The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Punjab took out rallies against the publication of caricatures of Prophet Mohammad (PTUI PBUH) in every district of the province but the party failed to stage an impressive demonstration in Lahore because of intra-party differences. Around 200 PPP members gathered outside the Lahore Press Club and shouted slogans like We are slaves of Holy Prophet (PBUH) and are ready to die for him,
I hope you're happy being slaves. I'd prefer to die a free man than to be a slave, but to each his own...
Go Musharraf Go and Prime Minister Benazir.
Lotta thought went into those, didn't it?
PPP Lahore leaders Azizur Rehman Chan, Samiullah Khan, Zikria Butt, Tahir Khalique and Sardar Hur Bukhari reached the press club at around 3pm. A few minutes later MPAs Uzma Bukhari and Faiza Malik and a few other female PPP activists joined them. Former Punjab governor Malik Ghulam Mustafa Khar also joined the protesting PPP members. However, the two female MPAs moved to another place with other PPP members when they saw Khar standing next to them. A few moments later, Sajida Mir, PPP candidate for womens seat in Senate, arrived at the scene with six supporters and started shouting pro-Benazir slogans.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/23/2006
21:09 ||
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BROCKTON A student who shouted "Remember Chappaquiddick!" during an appearance by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy at Massasoit Community College was questioned by campus police but will not be disciplined as he had feared.
"There is no disciplinary action planned against the student," Dick Cronin, Massasoit spokesman, said this morning. "The student was spoken to by campus police. That's the end of the matter."
Paul Trost, 20, of Foxboro said he was upset by the glowing introduction of Kennedy by U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., during their appearance at the school's Brockton campus on Tuesday.
He yelled the reference to Chappaquiddick at the beginning of Kennedy's speech, which focused on cuts in federal aid to college students and other Bush administration policies. Kennedy is running for his eighth full term in office.
"My goal was to make people aware of what he did," Trost said, referring to the 1969 accident on Martha's Vineyard that claimed the life of a passenger in a car Kennedy was driving.
Kennedy did not respond to Trost's shout, but Trost said that many in the crowd gasped and then he walked out of the student center where they had gathered.
Trost said a campus police officer spoke to him outside and he saw some state police troopers, who typically accompany Kennedy for security, go outside.
Trost, who is studying liberal arts, said he was told by campus police that he could face expulsion. "Campus police said it's an arrest-able offense for disturbing a public assembly," Trost said.
Trost said today he was relieved there will be no disciplinary action. He added, "I have a right to voice my opinion and I should be allowed to say what I want without fear of reprisal."
Trost said a teacher who overheard him talking to another student about the incident called him "ignorant."
In 1969, Kennedy left a party and was driving a car that went off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island on Martha's Vineyard. His passenger, Capitol Hill secretary Mary Jo Kopechne, died after the car landed in the water. At the time, Kennedy said he tried to rescue Kopechne but was unsuccessful and swam to shore. The accident was not reported until eight hours later. Kennedy said he was exhausted and in shock.
Kennedy entered a plea of guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury. He received a sentence of two months in jail, which was suspended. A grand jury later reopened the investigation but did not return an indictment.
"He told me he was tired of listening to hypocrisy," Edward Trost, Paul's father, said today about the heckling at Massasoit.
Posted by: Captain America ||
02/23/2006
17:24 ||
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#1
One prize item in my collection of ephemera is a copy of the 1970s period National Lampoon which carried a mock VW ad showing the notoriously airtight Beetle floating in a pond with the caption:
If Ted Kennedy had been driving a Volkswagen he might be president today.
Of course, the issue was yanked from the stands after Teddy raised a ruckus, but not before I scurried out and snagged a copy.
#2
Damn nice car he ruined too. Same in detail as my first car. 1967 White Olds Delta 88 hard top.
Silk electric seats.
425 Super Rocket - 13->1 compression ratio.
400hp
A trunk big enough to fit a mini-cooper
No good in the 1/4 mile but not too bad in the 1/2 mile.
Gets real squirrely much above 120 mph.
Drum brakes so high speed on 2 lane roads you don't know is a no-no.
When old made an excellent fishing car for a friend in Ketchikan Alaska...
When I finally died the good death I had been through many cars.
Kennedy kill both Mary Jo and a fine car before their time.
#3
Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.
PETER Costello has called for a tougher US-style citizenship oath that demands loyalty to the Australian "compact" as he outlined his vision for a more muscular nationalism.
Lambasting the spread of "mushy multiculturalism", the Treasurer has bluntly called for hard-line Muslims and others who don't observe Australian values to be stripped of their citizenship.
And he said people coming to Australia should have the same respect for Australian values as visitors to a mosque who are asked to take off their shoes.
In another provocative speech by a senior Government figure, Mr Costello warned of a second generation of immigrants from the Middle East living in a "twilight zone", unable to properly distinguish between the values of their parents' old country and Australia.
"To deal with this we must clearly state the values of Australia and explain how we expect them to be respected," he said.
"I suspect there would be more respect for these values if we made more of the demanding requirements of citizenship."
Addressing the Sydney Institute last night, the Prime Ministerial aspirant again criticised those who wanted to live under sharia law, saying Australia's citizenship pledge should act as a "big flashing warning sign". "A person who does not acknowledge the supremacy of civil law laid down by democratic processes cannot truthfully take the pledge of allegiance," he said.
"As such they do not meet the pre-condition for citizenship."
He said Australia would have a problem if a second generation of immigrants lived "in a twilight zone where the values of their parents old country have been lost but the values of the new country not fully embraced".
To address these concerns, Mr Costello suggested the Government may consider toughening up the present citizenship oath.
"I suspect there would be more respect for (Australian) values if we made more of the demanding requirements of citizenship," he said.
The Treasurer's speech, coming on the eve of the Coalition's tenth anniversary in power, shows him trying to broaden his image. The speech will appeal to conservative elements in the Coalition, amid concerns that Mr Costello needs to shed his 'small l' liberal image.
His comments come just weeks after angry muslims rioted when the prophet Mohammed was depicted in cartoons in Europe.
In a veiled reference to these riots, Mr Costello said he did not like "putrid representations" like Piss Christ, the controversial photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine that was displayed in Melbourne in 1997.
Laying down a template for religious tolerance, Mr Costello said he did not think galleries should show such displays.
"But I do recognise they should be able to practice their offensive taste without fear of violence or a riot.
"Muslims do not like representation of the Prophet. But so too they must recognise this does not justify violence against newspapers, or countries that allow newspapers to publish them."
Mr Costello's speech comes just days after The Australian published comments by John Howard, who also railed against fragments of muslim society that were "utterly antagonistic" to Australian values.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister hailed Australia as the "least-discriminatory country in the world".
"We welcome people from the four corners of the earth. The only thing we ask of them is that when they come here they become Australians before anything else," he said.
#2
Lambasting the spread of "mushy multiculturalism", the Treasurer has bluntly called for hard-line Muslims and others who don't observe Australian values to be stripped of their citizenship.
Way to go! Enough of that fear of being called "prejudice, racists etc." with the sound amplification aid from the LLL. Heck, prejudice is better than the default islamo BIGOTRY towards non believers.
Go read the whole thing, but key facts are that this case goes back to 2004; the civilian who sold the stuff on Ebay helped Homeland Security and the Navy make cases against the three civilians and twelve Marines involved (some of whom are now in Iraq, presumably without their body armor); and this appears to be several isolated individuals, not a criminal gang at Camp Pendleton.
A Vista woman was sentenced to prison yesterday for buying from Camp Pendleton Marines stolen body armor meant for Iraq-bound troops, then selling it to undercover agents posing as foreign arms dealers.
Erika Jardine, 47, was arrested in November 2004. Jardine pleaded guilty a year later in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia to charges of violating the Arms Control Export Act and selling stolen U.S. property, said Dean Boyd, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
BEIJING: Pakistan will stand by China if the US ever tries to besiege it, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad has said. He said this while talking to a private television channel in Beijing on Wednesday.
Rashid said that President Pervez Musharrafs visit to China will open new avenues of development and cooperation between the two countries in all sectors. Pakistan and China have signed 42 bilateral agreements during the presidents current visit, 13 of which have been reached at the government level and 27 are between the traders and entrepreneurs of both countries.
These accords are aimed at boosting cooperation in economy, defence, trade and the social sector. The information minister said that Pakistan and China are jointly manufacturing an F-17 thunder combat aircraft. He said that the test-flight of a second combat plane, an F-10, is scheduled for today (Thursday).
He said that Musharraf told the Chinese leadership that Pakistan wanted full membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). He said that Russian President Vladimir Putin, due to visit China next month, along with the Chinese leadership will help Pakistan acquire SCO membership. Cooperation of other SCO members Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan will also be sought, he said.
The president also expressed condolences for the killing of three Chinese engineers in Balochistan, he said. agencies
Posted by: john ||
02/23/2006
16:45 ||
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#1
The Chinese really despise those that offer them "useful fealty".
To them, it means the barbarians are saying first that they think China is weak, second, that they, the barbarians, think that they have something that the Chinese need, and third, that they think themselves peers of the Chinese. It sounds weasely and insulting.
The typical Chinese response to this is to put on an elaborate show for the barbarian to impress them, and behaving all sweetness and light.
If, however, the Chinese respect or fear a barbarian, they are very taciturn and businesslike, and the last thing they will do is show their hand.
I'm afraid that sometimes Schadenfreude is called for.
Reuters: a disappointing 2006 outlook sent its shares down sharply. Reuters shares fell 10 percent to 406 pence ($7.11) in trading on the London Stock Exchange. Numis Securities noted that the company's guidance of 3 percent underlying revenue growth for 2006 was below forecasts of 4 percent. "The shares have had a good run but numbers are at the bottom range of expectations..."
CBS Records $9B Loss on TV, Radio Charges to write down the value of its radio and television businesses, a net loss amounting to $6 per share for the three months ended Dec. 31, weighed down by charges to write down the fair market value of its radio and television properties. The valuations of radio stations in particular have suffered in recent years due to stagnant revenues and higher costs.
Cindy Sheehan, mother of a soldier killed in Iraq and the woman who protested the war last summer outside President Bushs Texas ranch, is scheduled to bring her anti-war message to U.S. military installations in Germany next month.
"[Weve already heard] that Cindy Sheehan is like Hanoi Jane [Fonda] coming here," said Elsa Rassbach, an event organizer with American Voices Abroad, which is supporting Sheehans trip.
But, she said, "Were here to just democratically talk about U.S. policy."
On March 11, protesters plan to walk from Landstuhl Regional Medical Center to a parking lot just outside Ramstein Air Base, where Sheehan will be at a "camp," paying tribute to those who have died in the Iraq war.
"Cindy will be with us at Camp Casey Landstuhl/Ramstein to call attention to the fact that Germany is Europes logistical hub for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and others threatening Iran and the Middle East," according to an event flier. "Germany has the power to stop the further use of U.S. bases in Germany for illegal wars and criminal methods of warfare the power and the right to just say no!"
Organizers are hoping to erect the camp known as Camp Casey for Sheehans son in a parking lot outside Ramstein Air Bases west gate. The parking lot is under German jurisdiction, said Erin Zagursky, an Air Force spokeswoman at the base. Protest organizers are meeting with city officials in Ramstein and Landstuhl to gain permission for their event.
Sheehans goals are to bring the troops home and have peace on earth, she said in an e-mail to Stars and Stripes.
Her son, Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, 24, was killed in Iraq on April 4, 2004. Sheehan said in an e-mail she was too busy for a phone interview with Stars and Stripes.
"I dont know anything about the visit," she wrote. "It is being arranged by some people in Germany."
With the Kaiserslautern military community home to more than 50,000 Americans with military ties, Sheehan could face a rough welcome. When asked for comment Wednesday on Sheehans upcoming visit, several soldiers in Kaiserslautern asked if they could be quoted anonymously.
One soldier, who recently returned from Iraq, did give his name but didnt have much to say about Sheehan.
"Anything I would have to say about her, you couldnt print," Army Staff Sgt. Mark Genthner said.
Beginning March 9, Sheehans European visit will take her to Frankfurt, Aachen, Landstuhl and Ramstein in Germany. On March 13, Sheehan is scheduled to have a news conference in Paris, and the following day will address the European Union parliament in Strasbourg, France.
A protest organizer in Landstuhl said he was asked by others, including some of the 732 members of the European Union parliament, to arrange the protest involving Sheehan.
"The meeting with Cindy Sheehan is coming to us by an offer of members of the European Union in Strasbourg," said Detlev Besier, a Protestant reverend in Landstuhl. "They asked whether it was possible or not to visit Ramstein Air Base and the hospital. It was not our idea. We were asked whether it was possible or not."
On March 11, protesters would like to bring gifts, such as books, flowers and homemade goods, to the wounded troops at Landstuhl to show "solidarity to the soldiers wounded in the Iraq War," according to the event flier.
"We want to make it very clear to soldiers and staff there, we are glad that there is a good medical facility for the wounded," Rassbach said. "We just want less wounded troops and for this to go away."
Officials at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center have received no requests for the group to visit the hospital or make donations, said Marie Shaw, hospital spokeswoman.
Rassbach said she did not know what response servicemembers would have to Sheehans appearance outside Ramstein Air Base.
"Some press and some opponents say that Cindy is coming as their enemy," Rassbach said. "Our message is 'support our soldiers, bring them home, take care of them.' Thats what we're about."
#2
Bam! That is so spot-on, tu, that it hurts. She's one of the sickest, most pathetic, most opportunistic people ever produced in America. Moore, Chomsky, Clooney - those I can fathom - they're just money whores. Sheehan is something else entirely. And it's seriously twisted.
#3
Is the idea of a woman driven mad by the loss of her child that hard to fathom?
I hate the damage she's doing, but I can't get past pity for the woman herself. I wonder how ashamed her son or even the person she was a few years ago are of what she's become?
#4
Good for you, EE - and I mean that. Someone who can, should still care for her - without making apologies for her acts unrelated to grief. I am a parent - and her actions are beyond my ken. She is off the chart, IMHO. Sick and twisted is what I see. Her son certainly deserves far far better than her.
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/23/2006 17:02
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#7
Elmeans Elmomong3975, from what I've been able to gather, Ms. Sheehan did not much like her son before his death, and he entered the military openly against her wishes. This is a woman so off kilter that her son's father divorced her when she started her shenanigans, and her children published an open letter begging her to stop dishonoring their brother's memory. I'm a mother myself, and from what I've seen it isn't grief driving her mad, but love of the spotlight.
Some things and some acts can be 'overlooked' because the person is mad with grief -- but that has its limts and Cindy Shithan has passed those limits long, long, ago. Calling those who killed her son 'freedom fighters' and openly supporting the enemies (Hugo) of the United States - which her son willingly and knowingly died to defend - are all beyond the point where they can be explained away by 'grief'.
Clawing on the corpse of her dead son to advance her own political viewpoint (which her son did not share) is also beyond being 'overlooked'. Cindy is a media Vampire trying desperately to suck the last drop of attention and honor from her son's death.
#10
HHHHhhhhmmmmmm, TOON/HAIR-GATE vv the DANISH RIOTS, and now Cindy in GERMANY proper. Sounds like Mother Cindy wants to help the Spetznatz's/Spetzlamists protect their conventional first-strike, anti-NATO beachhead???
#11
Yessss. It's been over 2 weeks since I'd last seen Cindy in the news. Sometimes it's hard when you can't get your fix of Cindy. She's so awesome - the loopiest, most self-refuting anti-Bush activist that you could hope for. For us hawks, we couldn't hope for a better person to be the face - the leading symbol of the appeasement movement. She's guaranteed to repel most semi-rational people under the age of 60. Most Libs and many hard-leftists are now embarrased by her publicity stunts and her act as the willing dupe / clown of Medea Benjamin and Code Pink. The only people who still take her seriously are the menopausal / geriatric hippies. Every day she's still in the media spot light is a triumph for Karl Rove.
Hattip Drudge. More trickle down from the "Cartoonifada." I hope the Catholics are proud of their Church's leadership on this issue. EFL
After backing calls by Muslims for respect for their religion in the Mohammad cartoons row, the Vatican is now urging Islamic countries to reciprocate by showing more tolerance toward their Christian minorities.
"If we tell our people they have no right to offend, we have to tell the others they have no right to destroy us," Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican's Secretary of State (prime minister), told journalists in Rome.
"We must always stress our demand for reciprocity in political contacts with authorities in Islamic countries and, even more, in cultural contacts," Foreign Minister Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo told the daily Corriere della Sera.
Reciprocity -- allowing Christian minorities the same rights as Muslims generally have in Western countries, such as building houses of worship or practicing religion freely -- is at the heart of Vatican diplomacy toward Muslim states.
"Enough now with this turning the other cheek! It's our duty to protect ourselves," Monsignor Velasio De Paolis, secretary of the Vatican's supreme court, thundered in the daily La Stampa. Jesus told his followers to "turn the other cheek" when struck. "The West has had relations with the Arab countries for half a century, mostly for oil, and has not been able to get the slightest concession on human rights," he said.
Bishop Rino Fisichella, head of one of the Roman universities that train young priests from around the world, told Corriere della Sera the Vatican should speak out more.
"Let's drop this diplomatic silence," said the rector of the Pontifical Lateran University. "We should put pressure on international organizations to make the societies and states in majority Muslim countries face up to their esponsibilities."
#2
How entertaining. Let's see if one of the world's most firmly established religions can lead by example and cause another, supposedly, established religion to make good on reciprocity.
Part of me wants to scream, "FAT CHANCE!" But another little part of me is ever-so-slightly hopeful that the Vatican can pull another hat trick like they did in Poland.
#3
I don't think it will make any difference on the Muslim side at this point, but that such things are actually being said, publicly, is important. One more item on the tipping point scales.
#5
it also points out to us Catholics that there are limits to turning the other cheek. Some already knew that. Others, blissfully felt that appeasement/inaction/remaining quiet is taking the moral high ground. Those are the ones we need to wake the F*&k up.
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/23/2006 17:23
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#6
there are limits to turning the other cheek
I know whacha mean, Frank. First you get slapped, then you get spanked and then you run out of cheeks to offer and things get real squirrelly.
#9
"it also points out to us Catholics that there are limits to turning the other cheek."
I don't believe there is anything in the Old Testament about turning the other cheek! All that twaddle is New Testament clap-trap intended to encourage a "kindler, gentler" Christianity.
#10
LOL - no muslim here - I wipe with both and wash after
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/23/2006 19:19
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#11
No, it is another 'child of the 60's' misreading of the testament. In Christ's time you slapped a social inferior or slave with the back of your hand. If the person slapped turns the other cheek you would be forced to slap with the palm side, which means you are slaping an EQUAL. Not crawling under the table.
#12
hokay - my R.C. "child of the 60's" ('59 actually) teachings sez you may get in one shot. But it will definitely come with a price, and I reserve the right to escalate :-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/23/2006 19:41
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#13
Jesus gave counsel on what *I* should do when someone slaps *me* in the cheek. No counsel given when they slap someone else's cheek.
Also, the advice is given to individuals. There is no guidance given in the New Testament to nations or governments.
#14
Reciprocity -- allowing Christian minorities the same rights as Muslims generally have in Western countries, such as building houses of worship or practicing religion freely -- is at the heart of Vatican diplomacy toward Muslim states.
Not doing very well, is it.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/23/2006 21:38
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#15
Midway is dead on - the Radical Islamists/Extremists = Lefties > desperate for Ideo-Validity + Faith-led Modernity in all things.
For Myself the Church is trying hard NOT to say ISLAM AS A FAITH WILL NOT BE SAVED MERELY BY ISLAM FORCING ITSELF ON THE WORLD AND TAKING OVER THE POSSESSIONS AND IDEAS, ETC. FROM THE INFIDELS. Islam must be saved from within, by and for Islam and Muslims, by "true believers" whom believe that God is for all, NOT the FEW vv waffling God-based Policrats, Governmentists, and Regulators, etc by and for the sake of same, THAT GOD MUST BE CONTROLLED!?
#16
One of my hopes and dreams as a Christian is a re-unification of the Church. By that I don't mean under the Pope in Rome or a Patriarch in Constaninople (sp) but a unity of purpose and ideals. I was raised Catholic and still have certain afinity for the creed and practices of the RC Church. At the same time time I am involved with a women who was raised Luthern. And to me donomination differences don't mean shit. And they don't to most priests/pastors I have met either. The world today is in a war for our spirits. On one side there is the faithful that practice moderation and fellowship, no matter there creed or religion. On the other are those whose single minded belief in one aspect of their faith allows them to condone acts beyond the pale.
Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan will be the guest of honor at the "Bring 'Em Home" concert at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom.
Among the performers scheduled to play March 20 are R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe, Bright Eyes, Rufus Wainwright, Fischerspooner, Public Enemy's Chuck D, Devendra Banhart and Peaches, Billboard.com reported.
Sheehan will address the audience at the concert noting the third anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Billboard said.
Janeane Garafalo will broadcast her Air America Radio show "The Majority Report" live from the concert.
Money raised by the show will go to Iraq Veterans Against the War and Veterans for Peace.
#4
be nice to hack their PA sysyem for a couple rounds of Neil Young's "Let's Roll":
Written: 2001/11/21)
Notes: Song is a tribute to those lost on Flight 93.
Rough mix first played on Jim Ladd's radio show.
Band is Booker T & the MGs (with Poncho replacing Steve Cropper).
I know I said I love you,
I know you know it's true,
I got to put the phone down,
And do what we gotta do.
One's standing in the aisle way,
Two more at the door,
We got to get inside there,
Before they kill some more.
Time is runnin' out, let's roll.
Time is runnin' out, let's roll.
No time for indecision,
We got to make a move,
I hope that we're forgiven,
For what we gotta do.
How this all got started,
I'll never understand,
I hope someone can fly this thing,
Get us back to land.
Time is runnin' out, let's roll.
Time is runnin' out, let's roll.
No one has the answers,
But one thing is true,
You got to turn on evil,
When it's comin' after you.
You got to face it down,
And when it tries to hide,
You got to go in after it,
And never be denied.
Time is runnin' out, let's roll.
Let's roll for freedom,
Let's roll for love,
Goin' after Satan,
On the wings of a dove.
Let's roll for justice,
Let's roll for truth,
Let's not let our children,
Grow up fearful in their youth.
Time is runnin' out, let's roll.
Time is runnin' out, let's roll.
Time is runnin' out, let's roll.
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/23/2006 17:05
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#5
Oh, goodie, I don't listen to any of them anyway.Those that I have heard of, anyway.
*$%&!!!, sometimes I feel like I spent the whole of my adult life cleaning up after a-holes who just couldn't get enough of those 1960ies glory years.
#6
Janeane Garafalo will broadcast her Air America Radio show "The Majority Report" live from the concert.
I hope muck4doo checks in tonight -- he'd know for certain about this. But I was under the impression that Air America had gone under, due to a a significant majority not listening to the "Majority Report" or any of the other offerings?
Lydia Angyiou's kids sure won't be giving her much trouble any more now that they've seen her wrestle a 700-pound polar bear.
Angyiou lives in Ivujivik, a village of 300 people on the shore of Hudson Bay in northern Quebec. One Wednesday evening earlier this month, Angyiou was walking near the village community center with her two sons when a group of children playing street hockey nearby started shouting and pointing frantically. Angyiou, 41, turned around and saw a polar bear sizing up her 7-year-old son.
She told the children to run and raced around to get between the bear and her son. Then she started kicking and punching the animal, according to police reports. In a flash, the bear swatted her in the face and she fell on her back. With the bear on top of her, Angyiou began kicking her legs in a bicycle motion. She was swatted once more and rolled over, but the bear moved toward her again.
Siqualuk Ainalik heard the commotion and came rushing over.
Seeing Angyiou wrestling with the bear, he ran to his brother's home, grabbed a rifle and headed back to the street. He fired a few warning shots. The sound diverted the bear's attention from Angyiou just long enough for him to aim and fire again. According to police, Ainalik fired four shots into the bear before it finally died.
With the help of some neighbors, Angyiou made it to the home of Nelson Conn, a constable with the Kativik Regional Police Force.
"She came in in a panic," Conn recalled. "She was obviously in shock. She was saying 'Bear. Bear.' I just took her over to our nursing station and I asked where and if the bear was dead. She said, 'Yes.' "
Remarkably, Angyiou suffered only a couple of scratches and a black eye. She and the local police have been fielding calls from across Canada ever since the incident first was reported last week in the Nunatsiaq News.
Meanwhile villagers still are marveling at her courage and there is talk of nominating her for a bravery medal. "I've been here 24 years and I've never seen this before," said Larry Hubert, a regional captain with the police force who arrived on the scene just after the bear was shot. "For sure, she saved the kids' lives."
Hubert has known Angyiou for 15 years and he can't believe she took on a bear. He said the bear measured eight feet in length and weighed at least 700 pounds.
Angyiou "is about five-foot nothing and 90 pounds on a wet day," Hubert said with a laugh. "She's pretty quiet. I'm surprised she went and did this. But I guess when your back is up against the wall, I guess we come up with super-human strength."
Ivujivik is Quebec's northernmost community, situated on a peninsula where the Hudson Bay meets the Hudson Strait. While polar bears roam the giant ice packs that float just off shore, Hubert said it's rare for them to wander into the village.
Posted by: DanNY ||
02/23/2006
15:21 ||
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#1
Dude, hands down, my mom is tougher than yours.
Posted by: Jimmy Angyiou ||
02/23/2006 18:05
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#2
sounds like a nominee for Defense Minister
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/23/2006 18:21
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#4
Polar bears are nothing to mess with. One of they boys that went to high school in the town I lived in got attacked and half eaten by a polar bear at Point Lay in northwest Alaska. He and his girlfriend were walking home and the bear attacked. He told his girlfriend to skidaddle and she did while he fought off the bear. Villagers heard the commotion and came out and shot the bear. A fish and game necropsy found that the bear was starving. There was no fat on the animal except a little on the heart.
I have flown over a bunch near Cape Churchill on Hudson Bay, glad the engine was running fine...heh. They are impressive animals. Grizzly man Timothy Treadwell wouldn't get close to these party animals! Even had one wandering around the airport that day in Churchill.
Posted by: Al-Aska Paul ||
02/23/2006 18:46
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#5
I have too many polar bear pics to choose from.
We've been having connectivity problems for much of the day at the provider level, as you've probably noticed.
Please welcome the fine anuses at 61.56.251.251, 62.75.177.46. 72.11.78.154, and 61.144.230.185 to our list of banned IPs. Give 'em a big hand for their help in keeping my blood pressure from getting too low.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/23/2006
14:35 ||
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#1
I think I'll sign them up to some of the better pr0n mailing lists. S'only fair.
#7
Fred - on a Linux system you can change the default sshd port to something other than 22. It won't stop a determined hacker from attacking (after first port-scanning). But it'll keep the random script kiddies out.
#9
Is there a way to set it up so that not all users with accounts can connect? They've been trying to log in using lists of first names. I want to allow only two users, three at the outside.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/23/2006 16:28
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#10
How about using names like Thomoting Clolush :-)
My servers have that problem too, but it can be tempered by limiting the grace time from connect to login to something like 30 seconds and max 2 attempt. That way those dictionary attackss will go way down.
And since this is a remote machine you'll have to reboot the machine for the changes to take affect.
Serious execute man sshd_config for all the options. sshd is wonderful work of unix technology.
So, it's not my fault I'm fat, after all... besides, I'm not fat, I'm big-boned, dammit! Yeah, big-boned, that's the ticket...
Courtesy American Physiological Society
and World Science staff
There is a lot of good advice to help us avoid becoming fat, such as eat less and exercise. But if some researchers are right, you may soon be hearing a surprising new piece of advice: wash your hands.
There is growing evidence that some viruses may cause obesity, thus making obesity contagious, said Leah Whigham of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, lead researcher in a new study on the subject.
The idea isnt new, but it has been controversial among scientists, Whigham said. It makes people feel more comfortable to think that obesity stems from lack of control, she remarked. Its a big mental leap to think you can catch obesity.
Her study found that a human-infecting virus called AD-37 causes obesity in chickens. Previous studies had linked two three related viruses with obesity in animals or humans, the researchers added.
The study appears in the January issue of the American Journal of PhysiologyRegulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology.
AD-37 and its kin are adenoviruses, members of a family of viruses that commonly cause upper respiratory tract infections including the common cold.
Whigham said more research is needed to find out if Ad-37 causes obesity in humans. One study was inconclusive, she said, because only a handful of people showed evidence of infection with Ad-37, not enough to draw any conclusions.
Researchers should now identify which, if any, viruses cause human obesity, she added. Further steps could be to devise a screening test to identify people who are infected, and to develop a vaccine.
If Ad-36 is responsible for a significant portion of human obesity, the logical therapeutic intervention would be to develop a vaccine to prevent future infections, wrote Frank Greenway of Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, in an editorial in the same issue of the journal. One would want to ensure that all the [subtypes] of human adenoviruses responsible for human obesity were covered in the vaccine.
Whigham said there has long been evidence that factors other than poor diet or lack of exercise may be at work in an obesity epidemic that has affected many nations.
The prevalence of obesity has doubled in adults in the United States in the last 30 years and has tripled in children, the study noted. With the exception of infectious diseases, no other chronic disease in history has spread so rapidly, and the causes have not been clearly identified, she added.
Other diseases once thought to be the product of environmental factors are now known to stem from pathogens, she added. For example, ulcers were once thought to be the result of stress, but researchers eventually implicated H. pylori bacteria as a cause.
The nearly simultaneous increase in the prevalence of obesity in most countries of the world is difficult to explain by changes in food intake and exercise alone, and suggest that adenoviruses could have contributed, the researchers wrote in the study. The role of adenoviruses in the worldwide epidemic of obesity is a critical question that demands additional research.
The theory that viruses could play a part in obesity began a few decades ago, the researchers said. That was when Nikhil Dhurandhar, now at Louisiana State University, noticed that chickens in India infected with the avian adenovirus SMAM-1 had significantly more fat than non-infected chickens.
Since then, Ad-36 has been found to be more prevalent in obese humans, Whigham and colleagues noted.
In the new study, the team worked to determine which adenoviruses might be associated with obesity in chickens. The animals were separated into four groups, each of which was exposed to one of three adenoviruses, or no virus.
Chickens inoculated with Ad-37 had significantly more fat compared with the other three groups, which included those infected with Ad-2 or Ad-31, the researchers found.
