountain cluster remained extremely cold during the daytime on Saturday with the temperature rising to just 1 degree celsius in the afternoon.
A SUDANESE man has been sentenced to 30 lashes for smoking on a domestic Saudi Arabian Airlines flight, local media reported today.
The unnamed man had refused to put out his cigarette on the flight to the Red Sea port city of Jeddah from Qurayyat in northern Saudi Arabia, the Saudi Gazette said. He was arrested by police when the aircraft landed in Jeddah and sentenced to 30 lashes by a local court yesterday.
The man apologized and said he was attending clinic to help him stop smoking, according to the report.
. . . In the years since its release the film has been taken up by Jews, Catholics, Evangelicals, Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans, and followers of the oppressed Chinese Falun Gong movement. Meanwhile, the Internet brims with weighty philosophical treatises on the deep Platonist, Aristotelian, and existentialist themes providing the skin and bones beneath the film's clown makeup. . . . countless professors use it to teach ethics and a host of philosophical approaches. Several pastors sent me excerpts from sermons in which Groundhog Day was the central metaphor. And dozens of committed Christians of all denominations related that it was one of their most cherished movies.
When the Museum of Modern Art in New York debuted a film series on "The Hidden God: Film and Faith" two years ago, it opened with Groundhog Day. The rest of the films were drawn from the ranks of turgid and bleak intellectual cinema, including standards from Ingmar Bergman and Roberto Rossellini. According to the New York Times, curators of the series were stunned to discover that so many of the 35 leading literary and religious scholars who had been polled to pick the series entries had chosen Groundhog Day that a spat had broken out among the scholars over who would get to write about the film for the catalogue. In a wonderful essay for the Christian magazine Touchstone, theology professor Michael P. Foley wrote that Groundhog Day is "a stunning allegory of moral, intellectual, and even religious excellence in the face of postmodern decay, a sort of Christian-Aristotelian Pilgrim's Progress for those lost in the contemporary cosmos." Charles Murray, author of Human Accomplishment, has cited Groundhog Day more than once as one of the few cultural achievements of recent times that will be remembered centuries from now. He was quoted in The New Yorker declaring, "It is a brilliant moral fable offering an Aristotelian view of the world." . . .
Hey!
I got you babe
I got you babe . . .
"Let's live here! . . . We'll rent to start."
Posted by: Mike ||
02/02/2009
08:25 ||
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#1
Actually, today's been renamed Al Gore Day. If Al Gore sees his shadow, it's six more weeks of Global Warming...
QUETTA, Pakistan Gunmen kidnapped an American U.N. worker and killed his driver in southwestern Pakistan on Monday, underscoring the security threat in a country wracked by al-Qaida violence and rising criminality.
Pakistan's Foreign Ministry called the abduction a "dastardly terrorist act," but it was not clear who seized John Solecki, the head of the U.N. refugee office in the city of Quetta, as he traveled to work.
Senior police official Khalid Masood said Solecki was an American who had worked in Quetta for more than two years. The U.N. confirmed Solecki had been kidnapped, but would not specify where he was from. In a statement, the U.N. information office in Pakistan conveyed "extreme shock and dismay" at the kidnapping and the killing of the driver, Syed Hashim.
At the scene of the kidnapping in the Chaman Housing Society neighborhood, a UNHCR Land Cruiser was rammed against a wall. At least one bullet hole was visible on the vehicle.
Solecki did not have a police escort while he was traveling, Masood said.
"We have learned that he usually did not like to have an escort with him on his way to the office," Masood said.
Nasir said Solecki's office and home had security, including police.
"We had given adequate security to him," Nasir said. "We also had a meeting with him, and we had fulfilled all requirements he had discussed with us."
#1
Lets see if I have this right. We have an American who works for the UN in Quetta, Pakistan and he has no police escort? Because he didn't like it? What is this guy smoking? Just being an American in Pakistan much less Quetta puts you in serious harm's way.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
02/02/2009 10:31
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#2
this is why i said i would quit before i would be sent over there
#1
Good Lord! The beauty of this delusion is that there's no need for a scintilla of documentaion nor is there a comparison with the toll of the previous Tikriti regime. When Obama acknowledged the recent Iraqi election, he thanked the UN ... everyone but those directly responsible ... the American Armed Forces. Wake me up in twenty years when the real scholarship begins.
#2
They left out the body count of puppies, baby ducks, and unicorns. [Also missing in the count is the large number of muzzie on muzzie killing]. The only surprise here is that it wasn't in the esteemed Lancet. /sarcasm off
#5
How did 1 millions dead create 2 millions of widows and 5 million of orphans?
Iraqi men must be rich so support many more than 2 wives.
The women must be very fertile to average 5 children each before they were killed along with their husbands.
I guess the left gave up trying to do the math on invented numbers, and just pulled conveniently large number out of their arse without calculating any sort of cohesiveness.
#6
Lagom, it is an Islamic country. I suppose if a significant fraction of the dead had their full four wives, there could be a multiple of widows for the dead...
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
02/02/2009 13:36
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#7
"Most independent analysts would say it's too soon to judge the political outcome."
They're waiting until they can give Obama all the credit.
Meanwhile, Iraqi TV reports:
"In the lowest death toll since five years, Iraq Defense, Interior and Health Ministries reported that a total of 191 Iraqis were killed including 140 civilians, 27 soldiers and 24 policemen due to violence marked in January 2009."
Bankruptcies, unemployment and social unrest are spreading more widely in China than officially reported, according to independent research that paints an ominous picture for the world economy. The global economic crisis has scythed through exports and set off dozens of protests that are never mentioned by the state media.
While troubling for the Chinese government, this should strengthen the argument of Premier Wen Jiabao, who will say on a visit to London this week that his country faces enormous problems and cannot let its currency rise in response to American demands. The new US Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, has alarmed Beijing and raised fears of a trade war by stating that China manipulates the yuan to promote exports.
However, a growing number of economists say the unrest proves that it is not the exchange rate but years of sweatshop wages and income inequality in China that have distorted global competition and stifled domestic demand. The influential Far Eastern Economic Review headlined its latest issue The coming crack-up of the China Model.
#1
ION CHINA, WORLD MIL FORUM > THE PHILIPPINES VIOLATES CHINA'S SOVEREIGNTY: PHILIPPINE SENATE PASSES LEGISLATIVE BILL SUPPORTING DEVELOPMENT IN SPRATLEY AND SCARBOROUGH REEF ISLANDS CLAIMED BY CHINA [Chin = Nansha + Huangyan Islands].
WMF Posters > demanded that, besides CHINA USING MIL FORCE TO DEFEND CHINA'S RIGHTS TO SAID ISLANDS AGZ PHILIPPINE ENCROACHMENT, that the PHILIPPINES PER SE SHOULD BECOME A FUTURE NEW PROVINCE OF MAINLAND CHINA.
* SAME > INDIAN DEFENSE MINISTER: CHINA'S [covert = subtle]"STAR WARS" WEAPONIZATION OF SPACE POSES A REALIST/DIRECT AND NEW STRATEGIC THREAT TO INDIA, besides offensive posture of Chin PLA forces in Tibet, Chin PLAN/PLAAF new milbases in HAINAN Island, Ballistic Missles = ICBMS IRBMS, etc.; + JAPANESE MEDIA: CHINA's PROPOSED "SHENZHOU
#8" SPACECRAFT [Year 2010 launch] HAS A COVERT "SPACE BOMBER" MILITARY ROLE!?
#2
PAKISTANI DEFNSE FORUMS > CHINA "HELPS" OTHER ASIAN COUNTRIES: INDIA ANGERED, at CHIN PCORRECT "STRATEGIC ISOLATION/CONTAINMENT" OF INDIA VIA IRRAWADDY CORRIDOR [China's YUNAN Province down to CHIN-DEV/PROTECTED NEW MYANMAR/BURMESE PORTS IN BAY OF BENGAL], + CHIN EXPANSION OF ITS NEW EAST-WEST RAILROAD CORRIDOR THRU TIBET TO near IRAN-PAK [bypasses NORTHERN INDIA].
SAME > INDIA'S BJP: CHINA POSES NEW STRATEGIC CHALLENGES [Pan-Asia/Global Military, Economic, Geopolitical] TO INDIA; + INDIA WARY OF OBAMA'S SOUTH ASIA FOCUS [ex-POTUS DUBYA routinely prioritized INDIA + INDIA's INTERESTS VEE MUSLIMS, CHINA - OBAMA?].
* WORLD MIL FORUM > CHINA UPSET AT NEW PAKISTANI GOVT'S PRO-US/WESTERN "NEUTRAL" POLICY [China doesn't want to share Pakistan wid US = US-NATO].
A CIA official on Monday warned that the US intelligence agency had received indications al Qaeda was planning to launch terrorist attacks in Germany with the aim of influencing the country's general election this autumn.
The anonymous official from the Central Intelligence Agency told German news agency DDP that Washingtons intermediaries in Pakistan had supplied information on German Muslims plotting to return from training camps in northwestern Pakistan just a few weeks before the parliamentary election in September to prepare attacks on high-ranking targets in Germany. The official said it is highly likely the attacks would be carried out by suicide bombers, who could move unnoticed among society. Al Qaeda wants to use "massive violence" to influence the German voters to push the next government to withdraw German troops from Afghanistan.
Referring to concerns recently mentioned by German security services about the increasing number of threats directed at Germany, the official said US intelligence agencies believe that al Qaeda could be planning an attack in Germany along the lines of the attacks in Spain in 2004. The danger in Germany, unlike Spain, is that a considerable number of Muslim terrorists are living there covertly some of them Germans who have converted to Islam. These people offer considerable support to those returning from training camps. We know from our German colleagues how difficult it is to detect Islamist terrorists with a German background and who even look German, explained the CIA official.
Bekkay Harrach, a German with Moroccan roots who is reportedly the head of strategy for al Qaeda, has threatened attacks in Berlin, Cologne and Bremen shortly before the elections on 27th September if Germany does not withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.
Amid growing terrorist threats against Germany, the police union GdP warned on Monday of poor security across the country. The situation is very serious, GdP head Konrad Freiberg told the Dortmund paper. Everyone is talking about bailouts for banks and companies. We finally need a functioning protective shield against terrorism, he said. Since September 11, 2001, some 10,000 more police posts have been filled in Germany, but it is still not enough, he said. We are not at all in the position to conduct around the clock surveillance on the so-called 'threats,' a group of some 60 to 100 people, Freiburg told the paper. We dont have the personnel.
But Germany, as the third largest contributor of troops to Afghanistan, is a major target, he said. The terrorism danger is there, but not ubiquitous, he said. As long as nothing happens, awareness of the problem is missing.
