Who would have thought Time mag would publish such an article?
America's generals love to brag about their all-volunteer Army. That's because they tend to overlook Jeffrey Mellinger. He donned his Army uniform for the first time on April 18, 1972, about the time the Nixon Administration was seeking "peace with honor" in Vietnam and The Godfather was opening on the silver screen. Nearly 37 years later, he's still wearing Army green. Mellinger is, by all accounts, the last active-duty draftee serving in the U.S. Army.
"I'm a relic," Mellinger concedes with a self-deprecating laugh. But the last of the nearly 2 million men ordered to serve in the Vietnam-era military before conscription ended in 1973 still impresses 19-year-old soldiers. "Most of them are surprised I'm still breathing, because in their minds I'm older than dirt," the fit 55-year-old says. "But they're even more surprised when they find out this dinosaur can still move around pretty darn quick."
Mellinger was working as a 19-year-old drywall hanger in Eugene, Oregon, when he came home to find a draft notice waiting for him. He started his military career as a clerk in what was then called West Germany, and was looking forward hanging up his uniform after two years of service. "I was dead-set on getting out," he says. "We had a lot of racial problems, drug problems, leadership problems." But his company commander talked him into re-enlisting. The lure: the chance to join the Rangers, the elite warrior corps that Mellinger came to love (his 3,700 parachute jumps add up to more than 33 hours in freefall). Re-enlisting "was the best decision of my career," Mellinger says.
The Army sent him all over the world, including tours in Japan and Iraq. General David Petraeus, who served as Mellinger's boss during the draftee's final three months in Iraq in 2007, calls him "a national asset" who kept the top generals' aware of the peaks and valleys in battlefield morale. "We lost count of how many times his personal convoy was hit," Petraeus says. "Yet he never stopped driving the roads, walking patrols, and going on missions with our troopers." (Mellinger's 33-month Iraq tour was punctuated by 27 roadside bombings, including two that destroyed his vehicle, although he managed to escape injury.)
His proudest moments are watching those he trained climb the military hierarchy themselves. "I can think of several soldiers who went on to become command sergeants major who were privates when I was either their squad leader or their drill sergeant," Mellinger says. But such memories also trigger his lone regret. "I wish I were as smart as I thought I was when I was moving into those duty positions."
Mellinger has told his wife, Kim, that this is his final Army posting, meaning he's likely to retire sometime next year. The couple has no children, although Mellinger has three grown kids from a prior marriage. The last draftee then plans to move to Alaska, where he spent much of his career, and spend his days reading history and running with his two Dobermans. "When I tell my wife it's my last assignment, she just rolls her eyes," he concedes. "This is my sixth 'last assignment'."
#2
This is the man -- that finally let Michael Yon travel Iraq with him.... and then, invited him into his house.... for the Army ball upon returning to the States.
Just know the story from Yon's point..... never knew he was the "Last Draftee."
Following yesterday's quarterly refunding announcement by the U.S. Treasury, investment banks will be working the telephones hard to find clients to buy the record $67 billion worth of new Treasury securities scheduled to be auctioned, starting next week.
Just over half the total amount ($36.3 billion) is needed to repay existing notes and bonds that are set to mature; the remainder ($30.7 billion) is new borrowing needed to cover the cost of bank rescues, fiscal stimulus and the deficit in the regular budget.
The refunding portion should be relatively simple, since the money that needs to be raised is matched by the amount of funds investors will be receiving back from the government as old debts mature and are repaid. Refunding involves persuading investors to re-invest maturing funds into new securities. Only the price/yield is an issue, albeit a thorny one.
New borrowing will be more challenging because it involves attracting additional funds into the Treasury market. The risk/return characteristics of Treasury debt are not particularly attractive at present. The interest rate cycle is close to the trough, yields are at multi-decade lows, and risks to investors from both the rate cycle and inflation are probably concentrated on the upside.
The Fed has talked about buying longer-dated Treasury securities in an attempt to create a "buyer of last resort" to guarantee investors a floor under the market.
But buying an instrument that has limited upside capital potential, and where mitigation of downside capital risk depends on the Fed's uncertain willingness and ability to buy unlimited quantities if the price falls too far, is probably not attractive for most investors.
Some commentators have suggested that the normal role of benchmark U.S. Treasury bonds providing "riskless returns" has been inverted and they now provide returnless risks.
So the investment banks may find it hard to find customers for the new issues.
#3
I'm sorry, I just don't get it, they're selling money to raise more money?
No, they're selling the labor, the sweat and skills and enterprise, of us, our children and grandchildren to be turned over to the highest bidder who'll buy a bond, as in bondage. We are being sold literally into bondage to raise money so that those who have attained power can reward their backers and themselves. Done without the facade of government, at the least its embezzlement, at worst its slaving. All of course done in the name of whatever self rationalization the snake oil salesmen think they can get away with which usually involves scaring people into dumbness.
#4
It is my understanding that recent Treasury sales have been oversubscribed at a ratio of 4:1, that is (if I understand correctly), there are four who want to buy for every one offered. Given that money flows to comparatively more reward or comparatively less risk, it is understandable that US Treasuries would be desirable: the U.S. government is considerably less likely in the near future to default than Iceland, Venezuela, or Britain. Japanese debt is perhaps a safer option, but they aren't capable of making available nearly as much to investors, I think.
A coalition of Democrats and some Republicans reached a compromise that trimmed billions in spending from an earlier version of the Senate economic stimulus bill.
Senators worked late into the night to trim billions from the original stimulus bill.
CNN obtained, from a Democratic leadership aide, a list of some programs that have been cut, either entirely or partially:
Partially cut:
$3.5 billion for energy-efficient federal buildings (original bill $7 billion)
$75 million from Smithsonian (original bill $150 million)
$200 million from Environmental Protection Agency Superfund (original bill $800 million)
$100 million from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (original bill $427 million)
$100 million from law enforcement wireless (original bill $200 million)
$300 million from federal fleet of hybrid vehicles (original bill $600 million)
$100 million from FBI construction (original bill $400 million)
Fully eliminated
$55 million for historic preservation
$122 million for Coast Guard polar icebreaker/cutters
$100 million for Farm Service Agency modernization
$50 million for Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service
$65 million for watershed rehabilitation
$100 million for distance learning
$98 million for school nutrition
$50 million for aquaculture
$2 billion for broadband
$100 million for National Institute of Standards and Technology
$50 million for detention trustee
$25 million for Marshalls Construction
$300 million for federal prisons
$300 million for BYRNE Formula grant program
$140 million for BYRNE Competitive grant program
$10 million state and local law enforcement
$50 million for NASA
$50 million for aeronautics
$50 million for exploration
$50 million for Cross Agency Support
$200 million for National Science Foundation
$100 million for science
$1 billion for Energy Loan Guarantees
$4.5 billion for General Services Administration
$89 million General Services Administration operations
$50 million from Department of Homeland Security
$200 million Transportation Security Administration
$122 million for Coast Guard Cutters, modifies use
$25 million for Fish and Wildlife
$55 million for historic preservation
$20 million for working capital fund
$165 million for Forest Service capital improvement
$90 million for State and Private Wildlife Fire Management
$1 billion for Head Start/Early Start
$5.8 billion for Health Prevention Activity
$2 billion for Health Information Technology Grants
$600 million for Title I (No Child Left Behind)
$16 billion for school construction
$3.5 billion for higher education construction
$1.25 billion for project based rental
$2.25 billion for Neighborhood Stabilization
$1.2 billion for retrofitting Project 8 housing
$40 billion for state fiscal stabilization (includes $7.5 billion of state incentive grants)
Pakistan wants aid from the Obama administration without any "strings attached", the country's ambassador to the US Hussain Haqqani has said.
Haqqani has said that "assistance that is conditional is never good."
His comments come in the wake of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's plan proposal to triple civilian aid to Pakistan but impose clear conditions on military assistance to ensure the money goes towards fighting terrorists rather than building up Pakistan's defences against India.
But to this the Pakistani envoy had a poser. "There is no bullet that has been invented that Pakistan can be given to shoot at the terrorists that cannot be used in case there is a war with India," he said in an interview to Financial Times.
At the same time in an effort not to get his nation on the wrong side of the new US administration, Haqqani pledged that Pakistan would focus on fighting its "primary threat."
He outlined this threat as currently coming from terrorists and not from "eastern neighbour (India)."
The Obama administration is expected to unveil its foreign and security policy as its Vice President Joseph Biden speaks at the international security conference in Munich in Germany.
Haqqani's advice was that while Islamabad can discuss what the Americans would prefer... any conditional aids are not going to serve the US or Pakistani interest.
#5
Another political payoff ambassador, chosen for his help to the government as opposed to competence, the kind who drive the embassy staff crazy. Sadly, we have quite a few of those, too. What does Ambassador Haqqani's boss, the Prime Minister, say on this subject?
#1
I saw a cute little ad the other day, possibly on Drudge:
President Obama has an IQ of 125. Are you as smart as the president? Click here for test.
I must admit it aroused my most snobbish instincts, because my very first thought was, only 125? But that's only one standard deviation beyond the mean, not anything special at all! Truly, I apologize to all for not realizing at once that in the circles the president chooses to spend his time, that really is a great deal cleverer than the norm. No wonder so many thought him a genius!
#2
Many years ago IQ testing was the "Fad" Mine was tested at 141 Supposedly far above "Genius" level,
Well whoop te do So what, never did me any good.
Posted by: Rednek Jim ||
02/07/2009 23:10
Comments ||
Top||
THREE members of a suspected terror cell with links to Al Qaida are on the run in the Midlands.
The alleged jihadists, who all have joint Libyan/British citizenship, have been placed on Interpols Most Wanted list over claims they funded terror plots for Osama Bin Laden.
The international police force has made the men subject to a Red Notice the highest level of arrest warrant and have traced them to areas in and around Birmingham.
Navy officials say an attempt to pull free a 9,600-ton warship that ran aground off the coast of Honolulu has been unsuccessful.
The U.S. Pacific Fleet says Navy tugboats and salvage ship USS Salvor tried to tow the USS Port Royal early Saturday but the guided missile cruiser remained stuck. The Navy says it plans to try again after extracting fuel and water from the $1 billion vessel.
"Water and cannons over the side!"
"But sir, how will we fight the French?"
"Damn it man, if we don't get off this reef the French will have us!"
The 9,600-ton ship, while carrying guests that included a rear admiral, ran aground Thursday night on a sandy, rocky bottom. The cause of the grounding, as well the extent of the damage to the ship, remains under investigation.
"We're certainly working on bringing to bear the resources we have to move her off the current position. We're still putting that plan together," said Capt. W. Scott Gureck, a spokesman for U.S. Pacific Fleet. "Obviously, the high tide gives us an opportunity to do that."
The Port Royal left Pearl Harbor on Thursday for sea trials after being dry-docked for routine maintenance. The ship ran aground while shore-based officials were being transferred to shore by small boat, the Navy said.
An oil recovery vessel, the Clean Islands, was positioned behind the warship as a precaution as the U.S. Coast Guard monitored the situation. "We know that there is no oil spill at this point, and we're confident the Navy is doing everything it can," Coast Guard Lt. John Titchen said.
Whilst the Coasties sit on their ship and make rude jokes ...
Commissioned in 1994, the Port Royal has a crew of about 360. The crew stayed aboard the ship, along with Navy officials such as Rear Adm. Dixon R. Smith, commander Navy Region Hawaii and Naval Surface Group Middle Pacific. The 'Obit' tag is for the Captain's career.
#6
She is NOT an LST. Damn those beauties on the beach! They are a hazard to navigation. They were not noted on the charts. Who was watching the depth sounder?
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/07/2009 18:22
Comments ||
Top||
#7
AP, A list means tilt, in other words she's NOT sitting square upright but leans to one side.
List has absolutely nothing to do with LST which means "Landing Ship Tank" I'm afraid you've misread the word.
Posted by: Rednek Jim ||
02/07/2009 22:19
Comments ||
Top||
#8
The only thing the captain can hope for is if his navigation charts were out of date, and even that may not save him. He's really screwed if he has to pay for the repairs...
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/07/2009 22:23
Comments ||
Top||
Israel must decisively crush Hamas and immediately follow up by pumping investment capital into the Gaza Strip lest the group regenerate. To create, Israel must first devastate.
Posted by: Age Of Pericles ||
02/07/2009
12:58 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
American spy chiefs have told the President that the CIA has launched a vast spying operation in the UK to prevent a repeat of the 9/11 attacks being launched from Britain. They believe that a British-born Pakistani extremist entering the US under the visa waiver programme is the most likely source of another terrorist spectacular on American soil.
Information gleaned by CIA spies in Britain has already helped thwart several terrorist attacks in the UK
One former intelligence officer who does contract work for the CIA dismissed Britain as a "swamp" of jihadis.
Intelligence briefings for Mr Obama have detailed a dramatic escalation in American espionage in Britain, where the CIA has recruited record numbers of informants in the Pakistani community to monitor the 2,000 terrorist suspects identified by MI5, the British security service.
A British intelligence source revealed that a staggering four out of 10 CIA operations designed to thwart direct attacks on the US are now conducted against targets in Britain. That's ... a lot.
And a former CIA officer who has advised Mr Obama told The Sunday Telegraph that the CIA has stepped up its efforts in the last month after the Mumbai massacre laid bare the threat from Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group behind the attacks, which has an extensive web of supporters in the UK.
The CIA has already spent 18 months developing a network of agents in Britain to combat al-Qaeda, unprecedented in size within the borders of such a close ally, according to intelligence sources in both London and Washington. Good times for quadruple-agents.
Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who has advised Mr Obama, told The Sunday Telegraph: "The British Pakistani community is recognised as probably al-Qaeda's best mechanism for launching an attack against North America. The American security establishment believes that danger continues and there's very intimate cooperation between our security services to monitor that."
Mr Riedel, who served three presidents as a Middle East expert on the White House National Security Council, added: "President Obama's national security team are well aware that this is a serious threat."
The British official said: "The Americans run their own assets in the Pakistani community; they get their own intelligence. There's close cooperation with MI5 but they don't tell us the names of all their sources. Around 40 per cent of CIA activity on homeland threats is now in the UK. This is quite unprecedented."
Explaining the increase in CIA activity over the past month, Mr Riedel added: "In the aftermath of the Mumbai attack the US and the UK intelligence services now have to regard Lashkar-e-Taiba as just as serious a threat to both of our countries as al-Qaeda. They have a much more extensive base among Pakistani Diaspora communities in the UK than al-Qaeda."
Information gleaned by CIA spies in Britain has already helped thwart several terrorist attacks in the UK and was instrumental in locating Rashid Rauf, a British-born al-Qaeda operative implicated in a plot to explode airliners over the Atlantic, who was tracked down and killed in a US missile strike in November.
But some US intelligence officers are irritated that valuable manpower and resources have been diverted to the UK. One former intelligence officer who does contract work for the CIA dismissed Britain as a "swamp" of jihadis. Ouch.
Jonathan Evans, the director general of MI5, admitted in January that the Security Service alone does not have the resources to maintain surveillance on all its targets. "We don't have anything approaching comprehensive coverage," he said. Thanks, Labour Party! Now the US tax-payer has to subsidize the British domestic intelligence service, too. And all of this pro-bono labor to save the lives and remaining liberties of the British people was done by order of the "Evil" George Bush and his administration. Just Americans doing the work the British can't-won't do.
The dramatic escalation in CIA activity in the UK followed the exposure in August 2006 of Operation Overt, the alleged airline bomb plot. The British intelligence official revealed that CIA chiefs sent more resources to the UK because they were not prepared to see American citizens die as a result of MI5's inability to keep tabs on all suspects, even though the Security Service successfully uncovered the plot.
MI5 manpower will have doubled to 4,100 by 2011 but many in the US intelligence community do not think that is enough.
For their part, some British officials are queasy that information obtained by the CIA from British Pakistanis was used to help target Mr Rauf, a British citizen, whom they would have preferred to capture and bring to trial.
Sensitivities over the intelligence arrangement formed a key part of briefings given to Mr Obama, since they are central to what is often called "the most special part of the special relationship" and could complicate his dealings with Gordon Brown.
Tensions in transatlantic intelligence relations which were laid bare last week during the High Court battle over Binyam Mohamed, the British resident held in Guanatanamo Bay. British judges wanted to publish details of the alleged torture administered to Mr Mohamed, an Ethiopian national, in US custody. But key paragraphs were blacked out after American officials threatened it could damage intelligence sharing between the two countries.
Intelligence experts said that a trusting intelligence relationship, in which one country does not publish intelligence data obtained by the other, is vital to both countries' national security.
Patrick Mercer, chairman of the House of Commons counter-terrorism sub-committee, said: "The special relationship is a huge benefit to us. It clearly works to our advantage and helps keep the people of the UK and the US safe. There is no doubt that a great deal of valuable intelligence vital to British national security is procured by American agents from British sources."
Mr Riedel added: "The partnership between the two intelligence communities is dynamic; it is one of great intimacy. We overuse the term special relationship, but this is an extraordinarily special relationship. Since September 11 the philosophy on both sides has been to err on the side of telling each other more rather than less. It is in everyone's interests that that continues."
#1
Could it be that the CIA are running an elaborate plot to appear incompetent and overly politicized in Washington, DC in order to distract attention from the incredible work they are doing in places like Pakistan and Britain? Because it's clear they really are doing incredible work in Pakistan and Britain, and no doubt other places (Africa, anyone?) as well.
My heartfelt thanks to the quiet people in the CIA who accept the world's abuse as one of the costs they pay to keep us safe. And to former President Bush, who enabled them, and who deflected so much of the abuse onto himself so that they could/can do what needed/needs to be done.
#5
CIA warns Obama that British terrorists are the biggest threat to the US
O-BAMMI: HEADS UP!
The CIA believes that a British-born Pakistani extremist entering the US under the expanded visa waiver program are the most likely source of another terrorist spectacular on American soil.
Don't just send us a tiny fraction of your of your Tired Hate Filled Homicidal Bastards, We're enlightened Now and Recognize That Sovernty and Borders are the problem and not the Solution.
Why even the quaint notion of Citizen-Status is Passe and Reactionary...
In Fact:
Face the Music Folks; We enlightened types can now openly note:
US Citizenship is UN-AMERICAN!