#4
Damn--I wish they'd keep AD-37 out of my Big Macs!
Posted by: Dar ||
02/23/2006 15:14
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#5
Americans are obese for two reasons (a) Because we overeat and underexercise (b) Because the government statistics on obesity are so insane they include many pro atheletes (basketball and football at least) as obese.
#7
good thing there's no calories in my Jack Daniels on the rocks doubles...."another over here, bartender!"....if there was, I'd be able to see 'em
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/23/2006 17:12
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#8
There is a lot of good advice to help us avoid becoming fat, such as eat less and exercise. But if some researchers are right, you may soon be hearing a surprising new piece of advice: wash your hands.
Curse you, Col. Sanders, for being so finger-lickin' good!
#13
Her study found that a human-infecting virus called AD-37 causes obesity in chickens. Previous studies had linked two three related viruses with obesity in animals or humans, the researchers added.
Ah. This would be the rumor that arrived at the Weight Watchers meeting as "eating chicken can make you get fat".
(No, I'm not joking.)
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/23/2006 21:33
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"Does this tinfoil hat makes me look fat?"... Of course, it might be true, who knows? WND sez the US nile virus epidemic may be a gift from Saddam, via Castro.
Rats may understand cause and effect, contrary to widespread belief among scientists, a study has found.
Its well known that animals can quickly learn that events are connected in some way. They can learn, for instance, that one event usually follows another. But creatures arent generally thought to reason that the second event could happen because of the first.
But that assumption may be wrong, according to the researchers who conducted the study.
The scientists, Aaron Blaisdell of the University of California-Los Angeles and colleagues, repeatedly showed rats a light followed by a tone.
Then, if the tone was played alone, the rodents started to behave as though the light must also have gone on. But when rats produced the tone themselvesby pressing a leverthey didnt act as though the light must have flashed, the researchers reported.
The rats reasoning was like our ability to understand that it hasnt just rained when we see a wet lawn we just watered with a hose, according to the scientists.
They said they could ascertain the rats reasoning processes to some extent because when the light flashed, the rats were also given some food along with the sound. The rats learned to start looking for food after the light was flashed. But they didnt do this as much when they themselves had set off the tone.
A number of researchers have recently concluded that causal reasoning is a faculty that divides humans from animals, the researchers wrote in the Feb. 17 issue of the research journal Science, where they reported their findings. The present results cast doubt on that conclusion.
The rats might not understand the detailed physical mechanisms underlying cause and effect, Blaisdell and colleagues added. Nonetheless, they argued, the rodents show a key component of causal reasoning: they grasp the relationship between seeing and doing, and how these influence events differently.
Iraqi Shi'ite Leader Muqtada Al-Sadr: Arab and Islamic Forces in Iraq Would Also Be Considered Occupation; If Asked by Syria and Iran, We May Confront the American Forces in Iraq
The following are excerpts from an interview by Iraqi Shi'ite Leader Muqtada Al-Sadr that aired on Al-Jazeera TV on February 18, 2006. See at link.
EFL; go read it all.
The moment of truth Julie Gonsalves dreads is still some time away when her 3-year-old is old enough to understand that Daddy won't come home anymore. "That's the hard part, telling Cody his daddy is gone," said Gonsalves, the 30-year-old widow of Turlock native Chad Gonsalves, a Green Beret who was killed in Afghanistan last week.
"I tried to tell Cody, but he just didn't get it," Gonsalves explained by telephone from her home in Fayetteville, N.C. "I told him Daddy wasn't coming home, he was in heaven. Cody said, 'Daddy not coming home? Silly Mommy. Daddy's coming home.'"
If it's hard for her son to grasp the grim reality, Julie understands. It's still hard for her to realize this deployment has no end. He won't be coming home to her, Cody, or twin sons Dylan and Blake. . . . Rest in peace, and God watch over your family.
Posted by: Mike ||
02/23/2006
12:26 ||
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#1
Godspeed, young soldier. The best of the best in my book. God bless you and yours.
Posted by: BA ||
02/23/2006 13:52
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Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
02/23/2006
12:12 ||
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#1
Unfortunately yes. And if the US took any side it should the side of the Kurds. If the Turks don't like it though titties. Otherwise hunker down and let the idiots fight it out. Then shoot the last man standing. What would scare me about a Civil War in Iraq between Sunni and Shite is it spilling over into the rest of the ME in general. Just my 2 cents
#2
On the Big Picture scale, they've been gunning for each other, sorta, since the death of Mo and the Big Split. There's only been a warm bathtub of water separating them all that time, so what this tells me is that neither side is actually willing to duke it out in the old bloody ways till there's a winner. Adding nukes to the equation could certainly change that, however.
Within Iraq, outsiders will feed the strife and push the Iraqis, as their proxies, to have a go at it -- if they think they can do it without blowback. Zarqi, and to an extent Tater, give them the cover, so I'd wager Zarqi is being offered a lot of stuff and advice - and Tater his marching orders from the MM's. If the Iraqis can resist this indoctrinated from birth hatred and fear, and not let these foreign interests use them, then they've certainly met a supreme hurdle and topped it.
I say no civil war, but more skirmishing, perhaps serious but not all-out war, before it dies down. I take 2b's suggestion that they're actually tired of it as being an excellent point - meaning that I want it to be true. I say no all out war, but still more skirmishing for awhile to come.
If one comes, then we should be with the Kurds and exit the playing field of the Sunnis and Shi'a ASAP.
#5
Are the Kurds really a party to all this, as long as they can keep their traditional area? I.e., wouldn't they be happy to sit on the sidelines and watch the Shi'a and Sunnis kill each other while Kurdistan continues to act and prosper independently?
Posted by: Dar ||
02/23/2006 15:16
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#6
I just realized that even the small scale civil war now going on probably makes it impossible for the OIC to have a conference on the cartoons.
Even for the OIC, such a conference would not pass the vomit/giggle test.
#8
Actually, the Kurds have about 100,000 reasons to help the Shias demolish the Sunnis : their dead from the nerve gas attacks and Saddam's ethnic cleasing operations. And the troops that did almost all of that : Sunnis from the Triangle.
#9
My contention is that the Kurds already have a very stable and established region--why risk it? Yes, they may hate the Sunnis, but would they actively take part in a civil war and risk losing what they've already achieved?
Would this really boil into a three-way free-for-all, or more of a Shia (and Kurd, to varying degrees) vs. Sunni fight?
Posted by: Dar ||
02/23/2006 15:48
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#10
I don't think the Kurd leadership will allow them, not matter how much they want to, to jeaopardize thier shot at an independent state. They're smart - seems like down to the last soul there - so they'll keep their power dry - and continue to retake Kirkuk and (assuming it was once theirs) Mosul - sending the Arabs (who Saddam installed) packing. That will be their most, uh, "escalating" or "antagonstic" act, I think. If there is a full Sunni vs Shi'a civil war, they will use it to advantage to more quickly consolidate the areas they consider traditional Kurdish lands.
#12
Well, since the best units in the Iraqi Army and Police are mainly or heavily Kurdish, the Kurds will be involved in any Sunni/Shia battles. One of the deals cut to get a constitution passed there was that the Kurds maintain their militia {Peshmerga, sp?} as "Police units" in the Kurdish zone. However, the Shias also have the authority to callup those units to back up engaged Police/Army units in times of national emergency. A civil war would cetainly qualify as that, and Kirkuik and Mosul would be the prizes awarded for loyalty to the Shia-dominated national government.
#15
This is an uptick in a low level setting of scores that has been going on since before We removed Saddam. I don't know which way it's going to go. My hope is that it doesn't break out into a full bore Civil War. I do hope Iraqi's take this chance to remove all non-native Arabs foreign muslims one way or another.
What ever happens we should hang with the Kurds they can read this all better than we every will and are interested in real peace and stability.
#16
Yes the Kurds will stay : the Shias will not be going after them, at all. People have to remember one fact : the Kurds are Sunnis, just a relaxed branch of that sect. So, if Shias whack the Triangle Sunni Arabs - especially the imams - they are getting a twofer : dead enemies and the strong possibility that the replacement Sunni imam will be a Kurd. The Shias have no incentive to attack the Kurds and every reason to draw them into the fight as a combined force : Shia/Kurd vs Triangle Sunni. And the Kurds have all sorts of reasons to go along with that : Kirkuk, Mosul, oil revenue sharing programs to give a lot to the producing zones, political and economic power-sharing, and the ability to be the Praetorian Guard of the new government, as well as good old revenge.
#17
I agree with Shieldwolf but see it as a lot of reprisals and not an actual civil war. Yeah its a fine line but the Sunnis will learn and mellow.
On a similar note the entire area will become uninhabitable for Al Queda in the near future because of the Mosque attacks so there will be less provocating attacks in the future as well.
#18
The kurds have a strong economic incentive to prevent a civil war. Their economy is prospering partly because they sell stuff to the rest of the country. Also their soldiers in the National Army have a job because there is a national army.
Of course the emotional incentive is to encourage a shia-anwar conflict to take care of enemies.
To be honest though, if I were a Kurd I might well go with the revenge thing.
#20
There won't be a civil war, geography and logistics preclude it. The 'worst' that will happen is we see some heavy duty ethnic cleansing of Sunnis. The Shias and Kurds are probably not averse to pushing the bulk of the Sunnis into the 'Sunni triangle' and then contain them there.
BTW, Omar and his bro at ITM are Sunnis, and like most Sunnis they seem to way over estimate the military capabilities of the Sunnis and underestimate that of the Kurds and Shia.
#21
Is ethnic cleansing by Kurds, etc a legal solution given UN impotence?
For what it is worth, some of us supported ethnic cleansing by Serbs (Muslims were the first cleansers in Yugoslavia) as a means of removing hostiles and terrorists from the midst of a civilian population. I won't link the Serbianna website, for obvious reasons, but it is a fact that Serbs are being pushed out of Kosovo, by the same Muslims that Clinton served. And Bosnia has not permitted the construction of a single Christian church since they conned the Euros.
Sbrenica? Some innocents were slaughtered, but most of the targets were Muslim terrorists.
Posted by: ToughLove Not Hate ||
02/23/2006 18:56
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#22
As I recall the Croats have the honor of first place in ethnic cleansing.
#23
Nimble Spemble, I think you may have bought into the disinfomation that the Croats ethnic cleansed 200,000 Serbs when they retook the southern and eastern areas of the country . News reports at the time clearly showed long columns of Serb vehicles fleeing ahead of the advancing Croats. Which makes it difficult to argue it was ethnic cleansing.
#24
Phil
A cousin was over there with Doctors without borders..
Only stayed a couple of weeks as all sides would shoot at doctors, nurses and rescue workers being they were easy targets to shoot.
Said..
Muslim Jihadist from Iran would wander all over raping and pillaging everybody as they couldn't even recognize the local muslims.
Croats tattooed swastikas on their own foreheads and hunted muslims and serbs.
Serbs methodicly ran an rational sort of battle plan to accomplish what they needed.
Muslims Serbs and Croats shot at the aid workers and laughed.
#27
My point was that while 200,000 Serbs did leave Krajina. To say 200,000 were ethnic cleansed is false. Many if not most left of their own volition. Nowhere did I say the Croats (or Muslims, Serbs) didn't conduct ethnic cleansing.
#29
I have to comment here, I think the question is wrong, not "Will" there be civil war, but that "Civil War" is, and has ben going on for a loooooong time now, interrupted by the United States Army in some severely localised areas.
That this recent resurgence (Touched off mainly by the excuse "Cartoons") is only the current excuse used, and now fueled by the golden dome destruction as simply the heat under the steaming pot just being turned up another slight notch higher.
Hunker down, wait a bit, this has been going on for so many centuries now that the people are very tired of it, and things will calm relatively quickly.
(Calm being a relative term, you understand)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
02/23/2006 21:39
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#30
I don't think so - the SAMARRA, etal. attacks appear more like yet another coordinated strike against multiple local targets intended more for American MSM-Pols than to successly destabilize the post-elex new Iraqi Govt. Yes, the Civilians have suffered loses but so have the atackers.
#31
When we established the northern No-Fly zone for Sammy after OIF, the Kurds took advantage of the stability it produced and ran with it. The Sunnis in the Triangle are just spoil sports now that their benefactor Sammy and Uday and Qusay are out of power and/or this world. The Shiites have this Martyr complex that has been following them around for 1000+ years. They have a lot of shadow work to do, heh.
The Kurds have to secure their own area, consolidate their borders with the Triangle, ensure that their Northern oilfields are secure, and work things out with the Turks, so they have some communication with the outside world. It sure as hell won't be with Iran for a while.
If the Kurds play their cards right, they will do OK, despite what storms come up with the Sunnis in the Triangle.
Posted by: Al-Aska Paul ||
02/23/2006 21:57
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#32
From what I understand, causing folks to flee for their safety is the same as ethnically cleansing an area. If the Serbs left because they wanted Serbs as neighbors that wouldn't qualify.
As long as they don't go Rwanda on each other I don't really have a problem with this kind of ethnic cleansing as it tends to resolve conflicts a little better when combatants aren't intermixed.
#33
Considering all the weapons/ammo caches still laying around in the Iraqi desert, telling the Peshmurga "no" might prove to be a very exciting experience. Short, too.
DUESSELDORF, Germany (Rooters) - A German court on Thursday convicted a businessman of insulting Islam by printing the word "Koran" on toilet paper and offering it to mosques.
The 61-year-old man, identified only as Manfred van H., was given a one-year jail sentence, suspended for five years, and ordered to complete 300 hours of community service, a district court in the western German town of Luedinghausen ruled.
The conviction comes after a Danish newspaper printed cartoons depicting the Warlord Prophet Mohammad (may the voices in his head become silent) -- sparking violent protests around the world from Muslims who saw the images as sacrilegious and an attack on their beliefs.
Manfred van H. printed out sheets of toilet paper bearing the word "Koran" shortly after a group of Muslims carried out a series of bomb attacks in London in July 2005. He sent the paper to German television stations, magazines and some 15 mosques.
Hmmm, a little extreme, and I'd be angry if someone created toilet tissue with a cross and a picture of Jesus, but the First Amendment sez that ... oh, right, not applicable in the world of Y'urp-peons.
Prosecutors said that in an accompanying letter Manfred van H. called Islam's holy book a "cookbook for terrorists." He also offered his toilet paper for sale on the Internet at a price of 4 euros ($4.76) per roll, saying the proceeds would go toward a "memorial to all the victims of Islamic terrorism."
The maximum sentence for insulting religious beliefs under the German criminal code is three years in prison. Somebody wake me up when a muzzie is convicted for insulting a religion.
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
02/23/2006
12:06 ||
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#1
Did the toilet tissue become Koran just writing a single word on it? What will happen to me if I am in Germany, happened to eat a regular breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon, then end up writing the word Koran on a piece of paper? Will I be punished if I washed my hands before writing the word?
#3
Is not not obvious that members of religions other than Islam, must treat Mohammed's "prophet" claims as false? Is it not obvious that Muslims do not respect the right of free exercise of conscience? Is it not obvious that non-Muslims should recognize Muslims as enemies, who want to impose their cult on the rest of us? I guess not.
Posted by: ToughLove Not Hate ||
02/23/2006 18:38
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#4
Surprisingly (?) he was not imprisoned, though that option was available to the judge, he was given 300 hrs (IIRC) community service time. Only had to bare his belly button, it seems.
Posted by: Jacques Chirac ||
02/23/2006 12:07
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#3
Just 'cause they may eventually own a carrier doesn't mean they'll be able to operate one.
Posted by: Dar ||
02/23/2006 12:33
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#4
They probably reverse-engineered the Varyag years ago . . . not that that'll get them very far.
Posted by: Mike ||
02/23/2006 13:57
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#5
They got _two_ carriers, the Minsk and the Varyag. This article concerns the Minsk, which was being used as a theme park.
I don't know much about the Varyag or what they're supposedly doing with it now.
One thing that seems to have escaped most people is that China may have other things on their mind than just Taiwan... and the Varyag, or something reverse-engineered from it, could be useful as a "lily pad" in much the same way a US carrier was used post-911.
Posted by: Phil ||
02/23/2006 14:12
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#6
Big targets make bigger booms. These days, a carrier without an Aegis phased array radar screen is nothing but a sitting duck. A Russian built air craft carrier epitomizes the term, "white elephant."
#7
Mike, you're right. Interestingly, they are doing the same thing with the US tech firms (Cisco, Dell, Yahoo, Google), they reserve engineer these companies' products and give them a kick out the door.
We are so gullible.
Posted by: Captain America ||
02/23/2006 16:49
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#8
Doesn't China have an alleged aegis-equivalent destroyer class?
Posted by: Phil ||
02/23/2006 17:18
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#9
Here's an article, with pictures, of a recent Chinese anti-aircraft destroyer.
Posted by: Phil ||
02/23/2006 17:23
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#10
Doesn't China have an alleged aegis-equivalent destroyer class?
More importantly, does China's shipboard radar have anything remotely equivalent to the Aegis phased array system's tracking and fire control capabilities? I would be very surprised if they did. The processing power behind the Friend or Foe ID and targeting computations made by Aegis is simply phenomenal.
#11
This quote from your article, Phil, is what makes me wonder:
The Soviets seem to have had considerable trouble in exercises with their Gorshkov phased array radar, as mechanical scanning Top Sail/Top Pair radars replaced it on the next Soviet carrier, the Tblisi. Sea operations attempting to successfully target incoming threats using external ship or aircraft platforms also seem to have failed.
The Chinese aren't much better than the Rusians at systems integration, which is what complex targeting and fire control equipment is all about.
#12
Only the US ever figured out how to stabilize those beheamoths. A lot of Russians died trying to figure it out, and they never could, which is why their biggest carriers were only 2/3rds Nimitz class in size. Anything bigger and they wouldn't make it out of the port.
It takes many years to learn how to operate and maintain a surface and a submarine fleet, and it is a slow and deadly process. I'm pleased to see that the Chinese are using every shortcut available. This means that in short order we should see more and more Chinese naval disasters involving the phrase "...with all hands."
#13
I could be wrong but I believe Richard Fisher wrote an article describing how the PLAN will generally dev two types of carriers - one for anti-USN CV/Sub conventional/standard tacair opers, and one for dedicated support of amphibious opers.
#14
I hope there wasn't one chinese worker within 10 miles of any of the US's carrier building plants; I'm still wondering why they even let Wen Ho Lee anywhere near Los Alamos! Can the US build anything without having a foreign national involved?
Rummy got a taste of this when the Chicoms told him; "Up Yours" when he wanted to visit some of their sites, deemed "Too Chinese" for him to see!
Makes a lotta sense. Especially in NYC...
ALBANY - Sen. David Paterson is pushing a bill that would require cops to shoot to wound, rather than using deadly force - drawing outrage from officers. The bill also would create a new provision for second-degree manslaughter that would be reserved specifically for an officer who "uses more than the minimal amount necessary" to stop a crime suspect. ...and who makes that call?
Paterson, who is on Eliot Spitzer's ticket as lieutenant governor, has reintroduced the bill twice since first sponsoring it in 2001, refusing to let it die. In a memo urging its passage, Paterson wrote: "There is no justification for terminating another's life when a less extreme measure may accomplish the same objective." Why, thank you, Mr. Sanctimonious! Let's hope someone doesn't have a gun to your head some day and the ESU cops remember this quote. We'll see what you think then...
Current law gives cops a wide berth to use deadly force when a suspect presents a danger to another person's life. Paterson (D-Harlem) wrote that a police officer, under his legislation, "would have to try to shoot a suspect in the arm or the leg." You know? Like "The Lone Ranger"! He used to do it all the time...
"This bill shows absolutely no understanding of just how difficult it is for a police officer when they get into situations requiring the use of deadly force," John Grebert, director of the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police, told the Daily News. That's why he's a politician. But feel free to fire away with an antitank gun if you catch someone breaking into his house...
His sentiment was echoed by Dan DeFedericis, president of the New York State Troopers PBA, who said: "We are definitely opposed to this bill ... and we strongly believe it could endanger the lives of police officers and innocent civilians."
While Spitzer already has the endorsement of the New York City Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, that group's Albany lobbyist, John Poklemba, said, "This bill is very ill conceived. I can't imagine any police agencies not being opposed to it." ...and I must call Eliot and ask him why he has a friggin idiot on the ticket.
Paterson told The News last night that his bill would safeguard the public. He explained that he wrote the bill in response to the acquittal of four NYPD officers charged in the 1999 shooting death of the unarmed Amadou Diallo in the Bronx."Many people were surprised the officers weren't guilty of something, criminally negligent homicide or something that involved some negligence," he said. "I thought I was writing the bill that really mirrored what the department rules are." That shows how "in touch" this guy is...
A Spitzer spokesman declined to comment. We'll get right back to you on that....
#1
Subversives, on the side of the criminals, always.
Untile THEY are in power and sneezing becomes a crime against THE PEOPLE and you get reeducation in a mental asylum if you disagree with Mao Tze Clinton.
#4
This would never fly in San Diego. Here the police shoot early and often with the full support of an admiring public. Several years ago a "homeless" man threatened a number of folks (including 7 police officers and a police dog) at a downtown McDonalds with a big stick and was shot 41 times for his trouble. The only public outcry was that in the melee, one of the officers accidently shot the police dog. People were outraged at the cruelty to animals. Lethal force reduces recidivism.
#8
Shooting someone in the arm or leg sounds so mean and painful. We should require the cops to simply shoot the weapon out of the alleged perpetrators hand. But only after all attempts to sweet talk the presumably innocent citizen into behaving nicely have failed. [sarcastic snorting noises]
#9
"If they can do it in Hollyweird, then we can do it here, too, goshdarnit! I saw it done on Law & Order, Special Stuff Unit!"
I wonder if this would hold true if Paterson's home was invaded and he managed to get his hands on a gun after one of the invaders had dragged his pre-teen daughter off to another room...
#10
"I sure as hell shot to wound. What a pity the perp moved, putting his center of mass where his arm had been."
Guarantee there'd never be a conviction.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/23/2006 14:02
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#11
Several years ago a "homeless" man threatened a number of folks (including 7 police officers and a police dog) at a downtown McDonalds with a big stick and was shot 41 times for his trouble.
#12
Anyone who has ever received instruction in the handling of firearms knows two things:
A) Never point a weapon (loaded or unloaded) at another person unless you are willing to shoot them.
B) If you are pointing a weapon at someone you must be prepared to kill that person, whether you intend only to wound them or not.
Anyone who thinks that officers are able to choose or calibrate the level of harm inflicted by the firing of their weapons is a certifiable wingnut. An officer fires to prevent further loss of human life. At that point, the perp is posing sufficient danger to other people whereby his own life is forfeit.
Morons who are incapable of comprehending the reasoning behind such a decision chain are a danger to all around them.
#13
This guy is a danger to the public. No concept of how force is applied. The police never shoot to kill. The Police in NY should unite to run him out of office. A true TRANZI fool.
#15
What? Current laws already require that an officer show cause before post incident investigators, that his life was in danger at the time of use of deadly force. Existing deterrents ensure that it is of last resort. In fact, non-lethal weapons are on the market, and many officers are trained in their use.
Posted by: ToughLove Not Hate ||
02/23/2006 18:47
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#16
In fact, non-lethal weapons are on the market, and many officers are trained in their use.
There is no such thing as a "non-lethal weapon". There are less lethal weapons.
After Cincinnati had a riot, the excuse for which was police shootings, the police started to use tasers. Then an overweight guy with a heart condition over-medicated himself with off-prescription hand-crafted pharmaceuticals and made enough of a public spectacle of himself that police were called. While trying to get him under control, a taser was used.
He had a heart attack and died.
Last I heard, the local rabble rousers were agitating against the use of tasers beause they're too dangerous.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/23/2006 21:37
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#17
Revenge of STAR-GATE, where a simple. no frills, bland Xmas Star on a similar green tree was NOT ENOUGH for Lefties in different parts of Amerikkka to complain about. NOw we have SANDOVAL's REVENGE, i.e. MARIO/GERARDO-GATE, where a San Francisco's demand that POLICE UNITS be the proper medium of response to any new terror attacks/new 9-11's > NEW YAWK wants their NY-specific, perennially cash-short State-Local-City Police responders to only wound any surreal future Osamas, NOT kill them even iff to save the lives of many, i.e. WE DON'T WANT TO INSULT ISLAM OR HURT THE TERRORISTS FEELINGS BY STOPPING THEM FROM KILLING AMERICANS!?
Iraqi Shiites bent on retribution rampaged against Sunni Arabs up and down the country Wednesday, Feb. 22, after bombers destroyed the gold dome of the 1,200-year old Askariya shrine in Samarra. The attack against one of four Shiite holy places has brought the country to the brink of sectarian civil war. More than 100 Sunni mosques were destroyed.
DEBKAfiles sources: The bombing was carried out by a small squad trained by Abu Musab al Zarqawi especially for the operation. Four-to-six men entered the Askariya mosque Tuesday night and placed explosive charges around the interior of the gold dome so as to bring it crashing down on the sacred tombs below.
Samarra police have made 10 arrests, among them foreigners, as would be typical of al Qaeda.
Shortly after the disaster in Samarra, Irans spiritual leader ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, in contrast to the US presidents effort to calm the flames, accused US forces and Israeli intelligence of responsibility.
The Islamic republic is quite willing to exploit the destruction of a Shiite shrine to fuel the fire of sectarian conflict, in the hope of expediting the US forces exit from Iraq. The thousands of Iranian agents operating clandestinely in Iraq can be expected to aggravate civil strife in Iraq by agitation and leading attacks on Sunnis.
Some Shiite leaders blamed the United States for not protecting their shrine and are demanding a bigger security role for religious militias. But voices were also raised in an attempt to pull the country back from the brink: US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad warned the bombings were a deliberate provocation to foment sectarian tension and civil war. Key Sunni groups condemned the destruction of the Shiite mosques dome. The Sunni clerical association of Muslim Scholars called the bombing a criminal act.
#3
"DEBKAfile's sources" places this bombing in the hands of Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Perhaps. But there is no credible evidence available to support that claim. But I guess it is comforting to some to keep believing that all of this strife is being brought about by 'foreign fighters' and not the Iraqis themselves. I think it is time to face the reality that Iraq is teetering on the brink of full scale civil war. Many of my friends and I with war college training feared this scenario prior to the U.S. engagement in this war. We spoke of caution and tried to explain that ridding Iraq of Saddam without having another authoritative replacement (such as an Iraqi General)to replace him was opening the country to civil war. We tried to explain the deep religious and political divides that separated the Shia, Sunni and Kurds. But we were consistently shouted down and called wimps by our neo-con friends. Most of those neo-cons that we encountered were short statured soft-bellied young men that never had to hump anything heavier than a bag of donuts. And God knows they were way to good to serve in the military. Hell that's for the rest of us to do. Yep, they had this whole thing all figured out.
Well boys it ain't lookin' too good right now. It appears those old 9'th century grudges between the Shia and the Sunni are about to meet head on here in the 21'st century and we got our boots stuck right in the middle of this shit heap.
Put your donut down chub-chub. What's the plan now ?
#5
Buzzsaw is probably a journalism major, since the primary qualification seems to be extensive ignorance of as many topics as possible.
The media is currently full of talk about a civil war. A civil war requires as a pre-requisite that neither side is capable of inflicting a decisive defeat on the other side. This is not the case in Iraq, and hence there will not be a civil war there.
You're the one with the war college education--you tell us what happens now.
I'll check back later. That donut is looking lonely...
Posted by: Dar ||
02/23/2006 20:27
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#7
I can still do my several dozen real sit-ups (no wimpy crunches for this girl!), and a couple one-arm push-ups if I cross my eyes really hard. But otherwise the description fits... except for the donut and the male bits, of course, but I'm sure Buzzsaw was stymied by that whole English as a default masculine language thingy.
The point of this exercise in nation-building is to give them a chance to come out of the 9th century. After all, they've had the benefit of two generations under real, honest-to-god mid-20th century totalitarian fascism, so Bush thought they might be ready to progress. And given that 14 of the 17 provinces are peacefully being run by Iraqis for Iraq, with hardly a Western boot in sight, there is a bit of a glimmer of a hope that they are, indeed, progressing.
But I never went to War College (just audited at Rantburg U.), so I'm likely totally off base here.
(Phil_b, really good point about civil wars. In my unschooled ignorance I hadn't thought of that.)
#8
Hey,,, I was in UNL. That's a football college. Isn't that kind of the same? Of course.... we sold or season tickets to pay cover at the ZOOBAR for long nights with Muddy Waters and the like... but that was 70s and the ROTC bldg still stunk from being burned so nah.. no war college or neo-con experience here.
However, we did approach Jakarta harbor and dock in the middle of their revolution and had to take on refugees for India and I did wander the bazzars of Karachi and watched anti-british riots just before Aden became the Peoples Republic of ... and I was bounced on the knees of the Flying Tigers (CAT - Air Am) when born and lived only....
Russian missile cruiser Moskva - on a NATO exercise - docked at Syrian Latakia port on Feb. 21
A task force led by the Moskva and the Azov landing ship became the first Russian naval force in a decade to call at a Syrian port.
DEBKAfiles military sources report: The force sailed out of its home port of Sevastopol on the Black Sea, on Feb. 5, to join a NATO-led anti-terrorist operation in the Mediterranean for a combined three-month drill focusing on combating the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction, illegal weapons trade and migration. The drill is named The Active Endeavors Operation. NATO leaders and US army chiefs were keen enough on Russian participation for NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer to promise the gesture of the first visit by an alliance chief aboard the Moskva.
However, neither he nor the Americans taking part in the exercise had any idea that the Russian naval force intended to break away from the exercise long enough to put in at a Syrian port a call which Syrian president Bashar Assad took as a gesture of support from Moscow. The visit underlined the Kremlins plan to play a larger part in the military affairs of the Middle East, largely by making friendly overtures to Americas adversaries. President Vladimir Putins invitation to discuss arms sales in Moscow with an invited Hamas delegation was part of this picture.
...
On Feb. 15, in the course of the NATO drill, the Moskva captured the British destroyer the Nottingham when it played the part of the enemy. The Russian cruiser also seized the Spanish frigate Navarro.
#1
I took part in similar exercies in the Balck Sea back in '96. It sounded very impressive on paper but in reality it was a big joke. They were extremely incompetent and it was pretty much the USN advisor onboard that told them how to do everything. They couldn't even do a simple VERTREP. Thay also ran out of fuel and we had to by more, via the US embassy, from Romania for them to get back home.