#1
Awww. What happened to the fruits of popularity and vigorous diplomacy of the empty suit president? No magic protection from idiot jihadists? I'm stunned.
Still unlikely I'd read beyond the headline if any Euro country were hit with a mass-casualty attack. I would look for hilarious gymnastics from the idiots now passing as journalists and pundits and analysts, however, between bicycle and handgun shopping errands.
#3
Report: Barack Obama's Al Qaida initiative began months before his election Barack Obama was working with Arab intermediaries to establish an unofficial dialogue with Al Qaida long before his election as the 44th U.S. president, according to a report in the upcoming weekly edition of Geostrategy-Direct.com.
Al Qaida has offered what has been described as a truce in exchange for a U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to the report.
Obama has deemed the U.S. reconciliation with the Muslim world, including Iran, as his main foreign policy goal, sources quoted in the report said. The president has been aided by several Persian Gulf Arab Muslims with ties to Al Qaida's leadership in Pakistan, they said.
On his first day in office, Obama ordered the shutdown of the U.S. Navy prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which where 245 suspected Al Qaida members are detained.
Posted by: ed ||
02/02/2009 12:49
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#4
Yes, he pretty much lied when this was raised during the election, didn't he Ed?
A deafening silence from the left on such things, of course.
#6
The terrorists had better watch out. The German police have no tolerance for terrorists committing unlicensed acts of terrorism. There are rules for everything in Germany.
Terrorists who break the rules probably wake up with their head surgically attached to the body of a pig.
A Greater Manchester couple accused of publishing a leaflet encouraging terrorism are to go on trial.
Amjad Mahmood, 29, and his wife Shella Roma, 28, are accused of circulating a document telling others to go abroad to fight a jihad or holy war. They allegedly designed and printed the pamphlets and distributed them outside a mosque in Oldham. The couple, who have a baby, face a joint charge of dissemination of terrorist publications between October 2007 and January 2008.
The couple, of Chester Street, Oldham, deny the charge, brought under Section 2 of the Terrorism Act 2006. They are on bail. The trial is due to begin at Manchester Crown Court.
Posted by: ryuge ||
02/02/2009
06:14 ||
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Terrorists Suspected separatists shot dead two militia volunteers Monday in a rubber plantation in the violence-plagued province of Pattani, before slicing their throats and burning their bodies. The ambush occurred at 1:30 pm in Yanrang district of Pattani, 750 kilometres south of Bangkok, a notorious hotbed for terrorists insurgents. "The ambush was easy to pull off because it happened deep in the jungle," Pattani Police Chief Major General Triwin Ingkeow said.
The assailants, armed with AK 47s, shot dead Nihasan Niarae, 30, and Chuea Choktirat, 56, as they drove through a rubber plantation on a motorcycle. They then decapitated Nihasan, a Thai-Muslim, and sliced Chuea's throat, poured petrol on both bodies and burned them. Both men were volunteer militia.
It was the latest atrocity in the five-year-old conflict in Thailand's deep South that has cost the state an estimated 109 billion baht (3.1 billion dollars) and lost 3,287 lives. Deep South Watch, an independent research group that monitors the conflict, has put the southern death toll since January 2004 at 3,287 lives, of whom 1,788 were Thai Muslims and 1,348 Thai Buddhists, with another 5,405 people wounded, The Nation newspaper reported. Of the 300,000 Thai Buddhists who used to inhabit the region, some 70,000 have left since 2004.
Lucas Oil Stadium became a sea of camouflage this afternoon as Indiana National Guard soldiers paraded around the floor waving to their family and friends in the stands.
"Because of you and men and women like you, you have made the world a better place," said Linton Mayor Tom Jones, representing all mayors in Indiana. "Your communities felt pride while you were in Iraq, but couldn't wait for your homecoming. Thank you for a job well done."
The celebration, free and open to the public, honored those soldiers who returned from service overseas in 2008. The two-hour event began with a parade of soldiers on the floor of the stadium, and continued with speeches, a tribute to fallen and wounded soldiers and a short concert.
"We just want this to be fun and festive to give the community a chance to say thank you to the troops, and the troops to show their appreciation back," said Sgt. Maj. Jodie Newby.
Most of the Indiana soldiers left in January 2008 in one of the biggest deployments for any state in the nation last year. Those soldiers began returning gradually to the United States around Thanksgiving, Newby said.
"This is all kind of surreal to me because this stadium wasn't even here when we left," said Sgt. 1st Class Ross Williams Sr., while standing on the floor of Lucas Oil Stadium prior to today's event. "It is a great feeling to know people are going to come out and show their appreciation.
"It means an awful lot."
Thank you, each and every one of you.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/02/2009
00:01 ||
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I'm very proud of my fellow Hoosiers. Welcome home.
The Leader of the Islamic Revolution calls for serious progress in investigations into Israel's criminal acts committed in the Gaza Strip.
"It is important to follow up on the issue of bringing leaders of the Zionist regime [of Israel] to trial because they committed war crimes [during their recent military campaign against the besieged Gaza]," Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said in a Sunday meeting with Hamas political leader, Khaled Mashaal, in Tehran.
Ayatollah Khamenei praised the victory of Gazans and the Islamic resistance against Israel in the 23-day onslaught on the Gaza Strip.
The Leader further said that the war on Gaza was not over yet, adding that the western-backed media have waged a psychological war on the costal strip in an attempt to distort the truth about Hamas and the Islamic resistance.
"Explicit expression of the Islamic resistance and the Palestinian people's adamant stance is the only way to confront enemies," Ayatollah Khamenei said.
The Leader called on the Palestinians to remain vigilant and be prepared for all possibilities - even the possibility of new attacks that could come at any time.
Ayatollah Khamenei urged the swift reconstruction of the war-torn Gaza and expressed Iran's readiness to help Palestinians and to contribute to the rebuilding efforts.
During the meeting Mashaal briefed the Leader on Israel's 23-day incursion into the Gaza Strip and hailed the Islamic Republic and the Iranian nation for their political and moral support for Palestinians.
On December 27, 2008 Israel launched an operation against the Gaza Strip killing more than 1,330 Palestinians and wounding almost 5,500 others.
Israel declared a unilateral truce on January 18, without achieving the objectives set by Tel Aviv. Hamas also announced an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, declaring victory over Israel.
Also on Sunday, a number of former captives - held by oppressive powers like Israel and the former Baath regime of Iraq - also met with the Leader of the Islamic Revolution.
Ayatollah Khamenei praised the former prisoners for enduring bitter and arduous condition in captivity, and added that "you made a big achievement through your resistance and patience."
The Leader also said that the US and Israel, which once thought they were the strongest powers in the world, are now weakened and their hegemony nears its end.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/02/2009
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#1
ION IRAN, WAFF.com > IRAN ACCUSES PAKISTAN OF FAILING TO GUARD ITS BORDERS [deaths of 12 Iranian Border Guards near SISTAN-BALOCHISTAN region].
Also, SAME > OBAMA SAYS MOST US TROOPS IN IRAQ TO COME BACK HOME WITHIN ONE YEAR [EOY 2009 - Feb 2010]???
IOW, MUSLIM MIL HISTORY > A NEW BATTLE FOR IRAQ COULD BEGIN AGAIN IN 2010 OR SHORTLY AFTER [Appearance of islamist Hidden Imam-Mahdi]???
#2
Does the Ayatollah Khamenei have the morals of an alley cat? Or does the Ayatollah Khamenei not have the morals of an alley cat? The one thing he can count on is that he's not going to heaven.
Pakistan People's Party-Sherpao (PPP-S) Chairman Aftab Sherpao on Sunday demanded immediate implementation of the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation in Malakand to improve law and order in the area.
Sherpao said a year had passed since the army operation began in Swat but failed to solve the problem and was not effective.
"The army and the civil administration have both failed to achieve success to date in the troubled areas," said the PPP-S chief while addressing a press conference. Sherpao said the lawlessness had been limited to Matta tehsil consisting of 13 union councils. "Now, it has spread to Swat district consisting of 52 union councils and other districts and the situation is getting from bad to worse," he said.
The PPP-S chairman said the provincial government reached a peace agreement with the Swat Taliban in haste but could not implement it as the government had a non-serious approach and wanted to gain political mileage out of the peace accord.
He said it seemed the federal and provincial governments had no strategy on how to handle the Swat problem and the people had lost confidence in them.
The former chief minister and federal minister said the civil administration should return to the troubled areas and the governor, the chief minister, ministers and public representatives should visit Swat and other affected areas to restore the people's confidence.
Sherpao said at a meeting held before the press conference, his party decided to form a committee to contact all political parties to hold a joint conference to find a solution to the Swat issue.
The PPP-S chairman proposed formation of an independent body to assess 'collateral damage' in Swat, adding that the affected families should be compensated through a special fund.
Loan: The PPP-S chairman demanded the federal government waive the NWFP loans as it did in Balochistan's case. He called on the federal government to focus on the NWFP security problem on priority and not limit it to the closed-door meetings. He said statements by the president and the prime minister on the continuing drones strikes in the Tribal Areas showed the government was incompetent and its foreign policy flawed.
He said if the government had any agreement on US drone strikes it should be made public, adding that summoning the US ambassador to protest the attacks would not solve the problem. He said his party would not demand mid-term elections, but added if the government felt it had failed in solving the crisis it should itself announce the polls. PPP-S Central Secretary General Senator Aneesa Zeb and other central working committee members from NWFP were also present.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/02/2009
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#1
So we're not the only one with a fifth column in our government.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/02/2009 10:47
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A high-level delegation from Hamas arrived in Tehran early on Sunday as part of a regional push to reinforce support for the Palestinian group after the Israeli invasion of Gaza, a Hamas official said. The delegation, headed by Hamas leader Khalid Mesha'al, will meet Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Izzat Al Rishq told Reuters by telephone from Tehran.
Hamas was in close contact with Iran, its main backer along with Syria, during the 22-day Israeli offensive against Gaza, which was halted last month, with the two sides declaring separate ceasefires.
Hamas views the war as resulting in regional diplomatic gains for the group, with Turkey criticising Israel and Qatar convening a high profile meeting with the participation of Hamas that supported Hamas's objectives.
Mesha'al visited Qatar last week. Five other Hamas politburo members are accompanying Meshaal on the visit to Tehran.
Hamas said it would intensify its post-war diplomatic efforts to lift the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip, imposed with the help of Egypt. The group has kept a line open with Cairo, which is mediating a deal for a more solid truce that tries to meet Israel's demands for stopping arms flows into Gaza and Hamas's demands for lifting the blockade.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/02/2009
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The acting Palestinian authority chief blames Hamas for putting Gazan lives in danger, a day before Palestinian groups discuss a Gaza ceasefire in Cairo.