Posted by: Red Dawg ||
02/07/2009 20:35
Comments ||
Top||
A major Taliban stronghold has been destroyed by British and Afghan forces following 10 days of bitter fighting in southern Afghanistan. Hundred of insurgents were either killed or forced to flee from a stronghold in central Helmand which they had occupied for several months.
During the operation, Corporal Danny Nield of 1st battalion The Rifles, was killed after being blown up by an improvised explosive device and several British soldiers were injured.
A force of around 700 coalition troops launched a series of attacks against the stronghold in the area of Spin Masjid, north of the provincial capital of Lashkar Gar, where the British military headquarters is based. The Taliban had occupied the area for several months imposing "their version of law and order" on the locals and murdering anyone who supported the Afghan government, according to the Ministry of Defence. The area was also used as a base by insurgents to attack convoys supplying Nato bases.
The operation code named Attal, was one of an increasing number to be planned and executed by the Afghan National Army (ANA) with assistance from British, Danish and Canadian forces.
During the 10-day battle last month more than 30 IEDs were discovered and several senior Taliban commanders were killed. Insurgents were cleared from the area and a new patrol base was created to prevent the Taliban from recapturing their former base.
In his first visit to Afghanistan as a minister, Under Secretary of State for Defence, Kevan Jones, said that the success of the operation was proof that the British strategy was on course. He added: "The future for Afghanistan is with its own security forces -- they need to be able to protect the local population from the oppression of the Taliban and to uphold the rule of law. This latest operation is another example of how they are continually improving -- able to plan and execute complicated and hugely successful operations.
"The work of the British mentors, the 1st Battalion The Rifles who I met on this visit, has been central to this success, passing on the skills and experience of the British Army and setting the foundations for a safe and secure Afghanistan."
Capt Mike Richardson, 24 Commando Engineers Regiment, said: "The joint efforts of Afghan and ISAF troops saw 15 IEDs disposed of in an area approximately 2km by 1 km. The search skills and patience of the ANA, coupled with the expertise of British Bomb Disposal Teams undoubtedly contributed to the low casualty rate amongst locals and the coalition forces during this operation."
Well done, lads!
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/07/2009
12:43 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
This article left out the most important pieces of information - how many innocent civilians and fluffy bunnies were killed.
#6
It's triage Midoman. The worst offenders get priority attention. The Russians haven't built a religion around a "prophet" famous for abusing women and children. Nor do them attempt to emulate his every barbaric perversity, nor attempt to impose it upon the rest of the world. Most Russians, after they sober up, actually feel ashamed. Unlike muslims.
Posted by: ed ||
02/07/2009 14:49
Comments ||
Top||
#7
I think that, if you have invaded Afghanistan, it's because you are afraid of seeing Talibans taking control over Afghanistan and simultaneously taking control over pakistan and the nuke bombs, you USA, have provided to Pakistan! You are really sick!
#8
Midoman -- let's see, in 2001, we did invade Afghan, and we did remove the Taliban from power, and they still haven't regain power over the entire country of Afghanistan...
We didn't take over Pakistan, we don't have their nukes. Where you been the last seven years? In one of those caves?
#9
I mean, you have a tremendous problem there!
You know that you can't stop Talibans. You know that talibans have roots in Pakistan and majorly supported by Pakistani tribes. In my opinion, instead of killing everbody their, take a look aat the geography and try to discuss the issues with them. You can't win!! Impossible!
#10
Midol, you are clearly emulating the originator of the Big Lie, one Joseph Goebbels. I suggest you take this to its logical conclusion and emulate his departure from the anti-American media world. Leave the kids out of it this time though.
#11
Don't be more stupid than you have to be Midoman. We both know the US attacked the taliban regime was because they harbored and protected Al Qaeda. The US could have easily have left the Pushtoon population that formed the taliban to the mercy of the non-Pustoon majority. That the US stayed and is working with the Afghans, including the non-taliban supporting Pushtoons to educate and bring up the standard of living of the Afghan population is more than I would have done.
Notice this offensive that this battle where "Hundred of insurgents were either killed or forced to flee" was "planned and executed by the Afghan National Army (ANA) with assistance from British, Danish and Canadian forces." Instead you far from Afghanistan support "murdering anyone who supported the Afghan government". I think the Afghans have had enough of your Arab support. That's why the Northern Alliance with the assistance of a few hundred US and western forces weas able to take back the entire country so swiftly from the Arab supported taliban and Al Qaeda.
Posted by: ed ||
02/07/2009 15:07
Comments ||
Top||
#12
Insurgents were cleared from the area and a new patrol base was created to prevent the Taliban from recapturing their former base.
The task of manning this base must qualify for the title of "the worst job in the world". On the other hand, the soldiers assigned who joined up to see some adventure will get plenty of it.
#13
Midoman loves the Taliban, who: abuse women and children, who forbid music, dancing, literature, art, children playing, toys. Midoman, what would you do to the Taliban if we were gone and it was up to you. BTW, I think your excuse that it's okay to rape young men and women to trick them into being suicide bombers because you don't have the right weapons is weak. Nobody in the West is hurting Arabs, the Arab people, the culture, etc. This is a fiction which you all have been entertaining for many years. It allows you to scoot away from the real issues that you all find hard to deal with: corruption in your governments, religion, education, culture.
Any culture that allows men to dominate women is sick at the core--the Taliban being some of the worst offenders.
#14
@ed
You made me laugh!
Afghans and Arabs are Muslims. We arabs, prefer some stupid talibans rulers than christian coalition targeting wedding gathering and killing children and women. It's a matter of muslims and muslims will resolve their problems if you let them alone!
#15
What do the Pharoahs, the Assyrians, the Alexandrians, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Crusaders, the Inquisition, the Czars, the Nazis, and the Stalinists all have in common?
Two things: They all sought to destroy the Jews, and they are all extinct.
Perhaps Arabs and other nouveau riche Muslims should stop listening to their depraved media and start studying real history. .
#16
"It allows you to scoot away from the real issues that you all find hard to deal with: corruption in your governments, religion, education, culture."
Who is corrupting all muslims leaders? Isn't it USA to control arab populations.
You've bought all the arab and muslim leaders!
The ones you can't corrupt are Hamas, Hizbollah, Talibans, Saddam, Iranian guards etc and you're fighting them. I mean, as I said earlier, you have divided the world in two categories: friends and ennemies!
It's not fair! Because you have a super power hegemony, you kill everybody who says NON to you!
#17
And yet, the biggest killers of muslims are ... other muslims. The biggest murderers of muslim women and children in markets and schools are ... Arabs. It is the Afghan soldiers who just kicked the ass of the Arab and Paki puppet taliban.
That the days since September 2001 has shown so clearly that muslims, especially Arabs, eat their own children must come as disappointment to those who open their eyes. That you prefer muslim imperialism does not mean the majority in Afghanistan and Iraq who have experienced first hand Arab "solidarity" share your passion.
Posted by: ed ||
02/07/2009 15:28
Comments ||
Top||
#18
muslim Arab imperialism
Posted by: ed ||
02/07/2009 15:30
Comments ||
Top||
#19
We are talking about now. If you want history, the largest mass murders in history have been muslims. Muslims had murdered in a few generations 80 million on the Indian subcontinent. That the Indians, who have long memories, will become the next superpower in a generation while the muslims will run out of oil and friends is going to be a very nasty surprise to the ummah.
That muslims have murdered 120 million Africans will also have to settled. That Africa is turning more Christian and western oriented each day while muslim Sahara is mired in uncivil murder and starvation. Even muslim religious leaders are mourning the fact 6 million muslims are converting to the more successful and modern Christianity each year, most in Africa. You and those like you will have pay for your insistence on jihad and slavery of the African. And the butchers bill is indeed expensive.
Posted by: ed ||
02/07/2009 16:02
Comments ||
Top||
#20
Mods, are the fearless but ignorant Midoman's post now being deleted?
Posted by: ed ||
02/07/2009 16:03
Comments ||
Top||
#21
Midoman will not be allowed to post here for a while and perhaps permanently. Yes, some of his posts were deleted by me a short time ago. New ones will either be deleted by the mods or filtered before they are made public. If he slips in, as he may since the mods have other things we do besides clean up troll droppings, his new comments will be deleted when we notice them.
Do us a favor and stop responding to any that slip through.
This is not because his opinion differs from that of most people at Rantburg. G*d forbid that this place becomes an echo chamber.
Rather, it's because he lacks the basic manners due our host, Fred. And because he's boring - he brings no facts, no thoughtful analysis, not even wit. Just obscenity and rather vulgar and repetitious hatred.
In short, he is like a dog that is not housetrained. Such beasts are not allowed to foul the floor of the house, nor to mingle with people until they have learned to live cleanly and appropriately with humans. And they are certainly not invited into civilized discussions.
#22
Indeed, Ed. The Muslim world has nothing to offer but oil and a gullible media audience. The oil boom and the institutional media monopoly that started in the 60s were their best opportunity to finally recover from the devastation of the Mongol invasions 700 years ago, yet they have done nothing. Forty years is enough time to educate two full generations, yet countries like Saudi Arabia remain slavishly dependent on foreign workers. Now, both oil and institutional media are starting to fade and the Muslims have accomplished nothing worthwhile with their trillions in oil loot. They have blown it.
#29
Back to the story, it's good to see the Brits doing an operation well. I'm sure they've been doing better than their press lately, and certainly better than their politicians deserve. Way to go.
Settle back and read one of his finest -- He's even a "Dirty Dozen" fan!
In The Washington Post, E.J. Dionne tried to break it gently to us:
"No occupant of the White House has ever been able to walk on water."
Yeah, sure, no previousoccupant of the White House has been able to walk on water your Eisenhowers and Roosevelts, your Chester Arthurs and Grover Clevelands and whatnot. But Barack didn't run as just another of those squaresville losers. He was gonna heal the planet and lower the oceans. So, even if he couldn't walk on water, he should at least be able to paddle in it. "He is a community organizer like Jesus was," said Susan Sarandon, "and now we're a community, and he can organize us."
So how's that going? Jesus took a handful of loaves and two fish and fed 5,000 people. Barack wants to take a trillion pieces of pork and feed it to a handful of Democratic Party interest groups. Jesus picked twelve disciples. Barack seems to have gone more for one of those "Dirty Dozen" caper-movie lineups, where the mission is so perilous and so audacious that only the scuzziest lowlifes recruited from every waterfront dive have any chance of pulling it off. The ends justify the mean SOBs: "Indispensable Tim" Geithner, wanted in 12 jurisdictions for claiming his kid's summer camp as a business expense, is the only guy with the savvy to crack the code of the U.S. economy. Tom "Home, James!" Daschle is the ruthless backseat driver who can figure out how to steer the rusting gurney of U.S. health care through the corridors of power. Charles Bronson is the hardbitten psycho ex-con who can't go straight but knows how to turn around the Department of the Interior.
And, of course, there's the lovable dough-faced shnook in the front office, Robert "Fall Guy" Gibbs. He didn't do nuthin' wrong, but, when seven nominees die in a grisly shootout with a Taxable Benefit Swat Team in the alley behind the Senate, he makes the mistake of looking sweaty and shifty answering routine questions.
A president doesn't have to be able to walk on water. But he does have to choose the right crew for the ship, especially if he's planning on spending most of his time at the captain's table, schmoozing the celebrity guests with a lot of deep thoughts about "hope" and "change." Far worse than his Cabinet picks was President Obama's decision to make the "stimulus" racket the all-but-sole-priority of his first month and then outsource the project to Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank and Harry Reid.
Appearing on "The Rush Limbaugh Show" last week, I got a little muddled over two adjoining newspaper clippings one on the stimulus, the other on those octuplets in California and for a brief moment the two stories converged. Everyone's hammering that mom she's divorced, unemployed, living in a small house with parents who have a million bucks' worth of debt, and she's already got six kids. So she has in vitro fertilization to have eight more. But isn't that exactly what the Feds have done? Last fall, they gave birth to $850 billion of bailout they couldn't afford and didn't have enough time to keep an eye on, and now, four months later, they're going to do it all over again, but this time they want trillionuplets. Barney and Nancy represent the in vitro fertilization of the federal budget. And it's the taxpayers who'll get stuck with the diapers.
Those supporters who were wary of touting Obama as the walk-on-water Messiah did their best to lower expectations by hailing him merely as the new FDR. You remember the old FDR "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." Ha! With the new New Deal, we have everything to fear. As President Obama warned Tuesday, "A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe." If you're of those moonstruck Obammysoxers still driving around with the "HOPE, NOT FEAR" bumper stickers, please note that, due to an unfortunate proofreading error at the printing plant, certain nouns in that phrase may have become accidentally transposed.
As it happens, the best way to ensure catastrophe is to "act now." It would be nice if the world could all prance along in regimented unison like the Radio City Changettes. But, alas, the foreigners made the mistake of actually reading the "stimulus" bill, and the protectionist measures buried on page 739 subsection XII(d) ended, instantly, the Obama honeymoon overseas. The European Union has threatened a trade war. Up in Canada, provincial premiers called it "a march to insanity." Wait a minute, I thought the Obama era was meant to be the retreat from insanity, a blessed return to multilateral transnational harmony.
As longtime readers will know, I'm all in favor of flipping the bird to the global community. But at least, when Rummy was doing his shtick about "Old Europe," he did it intentionally. To cheese off the foreigners entirely accidentally before you've even had your first black-tie banquet is quite an accomplishment. Protectionism is serious business to the Continentals. Oh, to be sure, if the swaggering unilateralist Yank cowboy invades some Third World basket-case they'll seize on it as an opportunity for some cheap moral posturing. But in the end they don't much care one way or the other. Plunging the planet into global depression, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter.
The bloated nonstimulus and the undertaxed nominees are part of the same story. I'm with Tom Daschle: I understand why he had no desire to toss another six-figure sum into the great sucking maw of the federal Treasury. Who knows better than a senator who's voted for every tax increase to cross his desk that all this dough is entirely wasted? Tom and Tim Geithner and Charlie Rangel and all the rest are right: They can do more good with the money than the United States government can. I only wish they followed the logic of their behavior and recognized that what works for them would also work for every other citizen. Instead, they insist that the sole solution to our woes is a record-setting wasteful government spending spree.
Maybe it's time for President Obama to come out and give one of his big hopey-changey speeches. It's been a few weeks now, and I kinda miss them. You know "We are the change we've been waiting for." "We have nothing to hope for but hope itself." "Ask not what your hope can change for you, ask what you can hope for your change." Etc.
But I wonder if the old songs from last month's hit parade would play as well today. On Wednesday, Salon headlined a story on Obama: "The New Great Communicator Isn't." Oh, dear. It's early days yet, but the gulf between the rhetoric and the reality, between the audacity of hope and the reality of pork, yawns ever wider. Right now, it's the Obama mythology that urgently needs some stimulus. Some of us never expected him to walk on water. But we didn't think he'd be all at sea taking on quite so much of it after a mere two weeks.
#1
It would appear he's squarely in the kak and not responding well at all to public opinion. That desperate little rant he gave down in Williamsburg at the Dem getaway was aimed at the American public and the entire Congress, no doubt about that. The blaming "W" mantra is wearing quite thin and his attempt at expectation management is not selling well either. Way too much anxiety and drama for one man. If he continues as he has, he'll not make it through his first term.
That should end every discussion where Obama's name is mentioned. Thanks Susan Sarandon!
Posted by: ed ||
02/07/2009 15:15
Comments ||
Top||
#3
As George said farewell to Obama, he handed him three envelopes numbered consecutively 1,2,and 3. George told him to only open each in sequence when the crap hits the fan.
Well, he's opened and used envelope number 1 which read 'blame your predecessor'. How long before he gets around to opening envelope number 2 which will read 'reorganize'?
#6
If she did that (flip him off and tell him what an ass he is) it would never be reported by the MSM - except perhaps as an incident of RIGHT-WING HATRED!!!!! and RACISM!!!!!
Posted by: ed ||
02/07/2009 16:06
Comments ||
Top||
#11
If I were a relative of one of the Cole sailors, and had I been invited, I would have gone, and I would have hoped to ask the President this question:
"Sir, I know you have some background in constitutional law based on your teaching days at the University of Chicago. I do not understand why we should provide the perpetrators of the attack on the Cole the same basic rights that you and I enjoy under American law. I remind you, sir, that these individuals are not US nationals and consider themselves to be at war with America. So would you please explain this to me?"
And I would have insisted, gently, on an answer.
And I would talk publicly about his response.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/07/2009 16:46
Comments ||
Top||
#2
Yessiree bob, it's those ugly policemen, firemen and military pensioners who are causing all the problems. We've cured it in the private sector by shipping jobs overseas and buy hiring Kelly Girl/Guy temp contractors or 1099's. When is the governemnt going to wise up? Snark off.
#3
Glad to see that there is no family favorites in hiring, hiring of fellow frat college mates, stripping of assets, use of company equipment by senior management, ect. in the private sector. /s
There is much blaming of the Worker in government when when they just do the job the public and politicians and public want. Please keep your focus on the real locus of the problems we are dealing with. We have met the enemy and he is us. There is no free lunch. Pick your programs and fund them properly, cut the rest.
#4
Except - you missed the news. Part of the demographic pyramid scheme that is Social Security is that eventually you end up with one person supporting another person on pension. With the growth of government at all levels, you get the same effect. Now you have one person supporting a pensioner and a government employee. Somehow you have to start capping the redistribution.
The point you skip over is that the old system was based upon lower pay up front with earlier retirement later. Today, most get parity already. If you paid attention to the details on our military, you'd find that while their pay is up right now, a big chunk of it is in bonuses rather than base pay done intentionally to avoid the pension bomb that would happen 15, 12, 10 or even 8 years later.
#5
Hell, we already have one person in manufacturing and construction supporting 1.x persons in government.
Posted by: ed ||
02/07/2009 16:07
Comments ||
Top||
#6
The National Security Personnel System has addressed DOD civilian pay / pension issues by requiring that some of each annual up be in the form of a 1 time bonus rather than a base pay raise. Starting salaries are lower, too, to allow managers to reward better workers with bigger bonuses as well as raises.
I've seen one study specifically requested by DOD leaders that analyzes the effects of various policies re: bonus / raise awards to determine the cumulative effect over 20-30 years. So in the DOD / intel community, at least, this is being addressed for civilians as well as military.
#7
I retired out of industry after 30+ years. When I start collecting Social Security my pension goes down by what ever my SS is. There is no adjusting for inflation and my pension can disappear in the wink of an eye.