Take this with a HUGE grain of salt.
Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
02/23/2006 12:11
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#2
Docked just long enough to bring aboard takeout kabobs, the Hariri detonators, and detailed topo maps of the Bekaa valley with lots of red X's on them...
#5
Russian Spetsnaz in mufti, and scientists loading up Saddam's WMD cache before Bashar gets bashed would be my guess.
My thoughts exactly...
Posted by: DanNY ||
02/23/2006 15:09
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#6
As I recall the Moskva was originally designed to take on surface task forces and as an anti submarine platform. Russians do not envisage multiple roles for their Navyal vessels the way just about every other navy does.
I doubt she would have the capabilities to launch an SSM for an interdiction strike. Just anti ship and anti sub missions.
#7
NATO should scorn the Moskva, after it leaves port by forbiding it's rejoining the exercise for breaking rank, and deployment protocols. Let her set sail for home with egg on her face!
(H/T NRO Corner
NEW YORK --It was a night for the U.N. Security Council to forget scandals, global conflicts and divisive debates and watch cheerleaders, tumbling acrobats, a lopsided basketball game -- and even catch a glimpse of Woody Allen.
At the invitation of U.S. Ambassador John Bolton, council members headed to Madison Square Garden on Wednesday to watch the New York Knicks get trounced 103-83 by the Miami Heat, their 17th loss in the last 19 games.
"It was a fun game despite the outcome, and I think it gave the ambassadors a real view of what happens in everyday America and gets them out of their bubble," said Bolton, who holds the Security Council's monthlong rotating presidency. "I can't think of an event that's both more international ... but more American as well."
To get in the spirit but maintain his neutrality, National Basketball Association Commissioner David Stern handed out red NBA caps to the ambassadors.
"We think that basketball is the international language," Stern said. "It's a sport that was invented in America, but it travels the world. It's been an Olympic sport since 1936, and we have worked with many of the countries here."
Ambassador Kenzo Oshima of Japan, where the sporting passion is baseball, said he had watched basketball on television but was very excited at seeing "the real thing on the ground."
"I enjoyed it very much," he said. "But the closest the Knicks came was 10 points behind -- bad night for New York."
But Russia's Ambassador Andrey Denisov was thrilled about Miami's victory; he's a fan of the team, and especially its star, Shaquille O'Neal. He said he had long been trying to make time for a basketball game.
Danish envoy Ellen Margrethe Loj, the only woman on the 15-member council, arrived saying, "I don't know a thing about basketball." She got a crash course from former NBA player Mike Bantom -- now the NBA's senior vice president for player development -- who watched part of the game with her.
The experience was no first for China's deputy U.N. Ambassador Zhang Yishan. It was in Madison Square Garden that he saw his first basketball game over 30 years ago -- soon after communist China took over the Security Council seat from Taiwan in 1971.
"We have some minutes of being ordinary people," Zhang said. "Forget about the security, forget about the peace, you just enjoy yourself."
The diplomats later attended a VIP dinner where Woody Allen and his wife Soon-Yi Previn were at one table.
"Am I in any danger?" the film director quipped when asked if he knew he was sharing the room with the Security Council.
Did he want to meet Bolton or any of the other council ambassadors?
Sources close to the Lebanese presidential palace denied Wednesday any Qatari proposal to make a change in the country's political scene through the resignation of President Emile Lahoud. They told KUNA that the "move" initiated by Qatari First Premier and Foreign Minister Hamad al Thani was aimed at improving the Lebanese-Syrian relations and had nothing to do with the presidency. Coming from Damascus, the Qatari foreign minister met with Lahoud earlier and told the press after the talks that his visit aimed at clearing the atmosphere between Syria and Lebanon.
His Highness Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammed Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah sent Thursday a cable of condolences to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques of Saudi Arabia King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud and the Deputy Prime Minister, Defense and Aviation Minister and Inspector General Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud on the demise of Prince Fahad bin Abdullah bin Saud bin Nasser Al-Farhan Al-Saud.
I was going to say that YJCMTSU, but unfortunately the pattern is so clear we all could -- we just don't have to, it's happening in the real world
Malaysia has reprimanded one of its biggest daily newspapers for printing a cartoon lampooning the global controversy over caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad.
The government's move has fanned a hot debate in this mainly Muslim country about where to draw the line between press freedom and respect of religion, because this time it involves a newspaper closely aligned with mainstream Muslim opinion.
The English-language New Straits Times had defended its right this week to publish the cartoon, which featured a street artist offering "caricatures of Muhammad while you wait."
But the government, a prominent voice in the Islamic world, felt it crossed the line and its internal security ministry had given the daily three days to explain itself, the New Straits Times said on its front page on Thursday.
"The ministry said the cartoon had breached the conditions of the newspaper's publishing permit," the paper said.
"It added that the sketch was inappropriate and could invite negative reactions in the country, especially among Muslims."
Malaysia, led by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, an Islamic scholar, has banned the Danish newspaper cartoons at the heart of the row and has suspended the publishing licences of two newspapers for publishing some of them.
Muslims enraged by the cartoons have rampaged in several countries, killing Christians in Nigeria, destroying Western businesses in Pakistan and torching embassies in the Middle East. More than 50 people have been killed in the protests.
The offending cartoon published by the New Straits Times on Monday was one of the globally syndicated Non Sequitur series by Wiley Miller.
In an editorial on Wednesday, the newspaper responded to complaints about the cartoon, saying the Prophet had not been depicted.
In the editorial, it asked rhetorically whether the complaints were politically motivated to cow the newspaper's editors. "When the truth gets reported, some get hurt. The powerful ones will seek to protect themselves with whatever means at their disposal," the editorial said without elaborating.
The controversy is the latest episode in a public spat between the newspaper and elements of the ruling party, which has objected to the New Straits Times' reporting on sensitive issues of race and religion and its criticism of government policy.
#1
The NST is merely a sanitized English version of the govt. mouthpiece under the same ownership of the NST group that publishes the (priviledged to be racist) malay dailies.
How ironic that this NST in struggling to reinvent itself (in vain for better sales)gets reprimanded by its master. In fact it should be suspended like the Sarawak Tribune was for the same "sin".
Overall, NST has always been an incorrigible spin paper and pro-establishment mouthpiece. That's why their sales reclined.
#3
PlaneDan, Not to worry, it's still peaceful there ; the problem is one of mental attitude and worldview made difficult by the official pro islamo slant in everything official and the accompanying hypocrisy ensuing from that.
#4
Malaysia, led by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, an Islamic scholar, has banned the Danish newspaper cartoons at the heart of the row and has suspended the publishing licences of two newspapers for publishing some of them.
Heck, not much different from here. What's the count up to now on US dailies that actually printed the cartoons themselves? Three?
Posted by: BA ||
02/23/2006 14:36
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#5
Worse, BA : http://www.alphabetsoup.bloggoing.com/
The commander of the British forces in southern Afghanistan insisted yesterday that his troops would play no part in destroying poppy fields. Ministers had declared that one of the main tasks of the 5,700-strong force was to help end Afghan heroin production, which supplies 90 per cent of the narcotics sold illegally on British streets. But Colonel Gordon Messenger, of the Royal Marines, said troops deploying to Helmand, the biggest centre of heroin production, will not become involved in the process being considered by president Hamid Karzai's government of eradicating poppies.
"There will be absolutely no maroon berets (of the marines) with scythes in a poppy field," he said. "British forces will not even directly stop vehicles suspected of smuggling the drug. That will be the task of Afghan police and army."
The main role of the British forces will, instead, be to enable the Afghan police and army to establish control over areas which had so far remained outside their reach, allowing a resurgent Taleban and drug lords to gain ascendancy, said Col Messenger.
#2
That will be the task of Afghan police and army." The main role of the British forces will, instead, be to enable the Afghan police and army to establish control over areas which had so far remained outside their reach ...
That makes some sense to me. Strengthen and back up the Afghan government so that poppy eradication is seen as a national policy rather than as something imposed by the forces who will be gone soon. And - force the Afghan leaders to take responsibility for that policy.
#3
Mmmm... help the Afghan army and police collect their bribes more like. Smells of chicken shit to me. Get in there and f*ckin burn em.
Posted by: Howard UK ||
02/23/2006 10:09
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#4
What, you want to stand downwind?? ;-)
Yeah, the bribe thing is real. So is the lack of other cash crops and markets that could replace the income from poppies.
And so is the British hands-off preference for their troops, as we saw in Basra to a fair degree.
Still, if we mean it when we say we're there to help the Afghans set up a representative government out from under the Taliban and its ilk, that does seem to imply backing them up rather than taking over from a more-or-less-freely elected government.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed the United States and Israel on Thursday for the destruction of a Shiite shrine's golden dome in Iraq, saying it was the work of "defeated Zionists and occupiers." Makes me think he's involved.
Speaking to a crowd of thousands on a tour of southwestern Iran, the president referred to the destruction of the Askariya mosque dome in Samarra on Wednesday, which the Iraqi government has blamed on insurgents.
"They invade the shrine and bomb there because they oppose God and justice," Ahmadinejad said, referring to the U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq. Round up the usual suspects.
"These passive activities (sic) are the acts of a group of defeated Zionists and occupiers who intended to hit our emotions," he said in a speech that was broadcast on state television. Addressing the United States, he added: "You have to know that such an act will not save you from the anger of Muslim nations."
#1
Yes, the 10 armed Arabs with swarthy complexions who entered the building, were actually white Texans with shoe polish on their faces, and training in the local lingo. can't put anything past Iran.
Posted by: ToughLove Not Hate ||
02/23/2006 18:40
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#2
Mamhoud's in this up to his rolling eyes. The whole cartoon thing was dying down too fast.
#3
Additional thought. this was the shrine of the 12th (hidden) Imam. the one Mahmoud believes lives in the well - his greatest hero and who coming he is hastening. He wants his planned mosque to be the greatest and most holy. this is soooo right up his ally.
A different shade of green from Islam, but terror is terror.
Tucson environmental activist Rodney Adam Coronado was arrested here Wednesday after being indicted in California on a charge of demonstrating how to use a destructive device. Coronado, 39, a self-proclaimed member of the Earth Liberation Front, taught and demonstrated the making and use of the device on Aug. 1, 2003, at a public gathering in San Diego with the intent that it be used to commit arson, according to a news releasefrom the U.S. Attorney's Office.
The one-count indictment was issued by a federal grand jury in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of California.
The FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, arrested Coronado Wednesday, the release said.
If convicted, he faces up to 25 years in prison and/or a $250,000 fine.
#3
Oh-oh. Looks like Rodney's one of them...recividists.
From '93:
USA v. Rodney Adam Coronado: 93-CR-116-RAE
Synopsis: An animal rights activist with ties to the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), Rodney Adam Coronado, was thought responsible for acts of vandalism and theft at university labs where animal testing was being conducted. On behalf of ALF, Coronado started a fire at Oregon State University in the mink research sheds.
The FBI linked Coronado to:
a fire at the Northwest Farms Food Cooperative in Edmonds, Washington;
the destruction of records in the office of a mink researcher at Washington State University,
a fire that destroyed the processing building at a mink farm in Oregon,
an un-detonated fire bomb at the Fur Breeders Agriculture Cooperative in Utah;
a fire that destroyed records and equipment at Michigan State University; and
a burglary and fire at the Utah State University animal disease control facility. Coronado struck a plea agreement with federal prosecutors. He avoided charges tied to damage at Utah State University, Oregon State and Washington State Universities, as well as the mink farm and food cooperative.
He pleaded guilty to one count and was found guilty on 18 USC § 844-aiding and abetting arson at Michigan State University. He was sentenced to 57 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $2.5 million in restitution to institutions and businesses damaged by ALF. Coronado was also sentenced to 600 hours of community service upon release. The Fur Commission USA reports that Coronado has since renounced ALF, stating: "My actions were illegal, radical and extreme, and caused great pain to others."
This guy will never change. He needs 25 years without parole, so he will be kept out of circulation. Then he needs to be interrogated for intel on other activities, without color TV in his cell.
Posted by: Al-Aska Paul ||
02/23/2006 16:16
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#5
This story was posted long before 8 this morning - I commented on it before 12:30 am. For whatever reasons, it has disappeared. Perhaps it was the comments that were posted. Let's see...
I think he should be nailed to a tree, far from the madding crowds, and left to the gentle graces of Gaia.
#8
Stake him naked to the top of Pikes Peak - from about January through late March. Let "Mother Nature" take loving care of him. Reclaim the chains when the snow melts and the wind drops to a pleasant 40mph.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/23/2006 22:52
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#9
I was under the impression it would take him a couple days to die of thirst, or more likely less than an hour to die of exposure in those conditions.
Posted by: Phil ||
02/23/2006 22:56
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BAGHDAD : Gunmen have killed at least 80 people in Iraq in sectarian violence that flared after the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine and reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques.
Amid warnings that sectarian violence could spiral further out of control, Iraqi political leaders went into an emergency meeting with President Jalal Talabani.
The bloodshed is likely to complicate the task of Shiite and Sunni political leaders who have pledged to set up a government of national unity in the wake of the December elections which illustrated a deep sectarian split in Iraq.
Eighty bullet-ridden corpses were brought to the Baghdad morgue between Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning, the deputy director of the morgue, Doctor Kais Mohammed, told AFP.
"I've only been able to carry out autopsies on 25 of them," he said, adding that all had been shot. The bodies, which had been dumped in Baghdad and its suburbs, could not immediately be identified.
Iraq has already placed its security forces on high alert and cancelled all leave. The night curfew in Baghdad was brought forward from 11:00 pm to 8:00 pm on Wednesday.
The upsurge in killings came after suspected Al-Qaeda linked militants Wednesday morning bombed the 1,000-year-old Imam Ali al-Hadi mausoleum, one of the countries' main Shiite shrines, in the town of Samarra, north of Baghdad.
Early Thursday the police also reported finding the bodies of three Iraqi journalists working for Dubai-based Arabiya satellite television who were kidnapped near Samarra Wednesday evening while reporting on the shrine bombing.
"The bodies of the presenter Atwar Bahjat, of cameraman Adnan Abdallah and of soundman Khaled Mohsen were found early this morning some 15 kilometres (10 miles) north of Samarra," police said.
#1
From Iraq The Model - The sense in the streets and the statements given by some Shia clerics suggest that retaliation attacks are organized and under control and are focusing on mosques frequented by Salafi and Wahabi groups and not those of ordinary Sunnis.
Sadr's cosying up to the Sunnis suddenly makes sense to me.
#2
The TV reporter and her crew were targeted for killing. A truck drove up, someone shouted "we've come for the correspondent" and gunned all three down where they stood. Brave lady. She left al Jizz to work for al-Iraqiya.
by Victorino Matus, The Weekly Standard EFL'd to give you a taste; go read it all.
THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE has given millions of dollars to a company you've never heard of in order to fund something called Project M, whose aim is "The Use of Modern Sensing and Actuation Technologies Coupled With High Speed Processing to Control Complex Dynamic Systems." In English, this means three objectives: "active control of vibration, active control of mechanical shock, and active control of magnetic fields."
But for what purpose? To create an army of Magnetos capable of hurling large metallic objects at the enemy? Not quite. . . .
. . . "Throughout history," [Rear Admiral Jay Cohen] said, "we had used rubber mounts" to reduce noise and vibration. "What all navies have traditionally done is put heavy, large cables all around the perimeter of the ship. We then pass electric currents through them to try and nullify the electromagnetic feature of the steel hulls."
But what if you could drastically reduce the amount of noise a ship makes directly at the source? One small company in Alexandria, Virginia, was proposing just that. The result was Project M.
Vibration & Sound Solutions Limited (VSSL) suggested placing mag-lev sensors at the source of the electromagnetic fields, such as motors. "The idea was to actually levitate the machinery with an array of electromagnets while using a small amount of power. " . . .
Other applications include shock-absorbing seats for landing craft and humvees, which reduce casualties when a vehicle gets hit. Cool stuff with a high geek factor.
Posted by: Mike ||
02/23/2006
06:06 ||
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#1
It is really an extension of the noise cancellation technology in your speakerphone. Very interesting and clever.
#4
I also like the chief engineer's saying from "The Sand Pebbles":
Maintain an even strain.
It refers to the optimal distribution of vibration and off-center torque in the driveshaft of a naval vessel. Some main bearings of the drive line are loosened and others tightened to achieve minimum vibration and noise.
Posted by: Al-Aska Paul ||
02/23/2006 18:33
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#7
Zen: watched that the other night (Steve McQueen Box DVD Set) - his instruction of numbah one was painful..."Valve" "walwe"
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/23/2006 19:10
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#8
The past methods described are pretty much pre-war or early WWII, which does not say a lot about the Navy. Shock and vibration noise are no jokes. Bismarks' hydrophones could 'hear' Hood and Price of Wales before they met in the Denmark Strait and both Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk inpart due to their machinery being knocked off their mounts by shock waves of explosions and near misses.
#9
Zen: watched that the other night (Steve McQueen Box DVD Set) - his instruction of numbah one was painful..."Valve" "walwe"
Pretty painful movie in general. The entrenched racism and encouragement of "looksee" imitation, instead of actual teaching, like McQueen's character was doing. I strongly recommend reading the book. Just don't expect the usual Hollywood ending.
North Korea uses a printing press in Pyongyang to counterfeit U.S. dollars and then circulates them through a state-run trading firm, a South Korean lawmaker said on Thursday, referring to samples he said he got from the North.
Another legislator said he had also obtained counterfeit U.S. $100 notes through North Korean trading company officials who he said were certain to be intelligence agents.
North Korea has denied U.S. charges that it is involved in illicit financial activities, including counterfeiting, that Washington says helped fund the North's nuclear programs. Pyongyang has said the charges are part of U.S. smear campaign designed to topple the leadership in Pyongyang.
The South Korean legislators were scheduled to disclose the samples and photographs at a parliamentary question session later on Thursday.
The center of North Korea's counterfeiting of U.S. notes is a nondescript building in Pyongyang that also prints photographs of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, opposition Grand National Party parliamentarian Kim Jae-won said through an aide.
"The information comes from a recent defector from the North who was a high-ranking official," the aide said by telephone. The aide declined to disclose the defector's identity for security reasons. Counterfeit U.S. notes are then circulated through a state trading company under the supervision of the North's ruling Workers' Party of Korea, the aide said.
Kim Jae-won was not immediately available for comment.
Another opposition parliamentarian, Kim Moon-soo, said he had also obtained 2003-issue $100 U.S. notes through human rights activists in the Chinese city of Dandong that borders the North. "I paid $70 to get each of these, but you can get them for as little as $50 in China," Kim told parliament. Kim Moon-soo said in parliament counterfeiting notes of the quality he acquired would be impossible without the involvement of the North Korean government.
The U.S. embassy in Seoul said on Wednesday Washington had provided South Korea with evidence North Korea had been producing high-quality counterfeit U.S. notes.
South Korean Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan said Seoul had yet to see conclusive evidence that points to North Korean government involvement. "I have not been told specifically about how and when," Lee told parliament on Wednesday, when asked about possible North Korean state involvement.
Engineers conducting show-and-tell with a 20-ton robot on the last day of two weeks of trials on Fort Gordon were cautiously optimistic.
Karl Murphy, a software engineer from Robotic Research, said there was a new principle of Murphys Law at work on the test field Feb. 10. "One of my professors reminded us that we have 'sight-ons' present whenever an experiment is being viewed, Murphy said. The more 'sight-ons' you have, the greater is the potential for something to go wrong."
Tongue in cheek, he continued explaining that sight-on fields increase with the rank and reach of individuals viewing a test. With national, regional and local media rolling cameras, the sight-on field was very high that Friday.
In a 24/7 world, the U.S. isn't keeping up with its enemies in the communication battle. Our nation is engaged in what promises to be a long struggle in the global war on terror. In this war, some of the most critical battles may not be in the mountains of Afghanistan or the streets of Iraq but in newsrooms in New York, London, Cairo and elsewhere.
Our enemies have skillfully adapted to fighting wars in today's media age, but for the most part we our government, the media or our society in general have not.
Consider that violent extremists have established "media relations committees" and have proved to be highly successful at manipulating opinion elites. They plan and design their headline-grabbing attacks using every means of communication to break the collective will of free people.
Our government is only beginning to adapt its operations for the 21st century. For the most part, it still functions as a five-and-dime store in an EBay world.
I have just returned from Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. In Tunis, the largest newspaper has a circulation of roughly 50,000 in a country of about 10 million people. But even in the poorest neighborhoods you can see satellite dishes on nearly every balcony or rooftop.
Regrettably, many of the TV news channels being watched using these dishes are extremely hostile to the West. The growing number of media outlets in many parts of the world still have relatively immature standards and practices that too often serve to inflame and distort rather than to explain and inform. Al Qaeda and other extremist movements have utilized these forums for many years, successfully adding more poison to the Muslim public's view of the West, but we have barely even begun to compete in reaching their audiences.
The standard U.S. government public affairs operation was designed primarily to respond to individual requests for information. It tends to be reactive, rather than proactive, and it operates for the most part on an eighthour, five-days-a-week basis, while world events and our enemies are operating 24/7 across every time zone. That is an unacceptably dangerous deficiency.
In some cases, military public affairs officials have had little communications training and little, if any, grounding in the importance of timing, rapid response and the realities of digital and broadcast media. Let there be no doubt that the longer it takes to put a strategic communications framework into place, the more we can be certain that the vacuum will be filled by the enemy and by hostile news sources who most assuredly will not paint an accurate picture of what is actually taking place.
We have become somewhat more adept in these areas, but progress is slow.
In Iraq, for example, the U.S. military command, working closely with the Iraqi government and the U.S. Embassy, has sought nontraditional means to provide accurate information to the Iraqi people in the face of an aggressive campaign of disinformation.
Yet this has been portrayed as inappropriate: for example, the allegations of "buying news." The resulting explosion of critical media stories then causes all activity, all initiative, to stop. Even worse, it leads to a "chilling effect" among those who are asked to serve in the military public affairs field.
Improving our efforts will likely mean embracing new institutions to engage people around the world. During the Cold War, institutions such as the U.S. Information Agency and Radio Free Europe proved to be valuable instruments for the United States. We need to consider the possibility of new organizations and programs that can serve a similarly valuable role in the war on terror.
Although the enemy is increasingly skillful at manipulating the media and using the tools of communications to its advantage, it should be noted that we have an advantage as well. And that is, quite simply, that truth is on our side. Ultimately, the truth wins out.
I believe with every bone in my body that free people, exposed to sufficient information, will, over time, find their way to the right decisions.
We are fighting a battle in which the survival of our free way of life is at stake. It is a test of wills, and it will be won or lost with our public and the publics of free nations around the world. We need to do all we can to correct the lies being told, shatter the appeal of the enemy and attract supporters to our noble and necessary efforts to defeat violent extremism around the globe.
Redacted by moderator. Comments may be redacted for trolling, violation of standards of good manners, or plain stupidity. Please correct the condition that applies and try again. Contents may be viewed in the sinktrap. Further violations may result in
banning.
#5
"Comments may be redacted for trolling, violation of standards of good manners, or plain stupidity."
How incredibly vague. If I were a Mod I could sink-trap 80% of the posts - on any site - under that logic.
I happen to think the readacted post of wxjames, above, was (and still is) a common and easily defended attitude - and for good reasons which can be articulated for the 10,000th time, should any of the Mods really need to hear them.
I think the comment should be reinstated and an apology issued to her / him.
I find the current wave of censureship arbitrary. That's a bad thing. Ask any parent. How about some give 'n take before pulling the trigger on a regular who hasn't called for the violent overthrow of the US Govt or the lynching of a Mod, eh?
It's rather embarrassing to see something like this whacked, when a majority here would've / could've said the same thing, but then some asstard posts unsubstantiated politically-motivated bile, but ever so politely stated, you see, and it gets a pass. Yeah, right.
This is Rantburg, is it not? I heard nothing but sucking sounds yesterday - and this isn't a very good start for today, IMHO. What's going on here?
I've been trying to be more moderate in tone - but you can bet your sweet ass it wasn't to please some fucking Mod or any PC-addled finger-wagging drone who hasn't posted an original thought ever. It was for my own peace of mind. This shit just stirs me back up again. Fucking PC twaddle. Justify your actions, on each and every event, or cease "redacting", or change the name to PCville or Burkeville or whatever actually reflects the New Whatever-It-Is.
Pfeh. This really pisses me off. I am not alone, I'd wager.
#6
.com: the comment suggested that we gather names and addresses of 'anti-American' journalists with the idea that 'things would right themselves in time'. It could easily be read, and indeed was meant to be read, as an incitement to violence. Please see the sinktrap for details.
I redacted the comment as opposed to banning the commenter.
We've redacted such comments before. We'll continue to do so. No apology for it, either. We will not carry comments that suggest, imply or advocate a specific call to violence.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/23/2006 14:23
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#7
I saw it - and concur with it.
"It could easily be read, and indeed was meant to be read, as an incitement to violence."
I say it's a prognistication that violence will come - and that the press will find itself among the targets for its many treasons. And you know what? It will. You should have read the Opinion peice from Yesterday: Gramscian Damage. It rather brilliantly identified the roots of many of the memes, such as "all violence is bad", which you are using, at least partially, to justify your action.
Not all violence is bad. Were I a tad more erudite, a man of letters, I could construct a logical sequence for you that both demonstrates this and would put you in the awkward position of choosing between violence to preserve liberty and submission. The pieces are there. The only thing missing is that such constructs as not my speciality.
In the fullness of time, many things will happen. wxjames sees this, I see this, and you see this, too. He did not call for dick, he made an observation that any one of us could have made, but perhaps using different wording.
"No apology for it, either."
LOL. Well that sums it up - the rest is just blather. See us. We make no mistakes, we never misconstrue, we never injudisciously malign, we never fuck up. Right. Bullshit, Steve. Total bullshit and you know it. You drop 20 pegs for that obvious load.
This reminds me of a sound byte from a Firesign Theater routine...
believe it or not, I actually agreed with your post#5.
Posted by: Common Sense ||
02/23/2006 15:24
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#11
Lol. What's that supposed to do, change my mind about you as a classic dimwitted troll who comes here for no discernible constructive purpose and merely wastes bandwidth?
Look. Go home. You're Not up to this, son.
Oh, okay - here's your shot: Read the brilliant piece I linked to in #7: Gramscian Damage. It is a serious article assessing the issues facing Freedom. You are on the wrong side of it, hence I deem you at least a tool if not a dangerous fool.
If you can read it, actually comprehend it, digest what it means, and come back here still convinced you're right, lol, then you're lying, lol.
If it gives you pause, makes you reassess, convinces you to examine the underlying memes that you prattle on about - and pull your head out of your ass, well, I'm sure I'll hear the "POP!" all the way out here in Vegas - and note the change in your posts. Then I will happily have another "dialog" with you. Until then, bite me, junior, lol.
#12
God a nut job shows up and kills a thread that need to proceed.
Like PD I have self moderated my commnets because it's the thoughtful and responsible thing for me to do.
My feelings are well know in respect to the "press" and the practitioners of "law" in the United States. If they are actively working to harm our society and way of government. They deserve to feel real pain. Make your own mental image of what that actually means. This image will let you know what I think should happen to government employees whom leak inteligence to the press or talk about their work should face. It would and has been sink trapped when posted here.
I usually wouldn't give Eric S. Raymond the time of day but Gramscian damage" was spot on and an important read. So is this address The Adversary Culture by Keith Windschuttle.
I am questioning some of the redactions too. But at the end of the day it's Fred's site and he can't do as he pleases but some of the moderation a of late is troubling.
#13
This, obviously, is a big issue for Rummy and hence US and company.
Any swinging dick can put some garbage out in the ME news outlets that slanders our country, our brave soldiers, and our mission.
Unlike previous wars, this war is being waged everyday in the real time news.
The MSM want it both ways, they complain when the military tries to get the truth out by using a PR firm, but they go way out of their way to slime us all.
Posted by: Captain America ||
02/23/2006 17:13
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#14
This Political Correctness crap is BULLSHIT. I'll come back when this joint turns back into RANTburg again.
And if it doesn't then, well, I guess I won't. See ya...
Posted by: Dave D. ||
02/23/2006 17:19
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#15
All we need is a list of names and addresses of the anti-American journalists. Things will right themselves in the fullness of time.
Democrat voters low on enthusiasm Democrats, after 11 years as the minority party in Congress, still can't get it right with their own voters, a poll shows.
By objecting to virtually every initiative and proposal of the Bush administration and congressional Republican majority, Democrats are undermining their party's chances of regaining the majority this fall, the John Zogby poll of 1,039 likely voters suggests.
While House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and other visible Democrats in Washington pick fights with Republicans, the poll shows that 58 percent of rank-and-file Democratic voters say their leaders should "accept their lower position in Congress and work together with Republicans to craft the best legislation possible."
Only 6 percent of Democratic respondents say the No. 1 goal for their party's lawmakers in Congress should be to bury Republican bills.
The poll suggests that many Democratic voters accept their party's minority status. Nearly a quarter of Democrats -- 23 percent -- say Republicans do a better job running Congress.
"Democrats nationwide now seem to be adopting this minority-status mind-set," says Fritz Wenzel, Zogby International spokesman. "Democrats are tired of the warring and bitter partisanship that goes on inside the Washington Beltway."
The Democratic National Committee disputes that interpretation. "The poll reconfirms what Americans have been saying for months: Under Republican leadership, America is headed in the wrong direction," said DNC communications director Karen Finney. "The truth is, a lot of Democrats know that Republicans aren't doing a good job running Congress, and a strong majority have faith in Democratic leadership and ideas."
The Zogby survey also finds that 29 percent of Republican voters deem their party's leadership in Congress a "failure because it has passed legislation that has caused massive increases in federal spending and has not made meaningful progress on issues important to the rank-and-file Republicans."
"Republicans have lost a third of their support in their own ranks," Mr. Wenzel said. "Respondents who identify themselves as 'conservative' or 'very conservative' are leading the way in unhappiness over the growth in government since 2001 and the ballooning federal spending and budget deficits."
Republicans in competitive races who are looking to hold on to their elected offices can take comfort in the poll's finding that 61 percent of Republican voters think the Republican-led Congress "has passed much legislation during the past 11 years that has reflected Republican values."