Mahmoud Abbas lashed out at Hamas saying the resistance group has taken risks with the 'blood of Palestinians, with their fate, and dreams and aspirations for the independent Palestinian state'.
Talking to the press in Cairo on Sunday, Abbas also blamed Hamas of trying to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). He also rejected dialogue with any group 'which does not recognize the PLO'.
Abbas claimed that "today Hamas emerges upon us with a destructive project, which we have heard before ... and which has went to the rubbish bin of history", AFP quoted him as saying.
Abbas ruled out dialogue with Hamas unless it recognizes the supremacy of the PLO, saying, "They must admit without equivocation or ambiguity that the organization is the sole and only representative of the Palestinian people. Then there will be dialogue."
Abbas was responding to last week's statement by the head of the Hamas politburo, Khaled Mashaal, from exile in Damascus, that the PLO had become obsolete and that Palestinians need a 'new, national authority.'
PLO was founded by Egypt in 1964 and Fatah took over it in 1968.
Abbas is scheduled to meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Monday before Palestinian groups, who have gathered in Cairo, begin Gaza ceasefire talks.
Egypt has been mediating a truce after Hamas and Israel announced ceasefires on January 18, ending Israel's devastating 22-day war on the Gaza Strip that killed more than 1,330 Palestinians and injured over 5,400 Gazans, mostly civilians.
A Hamas delegation was due to arrive in Cairo on Monday, to join another delegation already in the country, a Hamas official said. An advisor to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, Ahmed Yusef, who heads the Hamas government in Gaza City, told AFP that the group was awaiting Israel's response to the Egyptian truce proposal.
"We can speak with details about the truce after our delegation examines the Israeli response," Ahmed Yusef said, adding that Hamas expected the response by Monday.
Hamas says that Abbas is desperate to maintain his hold on power, although his legal term as president is over, and has chosen to forgo national unity and is relying on support from the US and Israel to tighten his hold on the West Bank and target Gaza.
Posted by: Fred ||
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As many as seven massive natural gas export terminals are expected to start up overseas this year, expanding worldwide capacity by 20 percent and flooding markets with new supplies of the key power plant and heating fuel. Dozens of new tankers capable of carrying natural gas in a liquefied form are slated to hit the seas.
Just as these new supplies come on line, worldwide demand is expected to drop as the global recession deepens.
Operators of these new facilities are unlikely to cut back production, however, so shipments of liquefied natural gas will most likely head to the deepest markets with the greatest amount of natural gas storage capacity -- the United States.
'Counterintuitive'
"It's completely counterintuitive," said Murray Douglas, a global LNG analyst with Wood Mackenzie in Houston, who is predicting U.S. LNG imports will grow 30 percent to 456 billion cubic feet this year and to more than 1.1 trillion cubic feet by 2013. "We don't believe Asia and Europe will be in a position to absorb this new production, and the U.S. is the only market that can take it, that has a large amount of storage."
The wave of imports might even be strong enough to challenge growing domestic natural gas production from various shale formations, including the Barnett Shale near Fort Worth and Fayetteville Shale in Arkansas. "This can put pressure on U.S. gas prices and could delay the full development of some of the new shale projects," Douglas said.
Other analysts, including Houston-based Waterborne Energy and Raleigh, N.C.-based Pan Eurasia Enterprises, agree that an American gas import surge may be coming.
Even the Department of Energy updated its LNG import predictions for 2009 recently to include the possibility of such a surge.
Big energy chunk
Natural gas accounts for 23 percent of total energy consumed in the U.S., according to the Department of Energy, much of it used to fuel power plants.
Twelve percent of the gas comes from foreign suppliers, most of it through pipelines from Canada, and about 3 percent comes from overseas aboard LNG tankers.
Changing to liquid
Natural gas turns into liquid at minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit. In that condensed form, it can be transported in specially designed oceangoing tankers. When the tankers reach a gasification terminal, the liquid is heated back into gas for transport by pipeline.
2007 was a record year for LNG imports into the U.S., with some 770 billion cubic feet arriving through five terminals.
Three terminals came on line in 2008, including Houston-based Cheniere Energy's terminal on the Louisiana side of the Sabine Pass south of Port Arthur and Freeport LNG's terminal on Quintana Island south of Houston. The third, owned by The Woodlands-based Excelerate Energy, is near Boston.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/02/2009
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#1
But I suspect that somehow I won't be paying less for natural gas...
#2
seven massive natural gas export terminals are expected to start up overseas this year
And nobody in the US wants a new import terminal in their backyard.
#5
We bring it in and can charge the other companies for storage.
Works for me.
Either way, I still don't think my gas bill will go down. Fortunately, it is pretty cheap to heat the house with and is still cheaper than electricity.
#6
Spot, i'm with you on that , they will come up with some excuse like having too pay for these new refineries or whatever. I just don't see how ppl in more morthern states than me (GA) afford heating with natural gas since a couple of years ago my bill came in at about $400 a month
That is some expensive gas! In the dead of winter with temps hitting 0, my monthly gas bill comes to $150 and I keep the temp at 71F at all times. And that is a 3 bedroom, 1 loft 2000sf house. It drops to about $25 in the middle of summer when we have the AC on and don't use much heat.
#10
our bill for Jan was about $320, about $80 for transmission and distribution by the local company; the rest for the gas and interstate transmission.
This is in Maryland (4 bedrooms, two occupied & heated levels, about 1200 sq ft for each level). Last year's bill for the same period was about $200 but it was a 30 period instead of a 34 day period this year. Also, last year the temp ave was 43F and this year 36F (according to the utility). We keep the thermostat at about 64F downstairs which results in an upstair temp of about 69F.
#11
windows where closed, house about 1500 sq ft., and i even had the gas company out checking for leaks. When they came i also dropped my pants and bent over as a down payment on the next month
#14
rw, how well insulated is your house? And do you have window covers that you keep closed at night and during the day when you're not home?
Two factors that help us manage our heating bills - which are less than yours despite the fact that we have a much larger house in the northeast where we're currently surrounded by snow and ice. We do, however, heat with heating oil rather than natural gas.
#15
Northeast Philadelphia area, 55-year-old, 1600-sq.-ft-heated rancher at 70 degrees. Uses 3.5 gal of fuel oil per day in the worst of the winter. At $2.50/gal that's $270 per month. You do need better insulation.
#16
My inlaws in NY have a poorly insulated old house. When the temperature drops below zero and the winds get above 15 mph the oil burner consumes almost a gallon per hour, running wide open, and can't keep the house at 60 degrees. Fortunately such conditions only occure when Al Gore is in town. Insulation matters!
Hamas political leader Khalid Mashaal says the movement is determined to remain armed as long as the Israeli occupation continues.
Speaking at a joint press conference with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in Tehran, Mashaal ruled out the possibility of a "permanent ceasefire" with Israel, unless Tel Aviv ends its 19-month-long blockade of the Gaza Strip.
"While the occupation continues, a permanent ceasefire has no meaning," said the Hamas official who arrived in Iran earlier on Sunday. He is scheduled to deliver a speech at Tehran University on Monday.
"We believe that as long as the blockade continues, the (Israeli) aggression will also continue," he added.
Israel has enforced a blockade on the coastal enclave since Hamas took power in Gaza in mid-June 2007. Despite international calls for lifting the imposed siege on over 1.5 million residents of the strip, Israel continues the blockade while threatening a new war on the region.
Earlier in the day, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert threatened Gaza with another 'disproportionate' war after a 23-day-long offensive on the region killed almost 1,400 Palestinians, including women and children.
Israel launched the three-week offensive in a bid to prevent the democratically-elected government of Hamas from arming its fighters. Tel Aviv, however, failed to achieve the objective as the movement resumed rearmament as soon as Israel halted the onslaught on January 18, announcing a unilateral ceasefire.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#6
Farrah's recurring bouts with rectal cancer have been the challenges to which I was referring. Additionally, slime balls sold her medical records information to the tabloids. Law suits against the publishers are in progress and UCLA Med Center fired a bunch of employees envolved in leaking of her personal medical information.
#7
OT : Regarding Cagney, this reminds me of one of my very fav old school movies fight scene (the others would be in no particular order, the GREAT ending of the "Emperor of the north", the "From russia with love" train fight, the "They live!" very kewl hommage to the "Quiet man", or the "Darker than amber" brawl between Will " I'm not THAT will smith" Smith & Rod Taylor, love the "Sopranos" out-of-shape middle-aged men laying down beating on each others as well... as you see, I'm not being very original here).
#3
Well then you, for one, LH, don't understand much about politics or policy. Or the lightweights and worse now in charge. They won't initiate needed policies, they won't sustain them against unwarranted opposition, and by flip-flopping on all sorts of crucial matters without paying a price they confirm the robustness of the orwellian inversion of information that brought them to power.
We're talking here about their need to instantly jettison ridiculous positions that materially damaged the national interest for years - because of their fear of something going wrong. Being "politically correct" is to be mindless and misinformed, not to mention obsessively self-righteous in embrace of the accepted bigotries. You welcome what is a temporary and superficial boost to the atmospherics, when the threat to the substance is undiminished, and will only grow so long as facts are not faced honestly.
#4
LH, it'll be difficult to credit the mirrorball until he and his minions cut out the prefatory throat-clearings about the evils of the prior administration. Like Cordesman's crap today about Afghanistan, it seems as if they can't address policy questions any more without a ritual denunciation of prior practice - even if the policy to be mooted is just a continuation of the prior policy.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
02/02/2009 13:04
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Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama has made clear he is counting on Americas NATO allies for greater military contributions in Afghanistan. He may be in for a disappointment.
No kidding. The Euros wouldn't pony up for Bush and they're sure not going to pony up for President Featherweight ...
Most European leaders have either ruled out sending more troops to buttress the fight against a resurgent Taliban, or talked about increases that number only in the hundreds.
In encountering such reluctance, the U.S. is paying a price for its past errors, says Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at Washingtons Center for Strategic and International Studies. We asked NATO to join us in a peacemaking, post-conflict reconstruction effort when we hadnt won the war, and let the insurgency grow to where it threatened to take over the country, Cordesman says. Now were dissatisfied because these countries that signed up for something different arent willing to bail us out of our own mistakes.
CSIS is full of the usual progressive clap-trap. If everything was going well in Afghanistan the Euros still wouldn't help. We needed them to help in the south and east and, except for the British, Dutch and Danes, the Euros haven't and won't help. And, mostly, can't ...
With the U.S. preparing to deploy as many as 30,000 additional troops, the result is likely to be a growing Americanization of a military effort that was supposed to mark the North Atlantic Treaty Organizations first significant out- of-area operation.
The issue will be an early test of Obamas international leadership. The new president highlighted the war in a Jan. 22 letter to alliance members, in which he said NATO has much to be proud of, but also much work to do, including helping the people of Afghanistan build a better future.