#8
there is a legit gripe about OT boosting retirement pay as well as guaranteed returns above market returns. The rest (as a biased opinion, I have a public gov't pension awaiting in 10+ years) is scolding public employees for decisions made in good faith years ago. As an engineer, I could've made $30K+ more each year in private (that was actually offered). Instead, I chose to stay, and secure a retirement with defined benefit and healthcare. I also paid FICA for any side work I did, which I'll never see...
We also received improved retirement bennies (.25%/year) in a 4 yr period where the City didn't want to give any raises. Again, that was accepted as an informed decision: is it worth the $ in retirement to forgo raises for four years? Yes, was my opinion. My pension is maxed at 90% (at 2.5%/yr of service) with health benefits. I would have to serve 36 years (do the math) to achieve that. Is that a good pension? Hell yeah. Would you take that versus the increased pay in private, but lack of job security? YMMV. Cops and Fire have the game rigged with Safety pension bennies (3%, retire at 50 or 55...), but if that's what's offered, and you were in Fire or Police occupations, and it was offered, would you take it?
Reform the system for new hires, OK, and see what you get for a workforce.
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/07/2009 17:11
Comments ||
Top||
#9
BTW - I meant the above only as a selfish perspective on Tech/Professional ranks. Why you would pay parks maintenance workers/trash pick up/clerical, etc. a pension and healthcare is something I can't defend (or support). Too easy to privatize, and eventually, they will
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/07/2009 17:27
Comments ||
Top||
#10
Frank, if they privatize I would bet that the unions would insist (and the current Congress and administration would agree) that the companies offer the same benefits and retirement plan as the government. Which would make it too expensive to privatize.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
02/07/2009 19:08
Comments ||
Top||
#11
I'd agree that the pressure would be there, but if you balance the pay of public vs private, with bennies? I can't think that in the post-stimulus tax climate, you'd be able to argue their union's argument. I haven't had a raise in quite a while, and you know what? I understand that. I'll likely not get one for quite a while, either. And I understand that too.
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/07/2009 19:54
Comments ||
Top||
I went on a bird drive over the weekend; not a bird walk but a two hundred mile bird drive. I drove up to Davis, California, then through some orchard, farm, and ranch country. I eventually finished at a National Wildlife Refuge.
Nice trip; the almond groves were blooming, ranch land was lush and green, lots of young calves with their mothers grazed in the pastures. And, of course, I saw many different bird species: 62 different species of birds including both Bald and Golden Eagles. One thing that I did not see from the time I left San Francisco until I returned was the Rock Dove, commonly known as the regular old city pigeon.
Now, San Francisco is overwhelmed with these disease-spreading, defecating, street-fouling parasites. Certain sections of some streets and parks are so fouled by these disgusting flying rats that people, just because of the literally filthy state of the surroundings, avoid the areas.
Pigeons could be easily eliminated. Most rural areas do not have a pigeon problem. Pigeons exist as a major problem in most large cities of the world because they have a fervent lobbying group that protests loud and long at any practical attempt to control their numbers.
This is how San Francisco, a city the pompously bills itself as "The city that knows how," deals with disagreeable situations. San Francisco had a special commission on pigeons. Here is how the San Francisco Chronicle described it: "After six months of study, a commission appointed by Mayor Willie Brown to deal with the pigeon problem, came up with the following three solutions."
Solution one was to buy Peregrine Falcons that eat pigeons. Solution two was to subsidize homeowners and business owners for "pigeon proofing" their properties. Solution three, increase the fines on people who feed pigeons in non-designated pigeon feeding places.
These solutions were suggested as additions to the three laws San Francisco already had in place for dealing with pigeons: (1) It is against the law to kill pigeons. (2) It is against the law to sterilize pigeons. And (3) it is against the law to live trap and transport the pigeons to a location outside of San Francisco. Hence the three additional suggestions arrived at by the blue ribbon solution committee are typical San Francisco non-starter non-solutions.
Peregrine Falcons are hardly like a Rotweiller or a junkyard dog. They not only don't stay put; they are very territorial and drive off any other Peregrine Falcons. This precludes their making any significant impact on the pigeon population. The second solution was to subsidize property owners for pigeon proofing their buildings. This would take taxpayer dollars from one person to pay someone else to pigeon proof their property. The end result would be the pigeons moving next door to the un-pigeon proofed property of the person whose tax money was used to pigeon proof the neighbor.
The third method was to increase the fines on people who feed pigeons. These are the very people who got the laws passed against doing anything realistic about pigeons to begin with.
In a city that does nothing about people urinating and defecating on the streets and sidewalks, sometimes publicly, fining people who feed pigeons wouldn't have a prayer of accomplishing anything but enriching a few public defenders who would have the juries in tears over a little old lady fined a thousand dollars for giving her leftover sandwich crust to a pigeon. So naturally, San Francisco's pigeon population is increasing to even more unmanageable proportions.
How effective do you think city officials will be in dealing with the problems of a human population and "the homeless," when these morons can't deal with the problem of pigeons?
Any twelve-year-old farm boy knows how to deal with pigeons -- that is why I didn't see any pigeons while driving through two hundred miles of ranch and farmland. Pigeons spread disease and have to compete for food with native birds, (pigeons are an import from North Africa). Not only do they have to compete for food; they have to deal with hawks, foxes, and other predators.
In the large cities of the world, pigeons live off handouts and scraps. The birds that compete for food in the country don't live in the city for a variety of reasons. They build nests in trees and grasslands. Pigeons don't really use nests. They put together a few sticks and nest on window and freeway ledges. Hawks, foxes, and other predators do not exist in cities so the pigeons thrive there. Pigeons are freeloading, parasitic, disease ridden, and disease spreading useless creatures that do very well in large metropolitan areas and can't survive on their own without protection and free food.
This background of the pigeon serves as an analogy with politics. Bird watching has become a very popular pastime in the United States in the past twenty years or so. Because of this vast new interest, many new bird books have been published. Almost all of them have what are called distribution maps for each species covered, which show the parts of the country where you can expect to find that particular species. These maps are color-coded and are generally done quite well.
Now to the crux of this discussion of pigeons: Take a countywide distribution map of the common pigeon whose freeloading habits I have detailed. Superimpose that distribution map over a map of the United States that shows (also color-coded) the counties of this country that voted for Al Gore in the election of 2000 and for John Kerry in 2004 and for Barack Obama. The maps overlap. They are almost an identical match.
I don't think that it is necessary to enlarge on this, but will add a bonus: The Norway Rat, also non-native to the United States, is also a disease spreading, filthy animal that thrives only in large metropolitan areas. The distribution map of the Norway rat is almost identical to that of the pigeon and, hence, that of the counties that voted for Gore, Kerry, and Obama. This is not one of those interesting coincidences that just happen to be. There is a direct relationship between those birds and animals that are freeloading parasites and those parts of the country that overwhelmingly vote Democrat.
You will occasionally find small populations of pigeons in rural areas. They are very different in life habits than their city cousins. Likewise there are Democrats in rural areas who are so completely different from the city Democrats that, if they actually knew what their metropolitan political peers were really like and what they stood for, would change their party immediately. Just as there are pigeons that live in rural areas that are not invasive or overwhelming in filthy habits. There are Democrats in small communities who are sincere believers in a Democrat party that does not exist anymore.
I really do dislike pigeons, but I have finally found a use for them: comparing them to Democrats or Democrats to pigeons. Pigeons are actually of more use since you can eat them.
#3
Simply confirms what we all know. Frisco is buried in a mountain of shit and populated by wombats (and pigeons). There's no other way that the best and brightest keep getting re-elected. That would be StretchFace, Babs, and Finestain. Add Zoe Lofgren for flavoring. Sheeeiiiit by the Double Dip.
#4
Cats, you need cats, then no pigeons just cats, then you need Dogs (To kill/runoff the cats)followed by tigers to kill off the dogs (And homeless street bums, then everybody can walk safely in their own individual steel wheeled cages for safety from thr tigers, and everyone will be happy.
Posted by: Rednek Jim ||
02/07/2009 12:38
Comments ||
Top||
Michael S. Steele, the newly elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, arranged for his 2006 Senate campaign to pay a defunct company run by his sister for services that were never performed, his finance chairman from that campaign has told federal prosecutors. Ahhhh, but -
Fabian offered the information last March as he was seeking leniency for himself during plea negotiations on unrelated fraud charges. It is unclear how extensively his claims have been pursued. Prosecutors gave him no credit for cooperation when he was sentenced in October.
Steele spokesman Curt Anderson said he did not know what information the federal agents were seeking, but he dismissed Fabian's allegations as patently false. "It's from, what, a convicted felon?" Front-Page QaPo stuff, this is. Oh look, I misspelled WaPo. Freudian slip?
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/07/2009
07:16 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
They will try to smear all good Republicans when they can. Keep their kind, ala McCain around for when they need "Republican" votes to push a bill through.
When the United States went into Iraq in 2003, Americans had a very limited understanding of the country. Political pundits tended to reduce Iraq to neat categories: an oppressed Shiite majority; a Sunni minority linked to Saddam Hussein's regime; and the Kurds, who had no interest in remaining in Iraq. The strife between these supposedly monolithic communities was often portrayed as permanent and violent. Thank you, Main Stream Media.
Much has happened since 2003. Iraq has emerged as a complex and sophisticated society with layers of identity and a diversity of loyalties and interests, all of which are in a dynamic state of change as the country makes an untidy yet fundamental transition from absolute dictatorship, through occupation and violence, to the beginning of a functioning parliamentary democracy.
The significance of the recent local elections must be understood within the context of this transition and change. What these elections reveal is far more than the relative strength or popularity of the various political players - though this is important and should be studied carefully. These elections have shown that, finally, those who refused to accept the new order and were determined to defeat it by rendering the country ungovernable through violence have come to realize that they have lost; that the political process is the only game in town and that it is in their best interest to play by the new rules.
Those who had descended upon Iraq to defeat the United States through terrorism, initially finding favor and support from the "rejectionists," have themselves been rejected by the Iraqi people. Their strategy to ignite a sectarian civil war has failed. And though they still pose a threat to security, those extremist Islamists were comprehensively and strategically defeated in a Muslim country, a development of profound significance. Don't forget your own Prime Minister and police and military forces assisted.
The elements in Iraq who thought that they could dominate and create a new form of dictatorship with the trappings of democracy have discovered that they must accept the principles of power sharing. Even including Mookie?
Furthermore, the elections have proved wrong those who had claimed that Iraqis could not comprehend democracy and therefore could not abide by its rules. The world watched as millions of ordinary Iraqis, proudly displaying their purple forefingers, declared their desire to choose their leaders, and the leaders themselves demonstrated their ability to make adjustments and compromises.
This is not to say that Iraq has finally and irrevocably arrived at a perfect form of democracy. Far from it. Iraq is still beset by daunting external and internal challenges. It does, however, mean that after defeating the extremists and terrorists among its people and demonstrating a repulsion for sectarianism and a will to stay united, Iraq is set to consolidate all that it has achieved, with considerable help from the United States and others. It was, perhaps, wise to delay the credit to the Americans until late in the piece.
At the most critical junctures of this transition, Iraqis have demonstrated their independence and unity. This has given them more confidence in their future. Those who thought that they could dominate Iraq from outside, directly or by proxy, surely have realized that their influence will always be limited.
Looking ahead, the exact speed with which American troops are withdrawn must be determined by joint consultations between the political and military leaders of both countries within the parameters of the status-of-forces agreement. One can only hope your intelligence will prevail.
But the continued engagement of the United States in Iraq will be vital to ensuring that what has been achieved is not jeopardized, though the emphasis will inevitably shift from military issues to economic and diplomatic matters.
Our nations have mutual interests in Iraq's future. The success of Iraq would be an outstanding success of American foreign policy. If Iraq succeeds, it has the potential to become one of the most important assets and allies of the United States. This is the beginning of a new era in our relationship, one that opens the way to a flourishing economic, cultural, political and diplomatic partnership that augurs well for the future.
The writer is Iraq's ambassador to the United States.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/07/2009
06:59 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
"More than 1330 of Islamist fighters had entered Palestine," said a threatening email received by many Israelis on Thursday night. The message warned that several prominent people would be abducted and killed. "This is jihad, victory or martyrdom," it concluded. The message was sent in English, Arabic and Hebrew from an email account registered on Google's Gmail service, which enables any person to open an account for free without requiring identification.
The exact number of people who received the message is unclear at the moment. It is also unknown whether the email was only sent to Israelis or to a wider variety of people. Many of those who received the message said it had been sent to their private email addresses which are unknown to external sources.
Surfers reported of additional message which arrived in their mailboxes on Friday morning, expanding the text included in the original message and offering them to join the organization as spies. Some of the emails included shocking images and links to YouTube videos. The additional emails were titled "The End of Israel", and were sent by a person calling himself "Youth of Islam" from the address i.am.hitler2099.
"The interesting thing is that I'm indeed an Israeli, but I live in New York. The email was sent to my hotmail account registered in California," said Ron from New York. Adam, another Israeli who received the message, was surprised to find it in his mailbox. "This is an address which rarely receives spam (junk mail), as it is only used for personal needs. I really dont understand how they could have known this address belongs to an Israeli," he said.
The email was sent on behalf of al-Qassam, Hamas' military wing, but since it was sent from an anonymous address it is unclear whether this was an official Hamas message or an enthusiastic supporter who decided to send the threatening messages of his own accord. The message was sent in a number of languages, and it appears that its senders used automatic translation services for the English and Hebrew versions as it includes many grammatical errors.
This is not the first time Hamas or people on its behalf use electronic means in order to threaten Israelis. During the fighting in Gaza, many Israelis received threatening text messages on their cell phones and messages sent via the Skype software from the Palestinian organization. Midoman strikes again? ;-)
The BBC's Allan Little reported on the Balkan wars of the 1990s, following at close range the fighting between Bosnian, Serb and Croat forces. But, one day in 1993, he came face to face with a different group, the "Bosnian mujahideen".
A police mole who infiltrated an alleged homegrown terror cell volunteered to attend a so-called terrorist training camp and act as the "eyes and ears" of the RCMP, an officer testified yesterday in a Brampton court.
Sgt. John McIntyre said Mubin Shaikh was never tasked to go to the two-week camp in December 2005, which was frequented by members of a group known as the Toronto 18. "He was an informer in December, he was providing information to us," McIntyre told Superior Court Justice John Sproat. "To my knowledge he attended the camp on his own volition."
McIntyre said he was "specifically" told to treat Shaikh as an informant, adding informants are "eyes and ears only. They are not to be directed."
Supt. Jamie Jagoe, who at the time was in charge of national security investigations in the province, also testified yesterday. He, too, said that in late 2005 Shaikh was treated as an informant a decision he "certainly agreed" with. Their evidence, along with that of other officers who have testified this week, supports the position of Crown prosecutors John Neander and Marco Mendicino, who argue Shaikh was not a state agent at the time of the camp. That designation, they say, came two months later when he signed a formal contract with the RCMP.
Shaikh's status during the camp is the subject of a motion by defence lawyers Mitchell Chernovsky and Faisal Mirza, who allege their client was entrapped by Shaikh. He was found guilty in September and they are seeking to have his charge stayed. The accused was 17 at the time of the offence and attended the camp in Washago, Ont., which took place under the close watch of more than 200 covert officers. The defence have also argued Shaikh committed some of the same criminal acts their client is accused of.
Court has heard Shaikh purchased supplies for the camp and provided transportation to it. Once there, he acted as a trainer, offered religious leadership, emphasized the militant nature of the jihad, helped set up military-style activities and provided firearms training with an illegal 9-mm gun.
A Muslim man who police said used to spy on officials for terrorists insurgents was killed in a drive-by shooting here Saturday morning.
Police said Dusa-ing Kumor, 48, was shot and killed by a pillion rider on his way back from his rubber plantation at 8:30 am. The shooting took place on a village road in Nada village in Tambon Rusoh in Narathiwat's Rusoh district. Police said Dusa-ing used to spy on the authorities for terrorists insurgents but had surrendered and undergone an orientation programme.
You opium dealers in white may pass. You guys in black hold it up, we have a court order to audit your books looking for a link to the Taliban.
Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan will be ordered to attack opium traffickers and drug facilities when there is proof of direct links to the Taliban, CBC News has learned. The new order follows a heated debate among NATO allies over whether the attacks could be declared war crimes.
Defence Minister Peter MacKay told CBC News soldiers would indeed target drug traffickers and their production facilities. "We're not going specifically to eradicate poppy crops, but we would go after proven drug traffickers with operations linked to the terrorists," he said.
MacKay, who is rumoured to be a candidate for the post of secretary general of NATO, said Afghanistan's police force will continue to have responsibility for "ordinary ... criminals."
"What we're trying to do is step up our activity to cut off the linkage that allows for the supply of this explosive material that has been so deadly and so devastating. There is no question that there is direct linkage between the funding of terrorist activity and the poppy crop and the funds that are elicited from that poppy crop."
Commanders on the ground will decide whether Canada has the means to carry out individual operations aimed at drug traffickers, and all will meet Canada's legal obligations, MacKay said.
The plan was criticized in Parliament on Friday. "Does the government believe that such military action will resolve the drug problem in Afghanistan and does the government support NATO orders that potentially put our soldiers at risk of violating international law?" NDP Foreign Affairs critic Paul Dewar asked.
Dewar said that the drug operation is not the kind of work Parliament approved when Canada's mission in Afghanistan was extended until 2011.
More than 2,500 Canadians are serving in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province, a volatile region where Taliban-led attacks against foreign troops are frequent. British, Dutch and American troops are also in the southern area as part of a multinational NATO-led task force.
The issue had divided the 26-member military alliance. Commanders on the ground had earlier refused an order from the organization's top commanders to target the drug trade because the NATO order failed to distinguish between drug traffickers and those who directly support the Taliban.
International law forbids nations from using military force against criminals, including drug traffickers.
Really? They have that in writing somewhere?
Drug traffickers with links to the insurgency could be considered a legitimate target.
The attacks would be legal if intelligence can prove links to the Taliban, said Payam Akhavan, a former UN war crimes prosecutor who now teaches at McGill University in Montreal. "The question of burden of proof really revolves around intelligence gathering," Akhavan said.
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Thursday there is "full agreement" within NATO's chain of command on the decision. "We have full agreement ... that we can go indeed after laboratories where the poppies are brought in and turned into heroin ... or after the guys and the people who bring in the precursors," he said.