The Zogby poll indicates that Democratic voters are less enthusiastic about their party's representation of their interests and values in Washington. About 55 percent said congressional Democrats did a good job on that score, and 43 percent said they did not.
The poll's margin error was 5.1 percentage points for the Democratic and Republican subgroups sampled.
#1
This is a Zogby poll?!? The pollsters who called the last several elections for the Democrats? I wonder how bad it must be in the real world, for them to admit to numbers and interpretations such as these!
#2
"By objecting to virtually every initiative and proposal of the Bush administration and congressional Republican majority, Democrats are undermining their party's chances of regaining the majority this fall "
One could argue that this endogenous dynamic obviates the need for any explanations based on their plethora of uncorroborated exogenous justifications.
So rarely do I get to insert that statement into my daily conversation anymore.
#4
Zogby is pissed over the Port matter, his "polls" usually come out right after he gets ticked off and amazingly support his argument of the day.
A WSJ editorial by Henninger asked the question of why every issue that surfaces rings a "10" on the 0-10 rector scale for outrage by the Donks and the MSM.
Katrina, Libbygate, Cheney's buckshot gate, the terrorist surveillance program, Port gate, etc., etc., etc.
You would think there would be a periodic "6" or even "8"
Posted by: Captain America ||
02/23/2006 17:00
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#5
the Spinal Tap "11" syndrome
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/23/2006 17:27
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By William J. Bennett and Alan M. Dershowitz There was a time when the press was the strongest guardian of free expression in this democracy. Stories and celebrations of intrepid and courageous reporters are many within the press corps. Cases such as New York Times v. Sullivan in the 1960s were litigated so that the press could report on and examine public officials with the unfettered reporting a free people deserved. In the 1970s the Pentagon Papers case reaffirmed the proposition that issues of public importance were fully protected by the First Amendment.
The mass media that backed the plaintiffs in these cases understood that not only did a free press have a right to report on critical issues and people of the day but that citizens had a right to know about those issues and people. The mass media understood another thing: They had more than a right; they had a duty to report.
We two come from different political and philosophical perspectives, but on this we agree: Over the past few weeks, the press has betrayed not only its duties but its responsibilities. To our knowledge, only three print newspapers have followed their true calling: the Austin American-Statesman, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Sun. What have they done? They simply printed cartoons that were at the center of widespread turmoil among Muslims over depictions of the prophet Muhammad. These papers did their duty.
Since the war on terrorism began, the mainstream press has had no problem printing stories and pictures that challenged the administration and, in the view of some, compromised our war and peace efforts. The manifold images of abuse at Abu Ghraib come to mind -- images that struck at our effort to win support from Arab governments and peoples, and that pierced the heart of the Muslim world as well as the U.S. military.
The press has had no problem with breaking a story using classified information on detention centers for captured terrorists and suspects -- stories that could harm our allies. And it disclosed a surveillance program so highly classified that most members of Congress were unaware of it.
In its zeal to publish stories critical of our nation's efforts -- and clearly upsetting to enemies and allies alike -- the press has printed some articles that turned out to be inaccurate. The Guantanamo Bay flushing of the Koran comes to mind.
But for the past month, the Islamist street has been on an intifada over cartoons depicting Muhammad that were first published months ago in a Danish newspaper. Protests in London -- never mind Jordan, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Iran and other countries not noted for their commitment to democratic principles -- included signs that read, "Behead those who insult Islam." The mainstream U.S. media have covered this worldwide uprising; it is, after all, a glimpse into the sentiments of our enemy and its allies. And yet it has refused, with but a few exceptions, to show the cartoons that purportedly caused all the outrage.
The Boston Globe, speaking for many other outlets, editorialized: "[N]ewspapers ought to refrain from publishing offensive caricatures of Mohammed in the name of the ultimate Enlightenment value: tolerance."
But as for caricatures depicting Jews in the most medievally horrific stereotypes, or Christians as fanatics on any given issue, the mainstream press seems to hold no such value. And in the matter of disclosing classified information in wartime, the press competes for the scoop when it believes the public interest warrants it.
What has happened? To put it simply, radical Islamists have won a war of intimidation. They have cowed the major news media from showing these cartoons. The mainstream press has capitulated to the Islamists -- their threats more than their sensibilities. One did not see Catholics claiming the right to mayhem in the wake of the republished depiction of the Virgin Mary covered in cow dung, any more than one saw a rejuvenated Jewish Defense League take to the street or blow up an office when Ariel Sharon was depicted as Hitler or when the Israeli army was depicted as murdering the baby Jesus.
So far as we can tell, a new, twin policy from the mainstream media has been promulgated: (a) If a group is strong enough in its reaction to a story or caricature, the press will refrain from printing that story or caricature, and (b) if the group is pandered to by the mainstream media, the media then will go through elaborate contortions and defenses to justify its abdication of duty. At bottom, this is an unacceptable form of not-so-benign bigotry, representing a higher expectation from Christians and Jews than from Muslims.
While we may disagree among ourselves about whether and when the public interest justifies the disclosure of classified wartime information, our general agreement and understanding of the First Amendment and a free press is informed by the fact -- not opinion but fact -- that without broad freedom, without responsibility for the right to know carried out by courageous writers, editors, political cartoonists and publishers, our democracy would be weaker, if not nonexistent. There should be no group or mob veto of a story that is in the public interest.
When we were attacked on Sept. 11, we knew the main reason for the attack was that Islamists hated our way of life, our virtues, our freedoms. What we never imagined was that the free press -- an institution at the heart of those virtues and freedoms -- would be among the first to surrender.
#1
It is one thing to surrender to an armed enemy of the US.
But I believe it is another entirely to actively undermine the efforts of our military and intel organizations to prosecute this war in the way it needs to be prosecuted. WaPo fits this paradigm neatly with room to grow.
#2
AH, but the WaPo DID have the 'courage' to print this daring op-ed piece.
On page 19.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/23/2006 7:45
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#3
The WaPo is left of center and no friend of the administration, but compared to the NYT and LAT it usually operates under adult supervision. If you're gonna dog 'em when they get it wrong, it's only fair to give 'em a pat on the back when they get it right.
Posted by: Mike ||
02/23/2006 10:48
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#4
I'm with Mike on this one. Except for that whole Dana Milbank thing.
Hempstead rally decries House-passed bill co-sponsored by Rep. Peter King as an un-American law
Joining protests that have spread around the country, nearly 100 immigrants, advocates, union leaders and politicians gathered outside Hempstead Town Hall yesterday to denounce what they called the harshest piece of anti-immigrant legislation in decades.
They said the proposed legislation, co-sponsored by Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford), would turn undocumented immigrants into felons, send church workers and others who assist them to jail, and erect a 698-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.
"We're here on George Washington's birthday to demonstrate our moral outrage against this un-American bill," said Luis Valenzuela, executive director of the Long Island Immigrant Alliance, an immigrant advocacy group. "Our founding father would be turning over in his grave if he knew what was happening."
Supporters call the 257-page bill a reasonable step to attack an out-of-control problem that has led to an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants -- including about 100,000 on Long Island.
The bill, filed by Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), passed the House in December by a 239-182 vote and is expected to be debated in the Senate in coming weeks. King has said it would allow, for instance, Pentagon technology to be used for border enforcement and permit "deputizing" local police as immigration agents.
He denies it would lead to jail for church workers or others who assist or hire undocumented immigrants, saying similar laws have been on the books for decades and are aimed at people such as smugglers. Still, he has said he is willing to retool that part of the bill.
"It's the strongest, most comprehensive enforcement bill we have seen in a generation or more," said Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based think tank that favors stricter limits on immigration. "It goes about 70 percent of the way to getting us to actually enforcing the law, if it were ever implemented."
But the protesters, who included Hempstead Village Deputy Mayor Henry Conyers, said the bill would do nothing to reduce illegal immigration and that it was merely red meat being thrown to anti-immigrant sectors. They also disputed King's contention it would not open church workers and others to prosecution. Some carried signs saying, "My grandmother is not a criminal" and "We are a country of immigrants."
"This will just push people deeper into the shadows," said Edison Severino of the Manhattan-based Local 78 of the Asbestos, Lead and Hazardous Waste Laborers. He added that "I would be a criminal for having members [of the union] who are undocumented. If you have a maid in your house or someone who takes care of your children who happens to be an undocumented immigrant, you'd be a criminal, too."
Protesters said the root of the problem is that the United States labor market requires 500,000 low-skilled immigrant workers a year but provides only 5,000 visas for them. King has said he is not opposed to reconsidering the visa system but believes border enforcement must come first.
The bill is provoking street protests among immigrants and activists from Boston to Miami to California. In Philadelphia, some restaurant workers stayed home on Valentine's Day. The same day, the foreign ministers of Mexico, Colombia, Panama and El Salvador flew to Washington to meet with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and voice alarm over the bill. The 70% figure is interesting, though we'd rather see 100% compliance, of course. Paraphrasing FrankG - if they're squealing, then we must be doing it right... or at least close enough for Govt work.
#1
He denies it would lead to jail for church workers or others who assist or hire undocumented immigrants, saying similar laws have been on the books for decades and are aimed at people such as smugglers. Still, he has said he is willing to retool that part of the bill.
Well there's a big hole as usual. Anyone assisting in a crime is an accessory to the crime. You can be a driver at a holdup, if the heist goes sour and someone is offed, you as a participant can be charged with murder. By all means, church weenies and slavers employers should be subject to full penalties like any other crime.
#4
Only the Scared + Criminal would wilfully egress towards the shadows, and wilfully stay there. The US Constitution, US Codes, CFR, and State Codes apply only to US Citizens, legal Residents, and the American Union of States - these were never originally intended to apply to illegals, let alone to help illegals stay "illegal" andor "unlawful" FOREVER/PERMANENTLY AND VIOLATION OF THE LAWS.
The US military has funded a computer game to teach its troops how to use and decipher Iraqi body language. The purpose is to teach soldiers that using the wrong gestures can potentially cause offence and escalate already tense situations.
In the program, users must build trust with local people through verbal communication and gestures.
One of the system's creators says the training tool, known as Tactical Iraqi, has already been a great success. Hannes Vilhjalmsson, a research scientist at the University of Southern California, gave details of the Tactical Iraqi at a conference in St Louis, US. The system also gives troops Arabic language skills.
The program teaches military personnel some key gestures such as an up-down movement with the right hand to ask someone to slow down and gives them tips such as removing mirror sunglasses when approaching local people. In Iraq, to show sincerity you have to put more effort into your gestures," said Dr Vilhjalmsson. "In Western countries, we control our body language more. In Arabic culture, it is important you show how open you are."
He added that reserved body language in exchanges with local people could be interpreted as having something to hide in Iraq, potentially escalating a tense situation.
Military personnel also learn that people can approach each other more closely than one normally might in the West. Dr Vilhjalmsson said it was important troops should not automatically interpret close proximity in an exchange as a threat. And the game teaches them that pointing the finger at a person can be considered aggressive in Arab cultures.
Tactical Iraqi is built on top of the game engine for Unreal Tournament, a first-person computer "shoot-em-up". In the training tool, though, subjects use communication to resolve situations. Dr Vilhjalmsson said initial testing of Tactical Iraqi with marines deployed to Iraq had shown the programme to be very effective.
The University of Southern California is also working on other versions of the game: Tactical Pashto, which trains troops in communication specific to Afghanistan; and Tactical Levantine, which teaches them Arabic language and gestures specific to Lebanon and other surrounding areas.
The training system has been funded by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa).
#1
Lots of game technologies being used or developed for training. Goes way beyond the tank simulators I saw in the 80s although they're not issuing virtual reality headsets to troops. Not yet, anyway lol
BTW, the Army has put language courses online, behind a portal that soldiers and civilian employees can use. These are the Rosetta Stone courses, with audio and visual clips plus text in English and the target language. Troops can run them from any computer anywhere and pick up where they left off.
A whole lot of other training is available online now too. Some of the mandatory security briefings etc. can now be done without long meetings - click through the course, answer the questions and get the certificate to turn in.
#2
This only makes sense. Different cultures, different hand gestures. What to us my be benign or even one of approval may be a deadly insult elsewhere.
#6
Understanding gestures in other cultures/languages is a big part of the communication. The "body language" all humans use when speaking helps convey what you mean - and how you mean what you mean. Words alone can have many meanings. Think of gestures as vocal inflection and you'll see their importance in truly understanding what is being said.
An idea well behind it's time. Just learning the translation of your words is not really helpful. You need to learn how to say it in the destination language, And also to understand what is being said, you must understand the full communication package - body language, tone, inflection, words and the context of the words.
French 'anti-Jew gang chief' held The suspected head of an anti-Semitic gang which kidnapped, tortured and killed a young French Jew near Paris has been arrested in Ivory Coast. Youssouf Fofana, 26, is in the custody of French police who went to Ivory Coast to question him. The French authorities had issued an international warrant for his arrest after he had left the country.
Victim Ilan Halimi died after being found naked, bound and gagged in a crime that shocked France. The 23-year-old man had been held for ransom for three weeks. He was dumped near the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois train station near Paris on 13 February, and found lying in agony with horrific injuries to his body. He died on the way to hospital.
French ministers believe he may have been a victim of anti-Semitism.
'Brains of the barbarians'
President Jacques Chirac is expected to lead mourners at a memorial service for Mr Halimi in Paris later on Thursday. More than 1,000 people, mostly Jews, marched in the capital on Sunday to condemn the killing.
Mr Fofana, who is of Ivorian origin, is believed to have fled France before police made several arrests last week.
Mr Halimi's family were sent ransom demands by e-mail and text messages from the kidnap gang, whose leader called himself "brains of the barbarians". Prosecutors initially ruled out anti-Semitism, saying the gang - believed to be behind six other botched kidnappings - were unemployed and motivated by money.
But Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin told a meeting of Jewish community leaders on Monday that the judge handling the case was investigating leads pointing to an anti-Semitic attack. "We will do everything we can to arrest the authors of this barbarous crime and bring them to justice," he added.
#5
The article doesn't say, so I'm guessing it must have been one of those new age anti-semetic Christians that Bernard Lewis was talking about yesterday.
#13
Times are changing... about 20 years ago, after the Carpentras jewish cemetary desacration, 300-500 000 peoples marched on the streets in protest.
Of course, then it was blamed on the far right, with the National Front in mind (desacration was much later, after real sleazy political powerplays and rumors campaigns, found out to have been made by a small gang of drunken skinheads, but I repeat myself, in "honor" of the birth/death of hitler, can't remember).
Nowadays, antisemitism comes from the left (jews = nazis) and from the victims-of-racist-society "youths" (who commit about 93% of the actuals assaults, arsons,... according to police intelligence).
Cognitive dissonance at its best.
#15
All of us barbarians have brains, Mike. Some of us even use them. This guy isn't a barbarian, he's simply an anti-Semitic Muslim bigot.
It takes both brains and brawn to be a true barbarian in a "civilized" world. The United States is lucky to have a fairly large number of people who can very quickly shed the trappings of "civilization" against those that would enslave and destroy us. It's looking more and more likely that they (we) will be needed, and soon.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/23/2006 22:49
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MORE than 50 bullet-riddled bodies were found overnight in Iraq as sectarian violence surged after the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine sparked revenge attacks against Sunni mosques.
Amid warnings the sectarian bloodshed could spiral inro all out civil war, Iraqi political and religious leaders were set to meet with President Jalal Talabani.
A total of 53 bodies were recovered in Baghdad and its suburbs, an interior ministry official said today.
The upsurge in killings came after suspected al-Qaeda linked militants yesterday morning bombed the 1000-year-old Imam Ali al-Hadi mausoleum, one of the countries' main Shiite shrines, in the town of Samarra, north of Baghdad.
Early today the police reported finding the bodies of three Iraqi journalists working for Dubai-based Arabiya satellite television who were kidnapped near Samarra last night while reporting on the shrine bombing.
"The bodies of the presenter Atwar Bahjat, of cameraman Adnan Abdallah and of soundman Khaled Mohsen were found early this morning some 15km north of Samarra," police said.
The bombing prompted global condemnation and appeals for calm, but large-scale demonstrations turned violent, leading to the killings of at least six Sunnis in the capital and attacks on a number of Sunni mosques nationwide.
Two people were also killed in an attack on offices of a Sunni political party in Iraq's mainly Shiite city of Basra, while gunmen stormed a prison in the southern port city and lynched 10 suspected Sunni militants from Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
The latest bloodshed came as Shiite and Sunni political factions bicker over the formation of a national unity government, amid anxiety that further delay in setting up a cabinet could lead the country into chaos.
The bomb attack on the shrine destroyed the dome of one of the Shiite Islam's holiest shrines where Shiites believe their 12th Imam disappeared in the 9th century AD.
In Baghdad, mobs killed three clerics and three worshippers in assaults on 27 Sunni mosques, an Iraqi security officer said.
Gunmen opened fire on Sunni religious sanctuaries and torched at least one, the officer added.
"We ask the Marjaiya (Shiite grand ayatollahs) to intervene before it is too late," Sunni-based Islamic Party's chief Tareq al-Hashimi said.
Iraq's top Shiite religious authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, urged his community to remain calm and to refrain from seeking vengeance.
But at least 2000 Shiite demonstrators took to the streets of Kut, 175km southeast of the capital, today shouting "vengeance, vengeance".
Waving the green flags of Islam and the national Iraqi colours, thousands of Shiites yesterday had also taken to the streets, vowing to punish those responsible for the attack.
Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari has proclaimed three days of national mourning and decreed that Thursday would be a public holiday.
Mr Jaafari called on Iraqis to denounce sectarian attacks and "close the road to those who want to undermine national unity".
"They are trying to push us into killing one another," the Government said in a statement.
The head of one of the most powerful Shiite parties in Iraq, Abdel Aziz Hakim, attributed part of the blame for the bombing on US ambassador Zalmay Khalizad, two days after the US diplomat offered a veiled rebuke to Shiite parties.
"These statements were a reason for more pressure and gave the green light to terrorist groups. Certainly he is partly responsible for what happened," Mr Hakim said.
Mr Khalilzad, who has repeatedly warned against growing sectarian tension, enraged Mr Hakim on Monday with a suggestion that the United States would curtail funds if Iraq's next government were run on a sectarian basis.
The supreme leader of neighbouring Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also blamed Washington. But he too called on Iraqi Shiites not to seek revenge.
The Samarra bombing, carried out by men dressed in police commando uniforms, bore the hallmarks of supporters of al-Qaeda's Iraq frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has declared war on the country's Shiites.
US President George W. Bush called on Iraqis to act with restraint.
#2
I'm thinking the backlash on this may be a tipping point for many Sunnis and cause them to realize that 'resistance' is a road that leads to disaster for them.
#5
Amen to all of the preceeding - they're not incompatible views. I certainly hope that they've had their fill of death. BH6's observation yesterday regards how quiet Anbar has become was welcome news. As what's left of the "insurgency" become focused, so can the efforts to end it. Seems to me, from afar, that most of the Iraqis are acquitting themselves well, overall, in the fight.
#6
I do not think it's just tiredness that justifies the idea that this act will NOT lead to a civil war. It is in neither groups interest to start one.
If there is anything rational about the process, the Shia just got a stronger hand finalizing the government as they can point to this atrocity and explain that their constituents now demand more. If I were a Sunni politician I'd be scared at the backlash and more willing to lock in a deal rather than hold out longer.
Beside, I believe the shrine had some clerics buried there that were important to the Sunni too.
What's interesting is how quickly the retaliation against sunni mosques came. I would be interested to know details as to how well planned and organized these attacks were. They could have been spontaneous or they could have been organized by Al Queda or Iran for various reasons.
#7
You might want to check this post at Healing Iraq.
Or they could have been on the shelf plans that were implemented quickly so that the Sunnis' nose could be blooded but Sistani would look like the peace maker. Nothing over there would surprise me, especially as they are still in the process of negotiating the new government. Also interesting Tater was out of town.
And even if this was an al-Q attack, what are the chances the trainting and AAR occur in Iran?
Syrian Louai Sakka, on trial for top-level links to the al-Qaeda terrorist network, apparently used 16 different code names and identities.
Information regarding Sakkas codes name and forged identities, along with a fact-finding report of his testimony at Istanbul Security Dept. were included in the indictment prepared by the chief public prosecutors office.
According to a related statement, Palestinian Abu Zubeydah called Sakka Alaattin, a name he often used in 1998 in Pakistan.
Sakka, claimed to be al-Qaedas Turkish mandate and the mastermind of attacks committed on HSBC and British Consulate in Istanbul, introduced himself to Habib Akdas in Islamabad with another code name, Ayhan.
Sakka used the named Haci Omer Inanc during the preparation of attacks against an Israeli cruise ship carrying tourists in Antalya.
Sakka was captured in Diyarbakir as Ekrem Ozel in August 2005.
His lawyer had also confirmed the operation plan.
Reportedly, the al-Qaeda operative said in dialogues with police that one of the high-ranked administers of al-Qaeda, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi also called him Little Brother, Louai means Monster; Sakka said he deserves this name.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/23/2006
02:27 ||
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#1
I imagine this guy played hell with the org charts and databases. Sybil would certainly be jealous.
#3
I read a WaPo article about Sakka a few days ago. It was interesting because there were some bits of info in there that show how technically unsophisticated he is, surprising given that Al Qaeda had assigned him a major operation that included building a bomb. What technical skills these guys do have seems to be very limited and narrowly focused. Not a recipe for success for those wishing to take over the world.
Iran's Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has announced a week of mourning following the attack Wednesday morning on one of the holiest Shiite shrines at Samarra in Iraq, and accused the Americans and Israelis of responsibility. In a statement, the Iranian leader says those behind the attack were "the occupation forces and Zionism, which seeing their plans for Iraq dissolve, have planned this atrocity to sew hate between Muslims and fuel divisions between Sunnis and Shiites". In Iran, where 90 per cent of the population is Shiite, the attack against the shrine has caused disgust and consternation.
Ayatollah Khamenei went on to appeal to Shiites to "not fall into the enemy trap by attacking mosques and sacred places of [their] Sunni brothers".
"The enemy", Khamenei concludes "wants nothing more than weakening the Islamic front, right as Muslims with a single voice have been protesting against the continual provocations of their enemies", an apparent reference to protests around the Muslim world at Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.
"The attack this morning in Samarra had one aim, to divide Muslims" said the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi. This attack shows on one hand that the aim is to cause divisions within the ummah (global Muslim community) trying to turn Shiites against their Sunni brothers. "On the other it is a clear sign that the occupying armies are incapable of guaranteeing the security of Iraq or fighting terrorism" Asefi added.
Iranian imams will be invited to dedicate their Friday sermons to the attack.
The United States called the bombers "enemies of all faiths and of all humanity" and vowed to hunt down those behind the blast.
Washington's ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, and the top US commander in the country, General George Casey, issued a joint statement saying the US would contribute to the shrine's reconstruction.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/23/2006
02:26 ||
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#1
The expected islamo kneejerk. What else new is there?
#3
Sock! Are you suggesting the Mad Mullahs blew it up to derail Iraqi progress?
They wouldn't do that, would they?
Oh. Not unless they could blame the Jooos!
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/23/2006 7:34
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JPost Link
The Jooosss simply have to come into the plot in an Ayrab script. Chief rabble rousing ragheads always raise the same old blame-stupor line unfailingly.
#7
The Iraqi president should make a statement that we now have proof that the bombers were Iranian agents. That would set the mad mullahs back on the balls of their arses, and shut them up as well.
Global Jihad and Al Qaeda based in Jordan have stepped up their attempts to infiltrate Israel and were in close contact with Palestinian terror cells based in West Bank, OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh revealed on Wednesday.
"We recently caught several local terror cells that were in touch with the international Global Jihad based in Jordan," Naveh told a closed meeting at the Jerusalem Center of Public Affairs. Naveh would not say for certain that the al-Qaeda camp in Jordan worked under the direction of the movement's Iraqi leader Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, but, he said, "Al Qaeda was working to tighten its grip on the ground" in Jordan and Israel.
Jordan, the high-ranking officer said, should be particularly concerned with the Hamas takeover of the Palestinian Authority. Naveh predicted that Hamas would spread out to the other side of the Jordan River and might even succeed in toppling the Jordanian government.
"Hamas is gathering strength and a dangerous axis starting in Iran, continuing through Iraq and Jordan is in the process of conception," Naveh told the audience including former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Dr. Dore Gold and Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror - former head of research at Military Intelligence. "I don't want to be a prophet but I am not sure there will be another king after King Abdullah."
While the IDF has reported attempts in the past by Al Qaeda to infiltrate the Gaza Strip, Naveh's remarks on Wednesday was the first time the IDF revealed that cells in the West Bank were also operating in conjunction with the international terror organization.
"Zarqawi and his men are trying to get a better grip in Jordan," Naveh continued. "They are in the midst of trying to create ideological and religious cells in Gaza and the West Bank and their next stage is to connect themselves to local terror cells."
The Jordan Valley, Naveh said, was a "strategic security asset" that created a barrier between Israel and terrorism from around the world. "The Jordan Valley allows for shoulder-to-shoulder fighting alongside the Jordanians against terrorism," the IDF chief said adding that in his opinion the Jordanians preferred that Israel held on to the Jordan Valley and not relinquish it under a final status agreement with the Palestinians.
Moving to the Hamas, Naveh said he expected the radical group would continue perpetrating attacks against Israel even after it completed forming a new PA government. "Hamas, in my opinion, will agree to a 3-4 year hudna [ceasefire] during which it will continue carrying out attacks under the disguise of other groups," the senior officer said. "In the long term they will not change since the global process that is going on including Iran and Syria supports them."
Hamas, he said, would not carry out suicide bombings on buses in Tel Aviv, but would use the next few years to garner Palestinian public support with the ultimate goal of spreading Islam throughout the Middle East. "Over the next few years the Hamas will try to win over the hearts of the Palestinians," Naveh said. "A dangerous route is in formulating and it begins in Iran, continues to Iraq, to Jordan and then to Israel."
Palestinian terror groups, he said, received funding, sometimes up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, through Western Union branches in the territories. While Islamic Jihad would escalate is terror activity to try and vanguard the Palestinian struggle, the Fatah, the commander predicted, would also step up its attacks against Israel to "try and become legitimate in the eyes of Hamas."
The IDF, Naveh said, was facing a difficult period which included questions as to what its relationship would be with the PA security forces following the formation of a new Hamas-led government. The transfer of security control over PA cities, the commander said, was currently irrelevant and off the table.
"If Hamas will take over the security forces we won't be able to hold regular meetings with the PA brigade commanders like we do now," he said. "When we go into Jenin to arrest terror suspects we also won't be able to give them heads up before we come in."
Fences, Naveh said, made good neighbors and he called for a continued effort to "separate" from the Palestinians in the West Bank from a security standpoint. "Every place there is a fence we have good neighbors," he said. "I am in favor of continuing to build the [West Bank] security fence and separate roads for the Palestinians so there will be less friction and less terror."
Naveh also became the first senior IDF official to admit the military's failure to accurately predict the PA election results and Hamas's victory. He also said that the Military Intelligence needed to run an in-house inspection to determine how it failed to predict the elections. "I was surprised with the results," he said. "I thought the Hamas would get 40 percent of the vote since it was clear the [Palestinian] public was fed up with corruption."
Hamas's victory, Naveh said, demonstrated that the Palestinians were not just fed up with PA corruption but also believed that the armed struggle was the only way to achieve their diplomatic goals. "A simple citizen might not want to be personally involved in terror but as a concept he believes that the armed struggle is the way to achieve his goals," he said.
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02/23/2006
02:23 ||
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Today's attack on al-Askariya shrine marks the first time that Iraqi sectarian violence has targeted one of the country's central religious symbols.
The Shia Muslim shrine has existed in the middle of the ancient city of Samarra, one of the largest archaeological sites in the world, since 944, when it was built to house the tombs of two ninth century imams, direct descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.
Ali al-Hadi, the tenth imam who died in 868 and his son Hassan al-Askari who died in 874, were buried at the end of the turbulent period during which Samarra was built as the new capital of the Abbasid empire, briefly taking over from Baghdad, then the largest city in the world.
But the continued and intense religious importance of the site is connected to the 12th imam, the so-called "Hidden Imam" who Shias believe went into hiding in 878 under the al-Askariya shrine to prepare for his eventual return among men.
According to Shia tradition, the Mahdi will reappear one day to punish the sinful and "separate truth from falsehood". For many years, a saddled horse and soldiers would be brought to the shrine in Samarra every day to be ready for his return, a ritual that was repeated in Hilla, about 100 miles to the south, where it was also thought that Mahdi might reappear.
"It's one of the foremost important shrines in Iraq," said Alastair Northedge, a Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at the Sorbonne in Paris who has just completed an archaeological survey of Samarra.
"Najaf and Karbala are the two most important shrines in Iraq but only slightly subsidiary to them are the sites in Samarra and Baghdad.
"The shrine is central for the Shia. This is not just a major cathedral, this is more than that, this is one of the holiest shrines."
According to Professor Northedge, the shrine was extensively rebuilt as Samarra withered over the centuries and power was restored to Baghdad. Modern-day Samarra, a tough, Sunni-dominated town in the middle of the Sunni Triangle north of Baghdad, fills just a fraction of the enormous ancient city built along the banks of the Tigris.
The latest remodelling of the shrine took place in the late 19th century, with the dome that was destroyed today added in 1905. Covered in 72,000 gold pieces and surrounded by walls of light blue tiles, the shrine attracts thousands of Shia pilgrims from across the world.
Despite being an active base of Sunni insurgents since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the al-Askariya shrine had survived unharmed and largely unthreatened until today.
It managed to escape any damage when Samarra was retaken in the first major US and Iraqi combined offensive in October 2004, which was aimed at sweeping out the Sunni factions that had taken over the town. The shrine has also remained intact while other archaeological sites have suffered under US efforts to control the insurgency.
The 101st Airborne Division, which took over Samarra shortly before Christmas, has continued the policy of using bulldozers to create a mud wall around the town to make it harder for insurgents to move in and out.
Professor Northedge, who last met Samarra's director of antiquities at a conference in Paris in September, believes the attack to be the work of al-Qaeda related militants from outside the town.
In September, Sunni rebels in Samarra joined an unprecedented condemnation of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in Iraq after the execution of a leading cleric in nearby Ramadi.
"It is really quite surprising that something like that has happened in Samarra," he says. "The people there have a a very, very powerful sense of community identity, they know how to act in their best interests."