NATOs contributions to the Afghan effort will be spotlighted in a series of international meetings, starting later this week at the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy.
Munich -- always a great place to ask Euros to show a spine ...
The U.S. delegation in Germany will include Vice President Joe Biden; White House National Security Adviser James Jones; the new envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke; and Army General David Petraeus, the commander of all American forces in the Middle East and Central Asia. Jones, a retired Marine Corps general, is the former NATO supreme commander in Europe.
The discussion of Afghan strategy will continue at meetings of NATO defense ministers in Krakow, Poland, later this month and alliance foreign ministers in Brussels early next month. It will culminate in April at a summit of NATO heads of government in Strasbourg, France, marking the 60th anniversary of the alliance.
U.S. officials say they are hopeful that Obamas international popularity will spring loose new troop contributions that European leaders were unwilling -- or politically unable -- to make during George W. Bushs presidency. My sense is, from some of the information and diplomatic comments and public comments that some leaders have made in Europe, that they are prepared to be asked and that they are prepared to do something, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 27. In fact, theres some indication that a few of our allies have been sitting on a capability so that they could give the new president something when he asks, Gates said.
But recent statements by European leaders dont support such expectations.
Of course not. The Euros care nothing for Bambi's popularity -- something that's going to disappear anyway over the coming months. The larder is mostly empty. The Euros have their hands full with their own economies. And they simply don't believe in using their military, be it for 'peacekeeping' or anything else.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel signaled on Jan. 20 -- the day Obama was inaugurated -- that her government would resist a new troop commitment. Nothing will change in the short term for Germany because weve really embraced our responsibilities in the past, she said in an ARD television interview.
French Defense Minister Herve Morin -- whose country has the fourth largest contingent in Afghanistan behind the U.S., U.K. and Germany -- also ruled out more troops in a Jan. 21 interview with Europe1 Radio.
A British Defence Ministry spokesman said Jan. 30 that while the U.K. may bolster its Afghan force when its mission in Iraq ends later this year, it wont be a one-for-one swap. That means the increase in Afghanistan will be less than the 4,000 to be pulled out of Iraq.
The U.K. has 8,910 troops in Afghanistan, Germany 3,405 and France 2,890, according to NATO. Italy, which has 2,350 troops in the country, according to NATO, agreed last month to add 300 and isnt planning any additional increases. Poland is considering increasing its presence to 2,000 from its current 1,600. A substantial NATO troop contributor outside Europe is Canada, which has more than 2,500 soldiers in Afghanistan.
Christine Fair, an analyst at the RAND Corp. policy- research organization in Arlington, Virginia, said there is debate among German military officials that they could do more -- and they could. But they dont call those shots. I dont see in European capitals any desire to increase their exposure in Afghanistan.
Correct: no desire, no money, no manpower, and no logistics.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has 23,220 in the NATO force, according to the alliance, and about 36,000 troops in Afghanistan altogether, according to the Pentagon.
While the new administration is in the midst of a strategy review and hasnt made any final decisions about Afghanistan, Admiral Michael Mullen said in a Jan. 29 interview that close to 30,000 additional U.S. forces will likely go to Afghanistan over the course of 2009. Mullen is chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Obamas most senior uniformed military adviser. If that level of reinforcements comes to pass, the current ratio of U.S.-to-European forces in Afghanistan, about 1 to 1, will grow to 2 to 1. And because some NATO members, such as Germany, wont allow their troops to be deployed in areas where combat is most intense, the U.S. will carry the military burden to an even greater degree than the numbers indicate.
The upshot may be a slow-motion reversal of the decision during the Bush administration to let NATO take over responsibility for security in Afghanistan as the U.S. became increasingly preoccupied with Iraq.
Still, as Gates indicated in his Senate testimony, there are ways apart from adding combat troops for NATO members to contribute. One, he said, would be for countries to lift restrictions on how their forces can be deployed. Another would be to send civilian specialists in economic development, governance and drug control. Yet another would be to help meet the estimated $17 billion cost of expanding Afghan security forces.
For example, Merkel may be willing to send police trainers to Afghanistan, even if she isnt prepared to deploy more troops in an election year, says Karl-Heinz Kamp, director of research at the NATO Defense College in Rome. German national elections are scheduled for September.
Such initiatives may provide an opportunity for crafting a face-saving compromise, says Shada Islam, an analyst at the European Policy Centre in Brussels. Nobody wants the NATO summit in Strasbourg in April to turn into a shouting match, Islam says. So these are the kinds of things that are being considered and may be announced there.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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#1
Cordesman's clap-trap is entirely correct. The Euros can hardly help themselves. Oh wait, that's precisely what we were asking them to do! Hat tip to the Obama geopolitical analysis cell. Your grade on this paper came back a D- but you're still in the game.
#3
Wow, seems Tony 1,000 Annexes And Charts Cordesman has really gone off the shallow end here.
Our "mistakes"? Right, Tony. Those savvy, responsible, capable, experienced Euros just won't involve themselves with those bumbling Americans and all their mistakes.
Steve has it right. The failures of most Euros (moral, material, intellectual) here are exactly the same as in all other areas of international security - there is no question of them altering their behavior due to perceived "mistakes". Cordesman is trying to sound like an idiot just to fit in with the current (and not brand-new) Beltway fashion, or what?
#4
It aint over till the fat lady sings. The Euros arent going to roll for Obama after the first hints from staffers. He is going to have to USE his political capital. And hes going to have to decide what he wants to use his euro-specific political capital FOR = help on taking gitmo dwellers, troops in afghanistan, spine on Iran, cover for protectionist stuff from congress, whatever.
#5
He is going to have to USE his political capital.
WHAT political capital?
There is nothing for Bambi to use to try to get the EU to do what he wants. If there was, Bush would have used it already. There are no leverage points, there is nothing we can do except plead. And the only result that will bring is more EU scorn for the US.
Oh we could do a financial tit-for-tat, but when it comes down to it, it will cost more both in money and political points to the EU politicians to bow to US pressure. Simply put, it ain't worth their time or political jobs to help out the US.
We have a better chance getting Chinese troops to help out than NATO.
#7
LH, your fantasy that Obama will have any influence in Europe at all is just that - fantasy. Watch how Le Monde responds when he pushes them to do anything they didn't already want to do, if you don't believe me.
#8
The Obama's appeal to Europe is that He is the anti-Bush, all Kumbaya and Ain't Gonna Study War No More. Once he asks them to go and fight terrorists, the honeymoon is over.
Sri Lanka's top defence official has threatened to expel aid agencies, diplomats and foreign journalists seen as supportive of Tamil rebels cornered by troops in the island's north, a report said Sunday.
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Aswat al-Iraq: Four al-Qaeda in Iraq members on Sunday were arrested in Diala province, according to a local police commander.
"Those arrested are wanted by the judicial authorities," Staff Maj. Gen. Abdelhussein al-Shamri told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. "The arrests were made during military operations in the neighborhoods of al-Katoun and Bani Saad in Baaquba and Khanaqin (155 km northeast of Baaquba)," Shamri explained. Two arms caches were found in Shanoon village on the Iraqi-Iranian borders, Shamri added, noting that the caches contained four missiles, 20 rockets, 22 hand grenades, five Katyushas and other ammunition.
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Aswat al-Iraq: Basra's Khour al-Zubeir port on Sunday received two ships with varied cargo, according to the Iraqi ports department's relations & information chief. "Today, Khour al-Zubeir port received two ships from Liberia and Freetown carrying varied cargo," Abdelkareem al-Basri told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/02/2009
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#1
Um, why is this news? Is this the *first* dockings at newly-renovated or newly-opened port facilities or something? Because that article doesn't say so, and it would seem that would be something that should be explained if it were the case.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
02/02/2009 13:06
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The Senate will likely increase the amount of spending in a stimulus package that already exceeds $800 billion, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"I think we're going to add, frankly, to that ability to get money into the economy and put people to work immediately," Kerry said when asked how the Senate could strengthen the $819 billion House-passed bill. A Senate bill working its way to the chamber floor is already nearing $900 billion.
Democrats will put forth amendments on transit, water, and other infrastructure spending, Kerry said, noting that Democratic leaders will also open the package to Republican amendments when debate begins this week.
Extending unemployment benefits also must be included, Kerry said. "These are important issues. They're also a matter of a moral structure of your government ... your relationship with citizens," Kerry said. "People need to pay their rent. If you don't extend unemployment insurance, people are going to be long-term unemployed."
Posted by: Fred ||
02/02/2009
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#1
What a doofus. He and Barbara Boxer prove that no matter what coast you represent you're still stupid and ill suited to serve in any capacity beyond kennel work or washing dishes.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
02/02/2009 10:47
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#2
... your relationship with citizens
Thank goodness this dipshit didn't win. The ruling elite are parasites.
Pakistan's prime minister promised a quick solution to the brutal insurgency in the country's former tourism haven Sunday, even as hundreds of residents fled toward newly opened relief camps.
Carrying the sick and elderly on their backs, residents of the Swat Valley hurried from fighting that left at least 16 suspected militants, one soldier and 19 civilians dead.
Residents say militants now control most of the northwestern valley, despite an army operation that began more than a year ago.
They valley is less than 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the Pakistani capital and lies outside the tribal regions along the Afghan border where the Taliban and al-Qaida have long had strongholds. Militant gains in recent months have prompted worries that the violence will spread to other parts of Pakistan -- and that the government lacks the power to stop it.
The military recently vowed to increase its efforts in the valley, where Taliban fighters have set up Islamic courts, destroyed scores of girls' schools and used beheadings to terrorize the population.
The premier tried to dispel fears. "As far as Swat, we have the ability and will to bring peace there," Yousuf Raza Gilani told reporters. "We are all concerned about the life and property of the people. We are also concerned about those who are migrating."
Military action is not the only solution, he said _ an indication that negotiations may still be an option despite a failed peace deal.
Security officials have blamed the mid-2008 peace deal with the Swat Taliban for the current chaos, saying the pause let the insurgents regroup. The U.S. has criticized Pakistani government attempts to strike deals with militants for the same reason.
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India's large Tamil population is demanding that New Delhi ensure the safety of 250,000 of their brethren boxed into the battle zone in Sri Lanka's north. Protesters have poured into the streets in Tamil Nadu state, home to 62 million Indian Tamils, in the past week to call for a ceasefire in the conflict and assurances about the safety of their fellow Tamils in the island nation.
"Our prime concern is the safety of the Tamils" in Sri Lanka, said K Anbazhagan, a senior leader of Tamil Nadu's ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (DMK) party and state finance minister. The DMK has been spearheading the campaign to ensure the estimated 250,000 Tamil civilians trapped in the war zone are protected and is pushing for a ceasefire.