So-called precursor chemicals are materials that help refine opium into heroin.
"NATO will not act outside international law. This nexus between the insurgency and the narcotics business leads to the killing of our soldiers in Afghanistan," he said. "That really is a price too high to pay for our soldiers."
#1
When I was taking economics, it was pretty much given that the Milton Friedman school trumped the Keynesian school of economics. Keynes is basically used to validate the policies of more socialist politicians but it injects so much inefficiency that it really doesn't work.
Imagine you have a forest for lumber production and a fire has come through and burned your best trees. A Keynesian forest manager would engage in a lot of resource redistribution in an attempt to make all the trees exactly the same size. A Friedman school manager would clear out all the dead wood, maybe chip it up and put it down as mulch, get rid if the scrawny trees and after providing for a better general environment, let things pretty much grow as they will. Keynes would tend to inhibit the fastest growers in order to boost the slower growers.
The end result is that the Keynesian manager ends up spending billions of dollars in forest micromanagement and ends up with little overall gain.
"A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe."
President Obama, Feb. 4
Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the President who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared, "We have chosen hope over fear." Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.
And so much for the promise to banish the moneychangers and influence peddlers from the temple. An ostentatious executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high positions. Followed by a treasury secretary who allegedly couldn't understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040. Followed by Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent.
The Daschle affair was more serious because his offense involved more than taxes. As Michael Kinsley once observed, in Washington the real scandal isn't what's illegal, but what's legal. Not paying taxes is one thing. But what made this case intolerable were the perfectly legal dealings that amassed Daschle $5.2 million in just two years.
He'd been getting $1 million per year from a law firm. But he's neither a lawyer nor a registered lobbyist. You don't get paid this kind of money to instruct partners on the Senate markup process. You get it for picking up the phone and peddling influence.
At least Tim Geithner, the tax-challenged treasury secretary, had been working for years as a humble international civil servant earning nonstratospheric wages. Daschle, who had made another cool million a year (plus chauffeur and Caddy) for unspecified services to a pal's private equity firm, represented everything Obama said he'd come to Washington to upend.
And yet more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.
It's not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections, one of which would set off a ruinous Smoot-Hawley trade war. It's not just the waste, such as the $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction.
It's the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus - and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress' own budget office says won't be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said.
Not just to abolish but to create something new - a new politics where the moneyed pork-barreling and corrupt logrolling of the past would give way to a bottom-up, grass-roots participatory democracy. That is what made Obama so dazzling and new. Turns out the "fierce urgency of now" includes $150 million for livestock insurance.
The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington. By the time the stimulus bill reached the Senate, reports The Wall Street Journal, pharmaceutical and high-tech companies were lobbying furiously for a new plan to repatriate overseas profits that would yield major tax savings. California wine growers and Florida citrus producers were fighting to change a single phrase in one provision. Substituting "planted" for "ready to market" would mean a windfall garnered from a new "bonus depreciation" incentive.
After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all Presidents tell - and that this President told better than anyone.
I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.
#2
I beg to differ. I have seen this clip on various websites - being praised as some sort of example of effective leadership. I say bullshit.
I've been a US Army Infantry officer, and I've more recently created and built a company staffed by foreign employees from a different culture (Thais, in my case) - and I will categorically condemn 90% of what goes on in this clip.
It would take much more time than I feel like expending on this embarrassment, but to just tick off a few items:
*As a leader, you criticize behaviors of people - not the people themselves.
*You don't condemn a group for the failings of just certain members of the group.
* You never criticize junior leaders in front of their subordinates.
*If you habitually call out subordinates to go mano-a-mano, you are eventually going to get your ass handed to you.
*Constructive criticism consists of identifying behaviors that need to be changed, and clarifying preferable alternatives - not simply saying "you are all fucked up".
I suggest that this NCO be referred to: http://www.howemilitary.com/JROTC/refereneces/schofield.htm
#3
I hear you 5x5. Unfortunately, we're not talking about the Royal Thai Army. We're talking about Muslim miscreants who WON'T FIGHT and are probably reporting their unit's activity to the enemy. This guy has probably lost good men to these slime balls and he's trying to shame them into getting off their dead asses.
#4
I don't know about military leadership methods, but this resonates w/the sentiment of US civilians who became disillusioned w/the fecklessness of the Iraqis we willingly expended blood and treasure to liberate.
Posted by: regular joe ||
02/07/2009 9:38
Comments ||
Top||
#5
He's lecturing Iraqi police, not a unit of the Iraqi Army.
#7
Lone Ranger, normally Praise Publicly Criticize Privately is the better way. When dealing with westerners or in a western setting.
First consider that unlike your multi-national corporation a) its not a business and b) this is in a monoculture (Arabs). And also consider that it is not a western culture.
Arab Culture practically demands "big gestures". Their society is very much to the "drama queen" end of the scale (completely opposite, say, stern Germans or taciturn Swedes), and as such, loud public berating is expected, and if you do NOT do it, then they that that as a tacit approval.
The video may be a reaction to repeated incidents of failure of the Arabs to respond to traditional western-style leadership.
I'm not excusing this, but pointing out that that there may be no need for an excuse -- the situation and culture there may be a completely valid reason for someone to tear into them 1960-boot-camp-style
#8
Here's my answer. The NCO's performance may have resonated with disgruntled westerners, but if anybody thinks that this "pep talk" motivated the Iraqi police audience in attendance, I will simply tell you that you are dreaming.
Had the NCO so much as picked out one single policeman who had done something right, and built an argument toward having the rest emulate that conduct, he might possibly have made some points.
And - for anyone who offered the argument that "well, the NCO might have lost some buddies to Iraqi police duplicity" - then this NCO should not be put in front of Iraqi police until he has worked through his personal "issues".
Professionalism as a leader is about suppressing your natural personal urges in order to maximize your ability to motivate your subordinates to accomplish the mission. It most certainly is not about venting your spleen, to get your personal frustrations exorcised.
Being an Irqai policeman is probably not a particularly rewarding job. There has not been much of an "Iraqi nation" to be proud of in recent memory.
I cannot imagine any Foreign Military Forces Training Team scenario in which I would endorse the leadership style depicted in the video clip.
#9
then this NCO should not be put in front of Iraqi police until he has worked through his personal "issues".
RANGER, no problem. I'll take this NCO along with his...... "personal issues." Have him throw his gear in my truck. As you well know, things... they be a bit different in the big suck than they are on Smoke Bomb Hill or Bldg 4 at Benning. Particularly after the 2nd or 3rd tour.
#10
I've been there, my buddies have done SPTTs, I understand the frustrations but I'm not sure as I would've used the same verbage or started disparaging police chiefs in front of their subordinates. If these were all Marines it would be one thing, but dealing w/iraqis is a little different. You can get them to do what you want but as w/most things it's all in how you say it. Threatening to kick someone's ass in a formation is not that big a deal to me, but as soon as you start calling out their officers in front of the men you're probably off target. Threaten to kill them, fine, do it behind closed doors - they'll get the picture. One of my buddies had a huge bowie knife he'd pull out on occassion behind closed doors for effect. Compliance & motivation from there on out was solid amongst the locals.
#11
Ha ! Standard plt. sarge lingo. Said and done frequently. Works for US soldiers because they have some pride and gumption. Won't work on these useless shitbags. They are ALL probably in Mahdi army, if you can call it an army. More like a criminal gang. Unfortunately, this gentleman probably got a ticket stateside, a reprimand in his file, or possibly a demotion. But I'll bet he doesn't give one shit. You could hear it in his voice. He's had a bellyful of these useless clowns and he's done with them. This should have happened at the highest level. Someone should have kicked the Clown Maliki in the sack, and after he got his breath back, said "listen up, F**knuts, we have a few issues to discuss." Course, nothing like this will happen, and nothing is gonna change in that shithole.
#12
Hooah Woozle! You hit it dead on. Having it video taped was NO accident, it was a message to higher. I remember an incident years ago on North Fort Lewis where, after repeated warnings, a SGM got fed up with soldiers bringing their dogs to the Bn area and leaving piles all around to step in. One morning a young trooper was walking his Doby near the orderly room and the dog took a bite outta the SMG's leg. The SGM instructed the young trooper to bring the dog to the PT formation the following day. At the formation the SGM called the young soldier and dog front and center and in front of the entire Bn, he pulled a Browning High Power and PCS'd the dog to dog heaven. Caused quite a stir at Fort Lewis and resulted in the immediate reassignment of the SGM to Fort Bragg and retirement. The SGM accomplished his point quite effectively however and the unit commander went on to make General. Pay attention to your NCO's.
#13
Besoeker, Smoke Bomb hill, now that brings back some old memories...
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
02/07/2009 14:08
Comments ||
Top||
#14
hell i agree with everything he says. And he was spot on about some of them probably being in the mahdi army, i just wished he would have kckd the guys ass whop kept laughing and talking
A stimulus bill will be passed, and it will be loaded with massive construction projects. Now, it has become very difficult to do big projects in this country because of the labyrinth of federal and state regulation and the propensity of anti-growth and environmental activists to delay projects by litigation. This ability to prevent development has been one of the great "accomplishments" of the left of the Democratic Party in the last generation, in symbiosis with the merely self-interested trial bar.
So, what if conservatives filed lawsuits to block, delay, harass, and vex every project funded by the stimulus bill? You know, use the tactics of the left to prevent the waste of taxpayer money. Bonus feature: Vexatious anti-development litigation aimed at stimulus projects would put the Democrats in a terrible position, because it would cause at least some of them to renounce, at least implicitly, the very regulation and tactics that have been promoted by their most anti-business constituents. We might even get some of these laws repealed.
#1
At the first sign of difficulty the funds will be redirected to midnight basketball or foodstamps. Actually, this may already be the Dems plan. Remember the redirected TARP payments to the automakers? The economy will right itself on it's own. Ben Stein and others have said they are already seeing signs of recovery on the horizon. This entire exercise is simply payoff dollars for Nov 4th and the upcoming 2012 election. The Administration must act quickly before the recovery is fully manifested, otherwise they won't be able to claim credit for it.
#2
Does anyone know of a situation where a stimulus has actually worked, other than under war time conditions, where draconian controls are in force.
I'm thinking about the Marshall Plan in Germany after the war. In England it set the country back thirty years as they decided to introduce a cradle to the grave welfare state with their Marshall Plan grant.
A Declaration of the people of United States of America
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We the undersign clearly and without reservation remove our consent to any obligation or bonding of ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren to the measures presently being mishandled by those claiming such authority of obligation in the series of acts referred to as economic, stimulus, or recovery within the domain commonly referred to as the District of Columbia in this year of 2009. Any holder in any bonds or obligations issued in this process are forewarned and placed on notice that when the governed have removed the governing from their position of responsibility that they have so willing abandoned for their political ends, we will not honor such debts or recognize any court or order to honor such said debts. Further, possession of property derived from the embezzlement of the nationâs wealth and fortune in this process, places such bond holders as knowing participants in the conspiracy to the act.
Get a few million legit signatures on that, get it viral on the net, and those who buy the bonds are on notice that they have the value of Fannie Mae subprime loans. Think the Treasury will have no problem selling the paper?
#6
I've heard that currently takes an average of 68 months to get an Environmental Impact Statement done for a transportation project. This is going to be interesting, in a twisted kind of way.
Posted by: Matt ||
02/07/2009 12:24
Comments ||
Top||
#7
There is little construction in the $800B spending bill. The largest portion is income redistribution to buy loyal Dem party voters.
Posted by: ed ||
02/07/2009 13:13
Comments ||
Top||
A woman who claimed her house was set on fire because she supported President Barack Obama and her boyfriend have been charged with first-degree arson.
Forsyth County Chief Investigator Steve Anderson said Friday that 47-year-old Pamela Graf and her boyfriend, 46-year-old Steve Strobel, are being held in different jails. Graf is in Forsyth County and Strobel in Barrow County, where he was charged with obstruction of justice in the case earlier this week.
Graf's home burned on Jan. 18 while she was in Washington, D.C., to attend the inauguration. Officials found spray-painted graffiti that included a racial slur and ruled the fire an arson.
Anderson says he doesn't know if either has an attorney. He says the maximum sentence for first-degree arson is 20 years. The investigation is continuing.
#2
There will be a lot more of these fake "crimes" as BHO's fortunes dip, in order to cast all people in the center and right as Nazis, just like there were a bunch of fake "racist incidents" on campus in the late '90's.
What happens in the left's indoctrination centers (education industry) today becomes the reality in society at large in 5-10 years.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
02/07/2009 6:43
Comments ||
Top||
#3
A woman who claimed her house was set on fire because she supported President Barack Obama and her boyfriend have been charged with first-degree arson.
So she supported Obama and her boyfriend? That's some mighty fine writing there...
A DOCTOR who helped a US mother of six fall pregnant with octuplets is now facing a state investigation.
California woman Nadya Suleman, 33, already had six children when she fell pregnant with six boys and two girls that were born on January 26. Suleman told US TV show Today that her fertility specialist doctor provided IVF treatment for all her 14 children.
The octuplets were born prematurely and aren't expected to be released from hospital for weeks. Suleman's other children are aged between two and seven.
In the Today interview Suelman said she hasn't ever been on welfare and doesn't plan to be and will instead rely on family, friends and her church to help her.
#1
Due to an injury in 1999, Suleiman has received several hundred thousand dollars in workman's compensation? She can now raise 6, NO WAIT! 14 kids but can no longer work? Ok, I get it.
Solution:
a. Workman's compensation terminated.
b. Impregnator Doctor marries Suleiman and takes care of everybody, pays all medical bills and reimburses all workman's compensation paid.
c. Impregnator Doctor and Suleiman pic on front cover of next JAMA.
#2
I think emerging international law prevents one from doing item (c) there ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/07/2009 12:11
Comments ||
Top||
#3
Name. We need a name of this fertility specialist. Her relatives already lost a house to foreclosure keeping her boat afloat. This whole deal has a funny smell to it. She did get $165,000 in workman's comp which obviously needs to be rescinded and repaid. The estimate for her hospital bills is heading toward $400,000 and will be well byond that. She had 46 hospital staff in attendance during the delivery period. The kids, at 1 lbs.+ each, will be in hospital for weeks yet. The cost to care and raise 14 kids under seven years old will be staggering. What is going on ? What were the plans here ?
Posted by: ed ||
02/07/2009 12:47
Comments ||
Top||
#5
Something about these people who go through all the fertility treatments and wind up with quads, or worse six or seven babies. If they want childern that bad why don't they just adopt. Or is all about them wanting the "experience". It is a sore subject with me.
#6
will instead rely on family, friends and her church to help her.
In a nutshell, innit? For her, it isn't about the children. Her obsession is with pregnancy and care of the progeny is someone else's problem. She has been pregnant for the better part of eight years.
Why a Dr. would, time after time, impregnant so obviously disturbed a women is unforgivable. above all, do no harm.
She has been on disability for all the children. Who paid for the in vitro? It's about $15,000 a pop.
Of all the various treatments for depression, I'm not familiar with pregnancy as a fast-track cure. Pregnancy is the kind of bad decision one makes when clinically depressed. Not a treatment.
The tragedy is that when she finds the reality of all these children does not ease the "lonlieness" of her pathology, she is a prime candidate for suicide. And for taking her babies with her.
None of this will ease her depression (with psychotic breaks, I would venture) and the children are products of an obsession, not love.
All 14 are about 3 months away from ward-of-state when all the facts and deficiencies come to light. And it's going to get ugly on a rights vs. capabilites platform.
Twice today, CNN has done short segments on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's declaration that
To give the proposed economic stimulus plan some perspective, "if you started the day Jesus Christ was born and spent $1 million every day since then, you still wouldnt have spent $1 trillion."
Both times they said the claim checked out, the second time with a famous mathematician (although I think they just needed a calculator).
Christ's birth in year zero one, times 365, times 2009, gets you 733,285,000,000, or a bit over $733 billion. (Yes, I'm leaving out leap years.) You're not even three-quarters of the way there. (Politifact calculates from 4 B.C.)
Yes, the stimulus is less than a trillion$819 billion in the version passed by the House. But that's still a bigger total than a million a day since the first Christmas.
#1
Interesting trivia I suppose, but I'd rather he spend his time holding Republicans (Collins and Spector) together in the Senate as John Boehner did in the House.
#5
Recently, I saw a short piece about the New Hampshire legislature debating a bill that would back hand the federal government in the face (see here). Now, there appears to be some others and I am not sure what all this means...but there is something bubbling under the surface. Perhaps one of these states has 'heard' something disconcerting or seen language in some proposed federal bailout of the states. Whatever it is, it is significant enough for them to fire a warning shot directly across the bow of the USS Obama.
This is from the NH legislation:
"....That any Act by the Congress of the United States, Executive Order of the President of the United States of America or Judicial Order by the Judicatories of the United States of America which assumes a power not delegated to the government of United States of America by the Constitution for the United States of America and which serves to diminish the liberty of the any of the several States or their citizens shall constitute a nullification of the Constitution for the United States of America by the government of the United States of America."[emphasis added]
Ouch! That's gonna leave a mark.
And this is from a trusted website I use to keep informed:
This week, various state legislatures introduced bills intended to revive one of the most important gifts left to us by our forefathers state sovereignty.
No, you wont hear about this on CNBC or Fox News. In fact, we just got word of it a few hours ago. All the way from Hawaii to New Hampshire Georgia and California, nine states have so far introduced bills that would reaffirm state sovereignty as laid out in the ninth and tenth amendments to the constitution.
Now like I said we just heard about this news ourselves. And we havent had enough time to really decide what it all means but there is some strong wording in a few of these bills, to say the very least
From Arizonas bill, if the President or any other federal entity attempts to institute martial law or its equivalent without an official declaration in one or more of the states without the consent of that state individual members of the military return to their respective states and report to the Governor until a new President is elected [emphasis added]
Aswat al-Iraq: Two wanted men were captured while C4 explosives were seized and an improvised explosive device dismantled near a mosque in northern Basra province on Friday, a police spokesman said. "Two wanted persons were arrested during a search raid in different areas of Basra," the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. "The bomb squad seized a bag containing 25 kg of C4 explosives and TNT and defused an IED weighing 5 km in the area of al-Ablah, (8 km) northern Basra, near the mosque of Ali al-Safi, a top aide of Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani," the source said.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: Iraqi Insurgency
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Why were we using depleted Uranium in a bombing campaign in Kosovo? I thought that munition was designed for use against armor?