"If you look at the resistance situation in Samarra, there are two general sorts: there are local fighters and there are al-Qaeda fighters and foreign jihadis," said Professor Northedge. "I'm absolutely certain that this is not the local people from Samarra, they would not have blown it up."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/23/2006
02:20 ||
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#1
For everyone to copy, file and forget, here is the list of the Shia Top Ten Eleven, lol. This one, in Samarra, comes in at #7, folks...
Note, also, this gem in the story: "The shrine has [sic] also remained intact while other archaeological sites have suffered under US efforts to control the insurgency."
Point that remarkably dull intellect at the assholes, you TimesOnline wankfucks. Bite me.
#3
Looks like GUNS N' ROSES forgot the hoss-and-saddle in their "DON'T CRY" video - D***, Axel, you got JAMES + JOSEPH UNDERWATER but your Band all forgot the Hoss, like the Navy with the Battleship Oklahoma. *The days and decade when the world post-MADONNA discovered Global Warming + Sunspots.
The Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC) distributed in late-January 2006 to jihadist forums the sixth issue of Al-Jamaa, a periodic magazine devoted to issues of the Algerian jihad. This issue, 36-pages in length and commemorating the occasion of Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice, contains articles contrasting the faith and resolve of the mujahideen vis-à-vis the Muslim people in general, and renegade rulers in particular; congratulating the mujahideen in Iraq; disparaging Algerian President Abd al-Aziz Bouteflika and Algerian press for fabricating and aggrandizing claims of victory against Algerian mujahideen; and a vivid and lengthy description of a battle between fourteen mujahideen and Algerian authorities in the Sahara desert, near a village called Hajira, during the month of Ramadan.
An editorial opening the magazine lauds the mujahideen in Iraq for their victories accompanied by the beginning of the countdown for the American cowboy, and argues that jihad is the only language understood by the enemy and should be taken into account by the Muslim nation. This is followed by a piece titled, Between Two Festival, by Salah Abu Muhammad, that draws a dichotomy between those Muslims who are concerned more about materialistic and ostensibly Western values during Eid al-Adha, and the mujahideen in the cold mountains who would rather care about jihad. The article states: How will they slaughter, during the days of this blessed festival, a herd of renegades? If only their swords could do their work on crusading or Jewish targets! Or at least: how can they blow up a bomb? In the same vein, the article, Patience Increases Victory, serves to explain that only those Muslims who embrace patience and jihad will attain Paradise.
Another section of the magazine reports current events in the Islamic world community, including the speech by Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri in which he demanded that the idiot Bush confess his defeat at the hands of the Mujahideen, mujahideen operations in Iraq allegedly rendering 40,000 Americans killed, collaborations between the Algerian government and the enemies of the Ummah, and arrest campaigns in Morocco, which the GSPC interprets: It seems that exposing terrorist cells has become a preferred hobby carried out by this collaborating regime in order to prove to its Jewish and Christian masters that is a loyal dog of theirs. This section also elaborates upon the impression of Bouteflikas fading on the reconciliation initiative. The Algerian newspapers allegedly collaborating with the Algerian president are also thrashed in the article, Hired Newspapers and Imprisoned Facts, written by Abu Abdullah Ahmad, in which he argues that the publications condemned the purported maltreatment of Muslims in Iraq by American soldiers, yet do not write of the maltreatment of Algerian mujahideen. They also question why the mujahideen have not been interviewed to present their views.
Other myriad articles express condolences for the death of Abu Omar al-Seif, a religious leader and purported al-Qaeda leader in the Chechen jihad, describe operations executed by the GSPC, and criticize a partnership between Algeria and the European Union, believing that the EU seeks to use Algeria as a cultural foothold to rebuild the geopolitical map in the Islam world.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/23/2006
02:19 ||
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#1
How will they slaughter, during the days of this blessed festival, a herd of renegades? If only their swords could do their work on crusading or Jewish targets! Or at least: how can they blow up a bomb?
Several terror acts, hatched by gunmen for February 23, Fatherland Defenders Day, was warded off in Chechnya, Tass learnt from Chechen Interior Minister Ruslan Alkhanov.
On February 22, police officers uncovered a big cache with weapons and explosives, belonging to Isa Muskievs armed gang, in the basement of an apartment house in Grozny, Alkhanov noted.
According to the minister, police seized 11 homemade explosive devices, each weighing ten kilos, four grenade launchers and great quantities of firearms and ammunition.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/23/2006
02:17 ||
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Police in Chechnya have detained several rebel suspects allegedly involved in attacks on Russian security forces, a source at the republic's Interior Ministry said Wednesday.
One of the detainees is suspected of complicity in an attack on a police car near the village of Tangi-Chu, in the southern province of Urus Martan, on October 2001, which left one policeman dead and one other wounded, the source said.
Also, according to the source, a cache with arms and ammunition has been found in the town of Argun, near the border with Georgia. About 30 kilograms of a substance resembling TNT has been uncovered here along with several grenade launchers and mines. The substance is now being identified by forensic specialists, and a search operation is on to track down the cache's owners.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/23/2006
02:16 ||
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The Algerian government has given armed Islamic extremists six months to surrender and obtain amnesty under a new peace and reconciliation charter, officials said Wednesday.
The measure, adopted late Tuesday, aims at finally turning the page on political violence that has wracked the north African country since 1992, claiming more than 150,000 lives.
The amnesty is the second championed by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika since he first took office in 1999. Thousands of guerrilla activists, including the outlawed Islamist opposition party's armed wing, took advantage of the previous amnesty/
The charter, approved in a referendum last September, offers amnesty for those militants who are not implicated in so-called "blood crimes."
Under the deal, legal proceedings will be dropped against rebels who have "ceased their armed activities and surrender to the authorities" in the next six months, except those "implicated in collective massacres, rapes or attacks involving explosives in public places."
The amnesty will also apply to those who have been convicted in absentia for crimes other than "blood crimes," according to a government statement.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/23/2006
02:15 ||
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#1
Six more months or you're on double secret probation!
A powerful bomb shattered the golden dome at one of Iraq's most revered Shiite shrines on Wednesday morning, setting off a day of sectarian fury in which mobs formed across Iraq to chant for revenge and attacked dozens of Sunni mosques.
The bombing, at the Askariya shrine in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, wounded no one but left the famous golden mosque dome at the site in ruins. Coming after two days of bloody attacks that have left dozens of Shiite civilians dead, the attack ignited a nationwide outpouring of rage and panic that seemed to bring Iraq closer than ever to open civil conflict.
Shiite militia members flooded the streets of Baghdad, firing rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns at Sunni mosques while Iraqi army soldiers who had been called out to stop the violence stood nearby. By the day's end, mobs had struck or destroyed 27 Sunni mosques in the capital alone, killing three imams and kidnapping a fourth, Interior Ministry officials said. In all, at least 15 people were killed in related violence across the country.
Thousands of grief-stricken people in Samarra crowded into the shrine's courtyard after the bombing, some weeping and kissing the fallen stones, others angrily chanting, "Our blood and souls we sacrifice for you, imams!"
Iraq's major political and religious leaders issued urgent appeals for restraint, and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari called for a three-day mourning period in a televised address. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most senior Shiite cleric, released an unusually strong statement in which he said, "If the government's security forces cannot provide the necessary protection, the believers will do it."
Most Iraqi leaders attributed the attack to terrorists bent on exploiting sectarian rifts, but some also blamed the United States for failing to prevent it. Even the leader of Iraq's main Shiite political alliance said he thought Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Iraq, bore some responsibility. The Shiite leader, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, said Khalilzad's veiled threat on Monday to withdraw American support if Iraqis cannot form a nonsectarian government helped provoke the bombing.
"This declaration gave a green light for these groups to do their operation, so he is responsible for a part of that," Hakim said at a news conference.
The attack in Samarra began at 7 a.m., when a dozen men dressed in paramilitary uniforms entered the shrine and handcuffed four guards who were sleeping in a back room, a spokesman for the provincial governor's office said. The attackers then placed a bomb in the dome and detonated it, collapsing most of the structure and damaging an adjoining wall.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but some Iraqi officials quickly pointed a finger at al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, the terrorist group believed to be responsible for many of the attacks on Shiite civilians and mosques in the past two years.
Samarra's population is mostly Sunni Arab, and it was a haven for insurgents until 2004, when American and Iraqi troops carried out a major operation to retake the city and the Golden Mosque from guerrilla fighters. But the insurgents have filtered back since then, and American troops in and around the city are now regularly attacked.
Shops soon closed across the country as angry mobs filled the streets. Far to the north in Kirkuk, about 1,000 Shiites marched in the streets, chanting slogans against America, members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, and Takfiris, a word used to describe militant Islamists who denounce other Muslims as infidels. Similar demonstrations broke out in Baquba, Najaf, Karbala and other cities.
In Sadr City, the vast Shiite slum in Baghdad, flatbed trucks bristled with black-clad militia fighters carrying guns. Men with grenade launchers leaned out car windows, pointing at them menacingly.
"If I could find the people who did this, I would cut him into pieces," said Abdel Jaleel al-Sudani, a 50-year-old employee of the Health Ministry, who said he had marched in a demonstration earlier.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/23/2006
02:12 ||
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#1
Curious lack of news on the ten perps who have been caught.
#2
I would not be surprised if the ten people caught were just the first 'likely suspects' the police could find and grab, just like cops do everywhere. Not necessarily any evidence relating them to THIS crime, but guys the cops figure are guilty of SOMETHING.
That said, it sure sucks to be them right now.
#3
In the thread on Sadr's rapid return, lotp opines that it's al-Q rather than Iran. We'll probably never know and blame will be shared based on what makes the argument at hand work best.
#4
The vast majority of the retaliation was conducted by the tater's militia. Now tater has something to answer for. This effectively ends his role in future Iraqi governments.
THE Liverpool man accused of financing an al-Qaida cell has been linked to a Lithuanian nuclear power plant terror threat, the Daily Post can reveal. Mohammed Benhammedi, owner and director of Sara Properties and Ozlam properties in Wavertree, was named by the US treasury as a "key financier" for Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.
Now the family of his mistress in Lithuania are being investigated because her father is a senior security manager at the country's major power plant. They fear the link between them could pose a security threat.
Victoria Zakuko spoke exclusively to the Daily Post about her lover who shares his time between his wife and seven children and her.
The story has been front-page news in Lithuania's national newspapers after the government launched an investigation into the suspected links to their country.
Russian-born Sergey Zakurko, Victoria's father, has been suspended from his job at the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (INPP) while the investigation continues. Now the 47-year-old former policeman, who has worked at the plant since 1997, is considering leaving his post. He told Lithuania's main daily newspaper: "I am considering if I should write my resignation letter to my employers.
"I don't want to cause problems for my superiors and colleagues at the plant. I am ready for a very open talk.
"If I resign I will emigrate to the UK. I would learn English and work in the building industry. But now, when my surname is in every paper in both countries, will I ever get a job?
"The thing I wish most is to go to my motherland. Some day I will definitely go back to Russia for good." The security official had met Benhammedi, known to his friends as Ben, on a previous trip to Liverpool. He said he did not know that Benhammedi was married with children and had been told by the couple that he was divorced from his wife.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/23/2006
02:10 ||
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#1
Looks like Al-QAEDA is trying to ruin German-Russian-Baltic relations, instead of Germany working with the same.
Samarra has suffered mightily in the Iraq war, but seldom as badly as Wednesday when two bombers dressed as policemen blew apart the glorious golden dome atop one of Shiite Islam's holiest sites the Askariya shrine.
The location of the shrine, one of four main Shiite holy places in Iraq, had always been somewhat awkward because the Tigris River city has a mainly Sunni Muslim population of about a quarter million.
Residents had prided themselves on being gracious and tolerant hosts of the tens of thousands of Shiites who once visited the shrine.
Things have changed since the start of the Sunni-dominated insurgency in 2003. Sunni militants embittered by the loss of the power they wielded under Saddam Hussein resent the new Shiite dominion in Iraq. Many Sunnis now view the Shiites as American collaborators.
Shiite pilgrims nearly stopped going to Samarra altogether. They feared for their lives in the city which can only be reached on roads that cut through the so-called Sunni Triangle, where insurgents are most active and attacks on Shiite travelers are common.
Samarra had been among the most difficult cities to pacify in the Sunni heartland. In 2004, it fell under the control of extremists, and al-Qaeda flags could be seen flying over some buildings.
The militants had been so confident of their hold on Samarra in the fall of that year they hoisted their black banner in a taunt of American soldiers not far away atop the city's 170-foot tall spiral minaret at a 9th-century mosque. The minaret, itself, was damaged in a bombing last April.
Toward the end of 2004, U.S. troops moved in, flushed out the insurgents and held forward positions inside the city. The Americans brought in Iraqi commandos to help them patrol the city while they worked to build a local police force.
Since then, Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, has been relatively quiet but far from entirely peaceful.
There have been car bombs, assassinations or gunfights but none of the wholesale violence that once ranked Samarra with Fallujah, west of Baghdad, as a no-go insurgency stronghold for the U.S. military.
Suspicion for Wednesday's attack quickly fell on militant Sunnis, most probably from al-Qaeda. The target conforms with the terror group's publicized aim of igniting a Shiite-Sunni war in Iraq.
Some Samarra residents have complained of abuse and mistreatment by paramilitary commandos based in the city, who are primarily Shiite and come from areas outside of this Sunni Arab dominated province.
A new battalion of commandos was sent to the city in December, and U.S. commanders said that had doubled the number of the Iraqi forces in Samarra to about 900.
The number of U.S. soldiers based within the city was simultaneously trimmed by about two-thirds, to some 200.
U.S. commanders in Diyala province, the religiously mixed area east of Samarra, said several Shiite mosques were destroyed in the mostly agrarian area outside the city of Baqouba last year. Most had been loaded with explosives and were empty at the time.
Tradition says the Askariya shrine, which drew Shiite pilgrims from throughout the Islamic world, is near the place where the last of the 12 Shiite imams, Mohammed al-Mahdi, disappeared. Al-Mahdi, known as the hidden imam, was the son and grandson of the two imams buried in the Askariya shrine.
Shiites believe he is still alive and will return to restore justice to humanity. An attack at such an important religious shrine would constitute a grave assault on Shiite Islam at a time of rising sectarian tensions in Iraq.
The shrine contains the tombs of the 10th and 11th imams, Ali al-Hadi who died in 868 A.D. and his son Hassan al-Askari who died in 874 A.D and was the father of the hidden imam.
The golden dome was completed in 1905.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/23/2006
02:08 ||
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#1
Completed in 1905?
Then that really is rebar sticking out of concrete, not so old as they made us to believe.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
02/23/2006 20:34
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he Jemaah Islamiah terror network survived the death of its master bomb-maker last year, and is now splintered into independent cells which continue to recruit suicide bombers in Indonesia, a confidential government report says.
The document by the country's intelligence agency, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, says senior figures in the organisation have "ongoing links" with fellow militants in Afghanistan, the Philippines and Thailand as well as those in jail inside Indonesia.
Jemaah Islamiah, which once had cells throughout Southeast Asia and allegedly received funding from al-Qaeda, is blamed in a score of bloody bombings and failed plots in the region, including five suicide bombings in Indonesia that together killed more than 240 people.
Authorities have arrested scores of the group's operatives in the last four years, and in November police killed Azahari Husin, a top leader who allegedly made many of the bombs used in the attacks, during a raid on his hideout.
The report said that after Azahari's death, Jemaah Islamiah went further underground, forming small cells of terrorists comprising mostly of young people recruited through Islamic study groups.
The cells are called "Thaifah Mansurah" (or Winning Team), and operate independently, according to the confidential 33-page document, which was drafted earlier this month.
"'Thaifah Mansurah' are the main resource for JI when it is looking for suicide bombers," the report said.
Noordin Top, the group's alleged operational chief and head recruiter, remains at large.
Nasir Abbas, who was a key Jemaah Islamiah operative until his arrest in 2003, said the new, loose structure of the group would make it even harder for police to track down Noordin.
"If police caught a regional head, it's unlikely he could identify other members of the group, or reveal the whereabouts of Noordin," said Abbas, who now works with authorities.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/23/2006
02:06 ||
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When the United Arab Emirates paid $6.5 billion for 80 advanced F-16 fighters from Lockheed Martin in 2000, the deal was applauded by members of Congress and local American officials as a milestone that would solidify relations and help preserve thousands of American aerospace jobs.
But in the days since the Bush administration approved the purchase by a state-run company from Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates, of rights to manage seaports in six American cities, lawmakers have denounced the port deal as a security threat and threatened to block it.
The episodes highlight how Persian Gulf sheikdoms and other Islamic countries in the region have come to be treated paradoxically in Washington as both strategic allies and, since the attacks of September 2001, as untrustworthy foes in combating terror groups like Al Qaeda.
Few countries encapsulate this paradox more than the oil-rich United Arab Emirates. Around 1,500 American military personnel work and live at an airbase an hour outside the capital of one of the emirates, Abu Dhabi, from which surveillance aircraft and refueling tankers fly missions over Iraq and Afghanistan.
But in Washington, and especially on Capitol Hill, the emirates' reputation has been colored more by the blistering treatment the country was dealt by the 9/11 Commission, the congressionally mandated panel that conducted an exhaustive investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The commission's inquiry found that "the vast majority of the money funding the Sept. 11 attacks flowed through the U.A.E." Its government, the panel said, ignored American pressure to clamp down on terror financing until after the attacks.
Even now, when by all accounts the emirates have taken action in response to some American demands to enact tougher controls in its banking sector and cooperate against Al Qaeda, many lawmakers say allowing Dubai Ports World, the state-run U.A.E. company, to take over the ports remains too much of a risk.
Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and a member of the Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, said it was reckless to allow a country to manage the ports that does not have a "solid" record against terrorism.
The United Arab Emirates is composed of a disparate group of sheikdoms that banded together in 1971. Dubai, which runs Dubai Ports World, has built itself into a financial and transportation hub in the region. The country is the world's fifth-largest exporter of oil, but the vast bulk of its oil reserves lie in the more conservative Abu Dhabi, the emirate that holds the country's presidency and dominates its foreign and defense policy-making.
The emirates grew closer to Washington when commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf was threatened during the "tanker war" between Iran and Iraq in the 1980's. The ties expanded in the 1990's, culminating in the F-16 sale in 2000. Revelations about the Dubai banks' role in the September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, however, have introduced tensions on both sides.
Current and former American officials who have dealt with the United Arab Emirates say the portrayal of the emirates by opponents of the port deal is at best misleading and at worst could jeopardize the assistance the Pentagon, the F.B.I. and other agencies say they need in preventing terrorism.
If the port deal is overturned, few experts expect that U.A.E. would significantly reduce military cooperation with the Pentagon, which Abu Dhabi sees as vital to protect it from far larger neighbors, like Iran and Saudi Arabia. Abu Dhabi is unlikely to cut off oil and gas sales, which form a small part of American imports, experts said.
"It certainly will not mean that U.A.E. will start ending cooperation with the U.S.," said Theodore Kattouf, who was ambassador to the emirates from 1998 to 2001. "But I think it would be seen as a real rebuff to a country that is sort of leading the way in the Middle East in terms of globalization and free trade."
Pentagon officials say that part of the emirates' public relations problem stems from their unwillingness to disclose all but the most basic description of their cooperation with the American military. Worried about appearing too close to Washington, the emirates permit American troops and equipment in their country only under the condition that the United States cannot describe the scale or nature of the American mission, military officials said.
But the Pentagon in recent days has disclosed more details about American bases, apparently to counter the claims about the U.A.E.'s sympathy for terrorists. In remarks to reporters Tuesday, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, "In everything that we have asked and worked with them on, they have proven to be very, very solid partners."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/23/2006
02:04 ||
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Thousands of Bahraini Shiites organized several marches that lasted well into the night on Wednesday hours after Iraqs top Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called for demonstrations over the bombings that destroyed the shrine of Imam Ali al-Mahdi and Hassan al-Askari in Samarra, Iraq.
Thousands took part in the protest that was organized in the capital Manama, but at least three other protests organized in Shiite villages attracted several hundred people.
Protesters blasted the bombing of Samarras Golden Mosque, which is dedicated to the imams Ali al-Hadi and his son Hassan al-Askari. The bombings destroyed the famous dome on the mosque, one of the four holiest Shiite sites in Iraq.
The angry protesters shouted slogans against Al-Qaeda and its supporters, accusing them of attempts to fuel sectarian hatred.
Many marched holding pictures showing the damaged dome and placards equating the attacks with the controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published in Danish press.
In Manama, one protester shouted through a microphone that only those who have no love for the Prophet Mohammed would attack the resting places of his own blood.
The anger of protesters taking part in the spontaneous marches was also evident by top Shiite clerics in Bahrain.
Shiite Olama Islamic Council (OIC) chairman, Ayatollah Sheikh Isa Qasem, during a ceremony held Wednesday night screamed Labeek ya Hussan, Labeek Ya Hadi, which means we will answer your calls Imam Hussan and Imam Hadi, sending the crowds into a frenzy as they shouted it out with him.
Eleven Bahraini Shiite Islamic societies issued a combined statement condemning the bombing and describing it as a cowardly and criminal act carried out by Takfeereah, which are groups that seek to paint Muslims who differ with them as infidels.
Bahrains Supreme Islamic Council (SIC), which represents Sunni and Shiite clerics, also condemned the attacks in a separate statement.
Both statements warned that those who carried out the attacks seek to destroy Sunni and Shiite unity.
Bahrain, which is ruled by a Sunni government, has a large Shiite population that reacts closely with developments affecting Shiites in the region particularly in Iran and Iraq because of the historical links.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/23/2006
02:02 ||
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#1
"Many marched holding pictures showing the damaged dome and placards equating the attacks with the controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published in Danish press."
bzzt logic overload! can't quite see the comparison, need more islamic indocrination, pass a hadith.
#2
Might just be that I haven't had my caffeine this AM yet, but it makes sense to me.
Sunnis are the ones who don't want any depiction of Muhammed. Shiites don't mind them - but hold dear certain shrines, of which the Golden Mosque is a major one due to the tombs there.
The message seems pretty clear - they're warning the Sunnis of a major reaction by Shiites if they allow this sort of attack to continue.
#4
You just don't have a major mosque pop its top and everyone just goes on with the day to day. Maybe the Shiites should develop a watch network that will start isolating the terrorists. They have the martyr thing down. Now they need to learn how to live.
This is a defining moment for Iraq. Al Q and the Iranians are doing their best effort to sink Iraq. The stakes for EVERYONE, friend and foe, have never been higher.
Posted by: Al-Aska Paul ||
02/23/2006 15:53
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The United Arab Emirates has become what the Bush administration calls a reliable partner in the war against Islamic terrorists, but its rulers maintained close ties to Osama bin Laden before September 11, and the cities of Abu Dhabi and Dubai have since served as operations and financial bases for al Qaeda terrorists.
But the United Arab Emirates, the most Western of Persian Gulf nations, also has become the United States' closest military ally in the region. Its ruling emirs permit Navy warships to dock in the bustling commercial center of Dubai on lengthy liberty calls. It also hosts U.S. Air Force warplanes, refueling jets and spy planes at the sprawling Al Dhafra air base near Abu Dhabi. The base sits across the gulf from U.S. adversary Iran.
During the Clinton administration, the United States even considered killing bin Laden when he was on a hunting expedition but did not because one of his hunting partners was one of the United Arab Emirates' emirs.
"They have been helpful and supportive and a good partner in the fight against terrorism," said a U.S. counterterrorism official.
It is these two faces of the Arab nation -- a one-time sympathizer of al Qaeda, yet strong post-September 11 U.S. partner -- that Washington is considering in the debate over the Bush administration's proposal to let United Arab Emirates company Dubai Ports World run six large U.S. seaports.
The U.S. September 11 commission's report is replete with accounts of some of the 19 hijackers -- two of whom came from the United Arab Emirates -- using Dubai's permissive banking system and lax passport certification to gain entry into the United States and bankroll a mission that killed more than 3,000 people.
During bin Laden's stay in Afghanistan -- where he built terror training camps, a personal army and a financial network -- some of the United Arab Emirates' upper crust, known as emirs, visited him. The United Arab Emirates was one of only a handful of countries that recognized the harsh Taliban regime, bin Laden's protector.
In 1999, bin Laden spent time in the Afghan desert south of Kandahar near the Sheik Ali hunting camp. It was regularly used by visitors from the United Arab Emirates, according to the September 11 commission report. U.S. intelligence detected an official United Arab Emirates government airplane there on at least one occasion.
"According to reporting from the tribals, bin Laden regularly went from his adjacent camp to the larger camp where he visited the Emiratis," according to the report.
In fact, the presence of the United Arab Emirates rulers at the camp gave the Clinton administration second thoughts about ordering an air strike to kill bin Laden, more than two years before the attack on the United States.
"According to CIA and defense officials, policy-makers were concerned about the danger that a strike would kill an Emirati prince or other senior officials who might be with bin Laden or close by," the commission said. The Clinton administration was so concerned about the emirates' cozy ties to bin Laden that one official called a United Arab Emirates political leader to complain.
Weeks later, the camp was dismantled, and bin Laden disappeared. The implication was clear: Someone in the United Arab Emirates tipped off bin Laden, the United States' most-wanted fugitive, who then was planning the September 11 attacks.
"The United Arab Emirates was becoming both a valued counterterrorism ally of the United States and a persistent counterterrorism problem" the commission wrote. It said President Clinton personally pressed United Arab Emirates leaders to break financial and travel ties with the Taliban, but they refused.
Hamdan bin Zayid, United Arab Emirates foreign minister, told a U.S. diplomat that his country maintains relations with the Taliban to counterbalance "Iranian dangers."
Those dangers are one reason that the United Arab Emirates stands as the United States' best military ally in the Gulf, opening key parts of its country for U.S. operations.
Its Mina Jebel Ali port, the largest man-made harbor in the world, hosts more U.S. warships than any other rest stop outside the United States. CIA and FBI agents collect intelligence there on militant Islam. The United Arab Emirates has cooperated with the U.S. Treasury Department in shutting down bank accounts linked to al Qaeda.
"The United Arab Emirates is a country that's been an ally in the global war on terror," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said on the Michael Reagan radio show this week. "We have a port there where they help us. They have an airfield. We share intelligence, and we have a partnership that has been very, very helpful to the things we do in that part of the world."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/23/2006
01:57 ||
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#1
The United Arab Emirates has become what the Bush administration calls a reliable partner in the war against Islamic terrorists, but its rulers maintained close ties to Osama bin Laden before September 11, and the cities of Abu Dhabi and Dubai have since served as operations and financial bases for al Qaeda terrorists.
Like I said; What do we do when an overseas container arrives with UAE diplomatic seals on it? Arab governments, by nature, are far too duplicitous for us to trust with even minor aspects of national security. We are at war.
#3
I'll do more than sigh. How will this overseas container with UAE diplomatic seals on it be handled differently than it would if the company that owned the management agreement for the port were British? Will they UAE managers tell the American longshoremen and stevedors, the Coast Guard, and the Bureau of Customs, to all ignore the container behind the curtain? It won't be handled any differently and every body know that.
Based on Zenster's argument we appear to be at war with all Arabs and I presume the war won't be over till they're all dead. Does this include Abazaid?
#4
"The United Arab Emirates has cooperated with the U.S. Treasury Department in shutting down bank accounts linked to al Qaeda."
It's about time. The Treasury department was also investigating the NK counterfeiting ring since the early '90's and State is just now confronting them on it. Treasury was also in on the secret meeting that approved the UAE deal without President Bush's knowledge. Maybe Treasury needs investigated? Allowing foreign access seems foolish unless the blackmarket has made a deal with the insiders and need to make sure they don't lose any more turf in the smuggling business. Clamping down on the borders forced new routes and the cargo containers offer the most opportunity. Bin Laden father was once a Yemenese dock worker and the UAE emirs certainly don't have American best interests at heart, keeping control of records on their own soil to avoid government oversight. Afghanistan still grows the most poppies and the US the largest consumer of heroin. The deal smells of the UN, especially when many think the next attack will come through our ports.
Rev. 18:15-19
The merchants who sold these things and gained their wealth from her will stand far off, terrified at her torment. They will weep and mourn and cry out:
Woe! Woe, O great city, dressed in fine linen, purple and scarlet,and glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls!In one hour such great wealth has been brought to ruin!
Every sea captain, and all who travel by ship, the sailors, and all who earn their living from the sea, will stand far off. When they see the smoke of her burning, they will exclaim, Was there ever a city like this great city? They will throw dust on their heads, and with weeping and mourning cry out:
Woe! Woe, O great city, where all who had ships on the sea became rich through her wealth! In one hour she has been brought to ruin!
#5
Based on Zenster's argument we appear to be at war with all Arabs and I presume the war won't be over till they're all dead. Does this include Abazaid?
Don't over-reach yourself there, NS. Yes, we are at war. No, we are NOT at war "with all Arabs." The critical point I hope to make is that, historically, there has been way too much collusion between Arab nations, and a lot of it has been Anti-American in nature. The extent of this collaboration, when correlated against the UAE's recent and uncomfortably close relationship with bin Laden, leads me to conclude that it is unwise, at best, to concede any control over our ports to an only recentlty converted ally, especially one who is in the thick of our enemies.
"How will this overseas container with UAE diplomatic seals on it be handled differently than it would if the company that owned the management agreement for the port were British?"
I refuse to believe that you are this incredibly opaque, NS. Britain poses no terrorist threat. The Middle East represents one of the greatest concentrations of extremely corrupt nations on earth. The possibility of wavering or questionable allegiances, switched cargo, bribed warehouse staff and bought-off port authorities at the container's point of origin make such a scenario worthy of comment andsuspicion.
Too often political differences have been overcome by religious solidarity, especially so in the case of Islam and Islamist terrorism. Anti-American sentiment is simply too prevalent and deeply inculcated in Arab countries for this situation not to represent some sort of risk. When that risk becomes part of a scenario that facilitates a nuclear terrorist attack upon American soil, the cost-benefit ratio rapidly approaches less than zero.
Remember, all it takes is one single nuclear terrorist attack to cause nearly irreparable harm to our nation's economy. With hatred of America running so high in Arab countries, this relatively minor business issue makes no sense at all.
#6
Coding tags, why do they hate us? That should read:
Based on Zenster's argument we appear to be at war with all Arabs and I presume the war won't be over till they're all dead. Does this include Abazaid?