It was at the party's insistence that Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee rushed to Colombo last week to seek safety guarantees for the Tamils. "Mukherjee's trip was a first step but New Delhi must do more to bring about sustained peace for the Tamil people" and end the hostilities, DMK Chief Minister M Karunanidhi said in Chennai, Tamil Nadu's capital. The regional opposition All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) party has joined ranks with the DMK and other pro-Tamil regional groups to back the cause of the trapped civilians. "All of us want this war to come to an end," said Tamil Nadu's Congress chief Peter Alphonse. An Indian Tamil man committed suicide in Chennai Thursday to protest against civilian casualties in Sri Lanka by pouring petrol on his clothes and setting himself ablaze after distributing anti-war pamphlets, police said.
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The saga of a ship suspected of carrying arms from Iran to Gaza grew more complicated on Saturday as Cypriot authorities searched the ship, then backed away from previous assertions that it was violating UN resolutions.
Authorities will now conduct a second search, the Cypriot foreign minister said.
Suspicions that the Cypriot-flagged container ship Monchegorsk was ferrying arms from Iran to the Palestinian organisation, Hamas, had been raised by the United States. The US military stopped the vessel in the Red Sea last week, but could not legally detain it or seize its cargo.
The ship continued on to Port Said, Egypt, then headed for Cyprus, where it arrived Thursday. It remains anchored off the island nation's southern port of Limassol under tight marine police security.
On Saturday, Cypriot Foreign Minister Markos Kyprianou said that a first inspection of the Monchegorsk was complete. He refused to give details on the ship's cargo, saying authorities were still trying to determine if it contravened UN resolutions.
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#2
Far better to haul the arms out to the dock and spread them out for the world press to see .. assuming the press would bother to look.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/02/2009 9:40
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#3
The arms are probably in the sea off the coast of Gaza, and there's nothing for the Cypriots to offload. I'm sure Israel is on high alert for "fishermen" from Gaza doing diving operations.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/02/2009 10:15
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or maybe somebody got some bad intell. It happens. Not a reason not to keep stopping Iranian ships.
#6
It was Debka so I was holding my salt shaker but so the story went that Iran was using modified containers with GPS to deliver the arms to Gaza. Debka's theory was that the containers would be dumped over board and would sink just below the surface then move with tide towards Gaza at which some point Paleo "fisherman" would use the GPS to locate and pickup the containers cargo.
Feasible but questionable also.
The US ships escorted the Iranian ship from Samalia through the Suez and into the Med so depending on how tight that escort was depends on if the ship was able to off load the evidence or not. Either way all Iran has to say is its for Syria and there is nothing the law driven west can do.
If Israel wishes to survive they better let their balls swing in this election and get rid of the pansies and exchange them for some men that still have sacks, Likud.
Defeats Lebanon & Gaza, on top of giving away the Gaza for nothing has got sink in to the Israeli gen pop. The sad part is they have the same disease US and the west in general have, Liberalism, so self inflicted suicide/flagellation is not out of the norm.
#8
Either way all Iran has to say is its for Syria and there is nothing the law driven west can do
Depends on what the manifest says. Also the Iranians can be required to produce the End User Certificate which, btw, has been a requirement internationally for decades. Nations don't normally screw around with maritime law; it's real easy to end up with a precedent that can be used against them later.
Yeah, the certificate can be 'bent' (it's basically a letter from the end-user saying the purchase was authorized by the purchasing government for sole use by a particular agency or government body).
But if the items aren't listed on the manifest, or if the EUC says 'Syria' and the munitions are listed for shipment to Venezuela, then there's an issue.
Hamas has accepted an Egyptian proposal for a year-long truce with Israel in Gaza starting on Thursday, Al-Arabiya TV Sunday quoted sources in the Islamist militant group as saying.
A Hamas delegation is expected to arrive in Cairo on Monday in order to give the group's final answer to the initiative.
The official spokesman for Egypt's foreign ministry, Hossam Zaki, refused to confirm or deny the report on the Dubai-based Arabic satellite television station.
According to the report, Hamas has agreed to the deployment along Gaza's border crossings of forces under the control of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who heads the rival Fatah movement. The deal stipulates that the PA forces will coordinate their activities with Hamas.
Hamas' acceptance of the deal apparently led Abbas to cancel a trip to the Czech Republic and travel to Cairo instead.
Al-Arabiya reported that while in Egypt, Abbas discussed mechanisms that would enable the Gaza-Egypt border crossing at Rafah to be opened on Thursday, in parallel with an announcement by Hamas of the year-long truce in Gaza.
Israel, according to the report, has agreed not to interfere in the running of the Egypt-Gaza border crossing.
Meanwhile, Palestinian militants fired at least four Qassam rockets and four mortar shells from the Gaza Strip into the western Negev on Sunday, with one rocket hitting between two kindergartens.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/02/2009
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#1
See also FREEREPUBLIC > TURKEY MAY BE THE NEXT IRAN?
#2
#1 See also FREEREPUBLIC > TURKEY MAY BE THE NEXT IRAN? Posted by: JosephMendiola
I don't think so, Joe. I'm pretty sure that Erdogan has overplayed his hand, and the military is about ready to dump him - hard. It's the MILITARY, not the politicians, that have kept Turkey secular for the last 40 or so years, and they're not going to give up that authority without a fight.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/02/2009 11:00
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#4
The Koran says that truces started on days that end in 'y' are invalid.
Posted by: Bob ||
02/02/2009 15:39
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#5
If Hamas agrees without strings to PA control of Rafah and other crossings it will be major blow to their prestige (since they have stated many times that they wouldn't do this) and also something of a blow to their budget (because of a loss of some extortion leverage).
However, I still think this deal will likely fail this week because of the Hamas demands for 'no arresting our guys in the West Bank; no fair returning fire when the PLF sends mortars over the border; no fair stopping any merchandise that gets to the crossing, etc.
The BNP-led opposition yesterday decided to abstain from parliament proceedings until the speaker decides on their demand for three more seats in the front row of the House.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/02/2009
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Military Intelligence Chief Amos Yadlin said Sunday that while Israel's offensive on the Gaza Strip had indeed deterred Hamas, other radical groups in the coastal territory were still looking to escalate hostilities. Local Hamas is deterred, kinda sorta maybe. Its Beirut/Damascus leadership, which didn't take any casualties and didn't miss any meals, isn't. Hamas' owners in Teheran are even less deterred. The usual practice has been to have Hamas (or which ever other organization's signed the paper) adhere to its letter most of the time, while all the other groups that ostentatiously didn't sign continue with business as usual.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Riot police fired tear gas and water cannons Saturday at bottle-throwing demonstrators in Geneva who protested the annual World Economic Forum meeting in the Swiss Alps. I don't even consider this "news" anymore. It happens like clockwork whenever there's a meeting of big cheeses anywhere.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/02/2009
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Do you think we should use a picture of Davros for Davos stories?
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
02/02/2009 7:48
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Riot police fired tear gas machine guns and water cannons canister Saturday at bottle-throwing demonstrators in Geneva who protested the annual World Economic Forum meeting in the Swiss Alps. There, fixed for you
Pakistan plans on prosecuting a group of as many as 125 militants connected to last year's terror attacks on the Indian port city of Mumbai. I'll believe they're serious when Omar Saeed Sheikh is dead.
"The group, which includes anyone who made any suspicious contacts inside India as the attacks began, will be charged under the country's cyber crimes laws because suspects used Internet phones to communicate," ABC News quoted a senior Pakistani intelligence official as saying on the condition of anonymity.
The official added that Pakistani investigators have completed their probe into the alleged links between some of the 125 militants following November terror raids on the Indian financial hub.
The developments come after, India on January 5 provided Pakistan with data from satellite phones used by the attackers as well as what it describes as the 'confessions of a sole surviving gunman', who participated in the attacks.
Pakistan's Interior Ministry Chief Rehman Malik announced on January 17 that the dossier was being seriously examined and the initial probe would be completed within 10 days, a deadline that has passed.
Malik, however, held a meeting on January 27 to review the investigation progress. Following the meeting the deadline was extended by two days.
New Delhi expects Islamabad to officially share the outcome of its investigations with India through diplomatic channels rather than announcing it through the media.
"We assure India if somebody is found guilty, we'll proceed according to our own laws of Pakistan," Prime Minsiter Yousuf Gilani said on Sunday.
Washington, New Delhi, and London hold Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based militant group responsible for the Mumbai attacks - in which 179 people were killed, including nine militants.
Indian authorities are frustrated at what they see as Islamabad's slow response in arresting and prosecuting those allegedly involved in the case.
Islamabad has been angered by Indian claims that Pakistani state agencies were engaged in the incident as well as India's repeated hints at a military option against Pakistan.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/02/2009
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The biggest Shiite party in Iraq once appeared to hold all the political sway: control of the heartland, the backing of influential clerics and a foot in the government with ambitions to take full control.
But the days of wide-open horizons could be soon ending for the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, and replaced by important shifts that could be welcomed in Washington and scorned in Tehran.
The signs began to take shape Sunday with hints of the voter mood from provincial elections. The broad message _ built on Iraqi media projections and postelection interviews _ was that the eventual results would punish religious-leaning factions such as the Supreme Council that are blamed for stoking sectarian violence, and reward secular parties seen capable of holding Iraq's relative calm.
The outcome of the provincial races will not directly effect Iraq's national policies or its balance between Washington's global power and Iran's regional muscle. But Shiite political trends are critically important in Iraq, where majority Shiites now hold sway after the fall of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime.
"There is a backlash from Iraqis against sectarian and religious politics," said Mustafa al-Ani, an Iraqi political analyst based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Although official results from Saturday's provincial elections are likely still days away, the early outlines are humbling for The Supreme Council. The group had been considered a linchpin in Iraqi politics as a junior partner in the government that had near seamless political control in the Shiite south.
Some forecasts point to widespread losses for the party across the main Shiite provinces. The blows could include embarrassing stumbles in the key city of Basra and the spiritual center of Najaf _ hailed as the future capital in the Supreme Council's dreams for an autonomous Shiite enclave. In their place, the big election winners appear to be allies of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, according to projections and interviews with political figures who spoke on condition of anonymity because official results are not posted.
It's a vivid lesson in Iraq's fluid politics.
A year ago, al-Maliki looked to be sinking. Shiite militiamen ruled cities such as Basra and parts of Baghdad and rockets were pouring into the protected Green Zone, which includes the U.S. Embassy and Iraq's parliament.
Al-Maliki _ with apparent little advance coordination with the U.S. military _ struck back. An offensive broke the militia control in Basra and elsewhere in the south. His reputation turned around. And many voters appeared happy to reward his political backers in the elections for seats on provincial councils, which carry significant clout with authority over local business contracts, jobs and local security forces.