How is DU supposed to cause cancer as just scattered residue of expended munitions? It's a heavy metal and I would not want to be ingesting it, but is it worse than lead, or mercury etc?
#5
...Sigh...once more for the idiots who keep trying to turn this into another anti-American horror story: Yes, DU gives off dust on impact. Yes, it does give a short-ranged, very brief burst of gamma radiation on impact. And NO, those cannot harm you, because if you are close enough to breathe the dust or absorb the rads, YOU WILL BE DEAD ANYWAYS FROM THE IMPACT.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
02/07/2009 17:12
Comments ||
Top||
The UN says that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) must set all hostages free, following this week's release of six men. Oh, yeah. They'll get right on it. Or...what? Now now, let's not be hasty ...
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Eric, you know these people. We need a feel good story to counter the bailout bumout, LimBush and that disgusting Fox TV. How can we.....make this happen? Remember, money is no object.
The African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council decided Thursday (February 5th) in Addis Ababa to impose sanctions on members of Mauritania's ruling military junta, local and international press reported. Measures include restricting travel by military and civilian members of the junta, refusing visas and exercising control over junta members' bank accounts, AFP quoted council chairman Manuel Domingos Augusto as saying. The AU decision will be passed on to the UN Security Council, he added, noting, however, that despite the sanctions, the AU will maintain a dialogue with the junta to restore constitutional order to Mauritania.
In related news, junta leader General Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz announced his candidacy for president at a weekly government meeting on Thursday, APA reported. Speaking at a press conference this week, opposition Rally of Democratic Forces (RFD) leader Ahmed Ould Daddah said military officers should be ineligible to run in the country's June 6th presidential elections.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
ION AFRICA, WORLD MIL FORUM > IIRC/IIUC CHINA GIVES ANGOLA US$1.0BILYUHN ECONOMIC ASSISTANCE LOAN [Artic- Angola has recvd US$5.0BILYUHN in Loans from CHINA since 2002]???
BEIJING missed CNN's segment on China's, Japan's, and ASIA's serious econ troubles ala US-GLOBAL RECESSION, didn't we!?
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Friday voiced concern about a Pakistani court''s decision to free Abdul Qadeer Khan, who operated an alleged nuclear proliferation network. They had to wait until Bush was out of office and they had a feel for how mushy B.O. is...
"I am very much concerned and will have more to say about that," Clinton said when asked for reaction during a brief appearance before the news media with visiting Philippine President Gloria Arroyo. Maybe he should go for a stroll in Fort Mahmoud Park, huh?
Gordon Duguid, a State Department spokesman, told reporters earlier that "it would be unfortunate if the court released him," citing the "serious proliferation risk" that he represents. "The proliferation support that Khan and his associates provided to Iran and North Korea has had a harmful impact on ... international security and will for years to come," Duguid said. Duguid said the US government could not immediately confirm the information with the Pakistani government, whose members were not reachable as they had begun observing the Friday sabbath. In Islamabad, a Pakistani court Friday declared Khan a free man, five years after he was effectively put under house arrest for allegedly operating a proliferation network. The chief justice of the Islamabad High Court, Sardar Mohammad Aslam, made the decision after a closed session with lawyers for the government and Khan -- revered by many Pakistanis as the father of the country''s atomic bomb. The 72-year-old Khan has been effectively under house arrest in Islamabad since February 2004, when he confessed on television to sending nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea, although he later retracted his remarks. Military ruler and then president Pervez Musharraf pardoned Khan in 2004, but he was kept at his residence, guarded by troops and intelligence agents. On January 12, the United States unveiled sanctions against Khan, 12 associates and three firms linked to his nuclear proliferation network. The sanctions forbid the 16 people and firms from having business dealings with the US government or private US companies in what the State Department says is a renewed bid to make sure the network has been shut down entirely.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
Its not like he was being punished. Releasing him isn't much different than what was already going on anyway, I suspect.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
02/07/2009 2:11
Comments ||
Top||
#2
The chief justice of the Islamabad High Court, Sardar Mohammad Aslam....
Rahm, Rahm, Eric......wake up, wake up, jot down that name. He's a Dem right? Did he pay his income taxes? Names, names, we need names.
(AKI) - Fighting and instability in Sudan is likely to escalate dramatically if the peace agreement that ended the north-south civil war unravels. The landmark 2005 accord is coming under the pressure from insufficient mutual trust, fighting in the western Darfur region, and the possible war crimes indictment of president Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, a senior United Nations official has warned.
"The humanitarian implications of a relapse into conflict and chaos throughout Sudan are, to put it mildly, sobering," UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon's special representative for Sudan Ashraf Jehangir Qazi told the Security Council late on Thursday.
Qazi was giving the top UN decision-making body a briefing on Suduan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that in 2005 ended the two-decades-long conflict between the north and south, in which at least 2 million people were killed and some 4.5 million more driven from their homes.
Presenting Ban's latest report to the 15-member body, Qazi stressed that making unity attractive to the people of Southern Sudan, where a referendum on possible secession is due in 2011, should remain the focus of the parties and the international community over the next two years.
"Without any exaggeration, 2009 could be a make or break year for the CPA and for the prospect of peace in Sudan," he said.
The report called for "a tangible peace dividend," including the provision of basic public services, particularly for the people in the south and in the border areas, to convince them of the benefits of remaining in a united country.
Qazi also repeated the need for border demarcation between the northern and southern regions and a focus on disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration.
In his report, Ban expressed concern that some Sudanese officials had warned Sudan may seek to "redefine its relationship" with the UN mission to the country should an arrest warrant be issued against al-Bashir by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Darfur.
Qazi said the impact of an ICC decision on the CPA and the Darfur situation would need to be discussed. "We have received assurances of protection and cooperation from Sudanese authorities at the highest levels," he stressed.
"But these assurances have been qualified by warnings about public outrage. There have also been public threats and incitement to violence," he said.
"Political and security circumstances permitting, the UN is committed to continue its work in accordance with the mandate entrusted to it by the Security Council," he added.
The UN mission in Sudan is charged with enforcing the CPA.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[3 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Sudan
The Israel Air Force struck targets in southern Gaza on Friday a few hours after Palestinian militants fired two rockets from the coastal strip into Israel. An Israel Defense Forces spokesman confirmed the air strikes. The spokesman said the targets included four smuggling tunnels, as well as a weapons storage facility, which caused a series of secondary explosions to be heard in the area.
Hamas, which controls Gaza, and Palestinian witnesses said no one was wounded in the IAF strikes.
The first of the rockets fired by Gaza militants Friday hit the Sha'ar Hanegev region, the IDF said. The attack caused no casualties or damage. Three hours later, a rocket hit near the coastal city of Ashkelon. No casualties were reported in that attack either.
An IDF spokesman said the first rocket was fired from the northern Gazan town of Beit Lahiya.
On Thursday evening, IDF soldiers killed a Palestinian militant who approached the Gaza-Israel border and drew a grenade. The grenade subsequently exploded as a result of the soldiers' gunfire, killing the militant.
No virgins for you!
There were no casualties among the troops, who were from the Golani infantry brigade. The incident took place near Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha. The troops later searched the area from which the militant had come, Army Radio said, then returned to Israeli territory.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[2 views]
Top|| File under: Hamas
#1
The grenade subsequently exploded as a result of the soldiers' gunfire, killing the militant.
Bet that was a very long 4 seconds of a short life.
Posted by: ed ||
02/07/2009 12:45
Comments ||
Top||
The dramatic testimony from survivors of a draconian Thai military policy of towing Rohingya boat people out to sea and leaving them there has drawn international attention to the plight of one of the world's most oppressed people.
So what is it that is driving so many Rohingya, a Muslim minority from the western-most part of Burma, to flee in rickety boats in the hope of finding refuge elsewhere?
The term Rohingya refers to a distinct, Muslim ethnic group living in northern Rakhine state, along the border with Bangladesh. Northern Rakhine state is one of the poorest and most isolated in Burma. They are thought to be descended from Arab and other Muslim traders who travelled and settled there more than 1,000 years ago. They speak a dialect of Bengali similar to that spoken in the Cox's Bazaar region of Bangladesh.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
For a start, the Rohingya are denied citizenship under Burma's 1982 citizenship law, which leaves them out of the 135 ethnic groups officially recognised by the state. The official view of the Burmese military is that they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh or their descendants.
Michael Phelps has been suspended from competition for three months by USA Swimming, the latest fallout from a photo that showed the Olympic great with a marijuana pipe.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
The leader of Hizbullah's parliamemtary bloc, Mohammad Raad, rejected calls to implement the Arab Peace Initiative, urging Arab and Islamic nations to unite in their stance against Israel. "There must be a review and reconsideration of stands against those who pursue with placing bets on a settlement that would legalize the Zionist occupation of Palestine," Raad said at the opening session of the seventh pan-Arab Islamic conference in Beirut.
"This option [peace with Israel] cannot be promoted in the Arab and Islamic worlds anymore," cautioned Raad.
Hizbullah's second in command Sheik Naim Qassem similarly declared that Israel's recent assault on Gaza effectively "buried" any future prospects for peace.
"We, in Lebanon, have gone through an experience that our Palestinian brethren had witnessed and benefited from it in Gaza. Accumulation of experience would lead to more victories," Raad pledged.
With Israel still reeling from the international backlash prompted by its massive assault on Gaza in December and January, Raad warned against further military and diplomatic blows that would mark any renewed threat to Lebanon.
"Any imbecility that the Israeli enemy may commit in Lebanon would reflect badly on them," he said.
Raad hinted at the military readiness of the resistance, in the event of future hostilities. "What we have prepared for the enemy is more than its military commanders can imagine," Raad added. "Safeguarding the resistance and its principles is a responsibility we all share. This requires fortifying our principles so that they do not divert," Raad explained.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: Hezbollah
#1
Doesn't any read the papers? They have The One on their side now, they don't need no stinking peace.
UNRWA informed the IDF on Friday that it is suspending its humanitarian aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip after Hamas stole supplies the United Nations organization had transferred to the Palestinian territory.
The seizure of the 200 tons of supplies took place Thursday night and in response, UNRWA officials informed the Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration that it was suspending its deliveries to the Gaza Strip until further notice. The supplies confiscated included flour and other basic commodities.
The transfer of 40 truckloads of humanitarian supplies - some 800 tons - planned for Sunday has already been canceled.
Officials in Jerusalem said the announcement by UNRWA constituted a UN approval and confirmation of Israel's position, that Hamas is using the Palestinian population in gaza "cruelly and cynically" and is solely responsible for hardship there.
Welfare and Social Services Minister Isaac Herzog, who was appointed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the end of Operation Cast Lead to coordinate Israel's humanitarian effort in Gaza, told Israel Radio that theft of humanitarian aid exposes the true face of Hamas and of its supporters in Iran.
It was the second time this week that Hamas stole UN supplies transferred to the Gaza Strip for impoverished Palestinians.
The first incident took place Tuesday evening when armed Hamas police broke into a Gaza warehouse packed with UN humanitarian supplies and seized thousands of blankets and food packages.
The seizure took place after UNRWA staff earlier refused to hand over the aid supplies to the Hamas-run Ministry of Social Affairs.
"We received a phone call this morning from UNRWA officials that they have decided to suspend their deliveries after Hamas stole supplies from one of the organization's warehouses in the Gaza Strip," explained a senior official.
The official said that the IDF noticed the trend already during Operation Cast Lead last month, when despite the fighting, Israel transferred close to 80 trucks a day to the Strip.
Nuaf Atar, a Fatah operative captured during the operation, told the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) that Hamas government officials "took over" humanitarian aid Israel allowed in to the Gaza Strip and sold it when it was supposed to be distributed for free.
UNRWA Spokesman Sami Mshasha confirmed that the organization had suspended its deliveries to Gaza after Hamas stole its supplies.
"This is the second incident this week and this is a point of great concern for us and sets a bad precedent and if we are to provide services to people in Gaza after such an ordeal we need assurances that our work will be unimpeded," Mshasha said. "We cannot subjugate our work to the Ministry of Social Affairs in Gaza."
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[3 views]
Top|| File under: Hamas
#1
"Officials in Jerusalem said the announcement by UNRWA constituted a UN approval and confirmation of Israel's position, that Hamas is using the Palestinian population in gaza 'cruelly and cynically' and is solely responsible for hardship there.
At which point the UNRWA will resume shipments as any confirmation of Israel's position will never be countenanced.
Posted by: Marilyn Glomotch6962 ||
02/07/2009 2:29
Comments ||
Top||
While the world celebrates the planned closure of Guantanamo there is another US military prison full of terror suspects -- at the Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan. How Obama deals with the camp will indicate how serious he is about breaking with his predecessor.
Posted by: ed ||
02/07/2009 14:09
Comments ||
Top||
#4
I hear those shipping containers are just piling up in the US; no return cargos, not even scrap paper anymore, and not worth the cost of shipping them empty. So, fill them up and ship them to China, freight pre-paid.
#5
A man I knowBuilt a very noe underground hom from 3 huge cargo containers, he dug a pit, settled them inside, backfilled and cut doors between, I've been in it on a tour, very nice, damn near no heating and cooling bills. Light comes through inside polished tubes about 3 feet across, which double as ventilation ducts.
Posted by: Rednek Jim ||
02/07/2009 19:06
Comments ||
Top||
#6
Dammit, my rednek spelling cut in
A very nice underground home.
Posted by: Rednek Jim ||
02/07/2009 19:10
Comments ||
Top||
Aswat al-Iraq: Iraqi army forces found to unidentified bodies in Diala province on Friday, according to an official military source.
"Iraqi army soldiers found two bodies of people aging 20-30 years old in the area of al-Saadiya, (35 km) southern Khanaqin district," the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. "There were no signs of the bodies having been shot. We don't know how they were killed so far but the investigations will show all details," the source added.
He said that the two corpses were left in the open for several days before they were found.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: Iraqi Insurgency
#1
He said that the two corpses were left in the open for several days before they were found.
"Hey, Mamoud. What's that Smell?" "What smell, Abdulla?" "Something smells REALLY bad.". "It always smells really bad here, Abdulla.?
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
02/07/2009 13:28
Comments ||
Top||
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has taken credit for paving the way for this week's hostage releases in Colombia. Doesn't that kinda hint that he was involved in the hostage-taking? Or at least in the holding?
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
Oil prices fell below $41 a barrel Friday in Asia as soaring U.S. unemployment and bleak corporate results kept investors pessimistic about demand for crude. But price at the pump is acting more like it's $60 a barrel...
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
WORLD MILITARY FORUM > WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM[WEF-Davos]: WORLD FACES "WATER BANKRUPTCY/INSOLVENCY" IN 20 YEARS [Year 2029-30]/70 OF WORLD'S MAJOR RIVER SYSTEMS ARE NEARLY EXHAUSTED???
D *** NG IT, MAYBE THE FUTURE OWG-NWO WANTS TO MAKE ANTI-SPACE ROCK GMD-SPACE DEFENSE CALC ERRORS AND HAVE COMET APOPHIS SLAM INTO THE MOON ANYWAYS!
* AIRPLANE Comedy Movie > POINT COUNTERPOINT > GUEST = "THEY BOUGHT THEIR PLANE/FLIGHT TICKETS FAIR AND SQUARE - I SAY, LET 'EM CRASH"!
#2
OOOOPSIES, forgot to add that WEF believes that, besdies geopol and environ chaos and anarchies, THE MARKET PRICE OF WATER = PRICE OF WATER-BASED INVESTMENTS WILL BEOME MORE SIGNIFICANT OR IMPORTANT THAN THE MARKET PRICE OF OIL???
#3
I use the McDonald's inflation standard. When it was 15 cents for a hamburger, or fries, or a small drink (total 45 cents), gas was running about 40 cents a gallon were I was [not counting 'gas wars' that occasionally broke out dropping it to the low 30s]. Today the 'All American' meal is over $2, a gallon of gas is back to about the same [and that's with a heck of a lot of local/state/fed tax that wasn't there so long ago].
The quality of the country's primary education is so substandard that around 70 percent of students who complete the five-year primary level education are unable to read, write or calculate properly.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
They probably write with islamic ie arabic alphabet. A pure idiocy since it does not have vowels (and consonants are not that easy to discern) not a big problem in Arabic who has only three vowels but a big one in about every other language who have a dozen or so when you include variations (noted through diacritics in French.
When Mustafa Kemal had a new latin-based alphabet designed he toured through Turkey giving conferences and the end of them he picked people in the audience and made them write their names and simple words. Guess what? They succeeded.
#4
This puts them on a par with the average education of delegates to the General Assembly of the United Nations. (And remember that the delegates from many western nations hold doctorates, when you figure that average.)
This is why Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) was hired by the UN to make picture books for illiterate delegates, explaining such complex issues as nuclear proliferation.
General Assembly delegates have on average 70 potentially lethal weapons, such as blow guns, knives, and poisons, confiscated from them on a daily basis by UN security. They annual vote that their favorite snack food is "fried locusts", and have only narrowly lost votes requiring "drums" to be one of the translation languages offered to delegates.
Now ask yourself why anyone in their right mind would want the UN to have actual authority in running the world?
#6
JFM - the Japanese have a pictographic alphabet with thousands of characters PLUS two phonetic alphabets and they have 99% literacy. On the other hand, Japanese culture places a very high value on education.
I juts wanted to emphasize that the use of an alphabet who is completely unadequate for a language has an influence on literacy (litteracy rates in Turkey went up fast after switching alphabets) and the role of Islam in illiteracy since ot shoves arabic alphabet in the throats of non-Arabic speaking populations.
I don't know Japanese but in Chinese it seems that the number of basic ideograms is relatively limited and the others are obtained by composition (where is Chang Fei when you need him) and their meaning can be deduced from the components.
#11
the Japanese have a pictographic alphabet with thousands of characters PLUS two phonetic alphabets and they have 99% literacy. On the other hand, Japanese culture places a very high value on education.
True, and trailing daughter #2 (the non-artistic one) is having great fun learning all that in her Japanese course at the university. But, while the Japanese are to be congratulated on their wonderfully high literacy rate, there are only 400-500 kanji in common usage, and those considered highly educated have a vocabulary of about 2000 characters. Also, there is a reason graphic novels are so popular over there -- reading non-picture books is hard work, and people, even the educated, quickly forget the kanji they don't use frequently... to the point that when an American colleague of Mr. Wife's, who was then working in Japan, asked one of his local people for help reading the newspaper, the Tokyo university graduate in question was unable to do so and advised him to wait for the television report. Very much like the way Americans test better in history and civics when they graduate from high school than than when they have been at university for a few years.