Don't over-reach yourself there, NS. Yes, we are at war. No, we are NOT at war "with all Arabs." The critical point I hope to make is that, historically, there has been way too much collusion between Arab nations, and a lot of it has been Anti-American in nature. The extent of this collaboration, when correlated against the UAE's recent and uncomfortably close relationship with bin Laden, leads me to conclude that it is unwise, at best, to concede any control over our ports to an only recentlty converted ally, especially one who is in the thick of our enemies.
"How will this overseas container with UAE diplomatic seals on it be handled differently than it would if the company that owned the management agreement for the port were British?"
I refuse to believe that you are this incredibly opaque, NS. Britain poses no terrorist threat. The Middle East represents one of the greatest concentrations of extremely corrupt nations on earth. The possibility of wavering or questionable allegiances, switched cargo, bribed warehouse staff and bought-off port authorities at the container's point of origin make such a scenario worthy of comment and suspicion.
Too often political differences have been overcome by religious solidarity, especially so in the case of Islam and Islamist terrorism. Anti-American sentiment is simply too prevalent and deeply inculcated in Arab countries for this situation not to represent some sort of risk. When that risk becomes part of a scenario that facilitates a nuclear terrorist attack upon American soil, the cost-benefit ratio rapidly approaches less than zero.
Remember, all it takes is one single nuclear terrorist attack to cause nearly irreparable harm to our nation's economy. With hatred of America running so high in Arab countries, this relatively minor business issue makes no sense at all.
#7
This has been done, end to end and top to bottom.
When even Tommy Franks derisively (he laughed and almost snorted when asked) dismissed any notion of there being a security issue as pure politics, I knew we had the right take. You are wanking pointlessly.
#8
a cargo with diplomatic seals will go through regardless of country of origin. They are subject to external radiation, mag imaging checks, but can't be opened.
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/23/2006 19:56
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#9
The possibility of wavering or questionable allegiances, switched cargo, bribed warehouse staff and bought-off port authorities at the container's point of origin make such a scenario worthy of comment and suspicion.
How are doing any of these things made easier by having two or three guys from Dubai sitting in the big wheels' chairs in the front office in Newark?
a cargo with diplomatic seals will go through regardless of country of origin. They are subject to external radiation, mag imaging checks, but can't be opened.
And that's going to be true whether the port is managed by a British firm or a UAE firm.
#10
Zenster, I'm with you buddy! I think it is BAD idea for too many reasons to repeat here. If the deal goes through, and something happens, we can at least say they were warned.
As for Tommy Franks, a decent General Officer and brave warrior, but also a mouthpiece for the Administration.
#11
LOL. Yewbetcha, I'll take your word over his. He's just a tool and you're someone I can listen to for your deep access and knowledge, not to mention obvious trustyworthiness as a source. Righty-O.
#12
Funny, last week Billary was bitchin about how the Repubs are playing the fear card. My how the Donks and MSM have dealt themselves the same card.
We act like a bunch of cowering fools to whine about this deal. The Dubai Ports Authority, as is always the case, does not do security. It is the Coast Guard. The US apparatus remains in place.
The only change is who will cut the payroll checks for the same workers who load and unload cargo.
As for the impact of 9/11, the US is a vastly different country today than pre-9/11. The UAE has joined our side, time to show some gratitude.
If they screw up, we pull the contracts.
Posted by: Captain America ||
02/23/2006 23:10
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Sporadic gunfire rung out in the Somali capital despite a ceasefire agreement signed by warring factions after days of battles that killed at least 33 people and left hundreds wounded.
"The two sides have accepted the ceasefire proposed by traditional elders," Ugas Abd-dahil Ugas Mohamed, a prominent Somali elder, told AFP in the evening.
The redeployment of militia back into their stronghold from the battle zone will start on Thursday morning, he said, after truce talks in the Peace Hotel in southern Mogadishu.
Recent clashes pitted gunmen backed by the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT) -- a coalition of warlords -- against Islamic court militia.
At least 33 people were killed and hundreds wounded in the fighting, thousands of families were displaced and dozens of houses ruined by bombs, Mohamed said.
Despite the truce, gunshots were still heard along a key road in southern Mogadishu's Daynile district.
The capital remained isolated, without public transport or signs of civilians.
Heavily-armed militia patrolled the area littered with shell casings, fragments of rockets, ammunition boxes and remains of militia food rations.
Witnesses said the skirmishes began on Saturday moments after the warlords launched the ARPCT, an initiative believed to be backed by Washington. It is aimed at curbing the influence of Islamic extremism in Somalia and fighting the possible presence of terrorists there.
Critics have accused the Islamic courts, which have set up a judicial system in Mogadishu, of having links to the Al-Qaeda network.
Western intelligence groups have long warned that the world's failure to support efforts to stabilise lawless Somalia risks allowing the country to become a breeding ground for Islamic extremism. They have expressed concern at the influence of the clerics.
"The mediation effort was accepted by both sides and that will end the fighting in Mogadishu south from now onwards," said another elder, Sultan Ali.
"The violators of the ceasefire will be seen as the enemy of the people of Mogadishu and Somalia," Ali added.
Elders said earlier the fighting was between subclans of the larger Hawiye clan and that it was sparked by an attempt to bring southern Mogadishu under the full control of one of the two groups, which was rejected by the head of Islamic courts.
"It was the satanic alliance (warlords) that ignited the violence, fired the first shot and it is up to the them if the want to stop the violence. The Islamic court has accepted the suggestion of elders," said Sheik Shariff, the head of the influential Mogadishu Joint Islamic Courts.
The truce comes hours after the UN secretary general's special envoy to Somalia, Francois Fall, urged the factions to end hostilities and stop harming civilians trapped in indiscriminate crossfire.
It also comes as factions in the splintered Somalia transitional government prepare to hold their first parliamentary session in the town of Baidoa, about 250 kilometres (155 miles) west of Mogadishu, on February 26.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/23/2006
01:55 ||
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Gunfire follows truce. Night follows day.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/23/2006 7:36
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#2
This is the traditional Somali way of celebrating truces...
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
02/23/2006 12:20
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#5
Since we did not finish the job in Somalia in the 1990s, we will eventually have to go back in there and clean up the mess. Just like with Iran, the infection can only be allowed to fester so long before it has to be lanced or it will kill the body.
Forty-seven people were killed in Baghdad in the 24 hours since the bombing of a major Shi'ite shrine sparked the worst sectarian violence the country has seen since the fall of Saddam Hussein, police said on Thursday.
Gunmen sprayed a Sunni mosque in the city of Baquba, northeast of the capital, killing one person in the latest of dozens of such incidents that have left religious and political leaders scrambling to halt a descent into all-out civil war.
Three journalists working for Al-Arabiya television were found shot dead after being attacked while filming in Samarra, where the bloodless but highly symbolic bombing of the Golden Mosque at dawn on Wednesday provoked widespread protest.
In the bloodiest apparent reprisal for the attack on one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest site, men in police uniform seized 12 Sunni rebel suspects, including two Egyptians, from a prison in the mainly Shi'ite city of Basra and killed 11 of them.
President Jalal Talabani summoned leaders of all sides to a summit at 10:30 a.m. (0730 GMT) after the bombing provoked outrage among majority Shi'ites that surpassed the anger caused by thousands of killings by Sunni militants since U.S. forces toppled Saddam's Sunni-dominated government three years ago.
One man just stood silently inside the gutted Abdel Rahman mosque in central Baghdad. A veiled woman said she saw assailants throw grenades at the Sunni mosque and then open fire and set it alight, one of several badly damaged overnight.
U.S. President George W. Bush, whose diplomats and military commanders are pressing Shi'ite leaders to accept Sunnis in a national unity government after they took part in an election in December, urged Iraqis not to rise to the bait of what U.S. and Iraqi officials called an al Qaeda attempt to fuel civil strife.
"Violence will only contribute to what the terrorists sought to achieve," he said in a statement, as 130,000 U.S. troops stood by to back up Iraq's new security forces and keep order.
A policeman guarding a Sunni mosque in the southern Shi'ite city of Diwaniya was killed in an attack by Shi'ite militants. Three Sunni clerics were among those killed on Wednesday.
The United Nations Security Council, rarely able to find a common voice on Iraq since its bitter divisions over the U.S. invasion in 2003, sounded a note of alarm in calling on Iraqis to rally behind a non-sectarian government.
"The members of the Security Council understand the anguish caused by the attacks but urge the people of Iraq to defy its perpetrators by showing restraint and unity," it said.
"We don't know what could happen in the next few days," said Mohammed Tariq, standing in a long line outside a bread shop in Baghdad as residents hurried home after the government declared three days of mourning that will keep businesses closed. "I will buy as much as I can because of the security situation."
Washington wants stability to help it extract its forces but Shi'ite political leaders renewed sharp criticisms of its calls for them to give Sunnis key posts in government, with one party leader accusing the U.S. ambassador of encouraging the bombers by supporting Sunni demands for a share of power this week.
Talabani, an ethnic Kurd, accused the bombers, who dressed as policemen, of trying to derail talks on a national unity coalition: "We must...work together against...the danger of civil war," he told Iraqis in a televised address.
The Shi'ites' reclusive and aging senior cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani made a rare, if silent, television appearance that underlined the gravity of the crisis. He called in a statement for protests but restraint as protesters outside his office in Najaf chanted: "Rise up Shi'ites! Take revenge!"
Since U.S. forces toppled Saddam's Sunni-dominated government in 2003, Sistani has helped hold in check anger many Shi'ites feel against al Qaeda and other Sunni militants as the Shi'ite majority tastes power after years of oppression.
Sunnis accuse police of running death squads against them and some powerful Shi'ites, buoyed by success in December's election, have said only Sistani has prevented more violence.
Militiamen loyal to radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr patrolled streets in Baghdad and clashed in Basra and elsewhere with Sunnis. A Sadr aide said: "If the Iraqi government does not do its job to defend the Iraqi people we are ready to do so."
Sadr himself also called for national unity.
Talks on the government's composition have exposed divisions among Shi'ite leaders, with Sadr gaining influence, and mixed responses to the crisis may reflect jockeying for power.
After gunmen attacked offices of his party in Baghdad and Basra, Sunni political leader Tareq al-Hashimi of the Iraqi Islamic Party said: "We will pursue anyone who attacks Sunnis."
"For the Shi'ites...this is a major assault comparable to an attack on Mecca for all Muslims," said Hazim al-Naimi, a political scientist at Baghdad's Mustansiriya University.
"It could push the country closer to civil war."
Amid the calls for calm, government-run Iraqiya television included in its evening schedule a graphic music video hailing 9th-century Shi'ite leaders' battles against Sunni dominance.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/23/2006
01:52 ||
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#1
Christ, I hope they've got swarms of *reliable* guards around Sistani right now. The worst possible thing would be a nominally-Sunni assassination or assassination attempt on the Grand Ayatollah. I'm half-way suspicious of the Samarra shrine bombing being a false-flag as it is - it's too convenient for certain elements of the UIA to have a Sheat-unifiying atrocity (with no actual initial casualties!) at the exact moment that the attack occurred.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
02/23/2006 8:28
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THE United States suspects al-Qaeda is behind today's bombing in Iraq which destroyed the dome of one of the world's holiest Shiite shrines, a senior US official said.
"We believe this can be traced back to the al-Qaeda movement," James Jeffrey, the State Department's coordinator for Iraq, said of the blast that sparked a wave of reprisal attacks against Sunni mosques in Baghdad.
Mr Jeffrey said the Americans had no definite proof against al-Qaeda but had concluded the bombing of the Shiite mosque in the northern town of Samarra fit a pattern of the movement's past threats and actions.
"They would be the first target (for suspicion) you would look at and frankly there aren't too many other obvious ones," Mr Jeffrey told a small group of reporters at the State Department.
He dismissed suggestions that Iran might be involved, saying, "I think we should focus on al-Qaeda at this point. There are plenty of reasons to focus on Iran on other issues".
Foreign Islamic fighters, including al-Qaeda members led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, represent a small element of the insurgency battling to chase some 150,000 US troops from Iraq. But they have drawn most US attention.
Mr Jeffrey said if nobody claimed responsibility for the bombing, it might be because Zarqawi had been criticised by al-Qaeda's top leadership for spilling too much Iraqi blood.
"Recently no one is claiming credit for these attacks on the Shia. We suspect that that's a tactical ploy to avoid further criticism emanating from the al-Qaeda central," Mr Jeffrey said.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/23/2006
01:51 ||
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#1
From the "Not as dumb as they think" department.
IT COULD be any employment contract stating salary, paid holidays, home leave and grievance procedures - except in this case the employer is al-Qaeda and the recruit's job is "carrying out jihad".
By signing the contract, the recruit commits himself to al-Qaeda's objectives: "Support God's religion, establishment of Islamic rule, and restoration of the Islamic Caliphate, God willing".
The contract is one of thousands of documents captured by US forces, mostly in Afghanistan and Iraq, and stored on a Pentagon database known as Harmony.
An initial sample of 28 has been declassified and published by the Combating Terrorism Centre, part of the US Military Academy at West Point.
The documents set out the internal structure of al-Qaeda and illuminate disputes over tactics. They also analyse past failures, such as the crushing of an Islamist uprising in Syria in 1982, speculate on new regions for jihad and bemoan the lack of publicity about al-Qaeda's role in driving the US out of Somalia.
Some documents reveal dismay over the loss of al-Qaeda's bastion in Afghanistan. One writer, Abdel-Halim Adl, wrote to a man identified as "Mukhtar", in June 2002, complaining of Osama bin Laden's stubbornness and "the capture of a large number of brothers".
"We will become the laughing stock of the world," he says. He urges al-Qaeda to "stop rushing into action and take time out to consider all the fatal and successive disasters that have afflicted us during a period of no more than six months".
West Point academics say the documents add significantly to knowledge about al-Qaeda.
The most striking reveal al-Qaeda's personnel policies. The "employment contract" lists many requirements of recruits: obedience, secrecy, avoiding all links to other groups, being physically healthy, having integrity on matters of religion and morality and reciting the pledge to al-Qaeda.
A draft of al-Qaeda "bylaws" stipulates extra pay of 700 rupees a month for each additional wife as well as 20,000 rupees for married members to buy furniture and free health care.
The bylaws describe an organisational structure headed by an "emir" and "command council", which in turn oversee an "external relations branch" and "executive council", a "military committee", "security committee" and "political committee".
The military committee has a special "nuclear weapons" section, but there are no further details.
Job descriptions are set out in detail. To qualify as "emir", the leader (presumably bin Laden) should not be "too anxious to be an emir" and must have "adequate knowledge to qualify him to carry out the responsibilities".
The chairman of the military committee must be, among other things, older than 40 and "a university graduate, preferably from a military academy".
Jarret Brachman, the terrorism centre's director of research, said he believes some extremist groups, such as al-Qaeda's branch in Saudi Arabia or Jemaah Islamiah in South-East Asia, still use formal contracts.
Al-Qaeda's attention to publicity is apparent. A memo to bin Laden by "Abu Huthayfa" in Kandahar in June 2000 stresses the importance of better propaganda. He praises bin Laden as a "star", but complains that al-Qaeda suffers from "a political vacuum".
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/23/2006
01:50 ||
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#2
...Paris Hilton? That is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoo 2003.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
02/23/2006 6:47
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#3
Umm... I do have a life, B-whatever. Several of them, in one of which I was an AF E-6. Also a website of my own, where commercial, off-topic, comment spam is deleted ruthlessly. The management of Rantburg is equally vigilant about maintaining the same high standards.
An attack Wednesday that destroyed the soaring gold dome of one of ShiiteIslam's holiest shrines is being interpreted by most Shiites here as a direct attack on their faith - and has sharply raised sectarian tensions.
It's unclear if any people were killed in the massive explosion in Samarra, about 60 miles north of Baghdad. But the destruction of the shrine may be the most emotionally charged of attacks on Shiite targets thus far in the war, and could set back already hamstrung efforts to form a government of Shiite and Sunni unity.
As citizens deserted the streets of Baghdad in the wake of the attack, many said they feared this could be a seminal moment in Iraq's low-intensity civil war.
"The war could really be on now,'' says Abu Hassan, a Shiite street peddler who declined to give his full name. "This is something greater and more symbolic than attacks on people. This is a strike at who we are."
The attack occurred shortly before 7 a.m. in the largely Sunni city of Samarra, which has remained an insurgent hotbed despite years of US operations there. It was carried out by a small group of men who somehow gained access to the usually heavily protected Askariya shrine, set demolition explosives, and then fled.
Though the shrine dates back 1,000 years, it has been rebuilt numerous times. Its current dome was built in 1905. There are no records of previous attacks on the building or its predecessors.
"This could be a tipping point,'' says Juan Cole, a historian of Shiite Islam at the University of Michigan. "At some point, the Shiite street is going to be so fed up that they're not going to listen any more to calls for restraint."
Within hours of the attack, tens of thousands of angry Shiites - many of them members of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army who brandished rifles and rocket-propelled grenades - took to the streets in at least least a half-dozen central and southern Iraqi cities. A spokesman at Mr. Sadr's main office in Baghdad said the militiamen were acting spontaneously, and had not been ordered out onto the streets.
The Iraqi and US militaries scrambled forces in Baghdad and other cities in an effort to protect Sunni mosques. US soldiers cordoned off the approaches to the Abu Hanifa mosque in Baghdad's Sunni- controlled Adhamiya district.
Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most respected cleric, issued a statement forbidding attacks on Sunni mosques and calling for seven days of national mourning. But in a rare move, he also called for public protests. Ayatollah Sistani has typically called for even peaceful protesters to stay off the streets, fearing a downward spiral into violence.
Ayatollah Sistani "has the coolest and wisest head in Iraq, but this has chaos written all over it,'' says Mr. Cole. "He must know the likelihood of these protests being completely peaceful is low, so he's got to be absolutely furious to call for people to come out on the streets."
Eyewitnesses in at least four cities reported attacks on Sunni mosques. Tariq al-Hashemi, leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party, one of the biggest Sunni groups, said at a press conference that 29 Sunni mosques were burned across the country and demanded that the perpetrators be brought to justice. He also dismissed Shiite protesters as "rabble," a term favored by Saddam Hussein to refer to Shiites.
Meanwhile, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the cleric who leads the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), one of the country's two most powerful Shiite parties, and which has ties to the Shiite Badr militia, threatened reprisals in an interview with Sharqiya TV.
"If the government can't protect us then we will have to do it ourselves,'' he said.
He also said US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad is partly to blame for Wednesday's attack. The ambassador has made a number of forceful statements this week urging Shiite leaders to give Sunni Arabs a bigger say in government than they won at the ballot box, and has warned against allowing groups like SCIRI, which he deems overly "sectarian," from seeking to control security posts in the next government.
Mr. Khalilzad's "statements created more pressure and gave a green light to terrorist groups, [so] he shares part of the responsibility," Mr. Hakim said.
Shiite leaders like Hakim frequently use the word "terrorist" as a blanket term for Sunni political groups that have ties to the insurgency, and which Khalilzad would like to see join the next government.
In much the same way that a Danish newspaper's cartoons of the prophet Muhammad stirred violent protest across the globe, the reaction to this incident stems from a deep cultural identity and religious faith that can surprise outsiders. Though there was outrage at a bomb attack in Baghdad's dangerous Dora neighborhood that killed 21 Shiites on Tuesday, no attack has stirred the type of tension created by this one in Samarra.
Samarra is not simply a Sunni city with a Shiite shrine at its heart. It hosts a confusing welter of tribal allegiances and rivalries that have left it violent and unstable since the war began. About half of its 200,000 residents have abandoned the city in the past two years, and US soldiers built a vast earthen berm around it last August in an effort to keep insurgents out.
The city's history is also wound up with an age-old Sunni-Shiite rivalry, as well as with the apocalyptic beliefs of many Shiite clerics, like Sadr. The shrine contains the tombs of Ali al-Hadi and his son Hasan al-Askari, the 10th and 11th imams of Shiite Islam who died in the 9th century. Legend has it that Askari's son, Muhammad al-Mahdi, was born in the city. It is one of four main Shiite pilgrimage sites in Iraq.
Mahdi was the 12th and final of the Shiite imams. Legend has it that he was "occulted" by God before his death, and will return to earth to bring an era of justice and peace, followed by the end of the world. Sadr's militia is named for this imam.
Sadr and his followers are convinced that the time for the Mahdi's return is close. "He disappeared into a supernatural realm from there ... so this will be interpreted as an attack on the imam al-Mahdi, an attack on their guy; so for the Sadr people it's an apocalyptic moment,'' says Cole. "There will be reprisals."
There was also outrage in Iran, the most populous Shiite state, whose president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, is a deep believer in the looming return of the Mahdi.
In the 19th century, the shrine became a keyseat of Shiite learning and helped contribute to mass conversions to Shiism in central Iraq, alarming then-ruling Sunni Ottoman officials, who took steps to limit the influence of Shiite clerics.
Under Mr. Hussein, the city's importance to Shiites diminished, in part because of government measures to limit Shiite pilgrimages to the shrine. Al-Askariya enjoyed a brief revival after his fall before the city was swept by violence.
Askariya Shrine
Located in Samarra, Askariya is one of the most important Shiite shrines in the world, attracting millions of pilgrims.
Askariya contains the tombs of the 10th and 11th imams, Ali al-Hadi and his son Hassan al-Askari. Shiites believe that Askari's son Muhammad al-Mahdi, the 12th imam who disappeared in 878, will return to earth.
The mosque, first developed in the 10th century, has been rebuilt numerous times. Its golden dome, which dominates the skyline, was built in 1905 and contains some 72,000 gold pieces.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/23/2006
01:28 ||
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#1
Read, its 2006 and da thingys are hyping up for possible mil action(s) this year. MadMoud and the Iranian Mullahocracy are all but officially demanding Iran be invaded this year, as early as March 28, 2006 iff PRAVDA, etc. is to be believed. STRATEGYPAGE also has an article describing the Top Ten Signs America will attack IRAN - gotta watch those Pizza and Take Out meters, boyz.
#3
Get these dinosaur admirals out of the service. Unmanned vehicles are the way of the future.
"Get these dinosaur fighter proponents out of teh service. Bombers are the way of the future." And the 8th Air Force suffered losses of 25% per mission without significantly denting German economy. Oh and before the A-bomnb (unforeseen by the proponents of strategic bombing) no air force was able to force ennemy to surrender without the help of those "unneeded" services called land army and Navy.
Before the weapon of the future is ready, admirals and generals have to fight the wars of the presnt. And the presnt is: UCAVs, real UCAVs with a real payload, can't land on carriers, and I suspect, barely on airstripes.
#4
Gotta agree with JFM on this. Long range tactical UAV bombers are the future. Although where a bomber ends and a smart missile begins is purely a matter of $¢s.
#5
I might agree with respect to deployment but not with respect to R & D. There were plenty of cavalry officers in 1941. It's always hard to call these changes, but the Navy seems to be playing too conservatively here.
Posted by: Jack Bauer ||
02/23/2006 8:00
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#6
USN may be cutting back UCAV research, but USAF and Army are not - their budgets have greatly increased.
#7
Actually JFM, you're quite wrong about one thing:
UCAVs land frequently - and some of them autonomously - every single day. Lots of them. Many with unexpended ordnance. In combat areas.
So "barely" is wrong. Its quite routine anymore. There are place I've been that have those in the pattern along with manned vehicles, just fine.
And the issue of carrier landings is about to become moot - there is very little that these systems cannot correct for and do so much faster than a human. And with higher G-loads and lower weights (dont need all the stuff that keeps the pilot alive) for the same thrust, they are much more capable.
#8
Someday, UCAVs will completely replace manned aircraft for most applications. We aren't there yet, but it's probably just a few years off.
Spook, I think you're right about carrier landings. A combination ILS and terminal guidance system that could auto-navigate the UCAV right down to the arrester wire is probably not that much of a challenge anymore.
Posted by: Mike ||
02/23/2006 10:18
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#9
OldSpook: the key word was real. I was not talking of improved plane toys barely able to lift a couple HellFires but of something large enough for carrying seveeral tons of ordnance. That means much larger take-off and landing speeds. Still larger if plane is required to have the kind of aerodynamics who allow to break the sound barrier.
#11
There's the problem JFM - you're fighting the wrong war.
We dont need several tons of lift. This isnt WW2, we are not trying to level whole areas with mass tonnage -we dont need to drop thousands of 500lb bombs to take out a refinery anymore. This isnt Korea where we have to drop hundreds of bombs on the Sinju bridge just to mildly damage it. This isn't even Vietnam: Compare Rolling Thunder over Vietnam with iron bombs and B-52's, to the stand-off strikes via cruise missles from far fewer B-52's and the like in the first gulf war.
The max bomb size thats typically called for anymore is 500 pounds, and the Hellfire and new 250lb guided bombs are the preferred weapons. When you can put 250 pounds of modern HE within inches of the target, you simply do not need much more than that.
Anything more specialized (like bunker busters) or bigger than that the B-1 and B2 can delivery it. Remember we are talking tacair and direct support of ground operations, as well as opearational deep strike on targets - targets that dont qualify for expenditure of cruise missles.
So we dont need massive lift capacity for modern tactical air activity. And for this activity, UCAVs are every bit as capable, cheaper to fly and maintain, and lower risk.
And they can be bought in larger numbers - remember the most expensive component in a tactical strike aircraft is the pilot. If you drop that expense, then you can buy many more airframes and be even more effective.
And aside from that, if you've ever seen a pred or ghawk, you'd not be calling them toy planes.
You still might want to consider an upgrade to your knowledge base.
#12
Certainly the Global Hawk isn't exactly a toy:
Global Hawk, which has a wingspan of 116 feet (35.3 meters) and is 44 feet (13.4 meters) long, can range as far as 12,000 nautical miles, at altitudes up to 65,000 feet (19,812 meters), flying at speeds approaching 340 knots (about 400 mph) for as long as 35 hours. During a typical mission, the aircraft can fly 1,200 miles to an area of interest and remain on station for 24 hours. Its cloud-penetrating, Synthetic Aperture Radar/Ground Moving Target Indicator, electro-optical and infrared sensors can image an area the size of Illinois (40,000 nautical square miles) in just 24 hours. Through satellite and ground systems, the imagery can be relayed in near-real-time to battlefield commanders.
When fully-fueled for flight, Global Hawk weighs approximately 25,600 pounds (11,612 kilograms).
Length: 27 feet (8.22 meters)
Height: 6.9 feet (2.1 meters)
Weight: 1,130 pounds ( 512 kilograms) empty, maximum takeoff weight 2,250 pounds (1,020 kilograms)
Wingspan: 48.7 feet (14.8 meters)
Speed: Cruise speed around 84 mph (70 knots), up to 135 mph
Range: up to 400 nautical miles (454 miles)
Ceiling: up to 25,000 feet (7,620 meters)
Fuel Capacity: 665 pounds (100 gallons)
Payload: 450 pounds (204 kilograms)
but it's not a toy either, especially when you consider the whole operational system of which it is a part:
A fully operational system consists of four aircraft (with sensors), a ground control station, a Predator Primary Satellite Link, and approximately 55 personnel for deployed 24-hour operations.
The basic crew for the Predator is one pilot and two sensor operators. They fly the aircraft from inside the ground control station via a C-Band line-of-sight data link or a Ku-Band satellite data link for beyond line-of-sight flight. The aircraft is equipped with a color nose camera (generally used by the pilot for flight control), a day variable-aperture TV camera, a variable-aperture infrared camera (for low light/night), and a synthetic aperture radar for looking through smoke, clouds or haze. The cameras produce full motion video while the SAR produces still frame radar images.
The MQ-1 Predator carries the Multi-spectral Targeting System with inherent AGM-114 Hellfire missile targeting capability and integrates electro-optical, infrared, laser designator and laser illuminator into a single sensor package. The aircraft can employ two laser-guided Hellfire anti-tank missiles with the MTS ball. ....
That smaller size has some major logistical advantages:
The Predator aircraft can be disassembled and loaded into a "coffin." The ground control system is transportable in a C-130 (or larger) transport aircraft. The Predator can operate on a 5,000 by 75 feet (1,524 meters by 23 meters), hard surface runway with clear line-of-sight. The ground data terminal antenna provides line-of-sight communications for takeoff and landing. The PPSL provides over-the-horizon communications for the aircraft.
An alternate method of employment, Remote Split Operations, employs a smaller version of the GCS called the Launch and Recovery GCS. The LRGCS conducts takeoff and landing operations at the forward deployed location while the CONUS based GCS conducts the mission via extended communications links.
#13
The new UCAVs in R&D are almost as big as normal aircraft and carry twice the payload as a manned fighter. They cost less, are faster and can withstand higher Gs and have longer legs and are easier to maintain then normal aircraft as well. These babies will be out around 2010-2012. They can be controled via satellite from anywhere in the world so they can pump out more sorties than manned aircraft as well since a guy doing an 8 hour shift in Space Command can hand off control to a guy in Guam at the end of the day. 24/7 control and flight. Mid-air refueling is also part of their package as well. Programing is better so the UCAV can choose its own course from live feeds from satellite and the human controllers really don't need to do anything except watch to make sure it doesn't fuck up. They use very tight communucation beams and frequency hop so they can't be jammed by normal equipment. (You can jam anything, but you would have to have a huge dish that jams every frequency and people on the other side of the planet would be able to target your ass.)
It is happening and will be here very, very quickly. Within 15 years, these babies will be on call 24/356 and able to lotter over a theater of operation with mid-air robotic refueling and able to hit anytime someone pushes a button.
#14
To clarify the above post, it is the Air Force and Army making them. The Navy most likely will just buy some, hence the cutting of their budget. Why do the same work twice?
#15
Because the stresses of a carrier landing are far greater than for a field landing. It's aslways been so unless the AF wants to adopt the Navy palne such as the F-4.
#16
Wonder if they aren't building them carrier-capable, just doing it under the AF budget. Anybody know?
Posted by: Mike ||
02/23/2006 14:06
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#17
Mike,
I do know with the F-35 that the Navy version just has heavier landing gear and an arrester hook. I am thinking they might do the same with the UCAV.