"Al-Maliki ended the militiamen's reign of terror," said Faisal Hamadi, 58, after voting in Basra. "For this he deserves our vote."
The Supreme Council, meanwhile, appeared to stagger under the weight of negative baggage. It was accused of failing to deliver improvements to public services in the south. Also, its deep ties to Iran began to rub against Iraqis' nationalist sentiments.
The Supreme Council's leader, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, spent decades in Iran during Saddam's rule and was allowed an office-villa in downtown Tehran. After Saddam's fall, the Supreme Council was Iran's main political conduit into Iraq even though the group also developed ties with Washington.
Iran now could face limits on its influence in the south with the Supreme Council forced into a coalition or second-tier status _ and also confront resistance from a stronger al-Maliki government seeking to curb Tehran's inroads.
A Supreme Council lawmaker, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, acknowledged the election mood was against them. "We controlled most provinces in the south, so we were blamed for whatever went wrong there," he said. "The elections gave us an indication of what will happen in the general election late this year," said the analyst al-Ani. "Those who lost in this election have nearly a year to learn their lesson and change their strategy. They know now where the Iraqis stand."
Posted by: Fred ||
02/02/2009
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#1
Um, last time I checked, al-Maliki is the banner-carrier for a religious Shi'ite party with roots, funding, and a Hussein-era period of exile in Iran. Or is Da'wah now claiming to be secularized? They haven't dropped the name yet ("the Call", a Muslim term of art) and it's called "the Islamic Dawa Party" on al-Maliki's Wiki entry.
Way to toe the party line, dude. But since Da'wah's largely fielded the official armed forces as their "militia", I suppose this particular line of propaganda isn't entirely pernicious. But really, try to garnish the press release with a *little* independent research. I'm a moron on the internet, and I can do better with ten minutes thought, Google & a Wikipedia entry.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
02/02/2009 13:23
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The military on Sunday said it had killed 16 Taliban in operations in various areas of the restive Swat valley.
A spokesman for the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) in Mingora said the Taliban were killed during clashes with security forces in Aligrama and Dherai areas of Kabal tehsil and Manglor area of Chaharbagh tehsil.
Personnel: The ISPR spokesman said a security official was killed and two others were injured in the fighting with the Taliban.
He said the forces had 'consolidated their hold' over Chaharbagh, an area known to be a Taliban stronghold.
The troops also captured five Taliban during the clashes in the area
Meanwhile, two aid workers of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) were killed when suspected Taliban opened fire at their ambulances.
The medics were taking injured people to a hospital in Chaharbagh when they were attacked.
Bodies: Also on Sunday, locals said 28 bodies had been recovered from two areas of the district. They said 20 bodies were found in Salwekht Plao area, while eight others were recovered from Shakaro area of Chaharbagh teshil.
The locals said most of the bodies were bullet-ridden, an indication that the Taliban could be behind the killings. Official figures say more than 100 people have been killed in the eight-day military operation.
Thousands of civilians have fled the district's Manglor, Sangota, Ser Telegram, Dherai, Kooza Bandai, Bara Bandai and Ningolai areas fearing Taliban attacks after the forces' launched the fresh offensive.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/02/2009
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Leaders and activists of Airport police station unit of Awami League (AL) and its front organisations yesterday took control of the cab service counters at Zia International Airport after driving out the three lessees of Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (CAAB).
Posted by: Fred ||
02/02/2009
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An estimated 45,854 displaced persons in Iraq’s Kurdistan region and Kirkuk province have cast ballots in the provincial council elections held yesterday, the head of the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) said on Sunday.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/02/2009
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Damn, we are all sitting here in open-mouthed astonishment.
Turkish premier Tayyip Erdogan has just stormed off the rostrum after calling Israel's president Shimon Peres a "killer" to his face.
Mr Peres in turn has been thundering and fulminating at the top of his voice for 25 minutes -- while the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sat in embarrased silence next to him, mostly looking at his shoes.
The incensed leaders then walked out passed packed ranks of trembling Davos enthusiasts - all believers in civilized comity, and all horrified by this display of raw and visceral feeling - into a hall where a light-hearted Strauss Waltz being played with shocking insouciance.
If we journalists missed our deadlines - and leaving a big gap in our newspapers tomorrow - you must forgive us, because we none could concentrate on anything as this extraordinary spectacle of Mid-East passion unfolded before our eyes.
Mr Peres -- winner of the 1994 Nobel Peace prize -- had reason to be angry. The Turkish leader called today for the Obama administration to list Israel as a terrorist state for alleged atrocities against civilians in Gaza. "President Obama must redefine terror and terrorist organizations in the Middle East, and based on this new definition, a new American policy must be deployed in the Middle East," he said.
This seems to have tipped Mr Peres over the edge. A genteel panel on Mid-East issues flew out of control after he let rip such eloquence and emotion that nobody dared stop him, and people sat enthralled, or in tears, or aghast, as he related how Hamas was deploying terror in Gaza.
A hundred Fatah prisoners in Gaza had been thrown from roof-tops, he said. Dozens had been shot in the legs. The Gaza schools had become a Gulag of Palestinian prisoners, he said, reading aloud a letter from Fatah's secretary-general. "The tragedy of Gaza is not Israel, it is Hamas. They created a dictatorship. A very dangerous one."
Israel had withdrawn its troops and settlements from Gaza. It had complied to the letter with all accords, yet it was still attacked, and bombed, and rocket daily. (I merely relate his words this without wishing to make any judgment of my own on a conflict that has killed 1,300 people in Gaza, and 14 Israelis)
"What would you do?" he screamed into the face of Mr Erdogan, who sat stony faced, pulling slightly back, his legs twisted, his whole body language at war. "We have been a nation for sixty years, and which other nation has had to fight seven wars?"
Mr Erdogan perhaps feels betrayed because Turkey was mediating on behalf of Israel when the Gaza occurred. "I saw this as a lack of respect for us and also a shadow cast over peace," he said.
His Swiss trip has ended very badly. "I will never come back to Davos", he said as he strode out, complaining that his own rant had been cut short by the moderator.
It has been a bad hair day for Turkey's pro-Islamic leader. The negotiations for an IMF stand-by loan broke down. "It's not the end of the world", he said.
We'll see what the markets have to say about that tomorrow.
#2
In the early 1990s Erdogan made his Islamist bones as mayor of Istanbul and as head of the Islamist Refah Party. He was an early supporter of jihad in Bosnia and was an adept fundraiser for mujahideen operating in the Balkans. He worked with Sudan's Hasan al-Turabi and Al-Fatih Hassanein in support of the very Islamist Third World Relief Agency. He is a very devious SOB.
#4
What happened is that Tayyip Erdogan said out loud what about two thirds of the "cool kids" at Davos think in their heart of hearts--and then Shimon Peres refused to just smile and take it.
Posted by: Mike ||
02/02/2009 10:15
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#5
Let's give these genocidal primitives stealth technology!
Posted by: ed ||
02/02/2009 10:53
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#6
When I was traveling and working in Israel, the Turks were doing a lot of business there, especially construction. This is when the Paleo's were barred from transit and working because of all the bus bombings. Most of the skilled and semi-skilled additional labor was Turk as well as big Turk construction firms working with the Israelis. Turkey has really backtracked here.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
02/02/2009 10:54
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#7
I'd like to see one of them there ARCLIGHT raids dropped on Davos. Shoot, maybe even two. And while we're at it, drop one on the next Bilderburgers get together. Say, does anyone know where G. Soros lives?
#8
It seems the mask is now off Erdogan. He is an Islamist radical at heart and is leading Turkey away from secular democracy towards an Islamist Republic.
#10
The EU will never _say_ never. They want to say "If you just hobble the military a little bit more we'll let you join..." when the military is basically the only thing keeping Turkey secular. Kinda makes ya wonder, doesn't it?
#11
Even as the writer lays out the facts about Hamas' terrorist character and provocations, he has to give a little shout out to his anti-Israeli culture of origin. Hey, folks. I'm not judging here so don't blame me, just sayin what he said is all. I see lots more dead Gazans than Israelis so the Jews are still bad. I'm still one of you. We're cool, right?
The "more dead Israelis should would make me feel better about the whole thing" meme should be called out for the whacked out moral blindness it is. Since more Germans than
Americans died in WWII, does that mean defeating Nazism was a mistake? Would more dead GI's and maybe a bombed out US city have made it ok to defeat fascism? Few Americans and many Iraqis died in the liberation of Kuwait; should we have handed the country back to Saddam with our apologies? We'll try again when you're stronger, when you can get in a few more kills. Keeping your people alive is the point. The Israeli military should be proud of their achievement, not castigated for it. If you want to accuse a nation of misbehavior in war you should have more than just a body count to make your point.
Posted by: Baba Tutu ||
02/02/2009 12:37
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UNDER executive orders issued by the US President, Barack Obama, last week, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as "renditions", or the secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that co-operate with the United States.
Current and former US intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role because it was the main remaining mechanism - aside from Predator missile strikes - for taking suspected terrorists off the street.
The rendition program became a source of embarrassment for the CIA and a target of international scorn as details emerged in recent years of botched captures, mistaken identities and allegations that prisoners were turned over to countries where they were tortured.
The European Parliament condemned renditions as "an illegal instrument used by the United States". Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the CIA as well as a subsidiary of the Boeing Corp, accused of working with the agency on dozens of rendition flights.
But the Obama Administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration's war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.
The decision underscores the fact that the battle with al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups is far from over and that even if the United States is shutting down the prisons, it has not finished taking prisoners.
"Obviously you need to preserve some tools. You still have to go after the bad guys," an Obama Administration official said.
"The legal advisers working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice."
One provision in one of Mr Obama's orders appears to preserve the CIA's ability to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects as long as they are not held long-term. The little-noticed provision states that the instructions to close the CIA's secret prison sites "do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis".
Despite concern about rendition, Mr Obama's prohibition against the use of most other counter-terrorism tools could prompt intelligence officers to resort more frequently to the "transitory" technique.
The decision to preserve the program has not drawn major protests, even among some US human rights groups. "Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place" for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.
Posted by: john frum ||
02/02/2009
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#1
bla, bla..there is a legitimate place" for renditions, said bla, bla, bla...
Of course, from the Almighty everything can only be good.
#2
AND NOW, all of those wonderful leaks that kept the NYT afloat are now officially ended.
Those malcontents at Langley that kept blathering to the NYT were out to do one thing, embarrass GWB, now that he is out, no one wants to embarass BHO
Posted by: James Carville ||
02/02/2009 0:41
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Maybe they can use the rendition program to take care of traitors in Congress.
[/I can wish for hope and change, can't I?]