As for Bangladesh, some 50% of the population is female whose ability to read and do sums is deemed by the culture as unnecessary anyway... which only leaves about half of the male students as certifiable cabbage heads. ;-) Really, they ought to do as the Communist Chinese did: create a simplified alphabet that all can use to learn to read and write at a basic level (Mao's Little Red Book is written for kindergarteners! says my snobbish friend from Taiwan, who of course was taught the purist Mandarin), then let only the most advanced ones learn to read texts in classic Bengali Sanskrit-derivative and in Arabic as a reward for their diligence and cleverness. Or, as Kemal Ataturk did, transliterate to the Latin alphabet, and give the students a leg up in the world beyond their borders.
Anonymoose, where did you hear about the absurd weapons fetish of the UN delegates?
Presidential Determination No. 2009-15 of January 27, 2009
Unexpected Urgent Refugee and Migration Needs Related To Gaza
Memorandum for the Secretary of State
By the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, including section 2(c)(1) of the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1962 (the ``Act''), as amended (22 U.S.C. 2601), I hereby determine, pursuant to section 2(c)(1) of the Act, that it is important to the national interest to furnish assistance under the Act in an amount not to exceed $20.3 million from the United States Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance Fund for the purpose of meeting unexpected and urgent refugee and migration needs, including by contributions to international, governmental, and nongovernmental organizations and payment of administrative expenses of Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration of the Department of State, related to humanitarian needs of Palestinian refugees and conflict victims in Gaza.
You are authorized and directed to publish this memorandum in the Federal Register.
#6
Not only is this money old news, but its got nothing to do with moving Hamas vermin stateside.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
02/07/2009 1:24
Comments ||
Top||
#7
I wouldn't be at all surprised to see special immigration status granted these people. This is only the beginning. Charges against USS COLE Terrorist Abu al-Nashiri have been dropped. USS Cole victim families (all but one) got a smoochy, smoochy visit with The One. In his book, Dreams of My Father, he said "If the political winds turn, I will stand with the Muslims." The GWOT is over and he'll be releasing all of the detained terrorists soon. It won't be him however, it will be Eric Holder siting "the law." And we all know The One must follow "the law" Anshallah.
Instead of sitting, go and speak around you (that includes news organizations) that he is allowing into the states those people who handled candy on 9/11. Then tell about probability that given how much they hate the US they perpetrate acts of terror or help in their perpetration.
#13
It doesn't, per se, indicate they are allowed into US. It also doesn't say they aren't. With Hillary running State, ask yourself if Visas for these scum would be permitted. She'd give them a first class ticket and a grant of say $10,000 per head to get them settled. And probably let the PeaNut from Georgia be in charge of the relocation plans. It really indicates one thing which has beeen obvious for so long. Bambi is a Muzz. He favors them. He's going to coddle them. He's going to allow them to hit us again. They bought him & he's got to deliver. If you're still a doubter, just sit and watch. And, mebbe you oughta start drawing up plans for a bunker in your back yard, similar to the nuke shelters popular in the 50's.
Posted by: Rednek Jim ||
02/07/2009 11:53
Comments ||
Top||
#15
This most obviously runs counter the our national interest and our national security. The people of Gaza wanted war and they got it. If allowed into this country or any other country they will certainly engage in the kinds of terrorist activities for which they are famous in Gaza. Can we start impeachment proceedings now?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/07/2009 12:54
Comments ||
Top||
#16
Anything to enhance the Democrat majority.
We have a new contestant in the Worst President Ever Contest.
Posted by: Baba Tutu ||
02/07/2009 12:55
Comments ||
Top||
#17
In office barely 19 days, and the seeds of disaster are already well sown. This idiot will cause the needless death of thousands if not millions. My only prayer is that he screws the pooch so badly that the Democrat Party is destroyed.
Whatever steps that are needed to rebuild this once great nation after he is gone, are going to be a terrible hardship for several generations. I sometimes despair, he could be the end for my beloved America.
May the Marxists and Islamists reap what they have sown. When the pendulum swings back the other way, there shall be no mercy for these creatures.
#18
Yeah, and Midoman, I could have told you that would happen. You were fun for a while but if all you can deliver is juvenile bathroom humor it gets very boring very quickly and the mods at this site have very little patience for it. Post something intelligent that pertains to the thread, if you can, and they might let you even if they disagree. If you can't just shut up and read. Who knows? You might learn something.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/07/2009 13:20
Comments ||
Top||
#19
hell no don't send them too GA just send Jimmy Carter too them
#20
My God, what has Obama done? We are F*$ked!!! Even Egypt keeps the Palios out, they know how screwed up they are. We are in big trouble.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
02/07/2009 14:04
Comments ||
Top||
#21
Only 1442 days to go.
Posted by: ed ||
02/07/2009 14:23
Comments ||
Top||
#22
On January 27, Israel had already pulled back from its invasion of Gaza after being attacked for months via Qasom missiles from Gaza.
However, Hamas and the Palestinians had again begun attacking Israel on January 27, the day that President Barak Obama issued the order below to bank roll Gaza which is controlled by Hamas.
(AKI) - A suicide bomber blew up a vehicle packed with explosives at a checkpoint in Khyber Agency bordering Afghanistan, wounding seven people on Friday, an official said. The bombing took place in the town of Jamrud, through which trucks pass carrying supplies for Nato forces in Afghanistan.
A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the blast, which damaged other vehicles nearby.
The spokesman threatened to sever the NATO supply route for good unless the Pakistan government halts military operations against the group.
Traffic was suspended on the crucial road across the Khyber into Afghanistan on Tuesday after militants blew up a bridge near the near the Ali Masjid fort landmark. Militants have in the past few months stepped up attacks against NATO convoys in the Khyber Pass.
A suicide attack in NWFP's troubled Swat district on Friday wounded at least thirteen members of Pakistan's security forces, reportedly leaving six in a critical condition. Before the bombing, three rockets were fired against a police station, Pakistan's Geo News reported.
Geo News said periodic fire continued in Swat on Friday, which has this week seen fierce fighting between militants and security forces. Also on Friday, militants blew up a girls school in NWFP's Mardan district. No casualties were reported, Geo said.
Militants on Thursday killed three women in Swat they accused of colluding with security forces, and kidnapped three men when they stormed a house in Dagai village, Dawn daily reported.
A girls' primary school and a boy's high school were blown up in Matta and the house of a local policeman was set on fire in the Kala Kalley area of Kabah tehsil, Dawn said.
All banks, courts and government offices remained closed in Swat despite the easing of a 12-day curfew.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[10 views]
Top|| File under: TTP
#1
Warn all the civilians and Pakistani forces out of the NWFP, and then level the place with wave after wave of attacks using every weapon the US owns, short of nukes. Totally destroy everything. If there's any repair work done, hit that area again. Keep it up until six months have passed with no human activity in the NWFP. Then let the civilians back in to rebuild, with our help. The Talibunnies will all be dead from starvation, if nothing else.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/07/2009 13:15
Comments ||
Top||
#2
i believe you are under the misunderstanding that there are civilians.
you need 'civil' to have civilians
Posted by: Abu do you love ||
02/07/2009 13:45
Comments ||
Top||
Michael Steele, the new chairman of the Republican National Committee, has asked the entire staff to resign, FOX News has confirmed. The move signals Steele's plan to reshape the party, which was trounced at the polls in 2006 and 2008. As a black man from Maryland, a traditionally Democratic state, Steele has already brought a new face to the party.
The RNC has about 100 staff members, many of whom have been told that their last day on the job will be Feb. 15, a Republican source told Politico, which reported the story Thursday morning. Some aides may stay on, the source said, but several senior aides who were expecting the changes voluntarily submitted their resignations soon after Steele's election last week.
President Obama's new team made a similar request at the Democratic National Committee.
Steele, a former Maryland lieutenant governor, won the chairmanship last Friday. In his first speech as chairman, he pledged to bring change in an effort to re-establish the GOP presence in the Northeast and win elections in regions across the country. "It's time for something completely different, and we're gonna bring it to them," he said in his acceptance speech. "Get ready, baby. It's time to turn it on."
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
GOOD!
Kick ass, Michael.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/07/2009 0:07
Comments ||
Top||
#2
Give him a metaphoric Canadian Ronson WW2 flamethrower and clean house.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/07/2009 0:31
Comments ||
Top||
#3
I concur with Barb and Paul, Pour it on Mr. Steele, Wipe out those fires and infections Sir!! HIT 'EM WITH ALL The Heat and the Disinfectant You Can Muster Mr. Steele!!
SIR, We need you and 10 times your number in Gubmint Today!!
Let's Pray for a miracle,... America and Americans need a long list of miracles again!!
Posted by: Red Dawg ||
02/07/2009 0:57
Comments ||
Top||
#5
I recommend he hires The Office Linebacker, Terrible Terry Tate.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
02/07/2009 1:43
Comments ||
Top||
#6
Oustanding! Now go meet with Senator Mitch McConnell and Congressman John Boehner. Ask McConnell why he couldn't do the job Boehner did in holding the Republican camp (RINO's Specter and Collins) together against the bailout! FIX IT!
What is it about these people? Why don't they just declare themselves bonifide dems and be done with it?
#10
How about finding some real, small govt Trunks to run against Spectre, Snowe, and Collins? RNC should stop supporting them. And if the Dems win the general election, so be it. Support real Republicans, not RINOs.
#12
But all in all a good fresh start. Now if we cna start cleanign out the state parties, and getting back to grass roots instead of the Country Club types.
Adam Malik General Hospital in Medan, North Sumatra, announced Friday that a baby with two heads that had been treated at the hospital for the last 13 days, died on Thursday night, kompas.com has reported.
Hospital director Azwan Hakmi Lubis said the baby died of heart failure.
Azwan said the hospital has send the baby to the parents home in East Aceh, Aceh. All medical cost will be paid by state plantation company PTPN I, where Sutiono, the father of the baby, works, he said.
The baby, a malformed twin, was admitted to the hospital in late January by Sutiono and his wife Marwati.
Aside from the extra head, the baby, who was called Marwati 1 and Marwati 2, had two pairs of lungs, two legs, two hearts and two backbones but one abdomen and one set of genitals. The hearts and the backbones, however, were linked together.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
#4
The father worked on a state plantation in East Aceh? Not exactly the place where such a child would thrive, poor thing. Hopefully the skills the hospital staff practiced will benefit future babies born there.
This auction is for a 3 day thrill ride through your greatest fear! ~CLOWNS~!!!! I will dress up as a clown and scare you for 3 days STRAIGHT, everywhere you go, I will follow, dressed as a clown. People in Berkeley and similar enclaves purport to find clowns terrifying. Most of the rest of us, I think, still find them somewhere between mildly amusing and hilarious. On the other hand, we don't find vampires sympathetic, and we don't claim to believe that Snow White had sex with any of the seven drawfs, much less all of them.
As of this moment the bidding, starting at $25, has skyrocketed to... umm... $25.
India for the first time yesterday directly accused Pakistan's military intelligence agency of involvement in the Mumbai attacks.
In a speech in Paris reported by the Indian media yesterday, Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said the perpetrators "planned, trained and launched their attacks from Pakistan, and the organisers were and remain clients and creations of the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence)."
The stunning November assault on India's financial capital, when 10 gunmen killed 165 people during a 60-hour siege, has led to a furious blame game that has sharply escalated tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
In January, India handed Islamabad a dossier of what it said was evidence linking "elements" in Pakistan to the attack.
India has blamed the assault on the banned militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is active in Indian-ruled Kashmir, but the Pakistan-based organisation has denied responsibility.
Pakistan has confirmed that the lone surviving Mumbai gunman, who is now in Indian custody, is one of its citizens, but it insists that the attackers were "non-state actors."
India had previously blamed the ISI for a suicide attack on its embassy in Kabul last July, in which 60 people, including India's military attache and a diplomat, were killed.
Menon said India had long suffered from "terrorist organisations, their support structures, official sponsors and funding mechanisms, which transcend national borders but operate within them."
He also criticised foreign arms sales to Pakistan in the name of fighting terrorism, saying it was like selling "whisky to an alcoholic."
The United States has been one of Pakistan's key military backers, including providing F-16 fighter jets in return for political support for its operations in Afghanistan.
Earlier Pakistan will announce the results of its investigation into the Mumbai attacks next week, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said Friday.
Gilani said last week his government was investigating what India has called evidence linking "elements" in Pakistan to the November attacks on its financial capital, in which 10 gunmen killed 165 people during a 60-hour siege.
"The investigation report will be presented to me by Monday which will be made public on the same day or the next day," Gilani told reporters in the eastern city of Lahore, where he was on a private visit.
Meanwhile Pakistan's oldest English-language newspaper, Dawn, reported that investigators probing the Mumbai attacks for the government in Islamabad had uncovered evidence implicating a banned Bangladesh-based militant organisation, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islmani (HuJI).
The report, based on unidentified sources, also mentioned the possibility that one of the gunmen was of Bangladeshi origin.
The probe "is likely to indicate that the Mumbai attack was the handiwork of an 'international network of Muslim fundamentalists' present in South Asia and spread all the way to Middle East," Dawn said.
"Although the Bangladesh connection has emerged quite prominently in the investigations, there are also clear indications that some of the planning for the attacks was done in Dubai and there is also an element of local Indian support," it added.
There was no immediate official Pakistani confirmation of the Dawn report.
HuJI has been blamed for a series of attacks in Bangladesh, including the 2004 grenade blasts at a rally in Dhaka at which the current Premier Sheikh Hasina was speaking.
It was also accused of responsibility over a series of synchronised bomb blasts across the northeast Indian state of Assam in November in which nearly 80 people were killed.
The group's chief Mufti Abdul Hannan was sentenced to death late last year after he was found guilty of masterminding an attack on British ambassador to Bangladesh in 2003.
Bangladesh said Friday it was unaware of any evidence implicating HuJI in the Mumbai assault. "First of all we don't have any information. If anyone has any information, share with us. We are ready to cooperate," Foreign Secretary Touhid Hossain told AFP.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: ISI
The Islamist group Hamas will reject a long-term truce with Israel being mediated by Egypt unless the deal includes lifting the blockade on the Gaza Strip, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said on Friday.
Addressing a rally in Damascus, Meshaal said Hamas has only received "vague" proposals from Egypt without an Israeli commitment to lift the siege, which Hamas regards as an illegal collective punishment on Gaza's 1.5 million population.
"The enemy has yet to offer a lifting of the blockade and a reopening of the border crossings. They have given no guarantee and we will not agree to any truce except in exchange for a lifting of the blockade and a reopening of the crossings."
Meshaal, whose speech was aired on Syrian state television, told more than 1,000 supporters that Hamas emerged "victorious" from Israel's deadly offensive that killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and wounded 5,000 others. "It is the first real war that the Palestinians won," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[10 views]
Top|| File under: Hamas
#1
"It is the first real war that the Palestinians won," he said.
I wonder what this idiot would consider "losing"?
Hamass won't accept any Israeli conditions other than total surrender, and Israel would be a fool to accept that. It's time to REALLY bomb the sh$$ out of Gaza - including hospitals, mosques, nursing homes, kindergardens, schools, grocery stores, and UN compounds - anywhere where Hamass hides. Too bad we have such a chicken-sh$$ president that won't stand behind Israel and whatever it does.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/07/2009 22:09
Comments ||
Top||
Saudi Arabia is soon going to recruit 5,000 doctors from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India for dozens of newly constructed and renovated public hospitals in the Kingdom. Are they gonna pay them, too?
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Here's your answer Fred:
"Another Arab News report on February 5 said Saudi doctors reportedly started abandoning hospitals, which offer low salaries and benefits and do not have adequate facilities."
Do not get sick in Saudi Arabia.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
02/07/2009 13:56
Comments ||
Top||
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
02/07/2009 5:39
Comments ||
Top||
#4
Pardon me, Mam, but I think you have an albino turkey on your head.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
02/07/2009 8:57
Comments ||
Top||
#5
I see! Capitalism is not working by his own. You need help! You need ration coupons! You need Obama for food and work. And Obama is Muslim.
How many of you has eaten today? Do you want some food from Morocco? We have some goats here and a lot of camels! Are you guys broke or something? Would you like to exchange some of your blondy women with some of our beautiful goats? :)
#6
far be it from me to judge, but i thought the sink trapped comment was reasonable...
and with the 'stimulus' moving forward, seems we have some surplus (Boxer,Pelosi,Solis,Hill, etc)females that i really wouldn't mind trading for some goats...
besides a year or two of first hand immersion in a Muslim paradise might leave them with an adjusted opinion of what exactly it is about America that makes it great.
Posted by: Abu do you love ||
02/07/2009 13:29
Comments ||
Top||
#7
And yet you still watch Baywatch every night and wank off on the boob tube.
Posted by: ed ||
02/07/2009 14:27
Comments ||
Top||
#8
yeah, Fidoman finds David Hasselhoff soooooo sexy. Catcher, definitely a catcher
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/07/2009 14:40
Comments ||
Top||
#9
Midoman was indeed just being silly in this thread, Abu do you love. Sadly, the Troll Catcher automatically sinktraps all said commenter's posts without discriminating between horrid and otherwise. It's fair, though, because non-trollery is the threshold for being permitted to post, and Mr. Midoman preferred to throw fresh dung into the room rather than walk in politely.
With job losses soaring nationwide, Senate Democrats agreed with key Republicans Friday night on an economic stimulus measure at the heart of President Barack Obama's plan for reviving the economy.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#5
They still must work out a reconciliation bill with the House, and then get that passed, unmodified, by both the House and the Senate. Dear Nancy Pelosi is going to have a fit 'cause her beneficiaries aren't going to get what she promised.
#6
The republicans should have hung together and all voted no.
Let the donks act unilaterally.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
02/07/2009 1:28
Comments ||
Top||
#7
What a nice legacy we leave our children with the TARP and this piece of shameless garbage. Don't they understand that when the private sector competes with the gov't for loan dollars the gov't always wins and interest rates go up? They destroy the very thing they claim to be attempting to repair. We're very rapidly headed toward a one party, socialist system. The financing will soon be in place.