#20
Northrop Grumman is working a CV-capable UAV. regarding the comment that it is hard to tell where the UAV quits and the missle begins: real easy: the UAV is "s'posed' to come back" (snark disengaged)
#21
This is just a replay of the battleship vs carriers crap the Navy went through in the 1920s and 1930s : a bunch of brasshats made their bones on carriers and will defend them to the death. Of course, the first time we lose a carrier battle group to someone else's UAV swarm, the tide will offically turn. Until then, the Army and AF will continue the research, and the smart aerospace firms will spend some of their own funds to make their UAVs carrier-worthy.
#22
OldSpook, the Navy is working on magnetic induction to launch and land aircraft with far greater control than at present. Paradoxically, this may save large capital ships like aircraft carriers, because the huge amounts of electricity needed can only come from a massive power plant, probably nuclear.
#24
OldSpook: I kind of wonder if the US could build a high altitude aircraft as large an Antonov An-225, that Soviet behemoth. The reason being that even if it took two refuelings just to get it up to the Stratosphere, the ability to drop something on the order of 1,700 - 250lb JDAM iron bombs would be spectacular.
I gather a B-52 can "only" carry 51 such bombs, and even in a chalk of three, total 153 bombs, they can "only" obliterate a half-square-mile area.
So even if were just carpet bombing, we are talking the annihilation of over 5 square miles.
But a JDAM dropped from the stratosphere could glide hundreds of miles. Targetting 1700 enemy targets simultaneously. dayamn.
#25
the Navy is working on magnetic induction to launch and land aircraft
Ummmm, wouldn't that generate a pulse as great or greater than a nuclear EMP? (Square of distance, it's less than 10 feet away)
I know the military has hardened electronics, but this seems self-defeating, fry your onboard electronics each launch?
Also announce to the world (With EMP) your every launch and it's location?
Seems a very bad idea.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
02/23/2006 21:22
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Jordan threatened to cut back its official ties with Israel Wednesday night after OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh warned earlier in the day that King Abdullah II risked being toppled by an "Islamist axis" and could be the last king of Jordan.
"Hamas is gathering strength and a dangerous axis starting in Iran, continuing through Iraq and Jordan is in the process of formation," Naveh told a closed meeting of journalists and diplomats, including the Jordanian Counsel General, at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. "I don't want to be a prophet but I am not sure there will be another king after King Abdullah."
Naveh continued: "Already now, 80 percent of the population [in Jordan] is Palestinian. Let us try and imagine that the entire [Hamas] movement from the West Bank will continue to flow across the bridges into Jordan together with Hamas ideology and leadership. The family ties are taking on Hamas characteristics and this means that in a few years Hamas will become stronger in Jordan."
The Jordanian Charge d'Affairs in Israel Omar Nadif condemned the top IDF officer's prediction, threatening that the remarks could have a "negative effect" on Israeli-Jordanian relations.
"We strongly condemn and reject this irresponsible remark made by Maj.-Gen. Naveh," Nadif told The Jerusalem Post. "We expect the Israeli government to take appropriate action against the officer who made the remark, which indicates both a lack of discipline and a lack of understanding. Such an unfriendly remark may, if it is not corrected, have a negative impact on Jordan-Israel relations."
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz distanced themselves from Naveh's remarks, which officials said were under investigation.
"Mofaz and Halutz wish to clarify that the remarks associated to Naveh do not represent Israel's official position," the statement read. "Israel sees Jordan as a strong and stable country with a glorious tradition and a promising future. Israel wishes to express respect and appreciation to the Hashemite kingdom's vital contributions to the stability and peace in the region."
Military officials said that Naveh's remarks were misunderstood by the Jordanians who were in the crowd and listened to the talk through simultaneous translation to English. The remarks about Jordan, they said, were part of a larger idea that focused on the dangers Israel and Jordan faced from the creation of an Iranian-Hamas axis. Naveh, the officials said, made his remarks with the intention of praising King Abdullah and the cooperation between Israel and Jordan.
JCPA President Dr. Dore Gold said he interpreted Naveh's remarks to be referring to the growing Islamic terror threats both Jordan and Israel were beginning to face.
"Naveh was concerned with the threats that both Israel and Jordan face in the new strategic climate emerging to Israel's east," Gold said. "Specifically he added that Hamas not only posed a potential threat to Israel but also to the Hashemite Kingdom."
#1
Military officials said that Naveh's remarks were misunderstood by the Jordanians who were in the crowd and listened to the talk through simultaneous translation to English.
Ah, so the english and arabic words are quite different!
Radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr cut short his visit to Lebanon on Wednesday after the destruction of the golden dome of a famous Shiite shrine in Iraq.
Hmmm... Got his alibi established, does he?
Al-Sadr cancelled a meeting with his dentist Lebanese President Emile Lahoud and left by road for Syria, from where he was expected to travel to Iraq, reported Al-Manar television, the channel of the Shiite guerilla group Hezbollah. Syrian government officials confirmed al-Sadr crossed the Lebanese-Syrian border about midday. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media. Al-Manar television reported that al-Sadr had abandoned his 10-day trip to Lebanon, which began Tuesday, and headed for home in response to the blast at the Askariya mosque in Samarra.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/23/2006
00:00 ||
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#3
I'm still waiting for the worldwide islamic protests condemning the destruction of one of their holiest sites, fatwas, and head money. Then I realized just how low on the totem pole their holy sites are compared to cartoons.
Posted by: ed ||
02/23/2006 0:34
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#4
Dear #1 -- that's "Inshallan". Or, more grammatically, "in sha'a allan, which means, of course, "If Allan willed it."
#5
ed, take a look at the stories about Shiite violence against Sunnis yesterday. It's mostly the Sunnis who care about the cartoons. It's the Shiites who care about the shrines -- and who are getting pretty ticked off at absorbing al-Q / Sunni attacks.
(although I wouldn't entirely rule out Iran behind this one, since there is rivalry between Qom and the Iranian Shiite holy sites. But this one looks like al-Q to me, possibly with Sadr complicity)
#6
I think the demolition at Samarra is a perfect object lesson to the entire Arab world. They can choose to continue down their already well-established path of wanton destruction or reconcile themselves to some sort of coexistence. Further pursuit of the former will lead to eventual destruction of almost all of Islam's shrines at the hand of warring Islamic factions. The latter represents one of the only viable solutions. Whatever sort of compact these wingnuts arrive at will constitute a giant leap forward as it should then serve as a template for how Islam will finally achieve some sort of coexistence with the kufir world around them.
Of course, there is the possibility that, regardless of whatever negotiated peace they create amongst themselves, they will still remain unable to reconcile any sort of coexistence with the infidels. What that will amount to is their own death sentence and not much else.
These loons have a golden, literally, opportunity to finally initiate some sort of sincere rapprochment. The loss of Samarra must signal the pinnacle of their lunacy or merely be a foretaste of the sort of destruction that will continually rain down upon them. First by their own hands, and then by ours.
#7
Well, with 130+ bodies piling up today, I'm not holding my breath, Zen! And, as you say, even if they internally agree to differences, agreeing with us infidels is a WHOLE 'nother ballgame!
Posted by: BA ||
02/23/2006 12:35
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#8
Be a real shame if he got popped by bandits on the way.
#9
Unurong Spaiting6242, .com is speaking in the Saudi dialect/accent, of course, whereas you seem to have adopted Iraqi pronunciation. 'Most as bad as a boy from the hills of Tennesee trying to understand a New Yawker. ;-)
Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday he still saw a chance of Russia striking a deal with Iran, which could defuse an international crisis over Tehrans nuclear ambitions and boost Moscows international profile.
Over there! Is that Hayley Mills?
But a source close to talks, at which Russian and Iranian delegates discussed Moscows proposal to enrich uranium for Tehran, was quoted as saying the sides had stumbled on a crucial point on which neither was ready to compromise. An agreement to pursue discussions this week during a visit to Tehran by the head of Russias nuclear agency Rosatom was the only visible result of two days of talks that ended on Tuesday. The negotiations are not easy but we are counting on reaching a positive result, Putin said in the Azerbaijan capital Baku. We are not losing optimism.
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02/23/2006
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#5
An agreement to pursue discussions this week during a visit to Tehran by the head of Russias nuclear agency Rosatom was the only visible result of two days of talks that ended on Tuesday.
Sounds like we need to nominate these diplos to a position at the U.N.
"Nope, can't do that agreement. Say, why don't we meet next week, Jeeves?"
"Sounds good, Achmed. Say we meet in Tehran?"
Posted by: BA ||
02/23/2006 12:46
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Yea, but does Hayley know karate? Does she (heart) the KGB?
Looks can be deceiving, but she does play with dolls just like Putty.
Posted by: Captain America ||
02/23/2006 17:18
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Afghanistan has complained to Pakistan for naming lethal ballistic missiles and other weaponry after heroes of Afghan history - the latest episode in the testy relations between the Asian neighbors, an official said Wednesday.
"Yeah! Why name 'em after Afghan heroes? Why don'tcha name 'em after some Pak heroes, like... ummm... uhhh..."
Makhdom Raheen, the Afghan information minister, said Kabul recently sent a letter through its Foreign Ministry to Pakistan over its use of names including Mohammed Ghauri, a 12th-century Muslim conqueror. One series of Pakistan's ballistic missiles is called Ghauri. "We asked them not to use the names of great elders of Afghanistan on weapons of mass destruction or other war equipment," Raheen said. Pakistan's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam refused to comment or say whether it had received such a letter. Afghanistan is also complaining about Pakistan's use of the name of Ahmad Shah Abdali.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/23/2006
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"They're our heroes, dammit!"
Posted by: Edward Yee ||
02/23/2006 1:31
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"Yeah! Why name 'em after Afghan heroes? Why don'tcha name 'em after some Pak heroes, like... ummm... uhhh..."
lol!
Best line of the day for me, and I've been to a South Park quotes website.
President Bush has asked India to separate its military and civilian nuclear programmes, saying that the July 18 nuclear cooperation agreement signed between the two countries would need that to proceed. "By following through on our commitments, we'll bring India's civil nuclear programme into the international mainstream and strengthen the trust between our two nations," Bush said in a major speech delivered at Asia Society on Wednesday. "This is not an easy decision for India; nor is it an easy decision for the US. Implementing this agreement will take patience." He said that he would continue to encourage India to create a credible, transparent and defensible plan to separate its separate its civilian and military nuclear programmes.
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02/23/2006
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Warring Somali factions have clinched a ceasefire agreement to end days of fighting in Mogadishu that killed at least 33 people, mostly civilians, and left hundreds others wounded, elders said.
Damn. That's too bad.
"The two sides have accepted the ceasefire proposed by traditional elders," Ugas Abd-dahil Ugas Mohamed, a prominent Somali elder, said on Wednesday. "The next stage of the negotiations will start on Thursday morning, which is the redeployment of militia back into their stronghold from the battlezone," he said after truce talks that were held in Peace Hotel in southern Mogadishu. The clashes pitted gunmen backed by the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT) - a coalition of warlords - against Islamic court militia.
You just can't ask for better shootout participants than that...
Witnesses said skirmishes, along a road in southern Mogadishu's Daynile district, began on Saturday after the warlords launched the ARPCT. The initiative is thought to be backed by Washington.
And money well spent, I might add...
At least 33 people were killed and hundreds wounded, thousands of families were displaced and dozens of houses ruined by bombs in the fighting, Mohamed said. "The mediation effort was accepted by both sides, and that will end the fighting in Mogadishu south from now onwards," said another elder, Sultan Ali. "The warring groups full-heartedly accepted the ceasefire, and any group that violates the ceasefire will be seen as criminals who want to continue killing innocent people," he said.
"If they do that, by golly we'll shoot it out with 'em!"
Elders had earlier said the fighting was between the Mursade and Habergider subclans of the larger Hawiye clan. It was sparked by an attempt to bring southern Mogadishu under the full control of one of the two groups, which was rejected by the head of the Islamic courts, they said. "It was the satanic alliance (warlords) that ignited the violence, fired the first shot and it is up to them if they want to stop the violence. The Islamic court has accepted the suggestion of elders," said Sheik Shariff, the head of the influential Mogadishu Joint Islamic Courts. "Anybody who describes the violences as interclan fighting is lying," he said.
"We kills liars around here!"
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Another downpour forced an international rescue effort to suspend the search for the mud-covered elementary school here last night, further eroding hopes of finding any life under 35 meters of wet muck. Officials said they were worried that conditions were too dangerous, with a number of holes that have been dug in the unstable mud collapsing. US Marines brought in a two-ton drill, capable of digging 60 meters deep to clear rocks and debris, that they rented out to help in the search, but it went unused when no one could find the poles needed to brace it.
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02/23/2006
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Advance disclosure: Seven of 23 convicted al Qaeda terrorists who tunneled their way out of Yemen prison are captured They include Jamal Badawi, mastermind of the Oct. 12 2000 bombing attack on the USS Cole in which 17 US sailors perished. When a Yemeni force picked the escapees up in desolate Hadhramauth, ancestral homeland of their master, Osama bin Laden, it came upon a new 14-man al Qaeda network, geared ready in bomb vests for attacks on Western targets in Yemen.
#1
Need to catch a lot more than 23 - don't forget the ones who tunneled from the mosque IN, and the guards and officials who helped &/or stood aside. What IS the population of Yemen, anyway?
#5
I have a friend that is married to a Yemeni and lives there. Very successful business couple. Nice kids. 4 story house, big wall around the whole compound, bodyguards. The whole 9 yards. Power is spotty, water and sewer not reliable. With enough money, they buy and supply what they cannot get from municipal govt, which is everything. They do quite well, but always have to watch their collective sixes.
Posted by: Al-Aska Paul ||
02/23/2006 16:12
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Alaska Paul, I'm gladder and gladder that Mr. Wife didn't take that assignment in Yemen. I tend not to notice bad people, so I probably would have done even worse there than your usual nice Jewish girl, daughter of a minor Israeli war hero would've done. Which would have annoyed the bodyguards no end, even if I did give them tea, after. ;-)
Suspected militants shot and dead killed prominent pro-government tribal elder Arsala Khan in South Waziristan on Wednesday, where security has gone from bad to worse in recent months. Witnesses said that Arsala's car was sprayed with bullets in Wana bazaar, leaving him dead and two others injured. "He died on the spot, while two other passengers were also wounded in the attack," witnesses told Daily Times. The indiscriminant firing also injured a passer-by. One of the three wounded civilians was rushed to hospital in Dera Ismail Khan where he was said to be in serious condition.
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KUWAIT CITY - A Kuwaiti Islamist group on Wednesday called on the oil-rich emirate and other Arab and Muslim countries to boost financial aid to Palestinians in the face of Western threats to freeze funding for a Hamas-led government.
Of course they would, that's the 'Salafi' part.
The Salafi Movement, one of three Sunni Islamic groups in Kuwait, urged the government in a statement to increase aid to Palestinians, provide loans and grants and to contribute to rebuilding Palestinian infrastructure. It also called for fund-raising campaigns by charities, allowing monthly deduction from salaries and for guns and ammo providing special care to Palestinians who are killed or wounded by Israeli forces.
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02/23/2006
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The anti-terrorism appellate (ATA) bench of the Sindh High Court (SHC) upheld on Wednesday the death sentence of two activists of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ) and enhanced to death the life term of a third for killing a director of laboratories of the ministry of defence in 2001.
Maybe an appeal wasn't a good move?
Mohammad Shahid Hanif was awarded a life term while Talah Hussain and Khalil Ahmed were handed down the death sentence by Judge Arshad Noor Khan of the Anti-Terrorism Court-III on April 15, 2002. The appellants, who were, according to the prosecution, riding a bike, had shot dead Syed Zafar Hussain, the director laboratories of the ministry of defence, while he was on his way to work from his house in the limits of Gulberg police station on July 30, 2001.
That'll put a stop to that cycle of violence...
Safdar Hussain Shah, the director's driver, had identified the accused during the identification parade as well as during the trial. The trial court, on the evidence of Safdar Hussain Shah, who was also an eyewitness to the crime, had convicted all of the accused, but awarded Mohammad Shahid Hanif lesser punishment. The trial court had held that since Mohammad Shahid was driving the bike, he could not have participated in the firing on the car.
If the bike hadn't been driven, then they would have had to fire on the car from the sidewalk.
However, the SHC's ATA bench comprising Justice Mohammad Afzal Soomro and Justice Rehmat Hussain Jaferi, rejected this reasoning of the trial judge for awarding a lesser punishment to Mohammad Shahid and enhanced his life term to death while holding that his intention was common to that of the two convicts who were awarded the death sentence. The ATA bench dismissed the appeals of Talah Hussain and Khalil Ahmed and modified the sentence of Mohammad Shahid through a short order, the reason for which was to be recorded later on.
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The Tahafooz-e-Namoos-e-Risalat Movement will conclude after a government implementing the Prophet Muhammads (PBUH) system is established in the country, said MMA President Qazi Hussain Ahmad on Wednesday. Talking to reporters at Jamaat-e-Islamis JIs Lytton Road office about an MMA rally in Lahore on February 26, the JI chief said that people would gather at Nasirbagh and from there march onto the Punjab Assembly. He warned the Punjab government not to try to stop the rally. We will not compromise on the route of the rally. People will start processions from all city streets to join the main rally and no one can stop them, he added.
Qazi said that Pakistanis were not afraid of being jailed or being shelled by tear gas. Muslims will sacrifice their lives for the Prophet (RUCK-TOOEY pbuh), he said. The rulers days are numbered and the people will evict them soon, he added. He condemned the governments action in Islamabad on February 19. The government had imposed a curfew in the capital by closing all entry and exit point but still the MMA activists protested peacefully, he said. The protests in Islamabad proved the government had masterminded violence in earlier protests in Lahore and Peshawar, he added. The MMA leader said that Pervez Musharraf had visited Norway in September when the cartoons had already been published, but did not complain to the Norwegian government and instead tried to conceal the issue from Pakistanis.
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The womens wing of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) on Wednesday staged a demonstration at Aabpara Chowk against cartoons of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) published in newspapers across Europe. Over 1,000 veiled women gathered at Aapara and shouted slogans against President Pervez Musharraf, claiming that the government reaction to the cartoons, deemed blasphemous by Muslims, did not represent that of Muslims. They held banners and placards demanding punishment for the editor of the Danish newspaper which published the cartoons first and an end to diplomatic and trade ties with European countries where the cartoons were published later. They burned the Danish prime ministers effigy. Senator Dr Kausar Firdous, Samia Raheel Qazi and others led the procession. Most of the women protestors were seminary students. Some of them also brought their children with them. Students of Jamia Hafsa Al Banat were dominant among the demonstrators near Lal Masjid.
We condemn the blasphemous cartoons strongly and demand the government take note of the situation, Senator Firdous, who is also former chief of the Islami Jamiat-e-Talabat, said. She said women condemned the cartoons and the inadequate measures taken by the government against countries where they were published. She claimed the present government had deviated from the real spirit of the teachings of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him). Samia Raheel Qazi called for a joint strategy of Muslim countries under the umbrella of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) on the cartoon issue. She said the government should play its part in the revival of the Muslim civilisation and stop all western and anti-Islamic traditions.
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#1
As long as they made up a big pot of veal curry before the ran off to the confab. Otherwise, the beatin's will soon commence.
District Coordination Officer (DCO) Abdul Samad Lasi said that as soon as the arrest warrants of Akbar Bugti, his two grandsons and 12 others were issued in lieu of the three cases registered against them in the Sui police station, they would be arrested.
Talking to a private television channel on Wednesday, the DCO said that the overall security situation in Dera Bugti was very good and after the return of the Kalpar and Masoori tribes, Sui and Bakkar were becoming more peaceful. He said that the 3 cases were registered against Nawab Akbar Bugti his two grandsons and others under Sections 147, 148, 149, 427 and others of the Pakistan Penal Code and Sections 3, 4 and 5 of the Explosives Act and under Section 7 of the anti-terrorism act.
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About f*in' time.
(I also see that he's wearing the "Best in Show" ribbon that his pig won at the county fair. Very smart!)
Suspected militants ambushed a military convoy in Balochistan on Wednesday, killing two soldiers and wounding four, officials said. Insurgents positioned on mountains overlooking a road attacked the convoy with rockets and machine guns at Pinjra Pull, 70 kilometers southeast of Quetta, a security official said. The troops, who were on their way to nearby Sibi for a routine deployment, retaliated and the exchange of gunfire continued for about half an hour, the official speaking on condition of anonymity, said. At least one soldier died and five others were wounded, the official said, adding that the casualties occurred after a military vehicle was hit. The attackers fled into the mountains after the ambush, he said. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.
In a separate incident, four soldiers were injured when a landmine planted by suspected rebels exploded beneath a military vehicle in Sibi on Tuesday, officials said. Attackers also blew up small pipelines feeding natural gas from two wells to a filtration plant, the second such attack in two days in Balochistans Dera Bugti district, they said. Saboteurs blew up the pipeline from Well No 23 of the Pirkoh Gas Field and stole valves from Wells 13 and 16 on Wednesday
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There will be at least one terrorist attack on a European target this year and either Osama bin Laden or his right hand man will be killed or captured in 2006, British security experts predicted on Thursday. Furthermore, there will be no civil war in Iraq as insurgents lose the support of the mainstream population, and Iran will back down in its nuclear dispute with the West without sanctions or military action, Aegis Defence Services said.
In its annual terrorism report, Aegis, which assesses global risks for governments and international companies, said the net was closing on the leaders of bin Laden's al-Qaeda group. It called bin Laden a "spent force", whose only role was as a talisman, and predicted he or his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, would be out of circulation in the next 12 months.
At the same time, it said, al-Qaeda was showing signs of moving away from destruction towards more "earthly" political aims, meaning talks might be possible with their successors. "Al-Qaeda is striving to cast themselves in a political role," Aegis managing director of research and intelligence Dominic Armstrong told Reuters. "There is going to be more practical engagement."
But Aegis, which correctly predicted there would be a large-scale bombing in the UK last year, said growing radicalisation of Islamist youths in Europe, combined with social and economic alienation, would mean further attacks.
Britain and Italy remained the most likely targets but France, Spain and the Benelux countries were also at risk. "We are not going to see a 9/11 level of attack or that sort of destructive spectacular," Armstrong said. "It is more likely to be a number of smaller attacks against softer targets with an economic knock-on effect."
Weapons of mass destruction would not be used, he said. "They do not own and will not own nuclear weapons or lethal pathogens," he said. "The successful attacks that take place this year will be conventional."
Aegis, which has a $293m US contract to co-ordinate security for contractors in Iraq and has 1,000 staff on the ground, said the situation there was not as bad as the media portrayed and the country was not on the verge of civil war. "The insurgency will continue, but it will increasingly be down to criminals and foreign fighters as mainstream Iraqis become involved in the political process," Armstrong said.
He said 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces were trouble-free. "Foreign fighters will be made to feel less welcome and that will be a turning point for Iraq.
"For all the insurgency, the political process has not been delayed by a single day."
The report also predicted Iran would back down in its dispute with the West over its nuclear ambitions with an agreement to allow it to use foreign-supplied enriched uranium for reactors, thus avoiding sanctions or any military action. "They are going to take it as far as they can, but they will step back," Armstrong said. "It's only aggressive brinkmanship."
#2
Osama and the Burqua Boyz are fighting a Hyper-Power, nka GLOBAL UNIPOWER [word of week], where its unclear whether Dubya will stick to being a lameduck POTUS once he hits the last 6-12 mos. of his admin. My money is on Moralist, Leader Dubya continuing to lead America as he has up to the last hour of the last day before his [GOP?]successor is formally inaugurated in Jan 2009. IT MEANS THE TERRORISTS CAN EXPECT NO LET-UP FROM DUBYA IN THE WOT.
#10
I see,uh umm.... I see um...uh Whiskey! YES! A trainload of Whiskey! Enough for ever manjack and femalian in this "Burg. It's a miracle! I see a Man, a strange man, a man with a gun..... um a Pistol! It's AB! and he driving the Train!
Hallelujah brothers and sistern we are saved!
Posted by: Oracle Jones ||
02/23/2006 17:25
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"They are going to take it as far as they can..."
That means, they'll wait to see six aircraft carrier battle groups poised in the immediate area, Patriots and other batteries shored up in Iraq, Israel and Afghanistan, and "W" calling for a national news conference on the threat (ie the '24 hour get out of town speech') before they do. I hope some nervous trimble fingered Iranian general don't accidently push a button, when this happens!!
India has formed two top-level committees in New Delhi and Srinagar to check the flow of funds to Jammu and Kashmir. State Home Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal told the Rajya Sabha that various agencies of the government were taking measures to prevent funding to militant organisations. He said that the arrest of a Dubai-based engineer in Delhi on February 3, and the recovery of Rs 5.5m in cash and explosives from his possession confirms the involvement of Middle East businessmen in 'hawala' operations to fund militancy.
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Indian security forces clashed Wednesday with suspected militants in three separate gunfights in Jammu and Kashmir, leaving 11 people dead. The first battle broke out when rebels opened fire on soldiers and police searching the remote mountains of the Udhampur district of India's Jammu-Kashmir state, said Colonel D K Badola, an army spokesman. The soldiers and police were cordoning off the area when the fighting began, and "after a two-hour long gunbattle, three militants and an army soldier were killed while another soldier was injured," Badola said.
Elsewhere in Kashmir, two militants were killed in a separate shootout Wednesday in the Mendher region of the Poonch district, northwest of Jammu, Badola said. Two more militants were killed in a separate gunfight between militants and army soldiers also in Poonch district, he said. The police were investigating which militant groups the dead men belonged to, Badola said.
Meanwhile the police said four people, including two children, were killed on Wednesday when gunmen and soldiers exchanged fire in Indian Kashmir. The shooting took place in Doodipora village near Handwara town, 80 km north of Srinagar.
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Fatah has agreed at initial talks with Hamas to try find common ground for a governing partnership between the long-dominant Palestinian faction and the group that crushed it at the polls. The head of Fatah's parliamentary faction, Azzam al-Ahmad, said on Wednesday that "there is an agreement in principle and the intention is there (to participate in a coalition) but we must aawait the programme".
Good idea. Form a government of national unity. That always works wonders.
Al-Ahmad was speaking on Wednesday after a meeting between senior Hamas and Fatah figures in Gaza City. "We are in a dialogue that has only just begun and we want to find common ground and we hope that we will seal an agreement," he said.
"I mean, we both like killing Jews. That should count for something, right?"
Hamas swept to victory in the 25 January election on a platform of rooting out corruption in a Palestinian Authority dominated by the mainstream faction.
Fatah blew the election by arguing over how to split the boodle before their competing candidates had snatched it.
Outlining what appeared to be a major sticking point, al-Ahmad told Reuters that Fatah would insist a Hamas-led administration adopt President Mahmoud Abbas's vision of negotiating peace with Israel. Hamas's Mahmoud al-Zahar, who hosted the session with Fatah, said the two groups would meet again so that a coalition could be formed "as soon as possible". Hamas, sworn to Israel's destruction, has said talks with Israel would be a waste of time.
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#1
I would suggest a cemetery, a very big one, but that would be bad. Heh.
Sudan rejects US-backed efforts to have UN peacekeeping troops take over from African Union troops in the countrys troubled Darfur region, Foreign Minister Lam Akol said yesterday. The United States has said genocide is continuing in Darfur with rape, looting and killing by Arab militias, known as the Janjaweed, and has urged the African Union to accept a hand over to UN peacekeepers. The government has rejected this ... We did not hear anybody saying they (the AU) are not doing enough to stop the violence. What we are hearing is that theyre short of funds, Akol told Reuters. Sudanese officials had previously shown a softer position toward the deployment of UN troops in Darfur, which the AU says it supports in principle. The United Nations has already begun contingency planning for any takeover.
African foreign ministers will make a final decision in early March on any handover. In a statement issued yesterday the head of the AU mission in Sudan, Baba Gana Kingibe, said the transition was inevitable in the long run. Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than 2 million herded into camps during more than three years of fighting in Sudans remote western Darfur region. Non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003 accusing Khartoum of neglect.
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Britain's foreign secretary has told Iraqi leaders they must form a national unity government free of domination by a single group. Jack Straw said on Tuesday that the results of the 15 December parliamentary election indicated that the Iraqi people wanted a "broad government of national unity" to bring together "all the different elements" of Iraqi society.
I didn't think they indicated anything of the sort.
"It is a crucial moment today for the people of Iraq," Straw told reporters alongside President Jalal Talabani.
I think the crucial moment came when the Sunnis succeeded in booming the Shiite shrine. Straw sounds pretty stoopid, calling for reconciliation before the corpses have cooled.
"The international community, particularly those of us who played a part in liberating Iraq, obviously have an interest in a prosperous and stable and democratic Iraq."
And the international Salafist community doesn't. But it takes less effort to squirt warm milk from the oozing udder of goodwill than it does to organize an international crusade against Salafism.
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Straw = fart in wind
Posted by: Captain America ||
02/23/2006 17:15
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An explosion aimed at Nato peacekeepers has killed an Afghan civilian and wounded 13 people, including a German peacekeeper, in northern Afghanistan, police said. The blast, caused by a remotely controlled device attached to a bicycle, went off on Wednesday as a group of peacekeepers were shopping in the northern town of Kunduz, police chief Mutalib Beg said. "It killed the shopkeeper and wounded 13 people, all of whom were civilians except a German soldier from ISAF," he said.
An ISAF official in Kabul confirmed that the attack was aimed at its troops but said he had no more details. During the past few months, Taliban fighters and their al-Qaida allies have targeted ISAF peacekeepers in attacks. Most of the casualties have been Afghan civilians.
The ISAF has more than 9000 soldiers stationed in Afghanistan. Most of them are in Kabul and the relatively peaceful north and west, but there are plans for them to take over responsibility in the south to allow US forces to reduce their strength in Afghanistan. During the past year, nearly 70 foreign troops have been killed, mostly in the south and east, making it one of the bloodiest periods since US-led forces overthrew a Taliban government for habouring al-Qaida leader Osama bin Ladin in 2001.
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President Gen Pervez Musharraf said he wants to "inject more vigour" into a strategic partnership with China after meeting on Wednesday with the country's defence chief in Beijing, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. "Pakistan will continue to contribute to developing friendly cooperation with China's defence department, military and other departments," Xinhua quoted Musharraf as saying. "We want to continuously inject more vigour into the two nations' close strategic cooperative partnership," Musharraf said.
We knew that'd happen when we started pressing for closer relations with India...
The news agency quoted Chinese Defence Minister Cao Gangchuan as saying he hoped Musharraf's five-day visit - which marks 55 years of diplomatic ties between the two neighbours - will help "deepen all-around cooperation with Pakistan, and maintain regional and world peace and stability".