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/02/2009 0:52
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Didn't Clinton start the rendition program? It only became evil when Bush continued to do it, of course.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
02/02/2009 6:03
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#5
Does this mean he also approves renditionering and cracklins...?
A cracklin is a piece of fatty pork skin or hog membrane that's left after the grease is cooked out. The cooking, or rendering, process is done in a large cast iron pot sitting over a wood fire. In the old days when we butchered a hog, much of the fat and scraped skin was cut off and tossed into the pot ...
#7
I doubt aragula-boy will ever have tasted cracklins, and certainly never have prepared them. The same goes for hog-head cheese, chitlins and collard greens. Those are all primarily Southern delicacies. He's more into Wagyu steaks and imported wines.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/02/2009 9:55
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Didn't Clinton start the rendition program?
(1995)
o Return of Indicted Terrorists to the U.S. for Prosecution: We shall vigorously apply extraterritorial statutes to counter acts of terrorism and apprehend terrorists outside of the United States. When terrorists wanted for violation of U.S. law are at large overseas, their return for prosecution shall be a matter of the highest priority and shall be a continuing central issue in bilateral relations with any state that harbors or assists them. Where we do not have adequate arrangements, the Departments of State and Justice shall work to resolve the problem, where possible and appropriate, through negotiation and conclusion of new extradition treaties. (U)
If we do not receive adequate cooperation from a state that harbors a terrorist whose extradition we are seeking, we shall take appropriate measures to induce cooperation. Return of suspects by force may be effected without the cooperation of the host government, consistent with the procedures outlined in NSD-77 (1992), which shall remain in effect. (S) --http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/pdd39.htm
#11
If we do not receive adequate cooperation from a state that harbors a terrorist whose extradition we are seeking, we shall take appropriate measures to induce cooperation.
Since Saddam harbored terrorists for years in Iraq, including the Jackal, why do these same asshats claim Bush waged an illegitmate war? Just following the law as introduced by the Dems.
A viable 136-kilogramme car bomb was discovered close to a school in Northern Ireland, police said on Saturday, in a grim reminder of the increasing threat posed by dissident paramilitaries.
The home-made device was in the back of a black Volkswagen car in the village of Castlewellan in the southeast of the British province. The device has now been made safe. A telephone warning claimed the bomb was originally intended for a nearby British army base but had been abandoned.
The callers claimed to be from a dissident republican organisation -- Catholic paramilitaries opposed to the peace process and wanting Northern Ireland to sever links with Britain and join the Republic of Ireland. Bomb discoveries in Northern Ireland are now rare compared to the heights of The Troubles, the three decades of sectarian bloodshed in the province.
"The people who have carried this out showed a callous disregard for the lives of everyone in our community," said police superintendent Greg Blain. "They placed the lives of every man, woman and child in the area at risk and simply have nothing to offer society. Those who operate under various flags of convenience are simply terrorists and criminals ... I would call on all in our community who want to see a happier and more peaceful present and future to give us the information to detect and bring these criminals to justice."
Margaret Ritchie, the local Northern Ireland Assembly representative, said, "This was a large device even by the standards of the past but those who planted it should be in absolutely no doubt -- we are not going back to the past even if they are locked in it. "They need to realise that times have changed, that we have an accountable policing service and we will back it to the hilt against those who would bring danger into our midst in such a reckless way."
Posted by: Fred ||
02/02/2009
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#1
Castlewellan is NE of Warrenpoint, where the British army got ambushed by the Provos in August of 1979, by several diabolically placed bombs that killed a total of 18 soldiers. The Warrenpoint first bomb was 700 kg, but this 136kg find in the car was a serious quantity of explosive. I am glad that it was found in time and safely.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/02/2009 0:51
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But, but, but I thought George Mitchell brought Peace to North Ireland.
#3
This comes a few weeks after the Sunday NY Times ran a big piece in their travel section on visiting NI and Belfast. Sort of like the Gore effect of terrorism. They did the same thing back in the 80's on Beirut right before all hell broke loose.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
02/02/2009 10:25
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#6
I traveled a lot through the North in the early 80s and also 90s. One place I did not go at night was County Armagh. That was bandit country, and you could get carjacked there in an Ulster Minute.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/02/2009 13:18
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See how many of the terrorists from those days you still have in prison, stuff them in the car and tie them onto it, then detonate it.
WASHINGTON (AFP) President Barack Obama said that the United States is in a position to place more responsibility in the hands of the Iraqis following provincial elections and a reduction in violence there.
As he works to nudge George Bush away from the credit ...
"In conversations that I've had with the joint chiefs, with people, the commanders on the ground, I think that we have a sense now that the Iraqis just had a very significant election, with no significant violence there, that we are in a position to start putting more responsibility on the Iraqis," Obama told NBC television. "And that's good news for not only the troops in the field but their families who are carrying an enormous burden."
Asked about his campaign promise to end the Iraq war and bring combat troops home within 16 months, and whether he could "say that a substantial number of them will be home in time for next Super Bowl Sunday," Obama replied: "Yes."
"We're going to roll out in a very formal fashion what our intentions are in Iraq as well as Afghanistan," he added in the interview which aired just before the start of the Super Bowl.
Obama on Saturday praised the elections as an "important step forward" after millions of Iraqis went to the polls to elect councils in 14 or Iraq's 18 provinces. Saturday's election is seen as a key test of Iraq's steadily improving security and political system as Obama seeks a withdrawal from the country in order to shift more troops to Afghanistan.
Last year, Obama put forward a 16-month timetable for the withdrawal of US combat troops, but he has not restated that commitment since taking office on January 20, when he said the United States would "begin to responsibly leave Iraq."
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/02/2009
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Carrying heavy combat loads is taking a quiet but serious toll on troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, contributing to injuries that are sidelining them in growing numbers, according to senior military and defense officials.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/02/2009
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#1
It's a problem older than you can imagine. Once you get over 35 lbs, it starts to wear down the body if done for sustained periods. Equipment may come and go, but no one has engineered new knees, ankles, or feet in several hundred thousand years.
#2
I read the "combat load and the mobility of the soldier" as a new 2ndLt many moons ago. Basically said the same things 35-40 lbs for the avg male is a good max wt to put on them. Most people don't have the frames for anything more. I was fortunate having lifted lots of weights and playing football growing up to have decent lower body and core strength. Females got it even worse due to the difference in pelvic girdle and bone density. They get far more lower leg injuries and hip problems then the males due to the weight of the gear.
#3
I'm sorry I mis-remembered it, P2K has it on his link thingy. "Soldiers load and the Mobility of a Nation." That was it. I read it at 29 Palms about a decade ago during a combined arms exercise. I remember giggling sarcastically to myself while reading this book while perched on my 80lb mountain ruck sack.
#4
Females got it even worse due to the difference in pelvic girdle and bone density. They get far more lower leg injuries and hip problems then the males due to the weight of the gear.
Wimin hating, sexist male trash talk! More of these factoids and it will be the Bidet Trap for YOU!
#5
"Individual Marine combat loads -- including protective gear, weapons, ammunition, water, food and communications gear -- range from 97 to 135 pounds, well over the recommended 50 pounds.
In Afghanistan, soldiers routinely carry loads of 130 to 150 pounds for three-day missions"
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
02/02/2009 14:14
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#6
An interesting zinger is that those "always experimental" exoskeleton soldier suits make no sense in using traditional materials like thick aluminum bars. However, we now have incredibly strong advanced materials that are just the fraction of the size and weight.
Why nobody has put two and two together just mystifies. Of course, the biggest obstacle are the hybrid power supplies. Most likely these will be a blend of advanced capacitor, fuel cell, hydrogen peroxide piston, battery, and who knows what all else.
#7
Why nobody has put two and two together just mystifies.
That's probably because you aren't aware of research in just those areas that has been funded by the Army for the last several years.
As early as 2001 the Army had concept videos that included suits that not only could provide some emergency exoskeleton support to a wounded soldier but could also monitor blood pressure, apply emergency pressure to staunch bleeding etc.
OTOH, suits that are primarily aimed at carrying gear aren't necessarily the right solution. That's one reason that the Army has developed prototype ground robots to serve as pack mules for solders. The mature ones are tracked, but DOD has also funded major work in robots with articulated legs that could carry loads in e.g. mountainous terrain. Google Big Dog for one example from a few years ago.
Noise and power generation are the main bottlenecks now before those can be put into serious testing.
Security services are on high alert due to concrete intelligence that Hezbollah is in advanced stages of preparing an attack against Israelis abroad to avenge the killing of one of the group's top leaders, Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed in a car bomb in Damascus last February.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/02/2009
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#1
See also DEBKA + ISRAELI MILITARY FORUM, espec as per NASRALLAH warnings about disrupting the ISRAELI GENER ELECTIONS VIA THE RANDOM ISLAMIST/TERROR-LED LOCAL ANDOR INTERNATIONAL ASSASSINATION(S) OF ONE OR MORE HIGH-RANKING ISRAELI OFFICIALS???
North Korea warned Sunday that South Korea's confrontational policies may trigger a war on the divided peninsula, a message coming two days after the communist country vowed to abandon all peace agreements with its southern neighbor.
Relations between the two Koreas have been strained since conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office nearly a year ago in Seoul, pledging to take a harder line on the North. Tension heightened Friday when the North said it was ditching a nonaggression pact and all other peace accords with South Korea.
The tension may lead to "an unavoidable military conflict and a war," North Korea's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary carried Sunday by the country's official Korean Central News Agency.
"The policy of confrontation" by the South Korean government is "the very source of military conflicts and war" between the Koreas, it said.
The North has accused Lee's government of preparing to stage a war, which South Korea denies. Earlier this month, the North's military declared it adopted an "all-out confrontational posture" to defeat any southern aggression.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/02/2009
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#1
They sense a week US President who would not stand behind South Korea at a time when the US is going to begin gutting the military financially.
#3
NK has two powerful weapons - bluffing and the fact that SK is scared that they may have to absorb NK after a war, a la, West Germany's absorptin of East Germany.They may be enough to get SKJ to back off for awhile.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
02/02/2009 7:57
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#4
How would the Nkor's sustain an offensive that would bog down almost immediately in a orgy of looting and eating?
#5
Bomb them with twinkies and watch the desertion rate go past 90%.
Seriously, all the South needs to do is to hold fast for a month. There's no food, no fuel, and only the uniforms on the soldiers' backs. What reserves they have would be exhausted within a month, and they'd be nothing but a force in being, ready to be picked off.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/02/2009 10:39
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#6
dunno, OP. That could be a mistake, Twinkies make you crazy and vicious__ at least that's what Dan White said after he capped Moscone and Milk. Missed Feinstein though.....