#8
This situation calls for shared sacrifice and we're just passing along our share to the kids and grandkids.
Posted by: regular joe ||
02/07/2009 9:42
Comments ||
Top||
#9
We're very rapidly headed toward a one party, socialist system.
That is, one suspects, the intent. Especially since Obama has now put the hyper-partisan Rahm in charge of the upcoming census which in turn will control redistricting.
#10
hyper-partisan Rahm in charge of the upcoming census which in turn will control redistricting.
Maybe. Remember the phrase - all politics is local.
You mess with reapportionment and even the parties back home will turn on you. It only takes 2/3rd of small states to call a Constitutional convention to 'adjust' anything the handful of big state pols want to shove down their throat. Fiddle with those numbers will create a problem that will make the economy look like small stuff in comparison.
#11
Yes lotp, I saw the Rahm and census thing yesterday, very troubling. Like Rahm's public appearances of late, not much press given to it. The One made some snarky comment at the Dems Williamsburg retreat about the Rahm going to some underprivileged school to teach cursing. Appears The One is angered by the media and press negatives his little ballet dancer is receiving. Difficult to believe these bastards have only been at it for a few short weeks.
#15
It is interesting that, after claiming that pork only made up 1% of the bill, it turns out they had to cut 1/6 of the money in order to get waste & corruption down to acceptable levels.
The real test will be in the conferrence committe. I expect the Dems to slip the pork back in. Then it will be up to the Repubs to slap them around again.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
02/07/2009 13:20
Comments ||
Top||
#16
Heard a comment the other day that the US is following Argentina's lead.
Posted by: ed ||
02/07/2009 14:37
Comments ||
Top||
U.S.-led forces killed six men during a night raid in the southern Afghan province of Zabul, but Afghan officials disputed a U.S. military report that the victims were Taliban fighters.
Mohammad Hashim, a member of Zabul's provincial council, said that the dead men belonged to two families and were not involved in militancy.
A U.S. military statement said the operation was aimed at Taliban insurgents and the "ensuing engagement resulted in six militants killed."
Though supported by the West, President Hamid Karzai's government has been undermined by civilian casualties inflicted by Western forces fighting the Taliban.
Karzai faces dwindling public support, analysts say, with a presidential election due in August.
Afghanistan has seen a sharp escalation of violence in recent years and is going through its bloodiest period since U.S.-backed forces overthrew the Taliban in late 2001.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: Taliban
#1
After losing to the United States and its allies in Iraq, the mentally deficient are flocking to Afghanistan, hoping for a win there. I hope the additional troops will be sufficient to put an end to this mess once and for all. I doubt any progress can be made, however, until Pakistan no longer exists to stir up trouble.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/07/2009 12:36
Comments ||
Top||
#2
Let me add a clue. It starts with T and ends in aliban.
Posted by: ed ||
02/07/2009 14:42
Comments ||
Top||
U.S. Ambassador to Tajikistan Tracey Ann Jacobson has said after a meeting with President Emomali Rahmon that the Tajik leader "confirmed his readiness to offer the country's airspace for nonmilitary NATO supplies bound for Afghanistan."
The announcement comes after Kyrgyz officials announced they would order the closure of a U.S. air base at Manas that sends supplies and personnel to Afghanistan.
Jacobson also said that a bridge on the Panj River on the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan would soon function 24 hours a day.
The bridge -- in the Panj district of Khatlon Province -- was funded by the United States at a cost of some $30 million.
Jacobson said the Tajik government proposed building another bridge in the Farkhor district of Khatlon Province that also borders Afghanistan.
She added that the Tajik and U.S. militaries will have two six-week joint training sessions this year for special forces in the Regar district bordering Uzbekistan.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[4 views]
Top|| File under: Taliban
Two unidentified armed men have reportedly shot and killed a member of the Ulama Shura in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar.
The cleric, Mullah Baran, was leaving a mosque and heading home Friday mornng when he was targeted by Taliban militants. The assailant fled on a motorbike, the head of the Ulama Shura (scholars' committee) in Kandahar province told a Press TV correspondent. He also noted that the police have launched an investigation into the attack but have yet to make any arrests.
A Taliban spokesman, Kari Yousef Ahmadi, has said the group was not involved. Mullah Baran's death bring to five the number of religious leaders killed so far in Kandahar province.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: Taliban
Algerian security services killed terrorist Bentitraoui Omar, a.k.a Abu Khitma, in a restaurant near Boumerdes late Wednesday, Tout sur l'Algerie reported on Thursday (February 5th). Omar was a leader of the El Feth Brigade, one of al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb's five constituent groups. After Omar refused to surrender, the security services stormed the restaurant and shot him dead. Another brigade leader, Ali Ben Touati of the Al Ansar group, surrendered last week to Algerian security officers in response to former GSPC chief Hassan Hattab's appeal for Islamist fighters to lay down their weapons.
In related news, a terrorist attack Tuesday on an army patrol in Ait Chafaa, Tizi Ouzou province, claimed a second life, after one of nine wounded soldiers died Thursday of his injuries. One soldier was killed on the spot.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in North Africa
Home Minister Sahara Khatun yesterday strongly condemned the Pakistan investigation agency's claim of Bangladesh's involvement in the Mumbai terror attacks last year.
"Militants and terrorists do not belong to any territory, country and nation. I am shocked at such claim," she told reporters after attending the concluding ceremony of annual sports competition of Rajuk Uttara Model College.
The three-day long competition of the college ended yesterday amid various colourful programmes and prize distribution among contestants on the college premises.
Asked about the measures the home ministry would take in removing terrorism in the educational institutions, Sahara said her ministry is taking necessary steps in this regard.
"We are trying and I said times and again that we want to get to the root of the problems," she added.
Action would be taken against terrorists irrespective of their party affiliation, she said.
Addressing the programme as the chief guest, the home minister sought cooperation from people of all strata of society to build a peaceful Bangladesh by eliminating corruption, terrorism, militancy and extortion.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[3 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
Unknown militants launched rocket attack on NATO supply containers leaving one container on fire on Ring road, police sources said on Friday. Police sources added, fire brigade was called in immediately after rocket attack however, one container was totally tipped through by fire. Firefighting workers brought soon ablaze under control, rescue sources said.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: Taliban
Tuareg rebels fleeing Malian troops entered Algerian territory on Thursday (February 5th), AFP reported. The information was reportedly confirmed by an Algerian member of the committee charged with monitoring the 2006 Algiers peace agreement. Mali blames Tuareg rebel leader Ibrahim Ag Bahang for refusing to participate in recent mediation efforts led by Algerian Ambassador Abdelkrim Gheraib. However, following the Malian army's refusal to stop the offensive, Ag Bahanga "officially" called Tuesday for renewed Algerian intervention.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
With the 25-year civil war in Sri Lanka apparently coming to an end, many in this Indian Ocean island are starting to ponder what's next.
In the busy seaside capital of Colombo, the local newspapers are focused on the latest news from the front lines. But more and more the headlines are about plans for reconstruction and development projects in Sri Lanka. But still the tourists who once filled the country's five-star hotels, sushi restaurants and high-end shops for jewelry and clothes are no longer coming. Most people here blame the war that, they say, has dragged on way too long. Most people are eager for it to end.
Winning the war in one thing, analysts say, but bringing unity to Sri Lanka is another. Unity in Sri Lanka means closing the divide between the country's Sinhalese majority, which are mainly Buddhist, and its minority ethnic Tamil communities, which are mainly Hindu.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
Kenyan lawmakers are demanding their government to clarify who is the owner of the military cargo aboard the released MV Faina.
The Kenyan Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense which was assigned to investigate the Faina's cargo mystery wants the government to clear the air on the controversy surrounding the real owners of the military equipment aboard the freighter, our Press TV correspondent reported Friday from Nairobi.
The Ukrainian vessel, MV Faina, released on Thursday, Feb 5, is loaded with 33 refurbished T-72 Soviet tanks and crates of light and heavy weapons. Kenyan authorities said it had bought the tanks for its army but foreign diplomats said the arms were bound for south Sudan - a potential embarrassment to Nairobi, which brokered a peace pact for the region on its northwestern border.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Foreign Intelligence Service has confirmed that military equipment shipped by the Faina is destined for Kenya. "The cargo on board the ship was transported under a contract between Ukrspetsexport and the Defense Ministry of Kenya," the service's head, Mykola Malomuzh, said at a briefing in Ukrainian capital, Kiev, on Thursday.
The investigating committee said that they were still looking into the issue, and now that Faina is released, "we hope to find answers", Adan Keynan, the chairman of parliamentary committee was quoted by our correspondent as saying.
The ship is expected to dock at Mombassa port in the middle of next week.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[3 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Sudan
A Paris court sentenced Christian Ganczarski, a German convert to Islam, to 18 years in prison on Thursday (February 5th) for his role in the deadly 2002 suicide bomb attack on the Tunisian vacation island of Djerba which killed 14 Germans, five Tunisians and two French nationals, international press reported. Walid Nouar, the brother of the suicide bomber, received a 12-year prison term. Both defendants denied the charges and said they would appeal the verdict. The alleged mastermind of the Sept 11th, 2001 terror attacks in the US, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was also charged with planning the Djerba suicide bombing, but the Paris court chose not try him in absentia.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Europe
Over three million Somalis, or a third of the total population, are in dire need of humanitarian assistance this year, UN analysis says. The heart burns bleeds.
According to the assessment by the United Nations Food Security Analysis Unit (FSAU), the UN's World Food Program (WFP) has distributed 34,000 tons of food in 2008 to 3.4 million people in this strife-torn country.
The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), for its part, is working to create a permanent sustainable water system. UNICEF and the UN World Health Organization (WHO) are helping to protect some 1.5 million children aged five and under against preventable and water-borne diseases, the UN report said on Friday.
Supplying steady assistance to Somalia will remain the biggest challenge as less aid is coming in, and the situation is certain to worsen now that the European Commission has pulled out from among the top donors, it added.
The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has reported that only 18 percent of funds needed for humanitarian work in the Horn of Africa country has been disbursed.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under: al-Shabaab
#1
Since the population of Somaliland and Puntland is 6 million. That leaves about 100% of "Somalia" dependent on infidel charity.
Posted by: ed ||
02/07/2009 14:19
Comments ||
Top||
#2
Hey, Muzzies, you get Western aid once you drop the Islamist flag and allow churches to operate unharmed. As for the USA, please don't let any of these infidel hating people into our country.
Posted by: Jack Salami ||
02/07/2009 21:49
Comments ||
Top||
#3
Jack Salami, does it bring you comfort to know that at least a small number of Somalis are choosing to return to their homeland, if only for the pleasure of killing and being killed?
Russia granted transit rights Friday to non-lethal U.S. military supplies headed to Afghanistan but only after apparently pressuring a former Soviet state to close an air base leased to the Americans.
The signal from Moscow: Russia is willing to help on Afghanistan, but only on the Kremlin's terms.
Kyrgyzstan announced the closure of the Manas air base but American officials suspect that Russia was behind the decision, having long been irritated by the U.S presence in central Asia.
The Russian decision to let U.S. supplies cross its territory opened another route to those through Pakistan now threatened by militant attacks, but U.S. officials were still left scrambling for alternatives to Manas.
Russia wants to open discussions on thorny policy issues that Washington and Moscow have clashed on in recent years _ NATO enlargement, missile defense in Europe, a new strategic arms control treaty. More importantly, Russia's expectation is that Washington must go through Moscow where Central Asia is concerned.
Russia may also be showing Washington that its positions aren't immovable _ particularly where Afghanistan is concerned. Russia fears Afghanistan is collapsing into anarchy, leading to instability or Islamic radicals migrating northward through Central Asia.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia had agreed days earlier to allow transit of U.S. non-lethal supplies to Afghanistan.
"We are now waiting for the American partners to provide a specific request with a quantity and description of cargo," Lavrov said Friday in remarks broadcast by Vesti-24 TV. "As soon as they do that we will issue relevant permissions."
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[11 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Agreed days ago? About the same time they came out and said Irans reactor will be operational this year?
Posted by: Mike N. ||
02/07/2009 2:00
Comments ||
Top||
#2
"We are now waiting for the American partners to provide a specific request with a quantity and description of cargo," Lavrov said Friday in remarks broadcast by Vesti-24 TV. "As soon as they do that we will issue relevant permissions."
#4
"to allow transit of U.S. non-lethal supplies to Afghanistan."
Oh, food, medical supplies, new socks, but no ammo. No weapons. That's nice. That's real help.
#5
Russia wants to open discussions on thorny policy issues that Washington and Moscow have clashed on in recent years _ NATO enlargement, missile defense in Europe, a new strategic arms control treaty. More importantly, Russia's expectation is that Washington must go through Moscow where Central Asia is concerned.
Is the price worth it Barak Obama?
Posted by: ed ||
02/07/2009 14:08
Comments ||
Top||
#6
I don't think Obama gives a rats patootie for foreign issues except insofar as they might pose a problem for his intent to force a hard left revolution here under the guise of laws and regulations. That's why he was perfectly happy to have Clinton at State and Gates at DOD for now.
#7
Clinton considered issues of acts of war a bother to his domestic agenda. The Big O is picking up where Clinton left off.
The US will appear weak, our enemies will take advantage of this to further their agenda. They will exploit weakness. They will slowly back us into a corner. They will infiltrate this country at an accelerating pace. The Big O will really mess something up that will cost this country thousands in casualties. Everyone will go apesh*t, the Big O's presidency will go down in flames, we will be bankrupt, and if we have enough stout hearts, we will rebuild this country from scratch. But we will have lost a great deal. A great deal.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/07/2009 18:15
Comments ||
Top||
Aswat al-Iraq: Two persons were killed in an armed tribal dispute in a village west of Mosul city on Friday, a security source in Ninewa police said. "Two young men from al-Asi clan were killed on Friday (Feb. 6) in an armed feud in the area of al-Ulwaniya, northeast of Talafar district," the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. "The two relatives came under fire while they were in a sheep souk (market)," the source added.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[11 views]
Top|| File under: Iraqi Insurgency
(AKI) - Palestinian militants on Friday launched two homemade Qassam rockets into southern Israel, which landed in open areas near the Shaar Hanegev regional council, located in the Western Negev desert. There were no injuries or damage. Three hours later, another rocket hit near the coastal city of Ashkelon, causing no injuries. No Palestinian militant group claimed responsibility for the attack.
However, the attacks took place hours after a Palestinian militant was killed near the Sufa Crossing, located in southern Gaza.
Israeli Defence Forces say they fired warning shots against the man, who allegedly pulled out a hand grenade from his bag as he approached the border fence. The grenade then exploded after the militant was shot.
Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth says that the IDF Gaza Division has instructed soldiers operating near the coastal strip to assume any Palestinian approaching the border fence is seeking to commit an act of terror.
"I recall talk of disproportionate retaliation to the rocket attacks, but unfortunately the attacks are continuing and there is no response.
"I fear that even after the elections, nothing will be done, so we will suffer from the rocket fire for at least another month," said David Buskila, mayor of the Israeli city of Sderot, quoted by Yedioth Ahronoth.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
A Turkish prosecutor has launched an investigation into whether Israel committed genocide and crimes against humanity in its offensive in Gaza, his office said Friday.
The investigation follows a complaint lodged by the Islamist-leaning human rights association Mazlum-Der against several Israeli officials, including President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Defence Minister Ehud Barak and army chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi.
"Every complaint merits an investigation," the spokesman said when asked whether a probe had been launched into Mazlum-Der's complaint.
Under Turkish law, prosecutors are obliged to look into all complaints to determine whether there are grounds to initiate a full-scale investigation that could lead to formal charges.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
A Turk prosecutor probes genocide? Rich, very, very rich.
China urged Canada Thursday not to take three Uighur Muslims held at Guantanamo Bay saying they are "terrorists" and should be left to international law as a leading human rights organization accused China of omitting mention of serious rights abuses against the Uighur minority.
The three Uighur Muslims, whose lawyers have filed applications for refugee status in Canada, are among a group of 17 Uighurs captured in the wake of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and held at Guantanamo for the past seven years.
" We have expressed our position many times about those Chinese terrorists detained in Guantanamo and we are opposed to any country accepting those people "
Jiang Yu, Chinese FM spokeswoman
"We have expressed our position many times about those Chinese terrorists detained in Guantanamo. We are opposed to any country accepting those people," Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters in Beijing.
"We hope the parties concerned can resolve conveniently this issue according to the international laws and regulations."
Uighurs, who are mostly Muslim, form the largest ethnic group in northwest China's Xinjiang region that borders Central Asia. Some hope for independence from China.
Jiang was asked to comment on an appeal from Amnesty International, a Canadian Uighur group and several churches for Canada's government to take in the three Uighurs.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda
#1
Right. Let China repatriate them. Let them work their magic in "re-educating" them. They seem to deal fairly effectively with the Wiggers.
#2
The first thing China will do is harvest every usable organ from their bodies and toss what's left out for the hogs to eat. They'd do that with any other non-Chinese they decided had made them angry, and a few Chinese.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/07/2009 21:16
Comments ||
Top||
Militants have reportedly blown up a high school in Bajaur Agency on Friday night, Geo News reported. According to sources, the incident was reportedly occurred in tehsil Salarzai of Bajaur Agency while this latest havoc has taken the number of schools blown up in this year to 28. Political administration said, it has imposed indefinite curfew on some restive tehsils of Agency.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: TTP
Aswat al-Iraq: Policemen in Missan arrested two men wanted on "terrorist" charges in central al-Amara city on Friday, a senior security official said. "Policemen from the 3rd Emergency Police Department arrested two men wanted on terrorist charges in the old neighborhood of al-Hussein, central Amara," Col. Sadiq Sallam, the Missan Police Department's Relations & Information Director, told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: Iraqi Insurgency
Mobs sacked property and protesters called for revenge in central Pakistan on Friday after a bomb killed 33 people near a mosque in one of the country's deadliest anti-Shiite attacks, as Pakistani forces killed at least 52 militants in a crackdown of Taliban fighters.
Police said 33 people were killed and 52 wounded when a suspected suicide bomb ripped through a crowd near a Shiite mosque in the town of Dera Ghazi Khan in the central Punjab province late Thursday.
The attack was the deadliest bombing since October in Pakistan, where extremists opposed to the government's support for the U.S.-led "war on terror" have killed more than 1,500 people in just over a year and a half.