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CAIRO - Imprisoned Egyptian opposition leader Ayman Nour asked US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday to look into whether Egypt can benefit from a US offer to help developing countries develop nuclear energy.
Nour, President Hosni Mubaraks main rival in presidential elections last year, is serving a five-year sentence for forgery but says the charges were fabricated to keep him out of politics. One of his deputies in the liberal Ghad (Tomorrow) Party, Hesham Kassem, is seeing Rice on Wednesday when she meets a group of prominent Egyptian liberals and intellectuals.
At a news conference with Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit on Tuesday, Rice described Nours imprisonment as a setback and a disappointment. Aboul Gheit said Nours case had gone through due legal process.
"Forget it, lady, he stays in jug!"
But in his letter to Rice, released on Wednesday in the form of a statement by the Ghad Party, Nour surprisingly did not mention his own case or complain at the governments treatment of his party. Instead, he said Egypt needed six 2,000 megawatt nuclear reactors to produce half its electricity needs and replace natural gas, which now produces much of Egypts electricity.
They can't use NG because ...
President George W. Bush offered last week to provide developing countries with small-scale reactors that are secure and cost-effective, provided they forego activities, which could lead to nuclear weapons. Nour faulted the Egyptian government for failing to ask about Bushs offer before it supported the United States against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency this month.
Analysts said Nour raised the nuclear issue to underline his concern with issues other than his treatment by the government.
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Pluto, the most distant recognised planet of the Solar System, has two tiny satellites in addition to Charon, the moon which was discovered in 1978. US astronomers used the orbiting Hubble telescope to spot the moonlets, which have been labelled S/2005 P1 and and S/2005 P2 until formal names are approved after the International Astronomical Union (IAU) vets the find. P1 and P2 appear to measure between 48 kilometers and 165 kms across and take 38 and 25 days respectively to orbit Pluto, according to their paper, published on Thursday in Nature, the weekly British science journal. Pluto, discovered in 1930 by the American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, is the outermost of the acknowledged planets, although a new contender for that title emerged last year in the form of an object called 2003 UB313.
"Look, honey! All the moons are out tonight!"
"Goddamn! It's cold! What's the thermometer say?"
"340 below zero."
"Let's go inside."
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
The two new moons seem to be in an almost-resonance with Charon; the speculation being reported is that they were all formed from the debris of the same hypothetical collision that may have formed Charon.
Posted by: Phil ||
02/23/2006 0:04
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Methinks it means no PLANET X approaching until 2009 or after!?
Posted by: Mike ||
02/23/2006 11:39
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Hillary and Nancy (Pelosi)? Two coldest "moons" that we'd know of in our SS.
Posted by: BA ||
02/23/2006 12:10
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BTW, in all reality, wouldn't Pluto's "days" be different from earth? In that, I mean, scientifically, their year (time to loop the sun) would be different, so wouldn't its "day" be different (time for the moon to circulate the planet)? Or, because there's now 3 moons, Pluto doesn't have a standard day?
Posted by: BA ||
02/23/2006 12:12
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#11
PLUTO
O where O where has my little rock gone?
O where O where can it be?
Far away in space,
In a very cold place!
A planet no longer you see...
#14
I remember the Larry Niven story that suggested that any planets discovered past Pluto's orbit be named Caïna, Antenora, Ptolomea, and Judecca, after the rings of the Ninth Circle of Dante's Hell. Somehow, the names astronomers use for the recently discovered Trans-Plutonian bodies seem a lot less interesting.
Really, does anyone like “Sedna” or “Quaoar”? Or, darn it, “Xena”, “Gabrielle”, or knock-off “Buffy”?
And, Ogeretla, are you in the "Pluto isn't a planet" camp?
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
02/23/2006 21:21
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I say we give them nice Muslim names.
Posted by: IAU member since 1951 ||
02/23/2006 22:59
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I remember the Larry Niven story that suggested that any planets discovered past Pluto's orbit be named Caïna, Antenora, Ptolomea, and Judecca, after the rings of the Ninth Circle of Dante's Hell. Somehow, the names astronomers use for the recently discovered Trans-Plutonian bodies seem a lot less interesting.
One has to hand it to Niven as he was willing to re-write Dante with the good doctor
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/23/2006 12:06
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Lol, Frank. I used to hafta wade through SOSD, too. Pretty disorganized site with links shifting around - we used to draw on it for local news for the intranet of a client there in Sammy Dago.
#6
Tree Huggers: Georgia Pacific and Weyerhouser are the most prolific tree-planters on the planet. And they give thousands of college students Summer work in planting. If you can make a profit from replenishing the planet, the better for everyone.
Posted by: ToughLove Not Hate ||
02/23/2006 18:33
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Yes, and while old growth forest is important for the conservation of certain flora and fauna, it's the trees in their first twenty years of life that sequester the most carbon dioxide, and under which the most wildflowers and berry-producing shrubs grow (because the sunlight can get down to the ground between the smaller trees, that's why). The Progressive motto: why think when you have feeeeeeeeelings!
I wonder if these are the guys referred to in the Debka article? Or are they a second bunch?
The 17 are accused of forming an armed gang to carry out criminal acts against Americans in Yemen and Yemenis cooperating with Americans. They are alleged to have taken orders from the Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Jordanian Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.
Prosecutors told the court the group had planned to carry out attacks on places frequented by Americans living in Yemen, including a five-star hotel in the southern port city of Aden. Some of the accused had returned from Iraq after Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi gave them orders to carry out attacks against Americans in Yemen, prosecutor Khaled Al-Mawri told the court. He said the suspects had prepared weapons, explosives and forged identity cards for the attacks, and that they had surveyed the targeted locations and drawn up maps.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/23/2006
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You don't say! Saudis still involved in terrorism! What a shocker! Well, at least we have a pal in the U.A.E. *snicker*
GUJRANWALA: The All Pakistan Clerks Association (APCA) passed a resolution terming the publication of blasphemous caricatures of the Holy Prophet (PTUI pbuh) a war against Islam, an APCA press release said. The APCA and Muttahida-Ustad-Mahaz announced Rs 500,000 prize money for killing those responsible for the publication of the caricatures. Muhammad Iqbal Gondal, the secretary general APCA Gujranwala, appealed to people to boycott Western products.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/23/2006
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Thinking about cartoons, my dad while in the service used to draw cartoons on duffle bags for guys, and when I was a kid growing up, he painted an Indian with a tomahawk coming right at you in my brother's bedroom.
I still have one of his duffle bags :)
Posted by: Jan ||
02/23/2006 0:44
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A Pakistani cleric who offered $1 million and a car for the death of cartoonists who made carricatures of the Prophet Muhammad (May his drip clear up without medication peace be upon him) said yesterday that suicide bombers had volunteered to kill the blasphemers. Yousaf Qureshi, the imam, at the 300-year-old Moonbat Mohabat Khan Mosque in the northwestern city of Peshawar, announced the reward on Friday. The Prophet Muhammads blasphemers will not live and there are mujahedeen who visited me to assure that such people will not be allowed to live for their unpardonable act, the cleric told a news conference. Mujahedeen suicide bombers have contacted us and they are ready for this mission. They are college and university students.
I guess that's one way to get out of exams. Thought of it myself, back when I was taking statistics...
Five people died in Pakistan last week during a wave of violent protests against the cartoons printed in a Danish newspaper and other European publications.
That'd be the cartoons that mocked Islamists for their propensity for violence...
Qureshi is considered close to the Jamaat-e-Islami party, which is at the forefront of the ongoing campaign against the cartoons in Pakistan. The imam also hit back at criticism from both Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) chief Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu that rewards for murder were forbidden by the Quran. The OIC secretary-general is ignorant of Islamic teachings, he said.
"So you can just shut yer fudge up or yer car'll go boom. That's in the Koran, too!"
He said the Danish foreign minister lost sense after he realized the strength of the Muslim worlds reaction to the cartoons. The only solution to the crisis was the trial of the blasphemers under Islamic laws, Qureshi said. Nothing else is accepted than capital punishment under Islamic laws to the cartoonists, he said.
Is it still considered a clash of civilizations when one side isn't a civilization?
Posted by: Fred ||
02/23/2006
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"Is it still considered a clash of civilizations when one side isnt a civilization?"
#3
No one knows what prophet Mohammad looked like. Is there any one who could identify that the cartoons are of the prophet? So, what this whole craziness is all about?
#5
A Pakistani cleric who offered $1 million and a car for the death of cartoonists who made carricatures of the Prophet Muhammad (May his drip clear up without medication peace be upon him) said yesterday that suicide bombers had volunteered to kill the blasphemers.
A fat lot of good a million bucks and a car would be to a SUICIDE BOMBER who fulfilled the contract...
Never forget. lotp points us to another article from the BBC.
TOKYO (AP) - A Tokyo court convicted and sentenced a founder of the Japanese Red Army terrorist group on Thursday to 20 years in prison for kidnapping and attempted murder in a 1974 attack on the French Embassy in the Hague, court officials said.
The Tokyo District Court found Fusako Shigenobu, 60, guilty of kidnapping and confinement, as well as attempted murder in the 1974 case, court spokesman Tomoyuki Kushida said. Shigenobu was also convicted of passport law violations. Shigenobu was arrested in western Japan in November 2000 after more than 25 years on the run, most of it in the Middle East. She had pleaded innocent to the serious charges against her.
The Japanese Red Army, a violent ultra-leftist group sympathetic to Palestinian causes, was formed by Shigenobu in 1971. Its stated goal was to overthrow the Japanese government and monarchy and help foment world revolution. It took responsibility for several international attacks in the 1970s, including the takeover of the U.S. Consulate in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 1975. It staged an attack on the French embassy in The Hague in 1974, in which the French ambassador and 10 other staff were taken hostage in a bid to free militants in France. The group is also suspected in the 1972 machine-gun and grenade assault on the international airport outside Tel Aviv, Israel, that killed 24 people. Shigenobu's husband died in the cross-fire.
Good. He's had 30 years plus with Himmler.
Shigenobu has expressed regret for the deaths but defended the attack, which was carried out in co-operation with the militant Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Following her arrest in Japan, Shigenobu declared her group disbanded in 2001. Another key member is serving his life sentence in the case, with a third still trial at the Tokyo District Court. The fourth, Junzo Okudaira, remains at large.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/23/2006
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Read, SHIGENOBU > any and all Commies-Lefties are Fascists now, or at least RINOS-CINOS, like in Amerikkka USSA. THE USSR "IMPLODES", JAPANESE
"FASCISTS"/"NATIONALISTS" START CAUSING ANARCHY AND MAYHEM thru out the Land of Nippon/Yakitori.
The Fatah faction said yesterday that it had agreed in principle to join the new Palestinian government led by Hamas. At a joint press conference with Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Zahar held in Gaza City, Azzam El-Ahmed, head of Fatah in the Palestinian Legislative Council, announced yesterday that "participation in a Palestinian Cabinet led by Hamas is in principle accepted by the Fatah movement."
A government of national unity. It's the best way. Go for it.
He told reporters that both Fatah and Hamas should first agree on a joint program of the new government. Al-Zahar, who led the Hamas delegation at the talks in Gaza City, said that "all the parties, including our brothers in Fatah, intend to participate in the government." "We have agreed to continue our discussions," he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/23/2006
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Fatah Agrees in Principle to Join Palestinian Govt
How can an organization that is utterly bereft of principles agree to anything "in principle"? Bah!
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - Haiti's president-elect said Wednesday that the nation's constitution permits the return of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, but Rene Preval declined to say whether he would welcome home his exiled former mentor.
Preval, a 63-year-old agronomist, said Aristide could not be barred from returning to the volatile Caribbean nation two years after he was toppled in a bloody revolt. ``My position is simple on President Aristide and any other citizen who wants to come to Haiti,'' Preval said in his first news conference since he was declared the winner of the Feb. 7 election. ``Article 41 of the Haitian Constitution says that no Haitian needs a visa to enter or leave the country.''
The United States said Wednesday that Arisitide's return would serve no useful purpose, with State Department spokesman Adam Ereli saying: ``Aristide is from the past. We're looking to the future.''
Aristide said Wednesday he wants to return from exile in South Africa, but that the timing of his arrival in Haiti would be up to ``my president'' and other leaders. ``The date of my return will emerge from consultations'' among Preval, the United Nations, the Caribbean Community and his host, the South African government, the ousted leader said in an interview with international news agencies.
Asked if he had spoken to Preval, Aristide said, ``It's a private issue.''
It remains unclear if Aristide could return without consequences. Officials with Haiti's interim government have said Aristide and every other person in Haiti could be charged with corruption and other crimes, though no indictments have been issued against him.
Preval said his government would have two main priorities during his five-year term: rebuilding Haiti's gutted and corruption-prone civil institutions, and improving security to attract private investment and jobs. ``I talked to a lot of people during my campaign, and almost everyone told me they don't have work,'' Preval said. ``It is the private sector that must invest, but it is the state that has to create a stable environment.''
The president-elect stopped short of saying whether he would offer amnesty to heavily armed gangs - some with alleged ties to Aristide - that have been blamed for a wave of kidnappings that helped delay the elections.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/23/2006
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US President George W. Bush said on Wednesday he would push the leaders of India and Pakistan to resolve their long-standing conflict over Kashmir during his visit to the South Asian nations next week. I will encourage them to address this important issue, Bush said ahead of his meetings with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
Noting that the two governments were now engaged in a dialogue about the difficult question, Bush said they now have an historic opportunity to work toward lasting peace. For too long, Kashmir has been a source of violence and distrust between these two countries, he said.
He just plows ahead, doesn't he? Port flap, what port flap? He's got an agenda and he's going to get it done.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/23/2006
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I hope he is paying attention to the port flap because it has a strong possibility of turning into much more than a flap and is due primarily to political incompetence within his administration. He needs to recognize that the MSM is a major enemy, not only of his administration, but of the nation's interests. His administration needs to take more proactive efforts to manage the media spin machine. Bring back Mike Deaver.
If he doesn't fix this problem, his administration will be ground to a halt by all the sand being thrown in the gears.
#3
Kashimr will not be resolved because India is in the strong position and won't give, and Mushariff can't lose face without losing his job (life) by giving in. Even a compromise split down the middle is unlikely at this point.
I expect as Iraq because hostile to foriegn fighters they move to Checnya and Kashmir to keep the battle going and regroup.
#4
No Way Hosea! Your asking both war torn, impoverish nations to look down into the lush green fields and blue water flowing valleys of near paradise, to turn and forget what they have seen as not worth it?! There's only two solutions; nuke each other over it, or nuke Kashmir to stop the prior!
At least 76 people have been killed as religious violence continues to rage across Nigeria, with Christian and Muslim gangs on the streets in several cities. Rioters armed with machetes and shotguns roamed the streets of the predominately Christian city of Onitsha in the south of the country on Wednesday. There were three more deaths on Wednesday, with residents saying that gangs took to the streets apparently seeking revenge for a Muslim attack on a Christian primary school.
The wave of violence began in the northern city of Maiduguri on Saturday after protests against Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad spread and 30 churches were razed to the ground. Eighteen people, mostly Christians, were killed. Similar sectarian violence recurred on Monday and Tuesday in the northern city of Bauchi, where Red Cross officials say 25 people were killed when Muslim mobs attacked Christians. In Onitsha, residents and witnesses said two mosques were burned down and least 30 people were killed on Tuesday, most of them northern Muslims. Several local newspapers reported 30 to 35 dead as a result of the violence, apparently a response to the earlier attacks on Christians. Thousands of Muslims, originally from the north of the country, fled to the citys military barracks. One Onitsha resident, Isotonu Achor, said: "There are reports that some of the northerners attacked a primary school near the barracks this morning and killed some children".
"Schools have quickly closed and thousands of people carrying machetes, some with guns, are rushing toward the military barracks. It could be bloody," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/23/2006
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A surprisingly balanced piece, from Al Jizz. I wonder what the Arabic version looks like.
Iran offered Wednesday to help finance a Palestinian Authority run by the Hamas militant group, state radio reported. The secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, announced the offer after a meeting with Khaled Mashaal, the political leader of the Hamas, in Tehran, the radio said. Larijani said the decision was taken after the United States said it would not provide aid to an authority governed by Hamas until the group renounced violence, recognized Israel and agreed to abide by existing agreements between Israel and the Palestinians.
"We felt we could offer them a better deal," Larjani said...
"The United States proved that it would not support democracy after it cut its aid to the Palestinian government after Hamas won the elections. We will certainly help the Palestinians," Larijani said, according to the radio. The United States and European Union, which consider Hamas a terrorist group, have said they will halt their grants of hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to the Palestinian Authority after a Hamas government takes office unless it changes its attitude toward Israel and violence.
I imagine Medea Benjamin should be trotting out some starving Paleostinian children any time now...
... dressed in pink, natch ...
Hamas has long called for the destruction of Israel and has refused to negotiate with the Jewish state. Its leaders have refused to change their policies since the group won last month's Palestinian elections by a landslide. On Tuesday, a moderate Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was asked to form a government by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
They're quick to put scare quotes around the word "terrorist," but they can call Haniyeh a moderate without even pausing for breath.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/23/2006
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Iff the Mullahs are going to proclaim that suicide bombers, etal. may act and be protected in the name of Islama and the State, any Terror enacted by HAMAS may end up [rightfully] being blamed on Iran.
after funding the Paleos for a few months, Iran may get donor fatigue (especially if Hamas doesn't resume suicide bombings) and begin quarrelling with the Paleos.
In the meantime Hamas will start heavy handed enforcement of Islamic strictures which the Paleos will blame on both Hamas and Iran.
#5
A few days ago someone posted a link towards an article by an, I think, expatriate Iranian who was pissed about the "Palestine, Palestine, Palestine" discourse of the Mad Mullahs, the "Palestine" street into the smallest Iranian villages when in fact the Palestinians positively hate Iranians, that bunch of non-Arab and non-Sunni Iranians. It couleb fun when Mullahs will tell Iranians they will have to tighten their belts in order to give more to Hamas ie Sunni fundamentalists who hate Iranians still more than the PLO people did.
#7
IF this happens (and I expect Hamas will prefer Saudi money to Iranian) this should be great fodder for the new Farsi TV station we're launching. Juxtapose stories on aid to Hamas, Hamas waste and corruption, with stories on the Iranian economy.
#9
I 2nd lotp, .com....GREAT pic! If this doesn't push us (closer) to war with Iran, I don't know what will. It's almost as IF the MM's wanna fight (/sarcasm off).
Posted by: BA ||
02/23/2006 12:31
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You folks should check out SomethingAwful PhotoshopPhriday "contests" - there are some amazingly gifted (read: mentally deranged artists, lol) who contribute work there. Some of it is silly, of course, but some is awesome, lol.
Nine people, some of them U.S. Marines, have been arrested for stealing bulletproof vests intended for American troops in Iraq and trying to sell them to international arms merchants, Homeland Security officials said on Wednesday.
they're not true Marines, they just wear the uniform
Authorities said they had busted a group that stole ballistic vests, helmets and protective plates from the Camp Pendleton Marine base in San Diego, California, and sold them on the Internet. Several additional suspects are believed to be serving with the U.S. military in Iraq.
"At a time when our troops in Iraq need all the body armor they can get, it is extremely troubling to see bulletproof vests destined for those troops being stolen from our military bases at home for resale to the public," said Julie Myers, assistant secretary for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with the Department of Homeland Security. "It is even more troubling that individuals would try to sell these items for profit to people they believed were international arms dealers," Myers said in a statement.
One San Diego resident, Erika Jardine, was sentenced on Wednesday to six months in prison by a federal court in Philadelphia for selling U.S. property.
Not long enough.
ICE agents began investigating Jardine in June 2004 after she was discovered selling 18 stolen ballistic vests on eBay to agents posing as overseas arms dealers. Their investigation led them to several U.S. Marines stationed at Camp Pendleton who had sold equipment to Jardine. Eight people, some of them Marines and several civilians, have since been arrested on charges of stealing government property and other arrests are expected.
ICE agents said they had recovered or purchased items worth more than $63,000 including tactical vests, protective inserts, helmets, gas masks, M-16 assault rifle magazines and more than 100,000 Iraqi dinars.
#6
Without insulting Rantburg's atheists and agnostics, the statement stands on its own as Without a moral compass, people become assholes. We see from the riots and the murders that religion alone doesn't guide people to proper behaviour, if they choose an immoral religion.
#7
I just posted an article on p.2 about the same case, which emphasizes that it wasn't a crime gang, but a dozen guys who all had the same bright idea. Compare and contrast, and decide for youselves, ladies and gents.
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.
Sources close to the Lebanese presidential palace denied Wednesday any Qatari proposal to make a change in the country's political scene through the resignation of President Emile Lahoud. They told KUNA that the "move" initiated by Qatari First Premier and Foreign Minister Hamad al Thani was aimed at improving the Lebanese-Syrian relations and had nothing to do with the presidency. Coming from Damascus, the Qatari foreign minister met with Lahoud earlier and told the press after the talks that his visit aimed at clearing the atmosphere between Syria and Lebanon.
His Highness Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Mohammed Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah sent Thursday a cable of condolences to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques of Saudi Arabia King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud and the Deputy Prime Minister, Defense and Aviation Minister and Inspector General Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud on the demise of Prince Fahad bin Abdullah bin Saud bin Nasser Al-Farhan Al-Saud.
North Korea uses a printing press in Pyongyang to counterfeit U.S. dollars and then circulates them through a state-run trading firm, a South Korean lawmaker said on Thursday, referring to samples he said he got from the North.
Our nation is engaged in what promises to be a long struggle in the global war on terror. In this war, some of the most critical battles may not be in the mountains of Afghanistan or the streets of Iraq but in newsrooms in New York, London, Cairo and elsewhere.
Democrats, after 11 years as the minority party in Congress, still can't get it right with their own voters, a poll shows. 
There was a time when the press was the strongest guardian of free expression in this democracy. Stories and celebrations of intrepid and courageous reporters are many within the press corps. Cases such as New York Times v. Sullivan in the 1960s were litigated so that the press could report on and examine public officials with the unfettered reporting a free people deserved. In the 1970s the Pentagon Papers case reaffirmed the proposition that issues of public importance were fully protected by the First Amendment.
Rep. Peter King as an un-American law
The US military has funded a computer game to teach its troops how to use and decipher Iraqi body language. The purpose is to teach soldiers that using the wrong gestures can potentially cause offence and escalate already tense situations. 
The suspected head of an anti-Semitic gang which kidnapped, tortured and killed a young French Jew near Paris has been arrested in Ivory Coast. Youssouf Fofana, 26, is in the custody of French police who went to Ivory Coast to question him. The French authorities had issued an international warrant for his arrest after he had left the country. 
Iran's Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has announced a week of mourning following the attack Wednesday morning on one of the holiest Shiite shrines at Samarra in Iraq, and accused the Americans and Israelis of responsibility. In a statement, the Iranian leader says those behind the attack were "the occupation forces and Zionism, which seeing their plans for Iraq dissolve, have planned this atrocity to sew hate between Muslims and fuel divisions between Sunnis and Shiites". In Iran, where 90 per cent of the population is Shiite, the attack against the shrine has caused disgust and consternation.
Radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr cut short his visit to Lebanon on Wednesday after the destruction of the golden dome of a famous Shiite shrine in Iraq. 
Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday he still saw a chance of Russia striking a deal with Iran, which could defuse an international crisis over Tehrans nuclear ambitions and boost Moscows international profile. 
Warring Somali factions have clinched a ceasefire agreement to end days of fighting in Mogadishu that killed at least 33 people, mostly civilians, and left hundreds others wounded, elders said. 
Suspected militants shot and dead killed prominent pro-government tribal elder Arsala Khan in South Waziristan on Wednesday, where security has gone from bad to worse in recent months. Witnesses said that Arsala's car was sprayed with bullets in Wana bazaar, leaving him dead and two others injured. "He died on the spot, while two other passengers were also wounded in the attack," witnesses told Daily Times. The indiscriminant firing also injured a passer-by. One of the three wounded civilians was rushed to hospital in Dera Ismail Khan where he was said to be in serious condition.
The 
The womens wing of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) on Wednesday staged a demonstration at Aabpara Chowk against cartoons of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) published in newspapers across Europe. Over 1,000 veiled women gathered at Aapara and shouted slogans against President Pervez Musharraf, claiming that the government reaction to the cartoons, deemed blasphemous by Muslims, did not represent that of Muslims. They held banners and placards demanding punishment for the editor of the Danish newspaper which published the cartoons first and an end to diplomatic and trade ties with European countries where the cartoons were published later. They burned the Danish prime ministers effigy. Senator Dr Kausar Firdous, Samia Raheel Qazi and others led the procession. Most of the women protestors were seminary students. Some of them also brought their children with them. Students of Jamia Hafsa Al Banat were dominant among the demonstrators near Lal Masjid. 
District Coordination Officer (DCO) Abdul Samad Lasi said that as soon as the arrest warrants of Akbar Bugti, his two grandsons and 12 others were issued in lieu of the three cases registered against them in the Sui police station, they would be arrested. 
Suspected militants ambushed a military convoy in Balochistan on Wednesday, killing two soldiers and wounding four, officials said. Insurgents positioned on mountains overlooking a road attacked the convoy with rockets and machine guns at Pinjra Pull, 70 kilometers southeast of Quetta, a security official said. The troops, who were on their way to nearby Sibi for a routine deployment, retaliated and the exchange of gunfire continued for about half an hour, the official speaking on condition of anonymity, said. At least one soldier died and five others were wounded, the official said, adding that the casualties occurred after a military vehicle was hit. The attackers fled into the mountains after the ambush, he said. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.
India has formed two top-level committees in New Delhi and Srinagar to check the flow of funds to Jammu and Kashmir. State Home Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal told the Rajya Sabha that various agencies of the government were taking measures to prevent funding to militant organisations. He said that the arrest of a Dubai-based engineer in Delhi on February 3, and the recovery of Rs 5.5m in cash and explosives from his possession confirms the involvement of Middle East businessmen in 'hawala' operations to fund militancy.
Indian security forces clashed Wednesday with suspected militants in three separate gunfights in Jammu and Kashmir, leaving 11 people dead. The first battle broke out when rebels opened fire on soldiers and police searching the remote mountains of the Udhampur district of India's Jammu-Kashmir state, said Colonel D K Badola, an army spokesman. The soldiers and police were cordoning off the area when the fighting began, and "after a two-hour long gunbattle, three militants and an army soldier were killed while another soldier was injured," Badola said. 
Fatah has agreed at initial talks with Hamas to try find common ground for a governing partnership between the long-dominant Palestinian faction and the group that crushed it at the polls. The head of Fatah's parliamentary faction, 
Sudan rejects US-backed efforts to have UN peacekeeping troops take over from African Union troops in the countrys troubled Darfur region, Foreign Minister Lam Akol said yesterday. The United States has said genocide is continuing in Darfur with rape, looting and killing by Arab militias, known as the Janjaweed, and has urged the African Union to accept a hand over to UN peacekeepers. The government has rejected this ... We did not hear anybody saying they (the AU) are not doing enough to stop the violence. What we are hearing is that theyre short of funds, Akol told Reuters. Sudanese officials had previously shown a softer position toward the deployment of UN troops in Darfur, which the AU says it supports in principle. The United Nations has already begun contingency planning for any takeover.
Britain's foreign secretary has told Iraqi leaders they must form a national unity government free of domination by a single group. 
An explosion aimed at Nato peacekeepers has killed an Afghan civilian and wounded 13 people, including a German peacekeeper, in northern Afghanistan, police said. The blast, caused by a remotely controlled device attached to a bicycle, went off on Wednesday as a group of peacekeepers were shopping in the northern town of Kunduz, police chief Mutalib Beg said. "It killed the shopkeeper and wounded 13 people, all of whom were civilians except a German soldier from ISAF," he said.
President Gen Pervez Musharraf said he wants to "inject more vigour" into a strategic partnership with China after meeting on Wednesday with the country's defence chief in Beijing, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. "Pakistan will continue to contribute to developing friendly cooperation with China's defence department, military and other departments," Xinhua quoted Musharraf as saying. "We want to continuously inject more vigour into the two nations' close strategic cooperative partnership," Musharraf said.
Pluto, the most distant recognised planet of the Solar System, has two tiny satellites in addition to Charon, the moon which was discovered in 1978. US astronomers used the orbiting Hubble telescope to spot the moonlets, which have been labelled S/2005 P1 and and S/2005 P2 until formal names are approved after the International Astronomical Union (IAU) vets the find. P1 and P2 appear to measure between 48 kilometers and 165 kms across and take 38 and 25 days respectively to orbit Pluto, according to their paper, published on Thursday in Nature, the weekly British science journal. Pluto, discovered in 1930 by the American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, is the outermost of the acknowledged planets, although a new contender for that title emerged last year in the form of an object called 2003 UB313.
Five Saudi men appeared in a state security court in the Yemeni capital Sanaa yesterday charged with plotting attacks against Americans in Yemen allegedly on the orders of the Al-Qaeda network. The five men, 
GUJRANWALA: The All Pakistan Clerks Association (APCA) passed a resolution terming the publication of blasphemous caricatures of the Holy Prophet (
the imam, at the 300-year-old 
TOKYO (AP) - A Tokyo court convicted and sentenced a founder of the Japanese Red Army terrorist group on Thursday to 20 years in prison for kidnapping and attempted murder in a 1974 attack on the French Embassy in the Hague, court officials said.
US President George W. Bush said on Wednesday he would push the leaders of India and Pakistan to resolve their long-standing conflict over Kashmir during his visit to the South Asian nations next week. I will encourage them to address this important issue, Bush said ahead of his meetings with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
At least 76 people have been killed as religious violence continues to rage across Nigeria, with Christian and Muslim gangs on the streets in several cities. Rioters armed with machetes and shotguns roamed the streets of the predominately Christian city of Onitsha in the south of the country on Wednesday. There were three more deaths on Wednesday, with residents saying that gangs took to the streets apparently seeking revenge for a Muslim attack on a Christian primary school.
Iran offered Wednesday to help finance a Palestinian Authority run by the Hamas militant group, state radio reported. The secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, 
Nine people, some of them U.S. Marines, have been arrested for stealing bulletproof vests intended for American troops in Iraq and trying to sell them to international arms merchants, Homeland Security officials said on Wednesday. 