Posted by: Andy Whaiger9218 ||
02/02/2009 12:14
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#7
The US and China should sign some kinda treaty promising too stay out of it and let em get it on. I know i'm not the only one tired of hearing this shit
#12
FREEREPUBLIC/TOPIX > BREAKING: NORTH KOREA PREPARING FOR BALLISTIC MISSLE [Test?] LAUNCH [ ALASKA = FORT GREELY BMD Base, GET READY FOR INCOMING]??? "Object" believed to be a TAIPONGDONG-2 - PROB A TEST LAUNCH BUT NOT YET CONFIRMED.
* ION NOKOR, WORLD MIL FORUM [paraph = GOOGLE Chinglish translation] > KORAN MEDIAS: NEW OBAMA ADMINISTRATION FAVORS CHINA, JAPAN OVER KOREAN PENINSULA [ SOKOR/Pan-KOREAN ISSUES]???
SAME > ASIA REDRAWN: MOST LIKELY NEW ASIA ORDER SCENARIOS -
To wit,
* CLOSER US-JAPAN COOPER = MILPOLECON BI-NATION ALLIANCE? POLITICAL UNIFICATION [Future US State in ASIA???
* CHINA-TAIWAN UNIFICATION [including CHIN-CONTROL OF NORTH KOREA?
* ISOLATED SOVEREIGN SOUTH KOREA?
* ISOLATED SOVEREIGN RUSSIA, or in the ALTERN LOSS OF RUSS FAR EAST = SIBERIA, ETC. BY A WEAK RUSS TO CHINA???
Israel Air Force aircraft late Sunday bombed a Hamas security building in the central Gaza Strip and two other targets in the southern coastal territory, Palestinian witnesses said.
Witnesses in the central Gaza village of Mughraqa said a missile struck after dark in a cluster of caravans that served as a Hamas security headquarters.
They said the site had been evacuated, apparently after Israel telephoned warnings to Palestinians in Gaza to leave any buildings where weapons were located.
The other two strikes were on suspected sites of tunnels along the border with Egypt, Hamas said. Palestinians reported huge explosions as Israeli warplanes dropped bombs on the border, where Hamas operates tunnels to smuggle in weapons, food and other goods.
Before the attack, Israeli aircraft flew over the Gaza-Egypt border, setting off sonic booms, and witnesses said hundreds of people who work in the tunnels there fled, along with residents.
The news comes as Israel's leadership warned Sunday that the response to the rocket attacks from Gaza would be fierce. The disagreements between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, on the one hand, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak over an "arrangement" with Hamas have intensified.
Olmert and Livni accused Barak Sunday of acting against cabinet decisions, and aides to the prime minister said the Labor chief was "dragging his feet" on a response to the continued Qassam rocket attacks. Livni, meanwhile, warned that Barak is working on a separate, second deal, for a cease-fire with Hamas.
Barak rejected all criticism, describing it as "chatter by those who have never held a weapon."
On Sunday Israel suffered the heaviest barrage of rocket and mortar attacks since a unilateral cease-fire went into effect more than two weeks ago. A total of four Qassam rockets and 14 mortars hit the western Negev, causing light injuries to two Israeli soldiers and a civilian.
Israel did not respond immediately to the attacks from the Gaza Strip, but defense sources said that action is expected in the near future and "everything will depend on the operational opportunity that emerges."
Chief of Military Intelligence Amos Yadlin said Sunday during a cabinet briefing that the rocket and mortar attacks were being carried out by small Palestinian factions, whom he described as belonging to the loose network of "global jihadists."
Military sources said the intelligence suggests that Hamas is trying to contain the attacks and is keen on bolstering the cease-fire with Israel. Nonetheless, political and military sources in Israel said that despite Hamas' efforts, the IDF would take action against the Palestinian Islamist group because Israel considers it responsible in Gaza.
Rockets rain down
Meanwhile, the residents of Sderot and the communities bordering Gaza are finding it difficult to accept the continued rocket fire after Operation Lead Cast and argue that the military offensive should have been allowed to continue.
"This was entirely expected. If the Qassams continue to reach the communities on the Gaza border it means that the army operation was redundant, enormously damaged Israel's image internationally but did not have any results in ending the attacks on the southern communities," said one resident, Ariel Feller.
This view was shared by Segev Kalimian. "We are still waiting for the second stage of Cast Lead, and the Qassam rockets and mortars continue to fall on our area. And it seems that no one in the government cares about us. They are only thinking about their elections next week and it looks like we are going to have to wait for more attacks on Ashdod and Ashkelon for someone in this country to understand that we need to continue with the [military operation]."
The dispute in recent days among the country's ruling troika has divided Kadima's top two politicians, Olmert and Livni, from Labor chief Barak. The Kadima leaders support a harsher response to the rocket attacks - a "disproportional response" - while Barak argues that progress in the talks between Egypt and Hamas on a cease-fire should be given a chance.
Reports have a deal being signed as early as Thursday in Cairo, and the defense minister believes that a more proportionate response to the attacks is warranted. Barak has described this as a response that will bolster Israeli deterrence and lead to a stable cease-fire, avoiding another escalation in the fighting.
"We will respond responsibly and with sound judgment to what is going on in Gaza," Barak said.
Barak's position, which is backed by Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, is being criticized by field officers, including some who took an active role in Operation Lead Cast.
According to these officers, Israel is not keeping its promises to respond harshly against Hamas for every violation of the cease-fire. They expressed concern that the lack of a response will dissolve the military gains on the ground.
"At this rate, we will need to go back in a ground operation in three or four months," one officer said.
The same kind of skepticism was expressed Sunday by sources close to Livni who said that "we remember what happened during the past lull, when Barak reported to the cabinet that the agreement was inevitable, and this should not be repeated."
"We are not certain that today he is actually telling us the whole truth about his talks with Egypt," one of the sources added. "We need to make a decision at the cabinet and go with that to Egypt."
In parallel with talks between Egypt and Hamas, Israel is holding intensive negotiations with the Egyptians. The head of the security-political bureau at the Defense Ministry, Amos Gilad, told the chief of Egyptian intelligence, Gen. Omar Suleiman, that Israel is rejecting the Egypt-Hamas idea of a new cease-fire limited in time. The current proposal is for a cease-fire lasting between one and one and a half years.
Israel is also rejecting verbal accords with Egypt on the character of the response to violations by, including attacks and arms smuggling.
Livni reiterated before the cabinet that she opposed any agreement that granted Hamas legitimacy. "I have been fighting for three years that the world will not talk with Hamas. Whoever negotiates with Egypt to reach an 'arrangement' must understand that this will grant Hamas international legitimacy."
Posted by: Fred ||
02/02/2009
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#1
Well, that didn't last long. Back to the drawing board. I guess we can call this the George Mitchell effect from now on.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
02/02/2009 10:32
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#2
They said the site had been evacuated, apparently after Israel telephoned warnings
The Israelis still treating this like a game.
Posted by: ed ||
02/02/2009 11:02
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#3
They said the site had been evacuated, apparently after Israel telephoned warnings
When was the last time Hamas telephoned Sderot to let the Juice know there were rockets on the way?
#4
Israel is nuts to put up with this crap. The Gazans want to play tit-for-tat? Fine, just remember Israel has a lot more tits than you twerps have tats.
Start pounding launch sites, and forget the baby ducks and fluffy bunnies crapola. You don't want to die, fuckin' leave.
#6
well the "juice" is kinda like the US damed if they do and damned if they don't I don't guess this is no more a game then we have been playing with Iran and NK the last 30 years
#7
See also CHINESE MIL FORUM > HAMAS' CHINESE ARMS/US DEFENSE OFFICIALS ACCUSE CHINA OF SUPPLYING ARMS TO GAZA MILITANTS ["THIRD-PARTY" ARMS > CHINESE manufacture to IRANIAN = GAZA/PALEO-Focused milspecs].
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.
The facts are these: Just after 1 a.m. February 3, 1959, a three-passenger Beechcraft Bonanza went down about five miles northwest of Mason City Municipal Airport, near Clear Lake, Iowa. The plane crash took the lives of the pilot, Roger Peterson, and three musicians: Charles Hardin Holley, better known as Buddy Holly, 22; Ritchie Valens (originally Valenzuela), 17; and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, 28.
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd says he'll refinance two mortgages that he received through a VIP program from Countrywide Financial Corp. 
Make no mistake, tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter. 
COUPLES who have more than two children are being "irresponsible" by creating an unbearable burden on the environment, the government's green adviser has warned. Jonathon Porritt, who chairs the government's Sustainable Development Commission, says curbing population growth through contraception and abortion must be at the heart of policies to fight global warming. He says political leaders and green campaigners should stop dodging the issue of environmental harm caused by an expanding population.
LONDON, England (CNN) -- The worst snowstorm to hit Britain in 18 years forced the cancellation of more than 650 flights at London's Heathrow airport Monday and shut down the city's bus network, partially paralyzing the British capital. 
When the Museum of Modern Art in New York debuted a film series on "The Hidden God: Film and Faith" two years ago, it opened with Groundhog Day. The rest of the films were drawn from the ranks of turgid and bleak intellectual cinema, including standards from Ingmar Bergman and Roberto Rossellini. According to the New York Times, curators of the series were stunned to discover that so many of the 35 leading literary and religious scholars who had been polled to pick the series entries had chosen Groundhog Day that a spat had broken out among the scholars over who would get to write about the film for the catalogue. In a wonderful essay for the Christian magazine Touchstone, theology professor Michael P. Foley wrote that Groundhog Day is "a stunning allegory of moral, intellectual, and even religious excellence in the face of postmodern decay, a sort of Christian-Aristotelian Pilgrim's Progress for those lost in the contemporary cosmos." Charles Murray, author of Human Accomplishment, has cited Groundhog Day more than once as one of the few cultural achievements of recent times that will be remembered centuries from now. He was quoted in The New Yorker declaring, "It is a brilliant moral fable offering an Aristotelian view of the world." . . .
Lucas Oil Stadium became a sea of camouflage this afternoon as Indiana National Guard soldiers paraded around the floor waving to their family and friends in the stands.
Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama has made clear he is counting on Americas NATO allies for greater military contributions in Afghanistan. He may be in for a disappointment.
Aswat al-Iraq: Four al-Qaeda in Iraq members on Sunday were arrested in Diala province, according to a local police commander.
The Senate will likely increase the amount of spending in a stimulus package that already exceeds $800 billion, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Riot police fired tear gas and water cannons Saturday at bottle-throwing demonstrators in Geneva who protested the annual World Economic Forum meeting in the Swiss Alps.
The military on Sunday said it had killed 16 Taliban in operations in various areas of the restive Swat valley.
North Korea warned Sunday that South Korea's confrontational policies may trigger a war on the divided peninsula, a message coming two days after the communist country vowed to abandon all peace agreements with its southern neighbor.