One person was killed and eight injured Friday during protests in the town of Uch Sharif, 60 kilometers (40 miles) south of Dera Ghazi Khan, police said.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[8 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday pressed Hamas to release the humanitarian aid shipment it seized in the Gaza Strip and provide assurances that no further aid would be taken.
Ban's spokeswoman Michele Montas told reporters that Ban "demands that Hamas immediately release the (U.N.) consignment of humanitarian goods it seized last night, in the second such incident this week, and to refrain from interference with the provision and distribution of humanitarian assistance."
She added that Ban wanted guarantees that it would not happen again.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said earlier it has stopped importing aid into the Gaza Strip after the Hamas government seized hundreds of tons of food assistance.
The decision came after 10 truckloads of rice and flour, more than 200 tons, brought in by the agency were seized on Thursday on the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel, UNRWA said.
Hamas reacted quickly by saying that the aid supplies were seized "by mistake" and will be returned.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: Hamas
#1
Or he'll send the dreaded strongly worded letter.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/07/2009 0:14
Comments ||
Top||
#2
Yes. A simple misunderstanding. We accidentally stole that. See, Abdul saw hundreds of tons of food on trucks and figured it was a local family coming home from the grocery store. We rob those people all the time and well, I guess ole' Ab didn't notice the UN markings. You can see what an easy mistake it is to make. Our bad.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
02/07/2009 2:07
Comments ||
Top||
#3
Sharper than a serpent's tooth the ingratitude of a child.
#4
Time for Israel to send some more "aid" to Gaza - 155mm HE "aid". Spare no one, no building, no road, no infrastructure. Render it all one mass of rubble, and then bounce the rubble several times.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/07/2009 22:16
Comments ||
Top||
Greek authorities are holding an Iran-bound ship carrying materials for the manufacture of surface-to-surface missiles, the Elefterotipia newspaper reported Friday. According to the Greek paper, the ship, called the Susanna, left a port in Slovenia more than a month ago.
The Jerusalem Post could not independently confirm the report.
Last week, the Cypriot Navy stopped a Syria-bound Iranian ship, believed to be carrying weapons for Hamas. The US military had previously stopped the vessel in the Red Sea, but allowed it to continue because the US could not legally stop its journey or seize its cargo.
The Cypriot-flagged Monchegorsk is currently anchored off the island's southern port of Limassol, and Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias said last Friday that the ship had violated UN resolutions.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
the US could not legally stop its journey
heh
True, very true, unless times demand it, in which case the ancient law of Rule Britannia is invoked. Being the sucessor state and family member of said RuleMaker,the executive arm of the real Law-of-the-Sea will be allowed to, Stop, Board, Disable or Sink as circumstances require.
#3
Obambi is under a LOT of stress, lotp, with all his "friends" having tax problems or nanny problems. He may not make it to July without a major heart attack. That's going to be REALLY bad, because I don't think anyone wants slow-Joe Biden as president. Those people that elected the Obambi empty suit to a major position of both power and stress will soon find out why "executive experience" is absolutely necessary in a President.
I'm sure we have a nuke hunter-killer sub in the Med, with some excellent torpedos. It would be nice for these vessels carrying weapons to Hamass to catch one in the keel. Do it on a "dark and stormy night".
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/07/2009 12:43
Comments ||
Top||
Somali pirates, holding an Egyptian merchant ship and 28 crew members, have agreed to release the vessel after the company agreed to pay a ransom. Blue Star owner, Abdel Rahman Awwa, told reporters on Friday that after days of negotiations with the pirates, it has been agreed the ship will be released as soon as the ransom is paid, our Press TV correspondent reported on Friday.
He said he expected the pirates to release the ship "within hours." He did not say how much the company had agreed to pay but company sources said it was more than USD 3m.
The Blue Star was seized on January 1 while it was sailing east with a cargo of 6,000 tons of the fertilizer urea. It is one of at least eight vessels which Somali pirates have hijacked from the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[3 views]
Top|| File under: Pirates
A Moroccan appeals court acquitted Hassan El-Haski on Thursday (February 5th) of involvement in the 2003 Casablanca bombings, MAP and international press reported. El-Haski is currently serving a 13-year jail sentence in Spain for involvement in the March 2004 Madrid bombings. In September, Spanish authorities approved El-Haski's temporary extradition to Morocco to be tried for the Casablanca terrorist bombings.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[4 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Europe
(CNN) -- Kyrgyzstan's government said Friday that financial concerns and the killing of a citizen are among the reasons the country will close a U.S. base that has been a key operations point for U.S. efforts in Afghanistan.
But mostly finances.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called the decision to close Manas Air Base "regrettable." Just a few weeks ago, during a visit to the region, Gen. David Petraeus -- who oversees U.S. operations in the Middle East and Central Asia -- talked about how important the base is.
But Kyrgyzstan President Kurmanbek Bakiyev announced Tuesday that "all due procedures" were being initiated to close the base. He made the announcement at a news conference in Moscow after reports of a multimillion-dollar aid package from Russia.
Aibek Sultangaziev, spokesman for Prime Minister Igor Chudinov, said Friday that his government feels that the U.S. base has accomplished its mission of helping Afghans install their new government. He added that his country is upset that the case involving a U.S. serviceman who shot and killed a Kyrgyzstan citizen has not been resolved.
Sultangaziev said the government also believes that the United States is not paying as much as it should for the base and has concerns about ecological problems resulting from the base.
Petraeus, speaking to reporters in Kyrgyzstan on January 19, said that U.S. assistance to the country "adds up to about $150 million per year in various programs, some $63 million of which is connected to Manas."
The base employs more than 320 Kyrgyzstan citizens, he said. And, he added, the United States supports "Kyrgyz counterterrorist, counternarcotics and military forces to about $25 million per year as well."
He said the prime minister had asked him about the killing at the base, "and I noted that the investigation into that case has been reopened and that I would brief him when the findings and actions are complete."
The incident took place in December 2006. The U.S. airman was transferred out of Kyrgyzstan, and the dead man's family was offered compensation. Bakiyev said Tuesday that he was not satisfied with the inquiry and that his government's "inability to provide security to its citizens" was proving a serious concern.
Closing Manas base would not affect only the United States. Petraeus said the site "plays an important role" in the deployment of Spanish and French soldiers into Afghanistan, in addition to U.S. troops.
The Kyrgyzstan government's decision will go before parliament, where it is expected to win approval. The president would then sign the law, and the United States would have 180 days to hand over the base.
The Pentagon said Friday that discussions, led by the State Department, are continuing with Kyrgyzstan. But Sultangaziev described the talks differently. He said that there is standard contact between the U.S. Embassy and the Kyrgyzstan government on the working relationship between the two countries but that the government's decision about the base has been made.
The mountainous former Soviet republic is Central Asia's second poorest country. The U.S. base has been in operation since December 2001 under a U.N. mandate. Kyrgyzstan also is home to a Russian military base, at Kant, that officially opened in 2003.
Sultangaziev rejected any suggestions that Russia may have pushed for the closure of the U.S. base. He said the announcement of Russia's aid package was a coincidence. The Russian newspaper Kommersant reported Tuesday that Russia would offer Kyrgyzstan a $300 million, 40-year loan at an annual interest rate of 0.75 percent and write off $180 million of Kyrgyzstan's debt.
Clinton said Thursday, "It's regrettable that this is under consideration by the government of Kyrgyzstan, and we hope to have further discussions with them. But we will proceed in a very effective manner no matter what the outcome of the Kyrgyzstan government's deliberations might be."
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
There will soon be 65 regional currencies in operation alongside the EU's, but the financial authorities are not worried yet.
If you live in the Bavarian region of Chiemgau, you can exist for months at a time in a euro-free zone of hills and lakes with a population of half a million people. Restaurants, bakeries, hairdressers and a network of supermarkets will accept the local currency: the Chiemgauer.
Notes are exchanged freely like legal tender. You can even use a debit card. Petrol stations are still a problem, but biofuel outlets are signing up. Dentists are next.
The Chiemgauer is one of 16 regional currencies that have sprung into existence across Germany and Austria since the launch of the euro five years ago.
Another 49 regios are in the pipeline. They are outside the control of the political authorities, mostly run by activists, farmers, eco-enthusiasts, anti-globalists, and citizen committees.
Some are rural, others circulate like underground money in Berlin and Bremen. Hamburg has two: the Alto and the Hansemark. Italy has its version in the Valchius Valley, in the Alps.
The phenomenon, not seen since the Great Depression, has left experts scratching heads at the Bundesbank. The mighty reserve bank, which issues euro notes and coins worth 146bn for a third of the eurozone economy, is relaxed about the risk of monetary anarchy. But it is sufficiently puzzled to publish a 63-page report probing the eruption of this movement.
Entitled "Regional Currencies in Germany, Local Competition for the Euro?", it concludes that the tiny scale of this bizarre Schwundgeld - scrip, or specie - poses no threat to the orderly management of the euro system.
The rise of the regios dates exactly from the abolition of the D-Mark, replaced in turn by a stateless technocrat currency ever further removed from local life.
A pure coincidence, said Prof Gerhard Rösl, author of the Bundesbank paper. "The assumption that this springs from a general scepticism towards the euro is not valid."
Rather, the movement is a rejection of "capitalist globalism", pushed by idealists fighting to save regional cultures. The currencies are "luxury" scrip that flourish most in areas with the lowest unemployment. They offer users a "prestige gain" in their neighbourhoods, and a glow of good feeling.
School teacher Christian Gelleri launched the Chiemgauer, with the help of pupils, as an experiment in January 2003 at a rate of 1:1 against the euro.
Four years later, it spans two districts and is accepted by 550 shops, firms, and companies, including eight supermarkets and four co-operative banks. It has 40 issuing offices, and usage is expanding by 70pc a year. Monthly turnover is still a miniscule 135,000 (£88,000) - or rather C135,000.
"People have taken to it because it is a way of supporting good causes," said Mr Gelleri.
The Chiemgauer is designed to lose 2pc of its value every quarter, generating a profit for the issuing body as shops claim back the euros. Some 60pc of the profit is used for local charities, sports clubs, kindergartens and such.
Shops accepting the money take a loss of up to 5pc, akin to interchange fees paid when credit cards are used. "Merchants pay the cost, but they go along because they don't want to lose business," said Mr Gelleri.
The idea stems from the century-old writings of Silvio Gesell, a German economist who believed that interest and rent charged on capital is pernicious. He argued that usury aggravated economic downturns because the wealthy began to horde cash.
Austria's Tyrolean community of Wörgl launched a scheme based on his theories, in 1932, reputed to have slashed unemployment at the height of the Depression. It was watched by Keynes and Irving Fisher, who saw a fast-depreciating currency as a possible answer to the 1930s "liquidity trap".
"I came to the idea by studying Keynes and Fisher, but for us it is more a way to build regional strength. We're not enemies of Europe," said Mr Gelleri.
The Wörgl experiment was declared illegal by Austria's central bank when a further 200 other communities launched copycat currencies, threatening the authority of the state. Though article 35 of the Bundesbank's founding law forbids the circulation of "quasi-currencies", the experiments are being treated as a harmless eccentricity.
However, they are a remarkable expression of people power, and a subtle threat to the established order. Would they be sprouting with so much energy if the Germans still had the D-Mark in their pockets? One suspects not.
That's the crux of the matter. The state (particularly the EUnicks) don't like having their authority threatened. I wonder how long Germany will put up with it.
I think the writer is right about the Deutchemark.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/07/2009 0:13
Comments ||
Top||
#2
*Rolls eyes*
God forbid someone figure out a way to raise money for charity. Doom is on the way for sure now. What with poor communities in Germany all banding together to donate to charitable causes and all.
Gettin kinda sleepy. Maybe some Java will perk me up.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
02/07/2009 1:39
Comments ||
Top||
#3
A pure coincidence, said Prof Gerhard Rösl, author of the Bundesbank paper. "The assumption that this springs from a general scepticism towards the euro is not valid."
One has to love the German sense of humour. They've never like the Euro, not even a little bit.
#4
The Bank of England issued currency has traditionally only been for England and Wales. Scotland, Northern Ireland and all those little places like Jersey have at least a dozen currency issuing bodie between them. Northern Ireland used to have 4 or 5 banks that all issued their own currency notes. I think they still have 3.
In N Ireland while English currency was legal tender, people were reluctant to take it. So I can understand how a local currency works. It's a way people differentiate themselves.
#5
Sounds more like a spark of regionalism to me. Take away a people's sense of identity (imposition of a stateless currency) and they'll grab something that has a more "home bred" flavor (?) to it. I agree, it's not a well thought out thesis, more of a gut feeling.
Aswat al-Iraq: Iraqi army forces seized a weapons cache and arrested two suspects in southern Mandili, Diala province, on Friday, a security source said. "The Iraqi military launched a raid on Friday (Feb. 6) in al-Nada area, southern Mandili district, (55 km) east of Baaquba, seizing a cache and arresting two suspects nearby," the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. "The cache contained 80 improvised explosive devices, six explosive belts, 40 mortar shells, 25 Katyusha rockets, dozens of bullet magazines and several light weapons," the source added. "The detainees are under investigative custody," he said, not giving more details.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/07/2009
00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
E-Mail||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: Iraqi Insurgency
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A coalition of Democrats and some Republicans reached a compromise that trimmed billions in spending from an earlier version of the Senate economic stimulus bill.
A major Taliban stronghold has been destroyed by British and Afghan forces following 10 days of bitter fighting in southern Afghanistan. Hundred of insurgents were either killed or forced to flee from a stronghold in central Helmand which they had occupied for several months.
"More than 1330 of Islamist fighters had entered Palestine," said a threatening email received by many Israelis on Thursday night. The message warned that several prominent people would be abducted and killed. "This is jihad, victory or martyrdom," it concluded. The message was sent in English, Arabic and Hebrew from an email account registered on Google's Gmail service, which enables any person to open an account for free without requiring identification. 
And so much for the promise to banish the moneychangers and influence peddlers from the temple. An ostentatious executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high positions. Followed by a treasury secretary who allegedly couldn't understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040. Followed by Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent. 
Aswat al-Iraq: Two wanted men were captured while C4 explosives were seized and an improvised explosive device dismantled near a mosque in northern Basra province on Friday, a police spokesman said. "Two wanted persons were arrested during a search raid in different areas of Basra," the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency. "The bomb squad seized a bag containing 25 kg of C4 explosives and TNT and defused an IED weighing 5 km in the area of al-Ablah, (8 km) northern Basra, near the mosque of Ali al-Safi, a top aide of Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani," the source said.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Friday voiced concern about a Pakistani court''s decision to free Abdul Qadeer Khan, who operated an alleged nuclear proliferation network. 
The Israel Air Force struck targets in southern Gaza on Friday a few hours after Palestinian militants fired two rockets from the coastal strip into Israel. An Israel Defense Forces spokesman confirmed the air strikes. The spokesman said the targets included four smuggling tunnels, as well as a weapons storage facility, which caused a series of secondary explosions to be heard in the area. 
Aswat al-Iraq: Iraqi army forces found to unidentified bodies in Diala province on Friday, according to an official military source.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has taken credit for paving the way for this week's hostage releases in Colombia.
Michael Steele, the new chairman of the Republican National Committee, has asked the entire staff to resign, FOX News has confirmed. The move signals Steele's plan to reshape the party, which was trounced at the polls in 2006 and 2008. As a black man from Maryland, a traditionally Democratic state, Steele has already brought a new face to the party.
This auction is for a 3 day thrill ride through your greatest fear! ~CLOWNS~!!!! I will dress up as a clown and scare you for 3 days STRAIGHT, everywhere you go, I will follow, dressed as a clown.
With job losses soaring nationwide, Senate Democrats agreed with key Republicans Friday night on an economic stimulus measure at the heart of President Barack Obama's plan for reviving the economy.
U.S.-led forces killed six men during a night raid in the southern Afghan province of Zabul, but Afghan officials disputed a U.S. military report that the victims were Taliban fighters.
Two unidentified armed men have reportedly shot and killed a member of the Ulama Shura in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar. 
Algerian security services killed terrorist Bentitraoui Omar, a.k.a Abu Khitma, in a restaurant near Boumerdes late Wednesday, Tout sur l'Algerie reported on Thursday (February 5th). Omar was a leader of the El Feth Brigade, one of al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb's five constituent groups. After Omar refused to surrender, the security services stormed the restaurant and shot him dead. Another brigade leader, Ali Ben Touati of the Al Ansar group, surrendered last week to Algerian security officers in response to former GSPC chief Hassan Hattab's appeal for Islamist fighters to lay down their weapons. 
A Paris court sentenced Christian Ganczarski, a German convert to Islam, to 18 years in prison on Thursday (February 5th) for his role in the deadly 2002 suicide bomb attack on the Tunisian vacation island of Djerba which killed 14 Germans, five Tunisians and two French nationals, international press reported. Walid Nouar, the brother of the suicide bomber, received a 12-year prison term. Both defendants denied the charges and said they would appeal the verdict. The alleged mastermind of the Sept 11th, 2001 terror attacks in the US, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was also charged with planning the Djerba suicide bombing, but the Paris court chose not try him in absentia.
BNP lawmaker Salauddin Quader Chowdhury yesterday said his party would give its best effort to help try war criminals.
Over three million Somalis, or a third of the total population, are in dire need of humanitarian assistance this year, UN analysis says. 
Supreme Court rejects petition to prevent transfer of PA tax monies to Gaza; funds meant to pay salaries.
(AKI) - Palestinian militants on Friday launched two homemade Qassam rockets into southern Israel, which landed in open areas near the Shaar Hanegev regional council, located in the Western Negev desert. There were no injuries or damage. Three hours later, another rocket hit near the coastal city of Ashkelon, causing no injuries. No Palestinian militant group claimed responsibility for the attack.
Mobs sacked property and protesters called for revenge in central Pakistan on Friday after a bomb killed 33 people near a mosque in one of the country's deadliest anti-Shiite attacks, as Pakistani forces killed at least 52 militants in a crackdown of Taliban fighters.
Somali pirates, holding an Egyptian merchant ship and 28 crew members, have agreed to release the vessel after the company agreed to pay a ransom. Blue Star owner, Abdel Rahman Awwa, told reporters on Friday that after days of negotiations with the pirates, it has been agreed the ship will be released as soon as the ransom is paid, our Press TV correspondent reported on Friday. 
